Aviation Based SSTO: Orbital Transport for the 21st Century

Mankind has been in space for the better part of a half century. Yet, our method of reaching space has stayed the same for that entire length of time. We still rely on expendable rockets to reach orbit. This is a very expensive method of reaching orbit, thus locking off orbit from everyone except for a select few. To understand why aviation based single stage to orbit (SSTO) transport is better, one needs to know the original rational for rocket based SSTO.

The original impetus for orbital transportation came from military during the early 1950’s. Seeing how attaining orbital velocities gave their weapons global range, the military saw how it could give them the ability to bomb targets with nuclear weapons from the safety of the homeland. Rockets were chosen as the vehicle because they offered faster response than aircraft. They were designed to be expendable because in the event of a nuclear attack, the home base from where they were launched would probably not survive the first salvo, and thus did not need to come back. This was the design rationale for the first generation of orbital launch vehicles, designed as ammunition instead of as reusable systems, intended to carry weapons of war. All the systems on the rocket were designed to have enough reliability to get to the target once, and maintain that reliability through long dormant periods of inactivity, sitting in silos waiting for the go commands. And, for this purpose, rockets are the ideal vehicle, providing the excellent throwaway strike capability the military needed to keep on constant readiness.

Unfortunately, economic civilian use diametrically differs from military use. Civilian, and especially, business use requires that a single vehicle service a myriad of markets, efficiently, for the lowest cost possible. It requires the vehicle to be constantly operating, through a myriad of conditions, and be flexible enough to reach its destination, no matter where it is. A good example of this is the air cargo market. FedEx travels everywhere, in all conditions, and always gets it packages to market on time. Thus, this is why aviation based orbital transportation is ideal for a cargo transports. Having the ability to operate in less than ideal conditions, land at airports, and use less fuel, they offer the operator the ability to do business anywhere, and the customer have that transportation conform to their needs. An aviation based SSTO would be the ideal cargo vehicle to transport raw materials and finished goods to and from orbital factories and labs.