Dark Moon rising
The story is based on four amusing (and puzzling) out-of-the-box solutions to (classic) aerospace issues
-early affordable access to space (in the 1960's)
-all-rocket SSTO propellant mass fraction, notably oxidizer
-beyond chemical rockets: a VIABLE interplanetary / interstellar drive
Nobody ever thought of reuniting the B-58 and the Agena after they separated in 1957; not even when the
B-58 was considered to air-launch spysats in 1962.
Nobody ever thought about suborbital refueling as a way of solving a SSTO "large oxidizer mass" issue.
Nobody before Mel Bulman "Thrust Augmented Nozzle" thought of adding a kerosene afterburner to a hydrolox rocket (tripropellant by Beichel, Salkeld and the Soviet RD-701 was on the right way but more complex)
Nobody before Fransisco J. Arias in 2016 thought of improving NERVA performance by transfering the reactor
heat to the hydrogen: not by fission fragments (constrained by thermodynamics), but through neutron kinetic energy.
Through some luck here and there, all four "out of the box" ideas will gradually transform spaceflight a little faster than OTL.
