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Cake day: December 12th, 2024

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  • @yogthos the tl;dr is that you basically have super high energy air coming in at Mach 5. You then have to take all that energy away to get your fuel to burn in it, which barely gets you past break even. They create massive amounts of drag too and in order to function need to stay in the part of the atmosphere that’s thick enough to breathe, thus prolonging the drag and problematic heat generation.

    Given the point of a scramjet is to get you into a suborbital trajectory for a rapid glide to your destination, the fact that they have inherently terrible thrust performance and only work when you’re in the bit of the atmosphere you desperately don’t want to be in, they’re uniquely terrible at it.

    Turborockets solve these problems. Get up to Mach 5 on air, close the intakes, run on liquid oxygen, and CLIMB.

    They’re lighter, more efficient, and faster than hypersonic air breathers. You wanna go that fast, use a rocket, and get away from the nasty draggy burny stuff. As enticing as the idea of “free oxidiser” is, it’s a sucker bet.