In 1979 Rockwell International unveiled a concept for a 100 ton payload heavy-lift multicycle airbreather ramjet/cryogenic rocket engine, horizontal takeoff/horizontal landing single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane named Star-Raker, designed to launch heavy Space-based solar power satellites into a 300 nautical mile Earth orbit.
source/image: Found And Explained
Star-raker would have had 3 x LOX/LH2 rocket engines (based on the SSME) + 10 x turboramjets.Around 1985 the NASP project was intended to launch a scramjet vehicle into orbit, but funding was stopped and the project cancelled.Thanks to its vast tri-delta wing blendered design, there was a great deal of internal volume for not only cargo but fuel as well.
The cargo deck was modeled after the C-5 galaxy, 20 feet high and 20 feet wide, in a square shape, and 141 feet long. Thats 6 meters by 6 meters, bt 42.9 meters for those living outside the US.It was a space plane that was 103 meters (310 feet) long with a wing span of about 93 meters (280 feet), and would have carried a maximum of 89.2 metric tons (196,600 lbs) of cargo into low earth orbit around 300 nautical miles above the equator – or 555 kilometers.
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Overall this would have allowed firms to get payloads into orbit for a cost of $15 per poundThe craft would have two engine systems, the first was conventional jet engines, specifically hydrogen fueled high bypass supersonic turbofan/air-turbo-exchanger/ramjet engines, each with 140,000 lbf of thrust. Then the space plane also had three hydrogen fuelled rocket engines, each with 1.06 million lbf of thrust and an ISP of 455 seconds – enough to get it into a high orbit.
