Hi it’s me, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut
Rockets are HUGE, complicated and expensive.
As a matter of fact, the rocket that took
humans to the moon, the Saturn 5, was 111
meters or 363 feet tall, and had more separation
events than dating teenagers.
I actually didn't mean for that one to happen.
So why do rockets always split themselves
up into multiple parts.
Isn’t that complicated and risky?
Why throw so much of it away?
I mean, there’s got to be a better way!!!
Well how about if rockets were only ONE stage?
How awesome would that be?
Well this idea isn’t new… it’s called
single stage to orbit or SSTO and it’s often
considered the holy grail of rocketry.
Well, today, I’m going to SMASH THAT HOLY
GRAIL and explain why I think SSTO’s SUCK.
In order to drill this point in we’ll teach
you all about the tyranny of the rocket equation
and help you understand why every orbital
rocket, well, ever is multistage.
Then we’ll take a stroll down SSTO history
and look at some crazy designs that in some
cases almost worked...
And not to be a huge downer, we'll take a
look at some SSTO designs that MIGHT actually
work, including the Skylon spaceplane that
uses that awesome SABRE hybrid engine.
Ok, Everyday Astronaut VS SSTO’s… oh man,
the comment section is going to love this
one… but hear me out, let’s get started!
So if you’ve ever played Kerbal
Space Program, you know that awesome computer
game where you design, build and fly rockets
with these little froggy alien guys and you
get them off their home planet of Kerbin,
yeah that game… then you know SSTO’s are
all the rage.
Building an SSTO in Kerbal is bragging rights,
something to show off about and post on reddit.
But what if I told you, I can’t hardly think
of one good reason to build an SSTO in real life?
Well there’s a few potential benefits, but
do they outweigh all the negatives?
Ok… ok… so before I sound like some old
grump here “Get off my lawn you darn kids
with your SSTOs”, let’s talk about why
SSTO’s are considered desirable by some
and why people dream about a time when launch
vehicles are only one stage…
Imagine a world where a launch vehicle takes
off, goes to space, comes back, refuels and
does that multiple times a day.
No problem.
Sounds like a real life millenium falcon.
When most people use the term SSTO it’s
inferred that the vehicle would be reusable…
it would go up in space and come back down
all in one piece, throwing away only fuel
to get it there and back.
And again, when talking about reusable SSTOs
most people and concepts utilize a spaceplane design.
A vehicle which takes off and lands like a
plane.
Sounds great right?
One vehicle to do it all!
Nice and simple.
Take off from any runway just like a jetliner
at an airport, and then instead of leveling
out at a boring old 10 kms or 35,000 feet
or so, keep accelerating and increase your
altitude until you’re in orbit!
Then when your mission’s done, just come
back down from space and land on any old runway,
again, like any other jetliner.
Hmm, SSTO’s don’t sound bad… do they?
Uh oh, have I lost my mind???
Well, before we keep on dreaming about our
potential sci-fi future, let’s take a quick
look at the history of rockets to see why
so far, SSTOs haven’t been attainable.
The first liquid fuel rockets ever made were
just one stage.
Basically a rocket engine, some propellant
inside the fuselage and in most a cases, some
kind of warhead on top.
Rocket’s were mostly used as an advanced
weapon delivery system at first, but lucky
for us, they also so happen to be able to
be used for spaceflight!
The V2 rockets built by Germany, were the
first rockets to ever reach the edge of space.
In June, 1944, a V2 rocket on a test flight
reached beyond the karman line, the most commonly
agreed upon boundary of space at 100 kms or
62 miles in altitude.
Sure, a single stage rocket can get up to
space, but what about stay in space?
Well in order to stay in space, an object
needs to reach orbital velocity.
To orbit the earth, a vehicle needs to be
traveling at about 28,000 km/h or 17,500 miles
per hour to stay in space.
Ok… so now we have a new goal for humanity.
Get something into orbit.
Well on October 4th, 1957 the Soviet Union
managed to place Sputnik 1 into orbit.
The shiny metal ball with scary looking spiky
antennas weighed only 83.6 KG or 184 pounds,
hey that’s pretty much my weight!
The vehicle that carried Sputnik to low Earth
orbit was a two stage launch vehicle most
commonly known as the R7.
This rocket was revolutionary and allowed
the vehicle to drop unnecessary weight on
ascent by ejecting spent fuel tanks and rocket
engines that were no longer necessary.
This is called staging.
It was revolutionary and pivotal in putting
anything of significance into orbit.
Staging is the number one cure for the tyranny
of the rocket equation.
The tyranny of the rocket equation is basically
the diminishing returns on adding fuel.
If you were to double the amount of fuel in
your rocket, you wouldn't double the delta
V or change in velocity…
Due to now having to push around all the weight
of the extra fuel and the fuel tank that holds
it, the rocket is able to burn longer, sure,
but it doesn’t receive anywhere near double
the change in velocity.
And it only gets worse the further you go
until the rocket actually gets too heavy for
the engine and next thing you know you’re
adding engines to lift the extra fuel and
so on and so on.
So this is where staging comes in.
Once a rocket empties a fuel tank, why not
throw it away?
Even better, if the rocket is throttling down
an engine to stay accelerating at a safe speed,
why not throw away the heavy, unnecessary
engines.
This is what the R7 rocket did.
It was basically a good sized rocket with
4 extra rockets attached to it.
Once those side rockets were spent, they were
discarded in this really cool formation known
as the korolev cross, named after Sergei Korolev…
who you can think of as the Werner Von Bruan
of the Soviet space program.
BTW, you can still see the Korolev Cross on
any of today’s Soyuz launches.
Separation events are often a breath holding
moment in flight.
There are two main types of staging events.
First there’s parallel staging where multiple
stages are fired and active at once, like
Soyuz, or the Space Shuttle, or Falcon Heavy.
Everyone holds their breath during staging
because if a booster doesn’t separate, the
mission will fail.
It was definitely a big moment when the side
boosters of the Falcon Heavy separated safely.
Or there’s an even more complex and nail
biting type of staging called tandem staging.
This is what most multistage rockets do.
It fires one stage first, then that engine
cuts off, the 1st stage and 2nd stage separate,
the 2nd stage fires and keeps going to orbit
as a brand new fresh rocket.
Not only is the 2nd basically a new fully
fueled little baby rocket, but their engines
are also optimized for the vacuum of space
by having a much larger exhaust nozzle.
But, that’s another huge advantage for staging.
Having different engines optimized for different
environments.
The first rocket ever to ever do any kind
of tandem staging was called the RTV-G-4 Bumper.
It was literally a V-2 rocket with a small
sounding rocket on top of it.
It was launched between 1948 and 1950 and
launched 8 times, creating a lot of valuable
data on multi staging.
But this stage separation event was really
hard to accomplish and almost considered impossible
for a long time.
That’s why many early rockets utilized parallel
staging.
As a matter of fact, separation events, or
more specifically a botched separation event
almost lead to SpaceX being another forgotten
aerospace company who went bankrupt after
only 3 flights attempts.
Flight 3 of their Falcon 1 rocket had a separation
event go wrong when the first stage had a
little residual thrust after stage separation,
causing it to bump into the upper stage, leading
to a failed mission.
So if it was so coveted and necessary to make
multistage launchers, why are SSTO’s so
sought after?
Well, there’s something to say about making
a less complicated launch vehicle.
So maybe SSTOs are good for something...
Well, I guess in order to see if SSTOs make
sense… let’s pop on over to my computer
where I’ll fire up Kerbal Space Program
to help figure out if stages are friend or foe....
Welcome to Kerbal Space Program with Realism
Overhaul.
Now Realism Overhaul is about a million different
modifications to make Kerbal Space Program
have a real solar system, it makes it a lot
harder and a lot more realistic.
Ok so our goal today, we're trying to take
a 1 metric ton Satellite up to an orbit at
250 kms in altitude.
So I built us a nice simple 2 stage rocket
with an RL-10 vacuum engine, which is an excellent
vacuum engine, and then it has a SpaceX Merlin
1D engine on its first stage, so all together
this things about 34.9 meters tall and has
about 9,237 m/s according to Kerbal Engineer Redux.
Ok now let's get ready to take this thing
off, and we'll do engine ignition in 3,2,1
HIP HIP!
Yeah!
Look at it go!
Alright we're going to speed this thing up
here a little bit and watch it get up into
orbit.
Alright now notice I've got the map pulled
up here too so you get an idea, of you know
if this were to run out of fuel right now
it would still be coasting up to its apoapsis,
it's highest point or apogee.
So you can see there you know we've got the
map pulled up and it gives us a pretty good
idea of you know where this things going.
Now just like if you were to throw a ball
it kind of goes up and arcs, if you were to
throw it further it would arc further and
further away.
Well we're just accelerating continually making
that arc extend out even further and further
and further away.
That's how rockets work.
Ok now we're running out of fuel in our first
stage so we're going to go ahead and do stage
separation.
And now we're going to light up that upper
stage.
And there it goes that the RL-10 upper stage
and this is optimized for working in the vacuum
of space.
So it means it has a really high specific
impulse.
And specific impulse is kind of like your
miles per galloon for a rocket engine.
And this this is just going to keep on accelerating
now.
It's going to keep on going and get itself
into orbit.
So its got a long ways to go now umm so this
upper stage has to do a lot of work still.
You know look its still accelerating!
And again if it were to cut off right now,
and run out of gas right now, even though
it was a fresh rocket, only about halfway
done, it wouldn't even make it to the coast
of Africa!
You know so look it, you can see on the map
there, we're not making it that far yet.
Ok we're just going to keep speeding up and
speeding up and speeding up until we get up
to around 7,500 meters per second which is
about 28,000 km/h or 17,500 mph.
We're just going to do an apogee kick which
is burning at the highest altitude just to
totally circularize ourselves and put us into
orbit.
And wah la.
A perfect orbit ish um that's fantastic now
we release the satellite and we're good space
stewards so we're going to go ahead and de
orbit the stage as well.
And it'll burn up on reentry.
Nice and easy.
There we go!
Well that was honestly the perfect rocket
for the job.
It could just barely get that 1 metric ton
up into space and have just a little bit of
fuel margins remaining to de-orbit itself.
It's perfect, it was a perfect fit.
Ok so I know what we're thinking.
So let's go ahead and turn this into a single
stage to orbit rocket!
So first things first let's go ahead and strip
it of anything that was necessary for the
second stage, so let's go ahead and take off
that expensive RL-10 upper stage engine, we
don't need that anymore!
And we don't need any of the interstage hardware
either.
Uh, so let's get ahead and take all this stuff
off here.
And goodbye.
We're going to attach this back up.
We need to put those thrusters back down on
there and now we need to make sure we replace
all that fuel that was hydrogen for that upper
stage with PR-1 which is the same fuel for
the first stage engine.
And wa la now we have about 7,155 m/s, let's
see what this thing can do!
Alright so we've got our first version of
our SSTO with the upper stage removed ready
for launch let's do this 3, 2, 1 hip hip!
And there we go!
Let's go ahead and kind of fast forward this
a little bit.
Not bad not bad.
How far is this thing going to make it, I'm
very curious here.
Ditch the fairings.
Coast up we're at that 250,000 meters in altitude
we're going to do an apogee kick here and
we're out of fuel and that's all the further
we made it!
What?
Yeah we only had a tiny little drip of fuel
left over after all of that.
And that's all the further our satellite's
going to make it about 1/3rd of the way into
the Atlantic ocean.
Let's try and go bigger, let's add enough
fuel so it can actually get into orbit.
Ok, so...
I know what we're thinking, let's just add
some fuel.
Right?
We're at 7,155 m/s we've got to get that up
to around 9,300 m/s so let's just start stretching
these tanks shall we?
I'm just going to click here and we're going
to edit this.
And we're just going to make this tank taller.
A lot taller, alright.
A lot taller.
Just going to keep going here.
A lot taller.
(laughing) uh I'm going to be here for a while
clicking.
Uh a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot
a lot a lot taller.
Well I'm tired of doing this.
Let's go ahead and stop at 602 meters tall.
Uh we're going to need a new VAB.
We absolutely smashed through the roof of
this thing, this thing looks pretty cool though,
let's go ahead and load this up.
(laughing) Yes!
It loaded!
And it's not tipping over, for now!
Oh my gosh that's amazing!
600 meters tall and by the way guys we only
have 8,800 meters per second of delta V.
We still don't even have enough delta v to
get ourselves into orbit.
And I think there's one other problem you
might, well besides the fact that it's insanely
tall, I think there's one other thing you
might realize.
Oh.
What?
It just blew up on the pad!
Oh it's like the dumbest pencil lead thing
ever.
Look at that!
Ok let's try and launch this thing anyway.
I think we know what's going to happen here
don't we?
Uh even though we only have 8,800 meters per
second of Delta V, it's going to be way too
low of thrust, to even remotely take off.
And there we go uh, it just blows up on the
pad as soon as you let it go.
So the thrust to weight ratio was way too
low with that single engine.
Um and even with that single engine, so let's
see, thrust to weight ratios about .05, and
you need above 1.0 in order to actually start
lifting off.
So .05, so we'd have to add, what is that?
20 more of those engines and we still didn't
even have enough fuel to do get into space
so let's see what it would take to actually
get this thing into space.
Alright so I've got an idea, why don't we
basically do like a Falcon 9 first stage booster
shall we?
So let's go ahead and first things first stretch
these tanks out quite a bit, quite a bit because
remember the Falcon 9 first stage booster
is about 45 meters tall.
Um and then we're gonna need a 8 more of those
Merlin 1D engines, and blah blah blah better
avionics, etc etc.
Kinda shnazy this up just a little bit.
Uh and what do we got here we ended up with
8,308 meters per second.
So still 1,000 meters per second under what
we need to do and now we have literally the
first stage of a Falcon 9, I can't help but
think that's going to be a lot more expensive,
we have 9 merlin engines instead of 1 Merlin
engine and then 1 RL-10 engine, so all of
a sudden we have instead of 2 engines we have
9, we stretched the tank from about 17 meters
for that first stage, all together that whole
thing was what about 38 meters and now we're
sitting at you know a 45 or 50 meter tall
rocket that's way wider way bigger and we
still are going to fall up short.
Let's launch it anyway just to show you and
3,2,1 hip hip!
And again I'm just going to speed it up here
real quick.
And guess what look, just like that, guess
what happened?
We didn't have enough fuel, even with our
apogee kick there we ended up 8,93.1 meters
per second short of orbital velocity.
We're out of fuel there's nothing we can do
now.
And look, we still didn't even make it to
the coast of Africa either!
So we made it about 2/3rds of the way across
the Atlantic Ocean and we just threw away
an entire Falcon 9 first stage booster basically,
I don't get it, I would much rather have a
small two stage rocket than a massive one
stage rocket that can't even perform the work
and to be honest with out tweaking the variables
like tank utilization or using some advanced
future technology like an aerospike engine,
I actually can't get this to work in Kerbal
Space Program... at all!
Alright… so I guess SSTO rockets don’t
really work out too well… the math just
doesn’t really add up.
DARN YOU TSIOLKOVSKY!!!!
So I can already hear you over there saying
but but but… and the first but is probably
“but Elon musk said the Falcon 9 booster
could reach orbital velocities…”
Sure it can.
Now good job.
You just put a $30 million dollar piece of
hardware up in space where it has no spare
margin to carry anything more than a small
backpack and no remaining fuel to re-enter
or land.
I think there’s better ways to put a backpack
in space...
And again…
Elon said that the BFS, the spaceship portion
of the big falcon rocket is capable of reaching
orbit by itself with a low payload but using
the booster, it can deliver more than an order
of magnitude more payload.
Well first off, it would require firing the
4 vacuum raptor engines at sea level which
Elon says, “I wouldn’t recommend.”
But, ok, so combustion instability aside,
let’s pretend it could put 15 tons into
orbit AND somehow have enough margins to deorbit,
and safely land…
So… now we flew a BFS to space and back
so it could deliver something smaller than
a Falcon 9 could deliver.
The cost of range, personnel and of course
refurbishment of the ship need to be in consideration.
Ok, so now let me ask you this, wouldn't it
be better to just fuel up the booster too,
and since the booster experiences much less
reentry heat than the upper stage, it can
be flown a lot more often without maintenance
and refurbishment costs.
So why not utilize the entire vehicle?
In the best case scenario you just launched
1/10th the payload capacity just to save a
little on gas money.
Once an entire vehicle is routinely rapidly
and reliably reusable, woah that’s a lot
of R’s… then who cares if it’s one stage
or two?
In best case scenario 2 stages is better than
one and in worst case scenario one stage doesn’t
even work at all.
Ok, but let’s not be all poo poo here.
Let’s take a look at some SSTO designs past,
present and future to see if there’s anything
that seem promising.
Let’s start off with some previously proposed
and pursued SSTOs and look at why they failed.
Well, one of the earliest proposals was the
One Stage Orbital Space Truck or OOST by Phil
Bono of Douglas Space in the 1960’s.
Later he proposed a reusable version called
ROOST.
Another proposal from the 60’s was the NEXUS
rocket which would’ve been freaking HUGE.
I’m talking insanely big.
It would’ve been 122 meters or 400 feet
tall, with a width of 50 meters or 164 feet!!!!
HOLY MOLY that is huge!
Ok, so paper rockets are one thing, but how
about a rocket that was actually being tested?
Look no further than the DC-X or Delta Clipper
Experimental made my McDonnell Douglas.
The DC-X was was an actual working 1/3rd scale
prototype of a proposed DC-Y SSTO that was
to be capable of putting about 1,300 kgs or
3,000 pounds into orbit.
The DC-X was just to demonstrate vertical
take off and landing and it actually flew
8 times between August 1993 and July 1995
and pretty successfully... but it only reached
a maximum altitude of 2,500m.
Think of it kind of like SpaceX’s grasshopper.
In 1996 NASA took the program and turned it
into the DC-XA which made some improvements
to the vehicle.
It flew four times, including a 26 hour turn
around and setting a new altitude record of
3,140 meters or 10,300 feet.
It’s last flight was on July 7th of 1996.
After a landing strut failed to extend and
a lox tank leaked, causing a fire and damaging
the vehicle.
Despite a relatively low cost to repair and
continue working, NASA cancelled the program
and looked to pursue Lockheed Martin’s VentureStar…
So let’s talk about that!
VentureStar is probably one of my all time
favorite spacecraft designs.
See…
I don’t HATE SSTOs….
Lockheed Martin proposed a space shuttle replacement
in the mid 90’s and received funding from
the U.S. government to work on its development.
The VentureStar ticked all the SSTO boxes.
It would’ve been amazing and it actually
got painfully close to flying… well at least
a subscale, suborbital version.
But here’s the rundown.
It had advanced carbon fiber construction,
a giant linear aerospike engine that could
take 20,000 kgs or 45,000 pounds to LEO.
That’s close to a Falcon 9!
It would take off vertically like a rocket
and land horizontally, just like the space
shuttle.
Unfortunately, the subscale x-33 demonstrator
was cancelled in 2001 despite being really
close to flying.
The X-33 demonstrator had 96% of its parts
manufactured and was 85% assembled… and
even the launch facility was complete!
The reason for its cancellation was a long
series of technical difficulties, flight instability
and excess weight.
DARN YOU WEIGHT!
Next how about maybe the craziest proposed
SSTO of all time.
The Roton.
This thing is hilarious.
This… is a helicopter that could get to
orbit..
Supposedly.
It basically was a helicopter powered by jet
tips…
So some small thrusters at the end of the
rotors.
It would then lift itself off using the low
powered jet tips spinning the helicopter rotors
until the atmosphere got too low where it
would then light up a rocket engine and ascend
to orbit using the rocket engine.
But the cool thing is, the rotors weren’t
just dead weight once in space either.
Instead of providing lift, they would continue
spinning to power the turbopump for the rocket
engine.
Then they would also be used to slow down
through descent in the atmosphere and used
to land softly.
Apparently it was horribly unstable when flying
like a helicopter… actually the vehicle
was found to be unflyable by anyone except
the test pilots who even then had periods
of being completely out of control… yikes.
Despite a full scale atmospheric test vehicle
being built, and flying… well sort of…
the program was cancelled in 2001 due to lack
of funding and people saying the technology
wasn’t valid and it was technically impossible
on available technology.
But I still LOVE that wacky thing.
It's straight up ridiculous!
Ok so what about some current proposals?
It’s been more than a decade since those
last proposals ended, there’s got to be
some new technology we can apply and make
these things happen, right?
Well, you can’t talk about SSTOs without
talking about perhaps the most alluring SSTO,
the Skylon space plane.
The Skylon is being designed by the United
Kingdom’s Reaction Engines Limited and utilizes
an amazing combined-cycle hybrid rocket engine
called the SABRE engine.
Now this is the one concept I can sort of
get behind.
The Skylon’s SABRE engines act like a fairly
traditional jet engine.
It uses the atmosphere to its advantage.
Instead of a traditional rocket that tries
to get out of the atmosphere as quickly as
possible by ascending virtually straight up
for a minute or so, the Skylon will reach
5 times the speed of sound or around 6,000
km/h or 3,800 mph while pulling in oxygen
from the atmosphere, just like a any other
jet.
And unlike a traditional rocket, the Skylon
can scoop up oxygen during ascent through
the atmosphere.
Then when it switches to the closed cycle
rocket engine, it uses onboard liquid oxygen.
So it doesn't need to carry nearly as much
liquid oxygen.
Another huge weight savings advantage.
The SABRE engine has received even further
funding from the United States’ DARPA, Boeing
& Rolls Royce to build a high temperature
test facility which hopefully will begin testing
this year.
So the Skylon actually has some promise!
But… even though it’s technically theoretically
possible, Reaction Engines is currently pursuing
non SSTO vehicles first, much before the Skylon
will ever fly.
In 2017, Mark Thomas of Reaction Engines said
they’re currently pursuing a spaceplane
as a 2 stage vehicle where it would deploy
an upper stage at a high altitude and a high
velocity and then the space plane would turn
around and land.
And one more thing while we’re talking about
Skylon.
Remember the SR-71 blackbird?
Even though it could only reach mach 3…
it still experienced so much heat that it
needed to have large gaps in body panels since
it expanded by 60 cms when flying at speed.
This led to it basically peeing its pants
and dripping fuel when fully fueled on the
runway.
Now can you imagine something that goes even
faster in the atmosphere?
Well this is the 21st century after all, I
don’t think the Skylon will pee its pants
on the runway, but the crazy heat at high
mach speeds in the atmosphere might be a huge
hurdle.
I personally foresee there being many fairly
substantial issues to overcome to making the
Skylon actually work.
It’ll be amazing if it does, but for now,
it’s kind of stuck in that future hopes
and dreams to me.
If you guys want me to do more about Skylon,
let me know.
We could probably do a whole video on it,
it’s really a cool vehicle.
And lastly… we should probably mention Arca
space’s Haas 2CA…
This to me, is pretty silly.
It’s an SSTO rocket with a linear aerospike
engine… cool.
BUT, it’s only capable of 100kg or 220 pounds
to orbit… ummm.
Maybe they should just add a small upper stage
to that thing and put 1,000 kgs into orbit
since they’re throwing away the whole thing
anyway.
My big question for Arca is… why.
What’s the point?
The ONLY thing they claim thats an advantage
is they can launch inland because there are
no spent stages to fall on populated areas.
Uhhh.
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
I mean yay for aerospikes, but boo for a rocket
with such limited capability.
Ok… so all past SSTOs have failed, all current
SSTOs are either not going to be SSTOs or
are kind of pointless in my opinion… and
there really isn’t much on the table for
a usable SSTO in the near future without some
major breakthrough in material science or
propulsion.
BUT WAIT.
There’s ONE MORE THING.
So far I’m here talking about how all SSTOs
failed… that’s not true!
As a matter of fact, one of the most famous
spacecraft in all of history was an SSTO…
the lunar excursion module!
Of course it could do single stage to orbit,
but only on the moon!
The LEM was capable of achieving lunar orbit
with only one stage.
But… that’s the moon.
The moon’s gravity is much weaker than Earth’s
gravity AND there’s no atmosphere to fight
against.
And then we have SpaceX’s BFS which will
not only be capable of SSTO from the surface
of Mars, but even have enough performance
to get all the way back to Earth from the
surface of Mars in one stage.
Again, this is mostly due to Mars having only
38% the amount of gravity of Earth AND having
only 1% the atmosphere of Earth.
Making achieving orbit, much much easier.
So maybe SSTOs don’t suck.
Maybe Earth sucks.
It has just enough gravity to make it barely
possible to achieve orbit with rocket engines
and it has that pesky atmosphere which slows
vehicles down on ascent too.
I still stand by the fact that as cool as
SSTOs are, and as much as I do actually love
them, they just don’t really work in practice
using currently available technology.
Of course I’m not saying that’s how it’ll
always be, but for now, give me them stages!!!
After all.
I think we can all agree the most important
aspect of an SSTO is the reusability thing.
So what if a multi stage rocket IS fully reusable?
Like the BFR?
Isn’t that what matters most?
The first stage does what it needs to do then
comes back and is refueled and reused.
Same with the upper stage.
So who cares if the vehicle does it in one
peice or breaks off into two more dedicated
pieces.
You can almost think of the booster stage
as a giant catapult or something, sending
off a brand new fresh rocket, giving it extra
velocity and altitude and then it just comes
back and lands.
I think that's awesome.
I can’t wait for a day when orbital flight
is routine and reliable and fully reusable.
And for the foreseeable future, I think it’ll
continue to be done with stages…
So what do you think?
Do you think SSTOs are still valid and practical
or are you on team multistage?
#teammultistage
Let me know your thoughts on SSTOs in the
comments below.
And PLEASE, spare me your Kerbal SSTO designs…
It works in Kerbal Space Program is not a
real argument… unfortunately.
And before you tell me all about how SSTOs
can take off and land on runways… remember,
that’s NOT exclusive to SSTOs.
That’s an air launcher and or lifting body
advantage.
That is not exclusive to SSTOs.
Let me know if you have any other questions
or things you want me to cover in future videos!
As always, I owe a huge thanks to my Patreon
supporters for helping make this and other
Everyday Astronaut content possible.
I owe a super special thanks to those Patrons
in our exclusive discord channel and our exclusive
subreddit for helping me script and research.
We had quite the debate about SSTOs.
If you want to help contribute, please visit
patreon.com/everydayastronaut
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and original artwork and lots of other fun
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Feel free to check it out at soundcloud.com/everydayastronaut
Tell a friend!
Thanks everybody that does it for me.
I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Bringing space down to Earth for everyday
people.
