(Bugged) GNIJ-10 Self Refueling Nuclear Ion SSTO

Update: looks like ion jets dont work in atmospheres in the new update. I will make a revised version of this craft

yoo this is cool. And the partcount is so small for such a build

@lordvader0219 … That helps a lot, Lord Vader

@Nicman you have to reach mach 5 at 22km before firing up the Gas Core engines.

And for the takeoff itself, use RCS and use the refueler to set the tanks to full. The rear weight distribution should reduce the takeoff speed. Just be careful not to pull up too hard.

I can’t take off of droo, but I am astonished on how well it performs when it is spawned in orbit.

@lordvader0219 Depends on the design of the engine though. Closed cycle gas core designs exist but they have obvious performance implications over an open cycle. Lesser performance because of temperature and material limitations, but theoretically possible?Closed cycle designs in principle do not mix the propellant with any sort of radioactive exhaust. Although all this gas core stuff is just theory and concept designs at this point though. Whether or not such an engine can produce thrust greater than its weight is up for debate. According to project rho, the verdict is no...close, 0.80 engine TWR, but not quite enough. Open cycle, however, can.

@sacr3dbac0n0 I used the refueling probe of the previos LV-03 model with the booster. I modified the fueltype of that refueling ion engine to use H20 as its propellant.

As for the VTOL, if I were to add VTOL engines, these engines would have a much lower ISP than the rear Gas Core engines since this craft is supposed to be based off real life engineering considerations. If the craft uses nuclear engines for VTOL, the landing site would he irradiated.

If I were to make some VTOL ion engines, these engines would have low thrust because even theoretical fusion powered plasma engines have minuscule amounts of throttle.

Looks clean. 90% of the spaceplanes on this site look the part, but do not come close to flying the part and this does both very effectively. Any plans for VTOL? I have some small gas core rockets meant for VTOL, but they might be a bit powerful and ISP too high for your application. They're meant to be clustered to lift spaceplanes on the order of 1000s of tons. I can upload an engine pack if you want to give it a shot. Either way looks great. I am wondering how in the world did you get your refueling system to work with ion engines as the method. Usually, when I assign any propellant other than xenon to them they bug out badly. I arrived at the same solution though. A negative mass flow rate gets the engine to produce fuel instead of consuming it. Probably going to upload a new version of my Tidebreaker spaceplane soon. Cool thing that you got some vacuum ion engines working out for you. That's something that's never really worked for me because of weight.

This craft uses water as its ion propellant as well as its nuclear propellant.