Alternative Design Thinking for the Rockets

For several months, I have been developing new ideas on alternative rocket designs. I want to explain my design thinking. I divide the journey of the rocket into two stages. First, travelling through the atmosphere of the earth and the second is travelling in vacuum.

The main advantage of atmosphere is its lifting power which helps to counteract against the gravity. Its main disadvantage is the drag especially at higher speed. I thought about designs to utilize the advantage and minimize the effect of the disadvantage. Using a multi-wing plane as the first stage of a rocket reduced the thrust requirement on the first stage. Vertical take-off requires approximately ten times more thrust compared to horizontal take-off from a runway. The plane design also allows slower ascend speed which reduces the losses due to supersonic speeds. The high altitude lifting first stage can also be used alone to send space tourists much more comfortably than the current rockets can. Additionally, it is much easier to land a plane safely on a runway compared to a long and thin first stage of a rocket vertically. 

Another alternative for the first stage was to place the rockets around a circular belt (Yurt Rocket). This design allowed almost infinite expendability for the payload. Smaller perimeter for smaller payload. Larger diameter for larger payloads such as space telescopes and space station modules. You simply add more rockets side by side to increase the lift capacity. At the moment bigger payloads require a complete design of the rocket which takes decades. Additionally, multiple small rockets allow gradual acceleration to lower the drag due to un-aerodynamic design.

I also proposed alternatives to rocket’s propulsion design. Most notably, the sliding mechanism that decreases the volume of the propellent tanks as they are consumed. This design was mechanically complex and required the whole rocket to withstand high pressure like the solid boosters. I also thought about an altered version to be used on solid boosters which only required the lower section of the rocket to withstand high pressure. Limiting the area of the high-pressure zone improves the specific impulse of the rocket and lowers the weight of the casing.

Finally, aerospike nozzle design looks to be the future for the rockets. They can only be manufactured on 3d printers. Once a printer with much higher printing volume is developed, they will be the dominating nozzle design. Especially for the rocket stages that travel in vacuum where the bell-shaped nozzles are huge and bulky.