Existing engineering materials allow the construction of towers to heights of many kilometers. Orbital launch from a high altitude has significant advantages over sea-level launch due to the reduced atmospheric pressure, resulting in lower atmospheric drag on the vehicle and allowing higher rocket engine performance. High-altitude launch sites are particularly advantageous for single-stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicles, where the payload is typically 2% of the initial launch mass. An earlier paper enumerated some of the advantages of high altitude launch of SSTO vehicles. In this paper, we calculate launch trajectories for a candidate SSTO vehicle, and calculate the advantage of launch at launch altitudes 5 to 25 kilometer altitudes above sea level. The performance increase can be directly translated into increased payload capability to orbit, ranging from 5 to 20% increase in the mass to orbit. For a candidate vehicle with an initial payload fraction of 2% of gross lift-off weight, this corresponds to 31 % increase in payload (for 5-kin launch altitude) to 122% additional payload (for 25-kin launch altitude).


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    Titel :

    High Altitude Launch for a Practical SSTO


    Beteiligte:
    G. A. Landis (Autor:in) / V. Denis (Autor:in)

    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2002


    Format / Umfang :

    10 pages


    Medientyp :

    Report


    Format :

    Keine Angabe


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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