Air Intakes

[Lanley Kerman]

What is/are the best intakes for a SSTO?

[jimmymcgoochie]

Shock cones. They can take a lot of heating, suck in huge quantities of air (one cone can supply 4 RAPIERs at full speed) and they also look good. What more could you ask for?

[Fraktal]

5 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

What more could you ask for?

Static suction so that said 4 Rapiers don't flame out on the runway.

[UncleManuel]

Shock cones or the divertless supersonic intakes. You can save a lot of fuel if you get your spaceplane up to speed (>900 m/s) in the atmosphere and then use the rocket mode above 20000 meters. But you need to haul ass to actually get the Rapiers going supersonic - that means faster than 450 m/s for the ram air effect to kick in and produce more thrust... 

 

Actually you can do this with the Whiplash + rockets but the Rapier is the more compact and probably more lightweight option for a SSTO... 

 

[Lanley Kerman]

Thank you all!

[Regor]

On 5/8/2020 at 12:27 PM, UncleManuel said:

Shock cones or the divertless supersonic intakes. You can save a lot of fuel if you get your spaceplane up to speed (>900 m/s) in the atmosphere and then use the rocket mode above 20000 meters. But you need to haul ass to actually get the Rapiers going supersonic - that means faster than 450 m/s for the ram air effect to kick in and produce more thrust... 

 

Actually you can do this with the Whiplash + rockets but the Rapier is the more compact and probably more lightweight option for a SSTO... 

 

Very Skylon-Esque; I like it!