Comment on Launch on Demand by Thomas-Peters
Cooool....Not sure what's going on with the ship though, it looks like it splits into two aircraft? Three? Not sure what it's doing. 
That is, essentially, what it is. The Booster gets the Orbiter up to about 40 miles, and 3 miles per second, then detaches to glide back to launch site to be reused. The Orbiter makes the final, fully rocket powered, sprint to 5 miles per second, and 250 miles and inserts itself into orbit.
Neat idea. I did quite a lot of research way back when on SSTO and MSTO launch systems. Yours definitely looks a lot cooler than what's out there now 
Biggest issue is just getting over the massive amount of fuel a rocket has to carry - most launchers are about 90% fuel, 5% launcher, and 5% payload (the numbers are around that anyway).
Biggest issue is just getting over the massive amount of fuel a rocket has to carry - most launchers are about 90% fuel, 5% launcher, and 5% payload (the numbers are around that anyway).I wish I could claim the model and design for my own, but it belongs to Jason Tinsley. He did a superb job!
Yeah, that's just the facts of life with rockets. But they're pretty much the only game in town, to operate in the speed and altitude regimes you need to get to orbit. The lower stage seems to be an air-breather, though (note the big intakes) so ay least the Booster doesn't have to carry oxidizer.
Yeah, that's just the facts of life with rockets. But they're pretty much the only game in town, to operate in the speed and altitude regimes you need to get to orbit. The lower stage seems to be an air-breather, though (note the big intakes) so ay least the Booster doesn't have to carry oxidizer.
Yea, that does help a lot - there was some research back in the 60s/70s where they developed a way to pull and compress oxygen from the atmosphere so they could add oxidizer on the way up, but that got canned in favor of the Apollo project and the Saturn V.