For SSTO to be worth for a Starship-Superheavy class vehicle, the aerospike engines would need to be as efficient as the Merlin ones at the same weight and the removal of the Starship engines would need to account for added thermal protection of the lower part.
The napkin math seems workable, but rockets require a lot more than napkin math.
Having said that, Shuttles were almost SSTOs in the sense that the fuel tank could be placed in orbit (and reused as pressurized habitation space, with some extra work). Maybe some SLS-derived work can add some very large volumes able to dock into a future space station.
> Shuttles were almost SSTOs in the sense that the fuel tank could be placed in orbit (and reused as pressurized habitation space, with some extra work).
That is super cool! I gotta dig into that.. pity they never did that. It would be neat to have an ISS module that was a re-purposed shuttle external fuel tank.
The Shuttle still dropped the two solid rocket boosters.
Still it performed better than Tsiolkovsky and everyone else thought a chemical rocket could perform because running rich with extra H2 lets you get a better ISP since it lowers the molecular weight of the exhaust even if it does lower the temperature a little.
The napkin math seems workable, but rockets require a lot more than napkin math.
Having said that, Shuttles were almost SSTOs in the sense that the fuel tank could be placed in orbit (and reused as pressurized habitation space, with some extra work). Maybe some SLS-derived work can add some very large volumes able to dock into a future space station.