sweetmidge, sweetmite, fairfly, bat. Small/tiny SSTOs that orbit @100 and back to KSC

heavylifter · June 4, 2013

All of which have gotten to ~100km or higher orbit and then deorbited to land at KSP again.

Craft files can be found here:

1) sweetmidge:

Vital stats:

9.12t, part count 24 (not including mechjeb)

Gets into 100km orbit with ease (even with a crappy ascent) with lots of dV (~1500+) left over, both for out-of-atmosphere and in-atmosphere stuff.

If one intentionally burns away more of the jet fuel on the ascent path, you can end up with a fair bit more dV.

Takeoff happens at around 60m/s, and landing at something significantly slower.

max turbojet-powered speed is ~1800+ m/s

This one is easy to make a VTOL as well.

2) sweetmite: (my favorite!)

Vital stats:

6.41t, part count 28 (not including mechjeb)

upper-atmosphere target is around 33km, where it should eventually be doing ~2125+ m/s

This puppy gets up to max service altitude and max turbojet-powered speed amazingly fast imho!

3) fairfly/bat (it is itsy-bitsy!)

Vital stats:

5.18t, part count 20 for bat, and part count 24 for fairfly (not including mechjeb) (the weight difference between these two is .004 I think...)

fairfly/bat is very fuel limited, so get it up to ~1800 m/s and then head on up to orbit.

You'll need to get your reentry done pretty right, 'cause it is likely you'll have to coast down. Good thing they glide well!

Fairfly:

Bat:

Technically, all ships here could be lightened with different choices of cockpit, so further weight reductions are possible.

Having played around with it, however, the crafts become difficult to control when the cockpit cannot counterbalance the jet engine's weight.

Edited June 5, 2013 by heavylifter

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