Hybrid Staged Rocket

Aerospace refers to the technology and industry involved with the atmosphere and outer space collectively. However, the collaboration between the aircraft and spacecraft design is below par. I would like to propose a hybrid staged rocket design. Where each stage can be reconfigured for different projects on demand.

The aircraft section of the hybrid rocket will be composed of two stages. The first stage will be powered by highly efficient high bypass turbofan engines. The delta wings will generate lift and are structurally sturdy. This is important while the wings need to lift heavy weight of the upper stages. Due to lift generated by the wings, the turbofans do not need to generate the thrust of a classical rocket’s first stage. The objective of this stage is to ascent the upper stages to the commercial aviation altitudes and speeds. Once the objective is reached and most of the fuel is consumed, the upper stages are separated. The first stage than flies back to the launch airport. This is a much simpler engineering problem compared to returning a rocket’s first stage to the launch site.

The second stage of the hybrid rocket will be a smaller delta wing with convertible ramjet engines. The engines will be fired close to Mach one during stage separation. The engines will operate in ramjet mode until Mach 4 and then they will transition to a scramjet above that speed. Unlike traditional rocket first stages, this stage will reach high speeds at lower altitudes due to air breathing nature of the engines. Once, most of the stage fuel is consumed, it will separate from the upper stages. Like the first stage, the second stage will also fly back to the launch site. Due to engines inefficiency at lower speeds, this will require more fuel. The delta wings will allow passive deceleration with improved stability.

The remaining upper stages of the rocket will have classical rocket design. They will be called high-altitude, high-speed rockets unlike the traditional ones that are launched from the ground with zero initial speed.

The first two stages of the hybrid rocket will also be used at high-speed, high-altitude testing of rockets (civil and military) and aircrafts. At the moment aircrafts with classical framing are used for this task and they are not optimal for the task.