The Right Stuff

[AllAmerican75]

Rocket Propulsion Elements is a good one.

Also, you can find a walk-through of the equations here. They get pretty nasty at the end... as they say, it is rocket science.

Those are some nasty equations. If I wasn't so tired, I might actually comprehend it better than I do.

BTW-checked and a single stager can go into orbit, it just taxes the limit of our current chemical rocket engine efficiencies. It also permits so little usable payload to hit orbit, that it just doesn't make a lot of sense, what with multistage jobs so easy to come by. (Pgs. 591 and following, for those of you playing along at home)

@Bogey: Are you considering command module/payload module a stage? Is there a standard definition of stage I don't know about? We did manage to put people into orbit with the Redstone/Atlas rockets during the Mercury program, and those were a single ascent stage with capsule and retrorocket package on top.

 

[Blutonski816]

@Bogey: Are you considering command module/payload module a stage? Is there a standard definition of stage I don't know about? We did manage to put people into orbit with the Redstone/Atlas rockets during the Mercury program, and those were a single ascent stage with capsule and retrorocket package on top.

Actually, redstone was only capable of suborbital ballistic flights

Atlas had cutaway boosters that were, when you think about it, stages... sorta

Since we're on the subject...
a wiki article on SSTOs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSTO