/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15951087
I suppose TSTO is still kind of a no brainer, the only real downsides are re-integration.

What really gets me is how few people seem to have thought of reusable TSTO configurations.
You have the side by side shuttle configurations, but that's it really.

Delta clipper for example would have been so much more feasible if they had done it as two stages, IDK why they didn't think of that.
You could have used separate deep throttling landing engines for example, and not have to design special deep throttle booster engines.

i miss him

>>14993156
Been there, tried that. It wasn't the worst idea ever given that the 1990s was the era of "it's all but impossible for anyone to design a new engine" and the only other option in the size range was the AJ10, but the RL-10 is still a bad upper stage engine that should have been replaced years ago.

>>12265010
>>12265025
The thing is DC-X was expressly built to be a small-scale demonstrator of the landing maneuver that an SSTO would need to perform. SN8 has a tougher task ahead of it because it was designed to be the upper stage of an orbital rocket first and foremost and it's the full-scale article.

I know it went nowhere, was supposed to be an SSTO, and that NASA didn't like it, but it was incredibly cool and I like it.

>>12084509
Why are there no good DC-X mods for KSP?

>>12054918
The problem was that NASA failed to recognize the "right direction" because the DC-X wasn't what NASA was looking for. While the DC-X was an impressive technical demonstration, it was merely a sub-orbital hopper when NASA was looking for SSTO demonstrators. NASA begrudgingly carried on with the DC-X, but they clearly wanted the X-33 more.

>>11972753
There could've been a 90punk Falcon 9 if the USA hadn't bought the SSTO meme.

>>11950628
I'll agree with you. I wouldn't dare call it the most "practical" or "useful", but damn does it look cool

>>11758863
People are so dumb, if we put tiny little aerodynamic fins on the bottom of the DC-X they would suddenly classify it as a spaceplane because
>muh winglets

>>9606421

Then you're a fucking moron, for fuck's sake the entire reason we are in this situation was because Congress saw how Douglas passed up NASA with the DCX in 1993, which is what led them to force NASA to consider "traditional" alternatives to the X-33. By 1997 Douglas aircraft ceased to exist when it was merged into Lockheed, who showed little interest in spacecraft when their F-35 had just won the Joint Strike Fighter contract. With private support gone NASA had to cancel the X-33 in 2001 when it's composite fuel tank cracked again. Within five years of that Lockheed and Boeing had all those problems sorted out yet still chose to create ULA in 2006 rather than build a proper SSTO (or SSTO-like system).

All of this happened because the government had high expectations that the private market would provide a low cost replacement to the Space Shuttle, which itself was originally going to be a low-cost private replacement to the Saturn V. The private market chose not to provide it due to the high cost and thus when the space shuttle retired so did America's manned space program (at least temporarily).

Relying 100% on the private sector only leads to ruin, as does relying 100% on the government like the Soviets did. America's space program was successful because it utilized both whenever practical instead of trying to make some sort of broader ideological point about doing things one way or another. This ended with the Cold War's peaceful close.