True, the noise problem would have been "just" limited to the noise of 30 hydrolox rocket engines lifting ~9154 metric tons straight up...
... yeah, that'd break a few windows...
Dedicated spaceport required.
... but the lift capacity and volume available for cargo leaves all spaceplane concepts in the dust...
SpaceX Unveils Heavy-Lift Vehicle Plan
The ejector shroud would cause the nose of those rockets to be directed mostly straight downward, with the noise footprint drifting westward slowly as the rocket gained altitude and downrange, it would tip over more.zapkitty wrote:True, the noise problem would have been "just" limited to the noise of 30 hydrolox rocket engines lifting ~9154 metric tons straight up...
... yeah, that'd break a few windows...
Dedicated spaceport required.
... but the lift capacity and volume available for cargo leaves all spaceplane concepts in the dust...
Oh, I'm not saying that it was a huge potential problem for the concept... just that launching from the local airport would not have been an optionIntLibber wrote: The ejector shroud would cause the nose of those rockets to be directed mostly straight downward, with the noise footprint drifting westward slowly as the rocket gained altitude and downrange, it would tip over more.
The good news is that a polywell version of the same size would have been lighter and quieter and my downsized version even more so as advanced design propfans are now available to handle the launch proper until the LV gets to high subsonic...
... wild thought comes to mind.... polywell makes the Roton concept workable...
... though I'd personally rather have multiple propfans in pods instead of one big rotor on the nose...
