Help with new collapsable aircraft half rocket design

[Moonfrog]

I saw alot of people doing SSTO's, though i got okish at building them, i wanted something that was more than one stage so i built this.

Its a very basic design, after testing it somehow managed to get to orbit, with lots of fuel to spare. Curious if other people have ideas on how to improve the basic idea of this craft. The wings detach on first stage, i wonder if i should keep them on or not. Also not sure how this compares to a normal rocket design. It did get up to 20,000 kilometres before i engaged the rocket, was only designed to go up to 10,000. Just interested in your general ideas to this approach of putting stuff in orbit as a new type of launch vehicle.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Moonfrog

[Red Iron Crown]

Hard to see what's going on in that tiny picture. Very generally speaking, it's not worth staging away wings as they're fairly low mass and quite useful for precision landing to get that tasty 100% recovery. Depends on what you're trying to accomplish, I guess.

[The_Rocketeer]

What you have there is basically a cruise missile. I honestly can't see much use for it.

The only exception that comes to mind is based on experience from the Ion Collier Trophy Challenge. That involves lifting a craft with a TWR<1 to orbit (Ion engines only), relying on wings to lift you up to where the atmosphere was thin and then just keep accelerating to orbit speed. If you were trying to deliver a heavy payload (like full fuel tanks) to orbit with minimum outlay in terms of the fuel used to get it there, then you could use a design like this... but then, as Crown says, there wouldn't be much point in jettisoning the wings. By the time they stop providing lift, they're already producing trace drag and weigh almost nothing.

[Moonfrog]

I see. Idea was to build small booster section at the bottom of the rocket. Therefore cut down on costs for much larger payloads. Cruise missle does sound better . Noone else really made anything like this?

[The_Rocketeer]

Ah! Well, booster sections are something I have used, but the other way around - attaching rocket boosters behind a Spaceplane's engines to get it into space faster with more fuel left for manoeuvres or transfers. Adding jet boosters to a rocket is also something I've see done, tho not done myself. It can cut out a lot of heavy rocket fuel and keep your TWR up while you gain some altitude and effectively launch through a thinner, shallower atmosphere - again, a big advantage for heavy payloads. The obvious drawbacks are the loss of expensive jet engines and the need for a lot of air intakes. This also wouldn't really be a winged craft, more like a really massive jet-powered VTOL.