Re: How big would an SSTO be?


"Sylvia Else" <sylvia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4696f409$0$18984$afc38c87@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ian Parker wrote:

There is one other vital fact. Suppose we accept that a hypersonic
SSTO orbiter is possible. There is still one other important
parameter.

Will it be able to perform 1000 flights maintainance free - only fuel
and LOX, or will it like the Shuttle have to virtually be rebuilt
after every flight? You cannot tell simply be looking at the Skylon
design.

Skylon appears to be designed for a life of 200 launches. I doubt they
expect the engine to last that long, but one would hope that the engine
didn't need to be stripped down after each flight.

You can't even look to the shuttle for a good example since the money needed
to make it less maintenance intensive never completely materialized. The
SSME's, however, have been improved and last I checked *don't* need to be
pulled and stripped down after every flight anymore. But things like the
TPS, the hypergolics, and the hydrazine APU's are still troublesome.

It appears from my what I've read over the last few days that a very
significant factor in the life and reliability of rocket engines is the
chamber pressure, and one reason the SSME requires so much maintenance is
that it runs at a very high pressure.

I haven't been able to find any indications of what kind of pressures RE's
SABRE engine will use.

No idea, but the SSME of today is a lot more safe and reliable than the
SSME's that would occasionally fail on the test stand during development.
There has been a lot of improvements to them over the years.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)


.

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