GeneralIssue

I\'m sure the way exhaust is modeled in KSP you could just have a separate \'truncated flow\' nozzle, that has a few extra units of thrust...the truncated flow in real life describes a gas flow system to create a high-pressure area at the end of the spike to keep the exhaust gas in line. If you somehow found a way to model that for real it would probably make some peoples CPU\'s turn in to slag

What a great lifter system! If the high standards of the Kocmoc parts are to go by, I think we are in for a treat! Do you have estimates on the Delta-V of each system, or is it too early to say?

I don\'t want to get toooo far off topic, but every post about aerospikes makes me so stoked to finish mine...it\'s weird going from huge slabs of rolled steel to a working rocket engine

The thing about that particular model is it looks like it would be able to do some sort of thrust vectoring by changing the shape of the throat and divergent section, but since KSP doesn\'t model gas flow (thank god, i like realism but that is wayyy too much lol) it just looks cool. And as Nova said, the spikes are usually flat or slightly concave at the end to conserve mass, and at the speed the combusting gas flows out of the engine, it forms a vortex area that mimics the shape of the end of the spike anyway. I think the amazing part of all this is that this technology has been around since the 60\'s.

You got it. An aerospike will have a more even thrust curve than a conventional bell nozzle due to the fact that an aero utilizes the ambient pressure where it is to determine the shape of the exhaust \'cone\'. While a bell nozzle may be able to out-accelerate an aerospike to a certain altitude, the aerospike will ultimately have a higher Isp due to the fact that it is optimized for a wide range of altitudes. (Sorry, had to nerd out a bit, I\'m building one currently )