/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11758750
if it's round or , it's a capsule
if it's not, it's a spaceplane
vertical landing is just a mode, the Harrier and F-35 do vertical landing. There were a few Nazi memeplanes and American post-WW2 research projects that did vertical takeoff and landing exclusively, although I think the american research projects never got off the ground and the nazi memeplanes did a Gagarin for pilot recovery
>>11758754
Spaceplane doesn't automatically mean "meme" (meaning bad idea) there are perfectly valid reasons to use lifting body reentry. Pic related were spaceplane ideas and not stupid memes.
Putting a spaceplane second stage on top of New Glenn would be great.
>>11758763
>Yes
I'm glad somebody gets me.
>>11758766
They absolutely called them self-propelled carriages for a while. Yes, using a spaceplane as a space station is perfectly valid. We did that with Shuttle for a while.
>>11758767
They need a quite large hypersonic L/D ratio (sustained hypersonic gliding) for Mars entry.

>>11254410
I did, in fact, say "dolphin sex"

>>11197208
I can at least understand choosing the full flyback shuttle booster over everything else as the future of America's space program at that time. Budgets were coming down hard and it made the most sense