Atomic engines and SSTO

[Dangerous_Beans]

@Dispatcher: thanks. i thought it was something like that, but was too sleepy to remember.

[maccollo]

I take back my previous statement. LVNs is totally the way to go on SSTOs, at least light ones. Built this thing with 2 LVNs, one turbo jet, and 3 air intakes. It weights 18.77 tons on the runway and it can make it to orbit with more than 4000 m/s of deltaV, enough to comfortably go to Duna and back.

[Dispatcher]

d-b, I still can't see your pic.

[Blaster]

Don't use circular intakes. Ram-air intakes are all that works at the burnout threshold, both the inline and the radials.

[Kozenger]

I take back my previous statement. LVNs is totally the way to go on SSTOs, at least light ones. Built this thing with 2 LVNs, one turbo jet, and 3 air intakes. It weights 18.77 tons on the runway and it can make it to orbit with more than 4000 m/s of deltaV, enough to comfortably go to Duna and back.

I haven't tried double atomic and single jet yet, will have to give that a shot. I find it so satisfying when I can get an SSTO into LKO and have 3 or 4k deltaV. To me it feels a lot better than launching a rocket that only carries 10% of its mass into LKO.