WASHINGTON — ATK Aerospace will develop and produce “large-diameter” solid-rocket motors for the first and second stages of Stratolaunch Inc.’s planned three-stage air-launched rocket, the Magna, Utah, propulsion provider announced Aug. 13.
That means Stratolaunch is still in business. As a matter of fact, they've completed the large hangar for the plane.
The reason I posted this is that I had a thought, which may be completely out of the question. Nevertheless, it costs nothing to post it here, so here goes: Let's say we can develop an aircraft that can be dropped off like the typical spacecraft that they plan to do. Let's say this thing has a nuclear thermal capability and it uses the type of configuration discussed earlier today. Then a typical mission would fly out in the Atlantic Ocean and drop this nuclear beastie and the thing would launch itself into orbit.
The weight would be kept below a half million pounds. The Skylon weighs a bit more, but by using the Stratolaunch, we may be able to save some weight. Consider that the original configuration would have been a SpaceX design that would have weighed about that much. The Falcon 9 weighs about as much as the proposed Skylon. It may not be out of the question to get the weight down to half a million pounds.
You may be able to save weight on the nuclear thermal because of the higher ISP. Let's say about 1000 secs. The empty weight of the Skylon is 120k lbs. Loaded weight is 760k lbs. We'd have to lose about a quarter million pounds. Consider that we should be using less oxygen and hydrogen. Plus the air launch would also save fuel and other weight that the Skylon uses for its braking system that it won't need since it is already airborne. So, this may be possible.
So, if you go out into the ocean, it won't be a problem if it crashes before reaching orbit. It won't fire the nuclear engines until it passes the Karman line, which marks the beginning of space. Perhaps this would assuage some of the concerns.
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