SSTO The Midge VTOL

[Karmacoma]

and today's boredom busting creation............

The Midge

SSTO - VTOL

Made up of 58 parts and weighing in at 9.61 Tons fully fueled.

Jet powered vertical or conventional take off capable she will make it to a 100Km orbit with 2-300 ÃŽâ€v to spare for maneuvers.

Action Group Toggles

1. Turbojets

2. Rockomax 48-7S

3. Basic Jet Engine (VTOL Engine)

4. Air Intakes

5. Solar Panels

I've only tried the VTOL using mechjeb as my piloting skills suck bigtime! but the plane in normal mode seems to handle ok without MJ. Any comments or critique are welcomed and if anyone tries this without MJ on the vtol i would be interested to hear how it handled. More pics and craft file below...

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>> Craft File <<

MechJeb Not Included

-KC-

Edited August 8, 2013 by Karmacoma
avoiding confusion

[dshuck]

That looks AWESOME. Trying it out.

[inigma]

Oh please oh please. SSI could use this.

[The Destroyer]

It's not a Stock craft if you use MJ.

[Karmacoma]

That looks AWESOME. Trying it out.

cool, let me know what you think.

Oh please oh please. SSI could use this.

haha help yourself mate

It's not a Stock craft if you use MJ.

craft file has no mechjeb, so is therefore stock, me as a pilot is lazy/stupid/crap or otherwise generally wasted so i use MJ

[dshuck]

The results of my third voyage in the Midge (the 1st 2 ran out of fuel before orbital insertion).

I ran out of oxidizer after I had my PE at 37 km or so, and I finished circularizing on RCS. Even though the RCS is on the bottom of the craft the SAS keeps it exceptionally stable. I should be able to deorbit without much trouble.

There's no MechJeb on the craft file by default, and I flew without MJ, as always.

EDIT: I like the craft. It's stable during VTOL (although it took a little bit of stabilization at takeoff) and RCS maneuvers, both of which I was unsure of, and it can in fact get to orbit, even if it's tough to do manually. There's a lot of air intakes clipped onto each other which I don't like to do when I build ships, but the craft works and looks nice too.

Nicely built craft, and the smallest SSTO I've ever flown.

Edited August 8, 2013 by dshuck
Forgot to say my opinion on the craft

[Karmacoma]

how i do it (and yes again i'm crap i use mechjeb) is...

stage to start all engines and extend the front antenna, then turn off 1 and 2 power up 1/2 to 2/3's and lift off vertically and raise gears, turn 1 on power up to full and pitch to 45° and ride it to 10Km then pitch to 30°, @ 15Km pitch to 20°, @ 20Km pitch to 10-15° dropping my vertical speed to about 40-50 m/s and ride that upto 30Km i'm doing +2Km/s by then and i let that ride upto 38Km at about 5° and yes I let mechjeb handle the flameouts but as its single engine its fairly simple to manually cope with as well (yes i actually tried ) then i just turn off all jets close all intakes turn 3 on and hit the autopilot to take me to 100Km orbit, but essentially all it does is pitch up to 37° and full burn to 100Km apoapsis and circularise.

just did exactly that flight profile as i typed this out and i have, as you can see 254 m/s ÃŽâ€v and 40.8 units of jet fuel left