cheapchips
Veteran
There was a lovely video about aerospike engines that interviewed many people and it was clear musk had the worst understanding of them.
Was that the Tim Dodd one? I don't remember anything that showed a lack of knowledge, care to elaborate.
Aerospikes do seem to be typical dead end theoretically optimal but just not really practical. To contextualise Musk's comments in Dodd's interview, economic TSTO reuse seems to favour high thrust to weight, which rules out aerospikes unless we have some wizzy new idea of how to make them. They make sense for SSTO, but then SSTO doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
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