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sabre specifications?! Uses? Fantasy SSTO.


Arugela

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I've been looking into the sabre for a giant diamond SSTO I've been trying to make for fun. I'm trying to figure how many hypothetical sabre engines I could shove into it. Does anyone know the potential diameter of the rear of the sabre and or the max trust of any of the variants. I can't fine a lot of info. And the mk 4 looked like it lost thrust.

The idea is the center of the diamond has a massive sphere. This could be for slush hydrogen or other things. But as I'm looking at a sabre probably slush.

The idea is the top and bottom of the sphere has sabres along the surface in the middle arch. The front is a massive intake(possibly variable sized) this creates a space that is basically artificial atmosphere. Could this be used to make the sabre run in efficient thrust air breathing mode for longer hypothetically. I'm not good enough at the math to figure out how much air it would need or lox/lair to fill the space for the engines intake needs. But if it could get up to mach 25 with slowly amended air into the intakes it could hypothetically reduce or eliminate the need for the rocket mode unless it has too.

I estimated a row of engines that are 7.2 feet in diameter could fit 9 engines top and bottom each(18 total). The problem is the max thrust is only 5400tons of thrust and I technically wanted around 14400 tons of thrust minimum. So, it would have to operate at reduced functionality.

The original sabres ran at 440,000lbs thrust or 220tons at save level and 660k/ 330tons in vacuum. That is 3960-5940 tons of thrust at 18 engines.

Are the sabres smaller than 7.2 ft diameter or likely larger?

ltLXl3E.png

Not the best visual, but the ssto is a diamond of originally(blue filled in) 96ft length, 54ft height, 166ft width. Outer size is 128ftx72ftx222.8ft. accordingly. The original dimensions weren't enough.  I think it has a total of 430,000-440,000 ft3 of space(assuming a straight flat diamond body and no curves).(Edit: Possibly only 400kft3.) The main tank has an inner diameter of 54ft (82,570ft3)and an outer diameter up to 56.7ft. Approx 2.7 ft. The tank with slush hydrogen could hold a max of 219tons or 183tons liquid hydrogen.

The idea is:

0.5. There is a, possibly rotating, set of engine plates(top and bottom) taking up about half of the spheres outer diameter(56.7ft-72ft diameter). 1/4 top and 1/4 bottom area on the surface.

1. The front of the engine plate is an intake of potentially variable shape and closable. (Could this be used to fill to feed the sabre past it's normal atmospheric limits?) Haven't figured out how much that might need to be yet.

2. The engines are center lined physically in the top middle, The back is a massive exit(hopefully not an issue) that either directly fires into space/air or funnels it down to use the body of the aircraft as an aerospike.

3. The engine and top canopy/engine pods rotate to go from the wider 60 degree angle?(can't remember) as front during low slower flight and changes to the 36 degree? angle for hypersonic flight for better aerodynamics. Assuming that is useful.

4. it's ideal design would use metalic hydrogen fuel(and possibly different engines) and would have a max cargo weight of 7200 tons fuel and 7200 tons full cargo/body mass for around 14,400 tons total weight and 5 times the max thrust(72,000tons thrust). This is trying to make it work with realistic potentially existing tech. So, probably max take off weight of up to 5760 tons or less. Maybe much less.

5. From top down it has a wing area of approx 14,400 sq ft. It has horrific wing loading, but it is a massive diamond. Does that make that less of a problem or more? I was hoping most of the design would be dealing with hypersonic flight.

6. Cargo room: 100,000ft3 of cargo, 82,570ft3 main fuel, 250,000ft3 oxidizer. Under current design. Changeable as needed.

7 Rough Estimate: 100,000ft3 cargo at 80lb/ft3 = 4,000 tons. 82,570ft3 slush hydrogen = 219tons.  250,000ft3 liquid air = 6750tons max(30.8 times the slush hydrogen.)(Edit: 180-220kft3 = 4860-5940tons liquid air = 22-27 times * slush hydrogen). 14,400 tons max weight(not considering engine power.)x14,400 sqft wing surface. 3,431 tons max empty weight. Edit: 1890 less liquid air = more cargo or better flight characteristics or LOX.

8. Can 2 feet of carbon fiber body hold up 1 ton per sqft of wing loading?! 8p (Which is around 2880tons of carbon fiber and over half a billion dollars. So, pony up elon if you want a real rocket!! ;D)

9. You could change it so a diamond of the 250,000ft3 is in the center for liquid air and the surface layer is all carbon fiber surface and thinner chambers for cargo. Haven't done the math on this yet. But given that the original diamond is about 180-190k ft3 and make the inner area 330kft3 instead with the surface a bunch of removable cargo bays. It could have hex shaped or other surface structures that can be detached in orbit and collected.

If something like this could use the 3600isp or anywhere near up to mach 25 it could probably easily get to orbit and back for massive payloads.

Edit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

Quote

The design of the Skylon D1 features a large cylindrical payload bay, 13 m (42 ft 8 in) long and 4.8 m (15 ft 9 in) in diameter.

The engine appears to be nearish to half of the body diameter. So, it's possibly near that size. There is a small margin for room potentially. Or just a custom casing to hold it as it would be encased.

Edited by Arugela
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