Originally Posted by
Ascend Charlie
But where does the heat go after being taken out of the incoming airflow? If it transfers to liquid helium in the pre-cooler, what do they do with a pile of hot helium?
I think the design has a significant part of the heat load absorbed by the LH2 fuel which is then used in a conventional sense. The open loop design is shut off when not enough Bernoulli’s can be collected up top, at M5+. By this stage, air resistance is so low that the mechanics of getting to orbit become
far more trivial.
The Isp Quoted for open loop are pretty impressive. This means the majority of the mass can be accelerated to 1/5 orbital velocity and more importantly, pushed out of the majority of the earths atmosphere.
Curious us to see how the structural thermal design side will pan out if they plan SSTO.