Falcon Heavy + Sunbird: evaluated

Starfire and I assume Sunbird promise high-alpha thrusts, such that they could push their own engines into orbit and beyond. Their problems are twofold: they use expensive helium-3; and their thrust isn't all that high, in the teens of newton. The Merlin series, which the Falcon rockets use, each runs 845 kN at sea level. Falcon 9 therefore must use several rockets - nine Merlins. The Falcon Heavy uses two sets of Falcon 9s and a bigger one in the middle. The US military sometimes uses the latter and buys the discardation of the boosters for extra thrust.

SpaceX has earmarked Falcon Heavy for retirement once the Starship is ready. And when they can do one Starship a week, the whole Falcon series is done. But what if...?

Today I pondered firing the FH triple blast except to swap out the colossal core rocket. Instead we are lifting the fusion rocket. The Falcons on either side can possibly use methalox or even hydrolox for less boost and soot. These rockets can be retrieved as per usual. Fusion rocket doesn't need as much thrust after those detach - we'll put a button on this.

If hydrolox, I call in the Germans. Their RLV-C5 as boosters are rated 1972 kN. Although not as mighty as the 2700 kN Raptor-3; RLV-C5 uses ten apiece. Both my boosters would, then, glide to pickup allowing more efficiency.

We are here buying horizontality over verticality. These should be safer and cheaper to assemble on the ground. Buys some international goodwill also. As a direct small-load mission, we here RETVRN to Gajeri's 2010 thesis to Saturn or whith'rever other 5+ AU destination.

So: let's run this by Copilot. Even at LEO, the fusion rocket still has to blow out extra fuel and must take many days to get to escape-vel. Layla Mohsen, sorry to pick on her but she's tagged her name to the mission rather than to the engine, assumes a space infrastructure fit to assemble interplanetary manned craft in that LEO. I don't know that we have that. Will we have that in 2030? Will any of the proposed stations want to do that?

If our mission is for a light cargo, and if we're assuming orbital infrastructure: a better investment be to hoist that Tamil Tether. The orbital station maintains tether, at most (which scales better than being a direct shipyard). Tether catches our fusion mission and drags it higher. Fusion lights the fuse.