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Post by anonymous on Dec 7, 2018 17:30:46 GMT
Does it mean anything to oxidize the propellant of an NTR? As in, does it have any particular advantages, or is it just not worth the engineering cost?
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Dec 7, 2018 18:21:03 GMT
Does it mean anything to oxidize the propellant of an NTR? As in, does it have any particular advantages, or is it just not worth the engineering cost? You mean like LANTR?: The advantage is being able to briefly get a lot of thrust out of relatively modest NTR.
It could definitely be worth it in some cases, especially when facing engineering problems obtaining high TWR.
The minuses include having to carry oxidizer (and choosing the right amount of it) - it is effectively dead weight as far as delta-v is concerned, as you will get better exhaust velocity just using your LANTR in an NTR mode (especially with something like H2 or HD), and your delta-v will suffer more, the longer you hang onto the oxidizer - for example in a warship wanting to keep oxidizer for combat manoeuvring. In a very large ship (like pretty much all CDE ships) the advantage might also be reduced by lower penalties for just using separate engines sharing fuel/propellant for chemical and nuclear propulsion - I actually built most of my stock-components ships like that prior to the last patch, using meth-LOx motors with limited oxidizer supply as both RCS and forward "afterburner".
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