The Sanger Concept

The Hotol system develped in the UK in the late 80s,
is very similar, eventhought is unmanned , but I don't
remember that it had similar problems.
IMO an unmanned booster stage , with a combination of
turbofan engines for take-off and landing and
scramjets for speeds up to Mach 7\8 at 100KM altitude
carrying a manned orbiter powered by rocket engines to
reach orbital speed , delivering its payload and
landing back at take off airport could be feasible and
allow to reduce accesibility costs.
I would like your opinion
Giorgio
--- ANTIcarrot ha
scritto:

> > From: sraj
> > The Sanger Concept developed by the Germans, where
> a large
> > reusable sub-orbital shuttle carries a smaller
> shuttle to a
> > higher altitude, seemed to be quite elegant. Why
> does this
> > not figure in future space carrier plans?
>
> Because in most realistic engineering studies the
> lower stage:
> *Melts due to friction as it slowly accelerates
> through high mach numbers
> *Is too heavy
> *Is so large it has an impractical development cost
> with respect to designs
> which promise a similar price/payload to orbit
> *Usually need very long runways, which are more
> expensive and harder to
> locate (because supersonic flight is illegial
> overland) than VTOL towers.
> *Depends on engine technology that currently does
> not exist and does seem
> likely to exist for the next ten years.
>
> John
>
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