AbstractSevere weight penalties can occur if the sizes of Orbital Sortie Vehicle stages are not near their optimum values. In particular, single-stage rocket configurations with or without “zero-stage” boosters are necessarily much larger than two-stage configurations. Conventional cryogenic propellant combinations provide a reasonable range of vehicle sizes. By comparison, one storable-liquid propellant combination would require vehicle size to be excessive, while two “exotic” propellant combinations do not appear to provide enough size reduction to warrant their use. Second-stage structural efficiency has a major effect on overall vehicle size. It appears feasible to design a two-stage Orbital Sortie Vehicle whose gross lift-off weight is 50–70 times the payload weight.
Propulsion and staging considerations for an orbital sortie vehicle
Acta Astronautica ; 15 , 1 ; 29-34
1987-01-01
6 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Propulsion for an air launched space sortie system
AIAA | 1983
|Manrating orbital transfer vehicle propulsion
NTRS | 1985
|Manrating orbital transfer vehicle propulsion
NTRS | 1985
|Manrating orbital transfer vehicle propulsion
AIAA | 1985
|