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Rotary-Winged VTOL Rocket with Free-Spinning Center Section, Inspired by Roton Rotary & Triebflugel

Goddess Bhavani
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Goddess Bhavani

Goddess Bhavani

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I recently read about the totally insane and very ambitious Roton Rotary Rocket and decided I must have a rotary winged rocket in KSP. I also wanted to build a Focke-Wulf Triebflugel for some weeks now and everything fit together in just a couple of hours.

Flight testing took about a day and everything seemed to work just fine, including the very tricky transition to horizontal flight and back again. Like the Roton, this craft has a few rather hair raising places in the flight envelope that guarantees loss of flight control, but so long as you're methodical and are patient with the rotor pitch controls, you'll be fine!

A few Infernal Robotics and B9 strut tricks were utilized to rotate only the center section of the craft.

KSP's SAS function helps a lot with the control and balance of this craft and it's not recommended to try turning it off. I've tried to engineer it to provide ample warning and graceful failure modes but if the main rotor gets damaged it's the emergency parachutes for you :)

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Craft file on KerbalX: http://kerbalx.com/crafts/1333
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Goddess Bhavani

Goddess Bhavani

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Thanks for all the kind compliments :)

Good effort man. Now make this using stock parts only!

If I stuck to stock parts only I'd have to make the entire craft rotate about its axis. The fun thing is, I think it will still fly but Jeb will be reallllly dizzy.

Source: By mistake I set one of the prototypes' rotor bearings to locked position and the entire back end of the ship rotated with the rotors. Still flew! If you removed the back fins it will look like a spin-stabilized rocket with centrifugal turbopump feeding the ring of engines.

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Azimech

Azimech

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If I stuck to stock parts only I'd have to make the entire craft rotate about its axis.

Well ehm ... not really. I've made a Heinkel Lerche because of your machine but stopped developing it. With the stock parts we have, it is possible, just big, fat & ugly. Maybe with the new wheels it might be worth another visit. The IR docking plates you use as bearings are in fact a lot harder to recreate in stock KSP, so I have a central spine with the blades rotating around it.

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Goddess Bhavani

Goddess Bhavani

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Whoaaaa! I'm a big fan of Gawker Media blogs like Jalopnik and io9! Thanks for the heads up I'll go take a look and kinja em!

@Azimech - Heinkel Lerche sounds really fun to make. Even if using IR parts I think I will need to learn how to create bearing races using landing gear. I have a problem with rotor disk expansion under high RPM, partly my fault as I insist on using Procedural Wings which may be heavier or have weaker joints than the stock wing parts. But I'd rather have one long rotor blade flexing in flight than half a dozen small sections...

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  • 9 months later...
Majorjim!

Majorjim!

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On 03/12/2015 at 4:28 AM, pandoras kitten said:

Thanks for all the kind compliments :)

If I stuck to stock parts only I'd have to make the entire craft rotate about its axis. The fun thing is, I think it will still fly but Jeb will be reallllly dizzy.

Source: By mistake I set one of the prototypes' rotor bearings to locked position and the entire back end of the ship rotated with the rotors. Still flew! If you removed the back fins it will look like a spin-stabilized rocket with centrifugal turbopump feeding the ring of engines.

Agreed, it's possible but it would not be as pretty.

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