Kerbalcopters and ornithopters?

[herbal space program]

Howdy,

So I've been working on this:

As you can probably see, it's basically a stack of reaction wheels attached to a lifting rotor spammed together out of massless struts, batteries, and solar panels, with some plane parts tacked on the ends. Lift is generated by jamming the roll axis clockwise. I added some ion engines to give it some non-aerodynamic thrust, in the faint hope that I can somehow eventually skate this thing into orbit. It gets off the ground pretty easily without using the ion engines, but this version still doesn't fly very well. It starts off OK, but then it starts to want to process more and more as it spins faster, and eventually it gets really hard to keep it in control. I have nonetheless gotten it up to over 8000m, at which point it seems to be both spinning faster and accelerating upwards. I think if I put the tail fins from the rotor near the bottom instead of where they are its behavior will improve significantly, but it's obviously still a WIP.

Anyway, I'm sure somebody out there has made one of these already, and I'd love to see it. Has anybody ever gotten to orbit this way? I will gladly give rep for images.

On another note, it occurs to me that if you were to attach control surfaces both to each other and to a massless strut framework in the right way, you might be able to "flap" by pitching up and down and thus generate lift and thrust. Anybody ever done this?

Edited November 4, 2014 by herbal space program

[QuesoExplosivo]

It's called an infiniglider. Look it up.

[herbal space program]

It's called an infiniglider. Look it up.

I'm pretty sure it's not actually an infiniglider, since it requires power to take off and gain altitude.

[herbal space program]

...OK, so the ornithopter idea is what is an infiniglider, except that the code for the control surfaces is such that you don't even need to rig anything special to make it work, so it's basically a cheat. The reaction wheel copter concept OTOH seems to work even without any control surfaces, so it doesn't actually seem so much like a physics exploit to me so long as you omit them. Anyway, I'd still love to see some pictures of somebody flying a reaction wheel copter to orbit. Looking that up specifically is a pretty tedious exercise.

[Master Tao]

There was a challenge for gyropters a few months back: Gyroplane Altitude Challenge.

[Claw]

Yeah. If you look in the spacecraft exchange, there are several stock helo threads. I recall seeing orbit capable things, but can't remember specifically where off hand. (Which doesn't really help. )

While you may be getting some benefit out of the infiniglide but, I would say that based on your pictures, you shouldn't be getting too much bonus unless you are also flapping those control surfaces around. If they are locked, the effect is still there but should be lessened.

[herbal space program]

There was a challenge for gyropters a few months back: Gyroplane Altitude Challenge.

Thanks! That's what I was looking for. It seems like with a few basic ground rules like no control surfaces, you could make a perfectly respectable design challenge out of this. I will see what I can produce for this one.

[herbal space program]

While you may be getting some benefit out of the infiniglide but, I would say that based on your pictures, you shouldn't be getting too much bonus unless you are also flapping those control surfaces around. If they are locked, the effect is still there but should be lessened.

I did notice that as I was twiddling my controller struggling to keep the thing pointed upwards, I was getting some inexplicable extra acceleration, so I guess that was the infiniglide effect. This was not required at all for me to take off, but it probably got me accelerating upward more than is legitimate later in my flight. I will build a version with no active control surfaces and see how that fares. To me this doesn't really seem so much like it would be a physics cheat, since the things are pretty hard to fly.