A Comparison of Future Fully Reusable Winged Single-stage and Two-stage Launch Vehicles with Different Propulsion Concepts.

The paper deals with the evaluation of future fully reusable launch vehicles on the basis of mass and cost comparisons. 16 winged single- stage and two-stage vehicles are compared. It is found that neither the horizontal take-off single-stage vehicles nor the single-stage ramjet vehicles represent an alternative to the vertical take-off single-stage rocket vehicles.