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A Review of Aerospike Nozzles: Current Trends in Aerospace Applications

(www.mdpi.com)
84 points PaulHoule | 1 comments | 26 Jun 25 15:33 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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psunavy03 ◴[26 Jun 25 15:59 UTC] No.44388657[source]▶
The abstract brings up SSTOs, but has there been anything in recent invention that will make them anything other than the white whale people have been chasing since forever?
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pfdietz ◴[26 Jun 25 17:41 UTC] No.44389554[source]▶
Why make an SSTO when you can make a TSTO? First stage recovery is a solved problem and will always greatly relax the engineering problems over making a SSTO.
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avmich ◴[26 Jun 25 23:37 UTC] No.44392505[source]▶
Because of course SSTO has benefits over TSTO, simplicity of operation being one example.
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1. marze ◴[27 Jun 25 23:02 UTC] No.44401090{3}[source]▶
Against the cost of a lower payload fraction. Say you get 4% with TSTO, 2% with SSTO. And if you run into trouble with the design, the SSTO payload moves towards 0%. Your operational savings need to compensate for a doubling of cost per unit mass payload, possibly much more.

And even though full reusability is much easier with two stages, and has not been achieved yet.