Launching a spaceship with a portal-based engine?

I previously asked how best to use wormholes for spaceflight, focusing mainly on propulsion in space. I'm now wondering if there's a good way to get off Earth with this ship.

The ship needs to be composed mostly of metal, for setting-related reasons, and also needs to be as simple as possible. So on the one hand, something based on a scaled-down version of SpaceX's Starship would cover the metal requirement, but the Rapter Engines are not available. There is also only one portal available.

The primary question is how much thrust can be generated, preferably with the lowest tech possible. Mas pulled through the portal can be artificially accelerated to some degree, if necessary, but I'd like to minimize this.

My estimate for the mass of the ship is between 25000 and 55000kg. The far side of the portal is near a star, with at least one gas-giant (probably a Hot Jupiter, to minimize the energy required to move the portal between them if necessary). There can also be various storage stations near the far side (I imagine they'd orbit the gas-giant, but the important thing is that they're secure and accessible when needed).

An answer that allows the engine to be as simple as possible, in terms of materials and mechanics, is preferred.

I used the atmospheres of Jupiter and Neptune as references, and attempted some calculating of what an ideal engine would be able to output by just pulling gas from the Hot Jupiter's storms, and am certain that I missed many, many details (I came up with something around 1300kn, which seems implausibly high, if convenient).

The important distinction between this and the previous question is the focus on launching from Earth. It would be nice if this could be done without committing any war-crimes in the process. If this can't be more than a glorified jet when in Earth's atmosphere and/or gravity well, that would be a problem, but also a valid answer.

posted about 5 years ago

CAE Jones‭

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