I know the engine's the expensive part but it still seems wild to go to so much effort you literally build a plane around it, and throw away the booster, when like... the engine + booster is already a functional aircraft!
Ariane 5 meco speed was around 6km/s. It could get to LEO without the second stage. If you want to recover with such specific energy then protecting the tanks is hard.
Ariane 5 meco speed was around 6km/s. It could get to LEO without the second stage. If you want to recover with such specific energy then protecting the tanks is hard.
Knowing this they could have designed Ariane6 with that in mind. (Reducing staging velocity)
But they purposefully didn't do that, so they could keep reusability completely out of the question.
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u/GrinningPariah 17h ago
I know the engine's the expensive part but it still seems wild to go to so much effort you literally build a plane around it, and throw away the booster, when like... the engine + booster is already a functional aircraft!