Discussion: TurboRamjet-Based SSTO

[Mister Dilsby]

Not a request for help so much as a thread to discuss high altitude performance of the turboramjet and techniques for safely approaching orbital velocity.

I've started experimenting with non-RAPIER platforms for SSTO. Looks like one can get pretty high on 'conventional' jets after all, though not nearly as fast as we did in 0.90. I got this very simple plane up to 24km by throttling way down to about 1/3 until I passed into the upper atmosphere, around 20km.

I found I can do 800m/s at 24k safely, and start to get heating effects at 1000 m/s and 24km. Seems like this would be a decent place to start rockets, just like in the old days except 1 km/s slower.

How is everyone else doing with this? Similar experiences?