Horizon Apogee Concept Comparison
Horizon Apogee  /  Concept Lab

Concept comparison

Illustrative concept data
01   Shared range picture
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Size class

Comparison circles

No point placed

Reference points

Base demo loaded at South China Sea.

Earth imagery: Three.js texture collection.

02   Shared flight condition

One cruise point, five propulsion paths

Every concept's Propulsion & Performance tab below shares this altitude, cruise Mach and drag-coefficient pair — only each concept's own geometry, mass and propulsion assumptions differ. See Methodology & sources for the full derivation.

Mission role — applies to every concept below

Mission role

Intercept sets the shared cruise altitude below to 10,000 ft; Attack restores the default 80,000 ft cruise altitude. (Size class — Tactical/Strategic — is set in the Shared range picture section above.)

Applies to every concept below

Solid and Liquid Rocket are unpowered boost-glide vehicles and use the "rocket gliders" drag coefficient; Reaver, Marauder and Traditional Scramjet are boosted-to-cruise airbreathers and use the "airbreathers" drag coefficient. Both share the same standard-atmosphere density/speed-of-sound and the same planform-area method (diameter × length, per concept).

08   Range sensitivity

Range vs. altitude

How Reaver's or Marauder's computed range would change across altitude, traced separately for a spread of cruise Mach numbers from 1.5 to 5.0 — using that vehicle's own current mass, payload and propulsion inputs above. Drag coefficient and structure floor stay at the shared values in section 02; only altitude and Mach vary.

Vehicle

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Each curve holds cruise Mach fixed (1.5 through 5.0, gold to crimson) and sweeps altitude. The pale vertical dashed line marks the current shared cruise altitude (set by the Intercept/Attack role above, or edited directly in section 02), with small dots showing each trace's range there. Hover the chart for exact values on every trace at that altitude. Same booster-sizing, atmosphere and range model as the rest of this page — only feasible points (enough non-payload mass to clear the structure floor) are plotted.

09   Methodology & sources

How this page was built

Where each part of this page comes from
Geometry, colors and defaults. Length, width/diameter, mass and payload are the default values from Horizon Apogee's internal Concept Comparison visualization tool. Reaver and Marauder keep their own accent colors (#ff3030, #fa8072); Solid Rocket, Traditional Scramjet and Liquid Rocket — the three non-Orthrus reference cases — are shown in a shared grey scale (#d9d9d9, #9a9a9a, #666666) to set them visually apart from the two named vehicles. All are editable game-balance figures, not measured hardware specifications. Each concept's Distance/range is not a separately editable figure — it's computed live from that concept's mass, geometry and propulsion assumptions using the same booster-sizing and range model as Horizon Apogee's Booster Range Calculator (see the equations below).
Wireframe exteriors. Reaver and Marauder each use their own Horizon Apogee‑supplied display mesh (Marauder's derived from a supplied 3D geometry file); Traditional Scramjet uses a purchased X‑51A exterior; Solid Rocket and Liquid Rocket share one simplified downloaded exterior. None of these meshes resize with the entered length/width values — they are normalized for viewing only.
Propulsion, mass-stack and range model. Adapted from Horizon Apogee's internal Booster Range Calculator, generalized from that tool's single shared airframe to each concept's own length/diameter/mass/payload. Solid and Liquid Rocket are modeled as unpowered boost-glide vehicles (burn to the shared cruise Mach, then glide); Reaver, Marauder and Traditional Scramjet are modeled as boosted-to-cruise airbreathers (a rocket booster to an ignition Mach, then powered cruise on air-breathing fuel). Reaver and Marauder both use the same combined-cycle (Orthrus‑class) propulsion assumptions in this model — they are treated as the same propulsion cycle at two different scales, not as two different engine families; this is a modeling simplification, not a confirmed performance claim for either vehicle. The full booster-sizing, structure-floor, atmosphere/drag and range equations are reproduced below.
Deployment platforms. Army, Navy and Air Force launch platforms are chosen by matching each concept's own length, diameter and mass against publicly reported dimensions of existing U.S. launch systems — see the citation under each platform card and the consolidated source list below. These are scale/fit comparisons for illustrative context, not disclosed integration plans, except where a card explicitly says the pairing reflects Horizon Apogee's own stated design target (Reaver's six-round canister compatible with the M903 launcher and PAC-3/IBCS fire control, from Horizon Apogee's xTech Apex Intercept submission).
China / Russia / Iran reference points. The toggleable globe dots (major cities, air bases, naval bases, missile/strategic sites, and army/ground-forces theater or district headquarters) are an illustrative reference layer, independent of the five concepts above. Locations are approximate placements compiled from open public sources — Wikipedia's lists of PLAAF and Iranian Air Force bases, GlobalSecurity.org and FAS/James‑Martin‑Center open‑source-imagery reporting on Chinese missile silo fields, and standard city/base gazetteer coordinates for Russia and Iran. They mark named, publicly discussed installations only, are not survey-grade or targeting-grade coordinates, and are not a claim about current force posture or operational status.
Propulsion & range equations
Booster sizing. Solving the rocket equation for the propellant/booster mass needed at a fixed total mass and payload: target boost velocity V = Mach_target · a, mass ratio r = exp(V/(Isp·g₀)), leftover non-payload mass x = (M₀−M_payload − M_payload·(r−1)) / r, consumed booster mass = (M₀−M_payload) − x. Solid and Liquid Rocket target the shared cruise Mach directly; Reaver, Marauder and Traditional Scramjet target their own, lower ignition Mach.
Minimum structure floor. Each family carries a floor on structure mass as a percentage of that concept's own total mass (10% default for the two boost-glide vehicles' tankage/casing; 20% default for the three cruisers' inlets, engine and avionics), so the rocket-equation solution can't shrink the airframe to nothing. A glider's structure is x; a cruiser's structure is max((1−φ)·x, floor), with the remainder of x becoming fuel. If the boost itself would eat into the floor, that concept is marked infeasible.
Atmosphere & drag. Standard (ISA) atmosphere density and speed of sound at the shared altitude. Dynamic pressure q = ½ρV² and drag D = q·Cd·A use a per-concept planform area A = diameter × length and the shared drag coefficient for that concept's family. Lift-to-drag L/D = Weight/D, evaluated at burnout mass for gliders and at the average of start/end cruise mass for cruisers.
Unpowered glide range (Solid, Liquid). R = (L/D) · (h + V²/2g₀) — an energy-height estimate crediting both glide-entry altitude and glide-entry speed. At Mach 5+ the kinetic term dominates the altitude term. This still ignores Earth curvature, boost-phase forward travel, and assumes constant L/D over the glide.
Powered cruise range (Reaver, Marauder, Traditional Scramjet). Leftover mass x splits into fuel and structure at cruise fuel fraction φ (80%/20% default, once the structure floor is met). Range follows the energy-equivalent Breguet equation: R = (η·e_fuel/g₀) · (L/D) · ln(M_start/M_end).
Remaining placeholders. Cd on a diameter×length planform is a simplified drag proxy, not a full aero build-up. Propulsive efficiency η, cruise fuel fraction φ, and structure-mass floors are editable assumptions, not measured figures. All figures are first-order engineering estimates for relative comparison, not a substitute for a trajectory/CFD analysis.
Licensing & attribution
Reaver/Marauder exterior: Horizon Apogee's own supplied display geometry. No named Electronics Bay is identified in the source file, so none is highlighted.
Traditional Scramjet exterior: purchased X‑51A model, TurboSquid product 742572; the listing specifies editorial-use restrictions and public deployment rights remain unresolved — flagged for legal review before any public-facing use of this page.
Solid Rocket / Liquid Rocket exterior: adapted from 9M79K Tochka‑U missile by Jeyhun1985, CC BY 4.0. Modified: exterior filtering, normalized scale, simplified wireframe.
Deployment-platform reference photos: Patriot M903/PAC‑3 launch, AIM‑9X wing-rail carriage and B‑52/ARRW pylon carriage are U.S. federal government works (public domain, 17 U.S.C. §105). Mk 49 GMLS/SeaRAM photo © Darkone, CC BY‑SA 2.5. M142 HIMARS photo by Juliusz Sabak/defence24.pl, CC BY‑SA 4.0. Mk 41 VLS/JS Chōkai launch photo, Japan Ministry of Defense, CC BY 4.0. All cropped for consistent framing; none modified otherwise.
Deployment-platform sources (as of Sep 2026)
Illustrative concept-comparison page — game-balance values and first-order engineering estimates, not validated performance data. Values reset on reload unless you save a situation.
Contains company-specific propulsion assumptions and an unresolved third-party model licensing question (Traditional Scramjet exterior) — keep internal per your own OPSEC guidance until resolved.