The Phoenix II SSTO (Updated)

[rdwulfe]

Debuting from the new company, Wolf-Hart Aerospace, is our SSTO and flagship design. The Phoenix II is the product of an exhaustive round of design and testing. Philley Kerman, upon hearing words like "Cost Effective" and "Reuseable" thought they would look really neat in a brochure, so he designed a launch system around them. As of yet, his design is not completely tested.. but we are hopeful this will become the backbone of our reusable ship line.

Basic Stats:

The vessel is designed to carry jet fuel in the wings, to power its four Turbojet Engines. With no payload, the vessel has 2,610 Delta V potential with its twin Aerospike Engines, providing a TWR of approximately .78 - These numbers are for the ship sitting on the tarmac. Once in flight, her true potential is higher, due to having burned off excess liquid fuel.

Crew capacity: 6

Cruising altitude: Yes, have some, please!

Mass: 45.5 tons

Cost: Low low price of only 107k spesos!

Ascent Profile:

Takeoff can occur around 105 m/s (a blistering 200+ knots)! Fly carefully to approximately 500 meters, then angle up to between 35 and 45 degrees. Once you hit 18 km, decrees angle to around 15-20. During this phase, you will begin to accelerate. Continue to do so until you reach approximately 30 km up. Cut jet engines and fire main engines at max, angling the nose once again to 45 degrees until apogee is 75km. From there, my fellow pilots and kosmonauts, you should be able to take it!

Descent Profile:

Keep nose around 5-10 degrees in direction of flight once you hit atmosphere. If the craft becomes squirrely, decrease angle further. Depending on orbital maneuvers, you should have enough fuel to continue flight and maneuver for a safe landing on the tarmac at KSC. Fuel may need to be moved out to the wings while in space to allow all 4 engines to fire, however, even on 2 engines there is enough thrust to provide control for landing.

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[TD]Disclaimer:_{^{Warranty void if vessel loaded with fuel, if wheels touch tarmac, grass, water, air, or vacuum. No actual warranty implied. May cause cancer. May eat small children. May explode suddenly. Flight not guaranteed. Do not taunt Happy Fun Phoenix II. If it glows green, run. Run faster. No, that's not fast enough. May cause sterility. May cause pregnancy. Too bad this text can't be smaller.}} [/TD]

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Mods used in construction:

Adjustable Landing Gear

FuelWings

I'll probably post a craft file sans MechJeb later, since this is perfectly flyable without it. Please, feel free to give me your reviews and test this baby out! I'd really like to refine it a bit, but haven't had a TON of time to test it. She took a few unmanned flights up to LKO, and I have yet to test her with a payload. Also, I attempted to design this for NEAR... but ended up ripping NEAR out after frustration that I couldn't get ANYTHING to fly right with it.

EDIT: No longer requires MechJEB! I accidentally left the module on there during upload, didn't mean to originally.

Edited November 14, 2014 by rdwulfe
Removed Mod requirement