
Originally Posted by
cjameshuff
This thing is a bizarre assembly of bad ideas. The limitations and minuscule benefit of air launch is just the start. The mass fraction of the toroidal stages will be terrible, and they've practically designed the thing to suffer from slosh-induced instabilities and to maximize the propellant mass that has to be left in the tanks at shutdown...otherwise, the engines are very unlikely to run out of propellant at the same time. And it's completely pointless, since they don't actually ignite the nested stage...they're taking on all the disadvantages of horizontal staging, creating new problems with their toroidal stage approach, while not getting any of the advantages.
And then there's this gibberish:
Physics just doesn't work that way.
So you're saying they might as well use floo powder? Which, having watched a Harry Potter film last night was the first thing I thought of when I saw the name.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.