Re: Can't We call the early Atlas a SSTO?



John Halpenny wrote:
Two vehicles that were designed from the start for low cost were the
Pegasus and Spaceship 1. They both used existing air-breathing first
stages. There are no existing hypersonic aircraft to work from, so we
will have to wait for the military to provide them, just as we did
with rockets and aircraft, and there seems to be more of a push for
reasonable ~ mach 5 aircraft rather than the more exotic ones. Even
countries like India are working on it.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/07/11/215441/israel-helps-india-develop-scramjet-demonstrator.html

When hypersonic aircraft are available for other uses, they will be
used as launchers.

I'm not talking hypersonic aircraft here, I mean just strapping some ramjets to the exterior of the vehicle that are feed by its fuel supply and dropped of once their use is done, like the strap-ons on a Delta II.
Ramjets have a very good thrust-to-weight ratio and are comparatively cheap.
By angling the ascent profile to keep the vehicle gaining speed inside the atmosphere, a significant amount of oxidizer can be saved, and overall vehicle size decreased, as in the Gnom design: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/gnom.htm

Pat

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