SSTO Spaceplane design when Nuke engines use LH

[Birdco_Space]

Greetings,

 

  I'm a fan of Nertea's Near future mods, and especially his atomic rockets mod.  It adds a wonderful complexity to the NERVA by having it use Liquid Hydrogen, giving it better ISP, but using a Cyrogenic fuel that boils off, is of low density, and isn't Liquid Fuel (thus jets don't run off it).

 

  Given that many of the efficient, long range SSTO space plane designs I have seen use NERVAs as the main source of thrust in space, do any of the space plane enthusiast out there have design advice for SSTOs that can make it beyond LKO using LF-O engines?

[Streetwind]

You can prevent boiloff by using the dedicated cryo tanks shipped by Kerbal Atomics and/or Cryogenic Engines.

It may still be tricky to pull off though, because hydrogen has a low density, and thus, you need more volume for the same reaction mass. And spaceplanes suffer far more from increased size and drag than rockets do, even if the mass increase is low.

[Birdco_Space]

6 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

You can prevent boiloff by using the dedicated cryo tanks shipped by Kerbal Atomics and/or Cryogenic Engines.

It may still be tricky to pull off though, because hydrogen has a low density, and thus, you need more volume for the same reaction mass. And spaceplanes suffer far more from increased size and drag than rockets do, even if the mass increase is low.

Exactly the problem I am running across.  Also, Cryo tanks  in the near future mods seem to be allergic to reentry heat (perfectly reasonable balance), so to use LH Cryo tank, you have to hide them in Mk2 or Mk3 cargo bays (at the associated weight penalty)

I can get to LKO easily with my space plane designs, but to get to Mun and Minmus, where I really want to go to support crew change outs at science stations there, I currently need to use a second space only Ion powered shuttle for the parts of the trip beyond LKO. 

[AeroGav]

That's why i uninstalled these mods.  In reality it's fairly trivial to modify a jet engine to run off LH2... well anything combustible in fact.