Solid Fueled Ramjet Engine

[StevieC]

So apparently there was research in the late '50s/early '60s into solid fueled ramjet engine that would, for the first part of its burn, operate as a solid-fueled rocket at first, and once that booster-portion had burned out, its casing would serve as the duct for a solid-fueled, air-breathing engine.

Might this be feasible to implement in KSP, as a way to get a lightweight vehicle off the ground and up to a high enough speed and altitude for a scramjet or two to finish accelerating the payload to orbital velocity, using air-breathing engines for everything except getting off the launch-pad and circularizing in the vacuum of outer-space?

[Rushligh]

i suppose you could. ideally jettisoning SRB's is preferable due to weight, but if you wanted to you could make an engine with two engine modules; two points of thrust. one SRB, one jet.
you could take the R.A.P.I.E.R and change the Liquid Fuel to Solid Fuel and inclue it in the the part. disable auto-switching, disable engine shutdown, etc,etc.
might be useful to do this to allow going from jet to SRB then back to jet for Orbiters... in-fact i'll look into it.

[kopapaka]

On 4. 3. 2016 at 8:14 PM, StevieC said:

So apparently there was research in the late '50s/early '60s into solid fueled ramjet engine that would, for the first part of its burn, operate as a solid-fueled rocket at first, and once that booster-portion had burned out, its casing would serve as the duct for a solid-fueled, air-breathing engine.

Edited May 13, 2016 by kopapaka