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pfdietzlast Thursday at 11:44 PM1 replyview on HN

The argument for SSTOs was that staging was too scary. But experience since then shows this argument was bogus. Staging can be made highly reliable.

Even a small amount of delta V provided by a first stage makes the job of the "almost SSTO" second stage much easier. And a low delta V first stage can be rugged, with high high safety factors, and is easy to recover at the launch site.

Put another way: if you have an SSTO, its payload increases dramatically if you stack it on a very low performance recoverable first stage.

I don't see any way SSTOs are going to be preferable to TSTOs, especially if the SSTO has to use hydrogen to get off the ground.


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avmichlast Friday at 4:28 AM

Everybody may have their own criteria of preferences, so the same solution with fail for one and succeed for another.

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