Garmaine asked 3 years ago
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I'm interested in space technologies and have basic understanding of rocket flights. When looking at large commercial rocket launches, i noticed that the lift of process from ground takes very long (slow speed of flight) and then rocket gains in speed.
When calculating needed propulsion for small rockets (e.g. size of person), usually a problem arises that the mass/weight of the propellant outnumbers the force of propulsion, which will result in unsuccessful launch to space.
Given the fact, that the lift-of does consume a lot of propellant already, I've started to think about the following questions:
- What amount of propellant could be saved if the lift of process is done by a device attached on the rocket, eg. a slider on a pole accelerated by pressured gas?
- What would it be possible/suitable to build a second, recyclable device that transports and accelerates the rocket to a certain speed and altitude, like a miniature jet airplane
- What would be the gain of launching the rocket from a high-speed jet, e.g. a combat jet, that's flying at maximum speed towards maximum altitude and then launch the rocket from its wings (like a guided missile)
Sure all those ideas are not suitable for commercial large rockets, but I'm thinking about smaller rockets to launch small spacecraft and satellites (e.g. Cube-Sat etc).
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