I was wondering if i can build a plane that can reach the vacumm using rocket engines. Its possible but it doesn't sound really effective
Is it possible to build a plane that uses rocket engines and can reach at least as far as moon?
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OverFlow
4.8 years ago
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10.4k sflanker
I think you answered your own question. SSTOs and space planes are hard because engine effectiveness varies with altitude and you end up toting a lot of excess weight with you into orbit. I've made an SSTO space plane that used a mix of jets and aerospike engines. It get's to low Droo orbit, but it doesn't have enough delta V left to get to the moon. I'm pretty sure this would be extremely difficult without excessive use of the tinker panel. That said, I think it would be possible to design a pure rocket based SSTO with the ~6500 m/s of delta-v needed to get to Luna. Getting home again is another story.
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@sflanker i dont have anything uploaded, but a was able to make an SSTO spaceplane that could reach luna and then use a free return trajectory to return to droo with some aerobreaking. I might try to build an optimized version of that, to potentially go interplanetary.