Did anybody watch the SpaceX launch today?

Chippy_boy said:
I hear what you're saying but nevertheless, so much of the fuel is burned in the early stages, it still saves a lot if you can fly up part of the way. The solid rocket boosters on the Shuttle are massively more powerful than the main engine and account for 70% of the total mass of the shuttle. And yet all they do is get the Shuttle to 140,000 feet and then they are jettisoned. If a spacecraft could fly to 140,000 ft (I appreciate it can't) the SRB's wouldn't be needed at all.
Click to expand...

The problem you have is the SRB's weren't designed to get the shuttle up and out they were designed to accelerate it as quickly as possible. A lot of continuous acceleration is all you need to get something into orbit. For that to happen you need something attached to the plane that can do the same thing as the SRB's but you have less altitude to do it. I can see that taking the same fuel roughly unless there is some new kind of engine that can accelerate you faster in a shorter time period.

To put into perspective, Saturn V weighed 3 million tons fully loaded. You could remove the first stage which would save a lot but with that you are removing the majority of the power which you still need to accelerate. The only option would be to carry a large size staged rocket up with you and that is going to be impossible to do for a plane. An Antonov is perhaps the closest to what you would need but that can't even get past 30,000ft fully loaded, fully loaded as in around 600 tons..

You have to also ask would you be willing to get in with your spacesuit on, release the rocket from the plane and fire it up knowing full well that if it failed in any way you couldn't just turn it off and get out. It happened all the time with the shuttle but in the worst case of a failure after launch they just detached and landed back. Once that rocket is released from the plane it is either going to space or in the event of any failure it is going to crash and burn. On the launchpad they could always just abort the launch and go nowhere.

Sorry mate I agree it is a very attractive option but I think the problems it creates are far too big and also costly with todays technology anyway.
 
inbetween said:
The problem you have is the SRB's weren't designed to get the shuttle up and out they were designed to accelerate it as quickly as possible. A lot of continuous acceleration is all you need to get something into orbit. For that to happen you need something attached to the plane that can do the same thing as the SRB's but you have less altitude to do it. I can see that taking the same fuel roughly unless there is some new kind of engine that can accelerate you faster in a shorter time period.

To put into perspective, Saturn V weighed 3 million tons fully loaded. You could remove the first stage which would save a lot but with that you are removing the majority of the power which you still need to accelerate. The only option would be to carry a large size staged rocket up with you and that is going to be impossible to do for a plane. An Antonov is perhaps the closest to what you would need but that can't even get past 30,000ft fully loaded, fully loaded as in around 600 tons..

You have to also ask would you be willing to get in with your spacesuit on, release the rocket from the plane and fire it up knowing full well that if it failed in any way you couldn't just turn it off and get out. It happened all the time with the shuttle but in the worst case of a failure after launch they just detached and landed back. Once that rocket is released from the plane it is either going to space or in the event of any failure it is going to crash and burn. On the launchpad they could always just abort the launch and go nowhere.

Sorry mate I agree it is a very attractive option but I think the problems it creates are far too big and also costly with todays technology anyway.
Click to expand...
*3,000 tonnes
 
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