Alternate Nuke Pusher Plate Shapes?

[Spacescifi]

 

Just curious, for scifi purposes, can other shape plates besides circles be used?

 

Like what if the spacecraft is oblong and flat? Would a rectangular pusher plate be viable?

My assumptions: Less surface area means bomb yield needs to be higher for the plate to offer sufficient thrust, so that means small AM/M would be ideal, as they have the highest yield per mass/weight.

 

The reason is because I don't want all my scifi pusher plate ships to look exactly like project Orion, even though they use the same method more or less.

 

Landing is done with airbreathing poly-nuclear aerospikes engines on Earth worlds.

 

Likely you will figure this out better than me. Thanks.

 

[Shpaget]

Welcome back!

But what's wrong with circles? Pusher plate would be subjected to some insane forces, and circular structure would be optimal regarding surface area and structural support needed to keep it in shape.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

Welcome back!

But what's wrong with circles? Pusher plate would be subjected to some insane forces, and circular structure would be optimal regarding surface area and structural support needed to keep it in shape.

 

LOL. Short absence but I kind of needed this question answered as it is crucial to the scifi.

 

Nothing is wrong with circle pusher plates.

 

But my ship is a belly landing VTOL.

 

The AM Orion pusher plate is at the tail end of the ship, which means that it uses poly (many) mini nuclear reactors with twin airbreathing thermal aerospike belly engines for vertical takeoff and landing.

 

Twin Turbojet fan intake fans are atop the ship.

The ship is flat simply because more space can be used vs the rocket shape.

This is a cargo to planet and back kind of SSTO.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Spacescifi

[sevenperforce]

The plate needs to be a circle because the explosion is spherical.

[Bill Phil]

18 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

The plate needs to be a circle because the explosion is spherical.

Well there is some indication that nuclear explosions can be "shaped" in some way. Not perfectly, of course, but...

OP:

At this point you could probably get away with a Mini-Mag Orion for in space flight and a nuclear turbojet/rocket (or a nuclear turborocket) for in atmosphere flight - though you'd want retractable radiators for the Mini-Mag Orion unless you use some really fancy technology.

The Mini-Mag Orion could even be boosted fission - or even an antimatter initiated reaction like ICAN-II.

So instead of a proper pusher plate you have a magnetically confined miniature explosion (or a big one...) and then use a magnetic nozzle to accelerate it out the back. This should be relatively easy if antimatter storage is safe enough for practical use. 

If you're advanced enough to have antimatter then a magnetic nozzle isn't too much of an issue.

[Spacescifi]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The plate needs to be a circle because the explosion is spherical.

 

I admire how you and others stick to reality no matter where it leads.

After brainstorming I realized it is not a showstopper at all.

 

I could literally have ships like this doing VTOL to orbit! In real life too! Would be riskier than in scifi though.

 

 

How? Put a pusher plate on the belly in the middle. Next put turbojet fan intakes on top (four), then put plug aero spikes below on the belly beneath where the turbojets are (four).

 

Use the nuclear reactors to heat air for VTOL.

Once clear and high enough, drop the bombs and pulse boost repeatedly to orbit.

Use RCS or aerospike engines as needed to tilt attitude for orbital trajectory during air flight. Once in space use RCS.

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Well there is some indication that nuclear explosions can be "shaped" in some way. Not perfectly, of course, but...

OP:

At this point you could probably get away with a Mini-Mag Orion for in space flight and a nuclear turbojet/rocket (or a nuclear turborocket) for in atmosphere flight - though you'd want retractable radiators for the Mini-Mag Orion unless you use some really fancy technology.

The Mini-Mag Orion could even be boosted fission - or even an antimatter initiated reaction like ICAN-II.

So instead of a proper pusher plate you have a magnetically confined miniature explosion (or a big one...) and then use a magnetic nozzle to accelerate it out the back. This should be relatively easy if antimatter storage is safe enough for practical use. 

If you're advanced enough to have antimatter then a magnetic nozzle isn't too much of an issue.

 

I have come to realize that with project orion your ship shape almost matters not. All you need is weight balanced evenly throughout so the ship won't tumble in flight (disaster). And a strong pusher plate, which is within human capability to pull off. We have the ressources.

Thus a saucer for VTOL orion with nuclear thermal airbreathing turbot jets for VTOL is perfect for the role.

 

Why? A disc is even along all edges, so it is less likely to tip during bomb pulse boosting, and even if it does, we have both the NTTR and RCS to correct that while in the air.

 

Once in space RCS is king for that.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

A Moebius-shaped pusher plate is highly recommended. It definitely doesn't look like a classic Orion.

As the nuke should blast in hundreds of meters behind the pusher plate, the pictured thing is probably a half-kilometer in diameter, because the surrounding throats should be shaded from the explosion by the downmost face.
As a ship of such shape would weight by orders of magnitude greater than a classic Orion, it makes to use much greater nukes, so make the plate even greater, ad infinitum.

Also this eliminates any sense of the ramjet usage, leave alone the airbreathing.

Also AM and pusher plate have nothing to do with each other.

[DDE]

10 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Just curious

It hasn't even been a week.

Anyway, the reason it is circular is because (a) shaping any blast is an unnecessary complication and (b) it provides for a more even distribution of force, et cetera. And since an Orion propulsion system is going to be the centerpiece of any craft, its needs will likely be put above those of any secondary propulsion system.

[sevenperforce]

11 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Well there is some indication that nuclear explosions can be "shaped" in some way. Not perfectly, of course, but...

Shaping the charge doesn't make the blast not-spherical, it just makes one side of the spherical blast wave denser than the other so that you increase the total impulse delivered to the plate.

9 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I admire how you and others stick to reality no matter where it leads.

Reality is exciting! You can stay in reality and still do a LOT of cool stuff.

[p1t1o]

I dont have all the info, but I do remember reading Orion material that explained that the pusher is a flat plate, rather than a "cup" or other more encompassing plate, to reduce the dwell-time of the hot plasma, reducing erosion. This does result in some reduction in efficiency, as the blast is rapidly diffused sideways, but the extra mass needed to reinforce a plate that extracts more impulse from the blast offsets the increase in thrust efficiency.

If I remember correctly....

[Bill Phil]

32 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

I dont have all the info, but I do remember reading Orion material that explained that the pusher is a flat plate, rather than a "cup" or other more encompassing plate, to reduce the dwell-time of the hot plasma, reducing erosion. This does result in some reduction in efficiency, as the blast is rapidly diffused sideways, but the extra mass needed to reinforce a plate that extracts more impulse from the blast offsets the increase in thrust efficiency.

If I remember correctly....

I remember that some designs were shaped so that the plasma deflected outwards, reducing dwell-time further. Like an inverted cup, but a very slight curve. Or a truncated cone shape.

Though that may not be particularly beneficial, except for plate lifetime.

35 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Shaping the charge doesn't make the blast not-spherical, it just makes one side of the spherical blast wave denser than the other so that you increase the total impulse delivered to the plate.

I would argue that constitutes a non-spherical explosion - as the propellant will have less specific energy and thus expand slower than the vaporized components of the nuclear charge. So it'd be a sphere with a deformation like a cone carved into it. But a shaped charge doesn't alter the density of a region of the blast wave, it alters the total energy available to the propellant. But the propellant is likely to have less specific energy, though maybe it's possible to have an equal or greater amount.

51 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Reality is exciting! You can stay in reality and still do a LOT of cool stuff.

Indeed. Reality has a lot of cool and exciting stuff. Usually a lot more than you'd think at first.

[Spacescifi]

17 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Well there is some indication that nuclear explosions can be "shaped" in some way. Not perfectly, of course, but...

OP:

At this point you could probably get away with a Mini-Mag Orion for in space flight and a nuclear turbojet/rocket (or a nuclear turborocket) for in atmosphere flight - though you'd want retractable radiators for the Mini-Mag Orion unless you use some really fancy technology.

The Mini-Mag Orion could even be boosted fission - or even an antimatter initiated reaction like ICAN-II.

 

 

How does mini mag orion look?

 

Good to know visually, since I need to know the basic design so I can extrapolate a more advanced yet still plausible one down the line.

 

There is a wealth of art for Project Orion online.

 

Mini-mag? Not so much.

[Spacescifi]

15 hours ago, DDE said:

It hasn't even been a week.

 

 

True... but the whole point of leaving was to focus on goals, one of which is to write scifi. It's been something I've always wanted to do for years, but always held back because of a lack of commitment.

Well no longer. I will go down the rabbit hole this time... I even bought a book I have read part of before and very much enjoyed to help me with my writing.

Point is... this post is in harmony with my goals... or at least one of them.

 

Don't expect a lot of posts from me nowadays, drama from virus etc/world events notwithstanding.

 

I will be busy. Coping with it all and pursuing my goals. Which includes stuff I should, must, and want (write scifi) to do.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

How does mini mag orion look?

Exactly like the google shows.
It doesn't have a pusher plate. Blasphemy.

[Bill Phil]

17 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

How does mini mag orion look?

 

Good to know visually, since I need to know the basic design so I can extrapolate a more advanced yet still plausible one down the line.

 

There is a wealth of art for Project Orion online.

 

Mini-mag? Not so much.

Like hardware for Z-pinch and a magnetic nozzle. If it's advanced enough it can look like just about anything though. So it could be a normal propulsion system.

It also seems to perform better than Orion generally - 16000 to 20000 seconds of specific impulse for the original Mini-Mag concepts compared to around 4 to 10000 for the original Orion concepts. Using boosted fission pulse units Mini-Mag Orion can likely have over 30000 seconds of specific impulse since it would have a higher burnup rate of the fission fuel. That means that, assuming a mass ratio of around 2.7, a Mini-Mag Orion could easily have 200 km/s of delta-v. Then it can easily get to just about any target in the solar system. Fast transfers to inner planets are possible, and 1 AU per month is about 62 km/s, so a fast transfer to Jupiter would be easy for Mini-Mag Orion (New Horizons arrived a little over a year after launch, so it's possible). If you use antimatter then you can make something way better.

As for its appearance... it can look like a rocket. I think it needs radiators for its reactors though.

[Spacescifi]

21 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Like hardware for Z-pinch and a magnetic nozzle. If it's advanced enough it can look like just about anything though. So it could be a normal propulsion system.

It also seems to perform better than Orion generally - 16000 to 20000 seconds of specific impulse for the original Mini-Mag concepts compared to around 4 to 10000 for the original Orion concepts. Using boosted fission pulse units Mini-Mag Orion can likely have over 30000 seconds of specific impulse since it would have a higher burnup rate of the fission fuel. That means that, assuming a mass ratio of around 2.7, a Mini-Mag Orion could easily have 200 km/s of delta-v. Then it can easily get to just about any target in the solar system. Fast transfers to inner planets are possible, and 1 AU per month is about 62 km/s, so a fast transfer to Jupiter would be easy for Mini-Mag Orion (New Horizons arrived a little over a year after launch, so it's possible). If you use antimatter then you can make something way better.

As for its appearance... it can look like a rocket. I think it needs radiators for its reactors though.

 

Indeed. Probably really long and broad radiators.

 

Would a flat VTOL saucer orion be a viable design? It would have several airbreathing NTTR aerospikes along the rim underbelly for VTOL on Earth, which also have fuel lines connected for moon landings just in case.

 

Think of this as the belly, the plate is the blue circle.

 

Or would the part of the blast hitting the saucer do damage?

 

Actually not if designed properly. Build the whole thing out of heavy steel boiler plate. Ship should be just fine.

 

And DO NOT put windows on the underbelly.

Edited March 19, 2020 by Spacescifi

[sevenperforce]

On 3/19/2020 at 12:09 PM, Spacescifi said:

It would have several airbreathing NTTR aerospikes along the rim underbelly for VTOL on Earth, which also have fuel lines connected for moon landings just in case.

One thing to keep in mind is that the envelope of usefulness for each of your engines' modes is pretty narrow. 

You wouldn't build an ATV with wheels for roads, deployable floats for amphibious use, deployable treads for rough terrain, and a jet-assisted autogyro rotor for jumping ravines; at some point you should just stick to a plain old helicopter. In the same way, having an Orion pusher plate PLUS pure rockets PLUS ramjets PLUS turboramrockets is probably less efficient than just sticking with one or two primary engine modes.

A gas-core antimatter rocket (where a small amount of antimatter is injected into a stream of propellant) has specific impulse comparable to a nuke pusher plate approach, albeit without the massive thrust capabilities. Start there.

[Spacescifi]

5 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

One thing to keep in mind is that the envelope of usefulness for each of your engines' modes is pretty narrow. 

You wouldn't build an ATV with wheels for roads, deployable floats for amphibious use, deployable treads for rough terrain, and a jet-assisted autogyro rotor for jumping ravines; at some point you should just stick to a plain old helicopter. In the same way, having an Orion pusher plate PLUS pure rockets PLUS ramjets PLUS turboramrockets is probably less efficient than just sticking with one or two primary engine modes.

A gas-core antimatter rocket (where a small amount of antimatter is injected into a stream of propellant) has specific impulse comparable to a nuke pusher plate approach, albeit without the massive thrust capabilities. Start there.

 

My saucer only has 3 engine types.

1. Multiple NTTR aerospike engines with air intakes fans on top for the rim.

2. Pure rocket RCS along the rim.

3. Bomb pusher plate drive on belly.

 

I need the massive thrust capabilities if I am going to launch navy desroyer weight craft into orbit.

[sevenperforce]

On 3/20/2020 at 5:39 PM, Spacescifi said:

My saucer only has 3 engine types.

1. Multiple NTTR aerospike engines with air intakes fans on top for the rim.

2. Pure rocket RCS along the rim.

3. Bomb pusher plate drive on belly.

I need the massive thrust capabilities if I am going to launch navy desroyer weight craft into orbit.

An NTTR aerospike is actually three engines all on its own.

Sure, you need a lot of thrust to launch a heavy craft, but conceptually there's no difference between launching a 20-tonne payload, a 200-tonne payload, and a 10,000-tonne payload. The type of engine does not really speak to thrust; you can have a very thrusty pure-rocket engine or a very unthrusty antimatter rocket.

To a first order, there's no real limitation on the size of a rocket engine. Practically speaking you run into combustion instability with chambers exceeding 22 cubic meters, but that's just an engineering problem. 

What you need for an SSTO is not a lot of thrust per se, but a high liftoff thrust-to-weight ratio as well as a high specific impulse. A NTTR has a higher specific impulse than a pure-rocket NTR but a lower thrust-to-weight ratio at takeoff.

[Spacescifi]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

An NTTR aerospike is actually three engines all on its own.

Sure, you need a lot of thrust to launch a heavy craft, but conceptually there's no difference between launching a 20-tonne payload, a 200-tonne payload, and a 10,000-tonne payload. The type of engine does not really speak to thrust; you can have a very thrusty pure-rocket engine or a very unthrusty antimatter rocket.

To a first order, there's no real limitation on the size of a rocket engine. Practically speaking you run into combustion instability with chambers exceeding 22 cubic meters, but that's just an engineering problem. 

What you need for an SSTO is not a lot of thrust per se, but a high liftoff thrust-to-weight ratio as well as a high specific impulse. A NTTR has a higher specific impulse than a pure-rocket NTR but a lower thrust-to-weight ratio at takeoff.

 

Yes, I was aware of the low TWR, but that has  a lot to do with the extra engine weight, not to mention the pusher plate.

The antimatter bombs are virtually the lightest weight stuff on board. The antimatter is anti-iron, which is ferromagnetic, and therefore easily held inside a small bomblet with a magnetic vacuum chamber inside.

Airbreathing NTTR can increase TWR with air, and if even that is too slow of an ascent, then add some antimatter into the mix.

At some point ship design will meet a sweet spot, optimal weight where we cannot continue to make heavier SSTO's without using disposable staging, making it not an SSTO. One coukd build a super large SSTO but only if it was mostly hollow.

I need SSTO's for my scifi, as that is what the ship does, fly and land on planets.

 

Regarding the OP, I really do think that AM enhanced airbreathing NTTR would be hard pressed to VTOL a navy destroyer weighted craft... if at all.

 

A more reachable size weight/payload range is a passenger jet aircraft.

Much more than that and the energy required to get the needed TWR will melt engines anyway.

 

Which is why I use project orion to actually reach orbit.

 

AM bomblets just reduces weight by a lot.

 

Bottom line is, using even theoretical IRL future technology, the heaviest practical SSTO we can launch to orbit is the weight of a passenger jet (500 tons).

Go much more than that and we are going into staged boosters, less albeit if AM is being used at all.

 

Passenger jets seat 440, but an SSTO with the same weight would have a smaller crew, and could likely run with far less.

Indeed, the less crew carried, the more cargo, and the more cargo, the more profit.

Edited March 23, 2020 by Spacescifi

[sevenperforce]

19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

The antimatter bombs are virtually the lightest weight stuff on board. The antimatter is anti-iron, which is ferromagnetic, and therefore easily held inside a small bomblet with a magnetic vacuum chamber inside.

If you have antimatter confinement, there is no need for a pusher plate design at all. Pusher plates are very inefficient with respect to the use of the available energy; it's just that nuclear bombs have SO MUCH energy that it beats chemical propellants:

A nuclear pusher plate design is the functional equivalent of ripping the pistons out of your car's engine and detonating them one at a time to push yourself down the road. The only reason it works is because the energies involved are so immense, or we would never consider it. We have to use a pusher plate because we have no way to contain a prompt-supercritical nuclear fission reaction, so we toss it out the back, let it blow up (wasting most of the energy) and ride the shockwave. 

If you have antimatter confinement, on the other hand, you don't need to waste all that energy because you can make the explosion as small as you want.

19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Airbreathing NTTR can increase TWR with air, and if even that is too slow of an ascent, then add some antimatter into the mix.

A NTTR has increased thrust once over Mach 0.8 or so, but it has poor liftoff performance. Liftoff is where you really need thrust; an SSTO needs to get off the ground as quickly as possible. The solution is not to add energy in the form of antimatter, but to add more propellant.

19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

At some point ship design will meet a sweet spot, optimal weight where we cannot continue to make heavier SSTO's without using disposable staging, making it not an SSTO. One coukd build a super large SSTO but only if it was mostly hollow.

Au contraire -- the larger your vehicle, the easier it is to make it an SSTO. The square-cube law means that the bigger your ship, the better. And yes, every rocket is mostly hollow. Hollow is the essential nature of propellant tanks.

19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Regarding the OP, I really do think that AM enhanced airbreathing NTTR would be hard pressed to VTOL a navy destroyer weighted craft... if at all.

A more reachable size weight/payload range is a passenger jet aircraft.

Much more than that and the energy required to get the needed TWR will melt engines anyway.

Not at all. An antimatter-based turbo-ramrocket could lift anything. Heck, you could lift a destroyer-sized vehicle with SRBs, if you wanted to. Just add more engines. More thrust means more propellant, which makes the engines less likely to melt.

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

 

If you have antimatter confinement, on the other hand, you don't need to waste all that energy because you can make the explosion as small as you want.

 

I see... so picking energy yield is the sweep spot.

Namely... how hard we throw our propellant.

With nukes you can either do a weak throw, or a mighty throw which wipes out everthing.

You are saying that with AM containment as good as I described, we could put JUST enough energy into propellant to lift... ANYTHING we want.

 

Provided we have enough propellant mass flow.

So that means that overall, the airbreathing navy destroyer scheme will need a propellant injection for lift off, but once up to ramjet speed it may be able to keep flying thanks to mass flow rate.

The heavier a vessel gets the more it cannot rely on air alone with AM, unless the ship is mostly all engine intakes, but that is not what a spaceship wants to be anyway.

They want cargo.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

VTVL planes have surprisingly small air intakes and nozzles.

And the more delta-V you have onboard, the less you need quick ascent.
Just get up to several kilometers at 150 m/s vertical speed, then engage the horizontal thrust to accelerate.
You even don't need to reach the sonic speed in low atmosphere.

As the problem won't get relevant until compact fusion reactors, it's just a question of a century of time _{or of KSPI-E usage}, not of inventions.

Edited March 25, 2020 by kerbiloid

[sevenperforce]

20 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

You are saying that with AM containment as good as I described, we could put JUST enough energy into propellant to lift... ANYTHING we want.

Right -- you may still need to do a pulsejet approach (though perhaps not), but you can scale down the pulse amplitude to where you don't need any pusher-plate at all and can use a conventional engine bell with a converging-diverging nozzle, etc.

Much more efficient.

20 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

...unless the ship is mostly all engine intakes, but that is not what a spaceship wants to be anyway.

They want cargo.

For the purposes of your fiction, exactly how much delta-v does your vehicle want? Are these monsters going to go from orbit to the surface and back to orbit? Are they planet-hopping? Will they need to make multiple VTOL SSTO cycles on a single propellant tank? All of these are questions that impact optimization.

20 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

The heavier a vessel gets the more it cannot rely on air alone

Here you've got it right. When you're talking about pure rockets and liquid fuel tanks, the square-cube law promises increasingly better and better results the larger your vehicle becomes; there's no upper limit.

On the other hand, air is a low-density propellant and so a larger ship will fare poorly if it tries to get off the ground using air alone as reaction mass. That's why a tiny drone can easily get off the ground with tiny propellers running at high speeds but a helicopter needs a huge, huge rotor to do the same thing: you're going up against the wrong side of the square-cube law.

Once in flight, collecting air via ramscoop is essentially "free" in terms of dry mass (intakes don't really weigh much), though not in terms of induced drag. On the ground, however, you need huge rotors and heavy compressors to accomplish the same goal. Accordingly it is better to jump-start liftoff using auxiliary propellant injection until you get up to ram-collection speed. The propellant you use for liftoff is spent mass, as opposed to heavy rotors and compressors you'd have to drag with you to orbit. 

Your landing mode becomes another issue, though. If your ship is intended to drop out of orbit, land, and then return to orbit without refueling, you're gonna need a really robust landing system. You might want to consider a rolling landing and rolling liftoff, because you can save the weight of that extra propellant you'd need to inject for takeoff by using a runway to get up to ram-collection speed.  

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Right -- you may still need to do a pulsejet approach (though perhaps not), but you can scale down the pulse amplitude to where you don't need any pusher-plate at all and can use a conventional engine bell with a converging-diverging nozzle, etc.

Much more efficient.

For the purposes of your fiction, exactly how much delta-v does your vehicle want? Are these monsters going to go from orbit to the surface and back to orbit? Are they planet-hopping? Will they need to make multiple VTOL SSTO cycles on a single propellant tank? All of these are questions that impact optimization.

Here you've got it right. When you're talking about pure rockets and liquid fuel tanks, the square-cube law promises increasingly better and better results the larger your vehicle becomes; there's no upper limit.

On the other hand, air is a low-density propellant and so a larger ship will fare poorly if it tries to get off the ground using air alone as reaction mass. That's why a tiny drone can easily get off the ground with tiny propellers running at high speeds but a helicopter needs a huge, huge rotor to do the same thing: you're going up against the wrong side of the square-cube law.

Once in flight, collecting air via ramscoop is essentially "free" in terms of dry mass (intakes don't really weigh much), though not in terms of induced drag. On the ground, however, you need huge rotors and heavy compressors to accomplish the same goal. Accordingly it is better to jump-start liftoff using auxiliary propellant injection until you get up to ram-collection speed. The propellant you use for liftoff is spent mass, as opposed to heavy rotors and compressors you'd have to drag with you to orbit. 

Your landing mode becomes another issue, though. If your ship is intended to drop out of orbit, land, and then return to orbit without refueling, you're gonna need a really robust landing system. You might want to consider a rolling landing and rolling liftoff, because you can save the weight of that extra propellant you'd need to inject for takeoff by using a runway to get up to ram-collection speed.  

 

Indeed.

 

I am thinking of changing my entire approach.

 

Ship shape will be like this. Twin bell shaped nozzles at the rear, capable of thrust vectoring by pivoting up or down, which also allows for pitch and roll in atmosphere only using twin main engines.

 

 

Also, use air intakes and a ramjet to use when the rocket gets the ship up to speed, so it can fly for free almost flying around.

 

Getting to orbit definitely will require propellant though.

 

I am thinking to forego big ship landings, except where there are runways.

 

Smaller dome shaped drop ships could land cargo piecemeal, a few tons here ans there, repeatedly,  getting back to orbit with ease thanks to AM and propellant, using air augmented ramjets for cruising around.

 

Refuel at mothership for refueling.

 

THAT is star trek... with realism mods turned on.