Liquid fuel only MK3 Cargo lifter

[AeroGav]

I built this Andromeda class SSTO the other week,  the intended use being space station components, which are bulky but light.   I tested it with a 2.5m Xenon powered ship as the heaviest plausible payload (18t), because if your lifter is NERV powered, why would you go back down to chemical ISP for the deep space part?   But the gold standard for a mk3 SSTO is an orange tank (36T) ,  so it had to be done...

A design like this lives or dies by it's lift/drag ratio, namely you must stay as close to prograde as possible to minimise drag from the cargo bay.    Aerodynamically, it's designed to do that when empty,  and i've added trim flaps on action groups 1-3 to nudge the angle of attack a few degrees higher or lower so you can adjust the flight path.   However, the positioning of the cargo can upset this.    The orange tank caused it's AoA in Neutral trim to shift to almost 2 degrees nose down , due to the cargo being slightly too far forward.    I was able to work around this by operating with nose up trim most of the flight and tweaking the deployment angle of the trim flap,  as i'm sure you could if you had the luxury of an analog stick !

In future though, i'd recommend test flying with the payload before shooting for orbit, and see where the natural AoA goes to so you can see if the cargo needs to move at all.   Or just get a fancy-ass analog joystick !

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Andromeda

Is it the smallest thing to ever lift an orange tank?

Edited April 9, 2018 by AeroGav