The Autostrut Tiltwing: a crazy new breed of VTOL

[quasarrgames]

Hello again!

Threw this together in an hour:

It can take off vertically...

...then fold its wings down and fly horizontally. And it does this without finnicky gear hinges, or any part detaching at all. This means you could timewarp it for an infinite amount of time and nothing would fly off the ship.

It works quite simply actually. The engines are attached to the fuselage via very flexible parts (in this case, the radial decouplers). With lots of SAS units attached, the engines can bend their structural connections with a reasonable degree of freedom. They can then secure themselves to the main body with autostrut.

Needless to say, it's not always that simple. Any engine rotation is very wobbly, so transitioning from vertical to horizontal can be a bit...problematic...

...But when it works, it works well. This design is also an SSTO, which can get to orbit with about 450m/s of delta v left:

Hope you liked it

Edited December 6, 2016 by quasarrgames

[Bubbadevlin]

Cool.. didn't even know you could toggle auto strut in-flight! 

I need to play around with 1.2 more.. 

[Heckspress]

my goodness!

[SHiftER2O]

Is it possible to make a small version of this tilt-wing concept? Like, packaged-in-Mk3-cargo-bay small?

Edited December 6, 2016 by SHiftER2O

[quasarrgames]

1 minute ago, SHiftER2O said:

Is it possible to make a small version of this tilt-wing concept? Like, packaged-in-Mk3-cargo-bay small?

Yes it should be possible. I already have a smaller version of it:

This one is a different design, using the joint capability of the klaw. It's a lot sturdier, but more draggy. Won't quite fit in a mk3 cargo bay, but both designs could easily be modified to do so.

 

[SHiftER2O]

1 minute ago, quasarrgames said:

This one is a different design, using the joint capability of the klaw. It's a lot sturdier, but more draggy. Won't quite fit in a mk3 cargo bay, but both designs could easily be modified to do so.

 

How do you control the flipping of the wings? by pitching I assume?

[quasarrgames]

7 minutes ago, SHiftER2O said:

How do you control the flipping of the wings? by pitching I assume?

Yes. Both models function about the same, you left -click on the joint mechanism to lock or unlock it, and use a large amount of reaction wheels attached to the engines and the engines alone to tilt it.

[Rune]

2 hours ago, quasarrgames said:

Yes. Both models function about the same, you left -click on the joint mechanism to lock or unlock it, and use a large amount of reaction wheels attached to the engines and the engines alone to tilt it.

This is genius. And if you trick the game hanging both nacelles of the same tiny connection with nooffset, I'd bet it'd work easier and more reliably.

 

Rune. I only noticed myself you could toggle the button in flight, didn't know yet if it worked or not. Good find!

Edited December 6, 2016 by Rune