Idea New vessel idea

[Juanelm]

Hi, I have an idea for a spacecraft, which I think is new (I've searched to see if it's already done but did not find it). If any developer finds it interesting, feel free to use it!

The idea is to do a hybrid between a shuttle-A and a DG. The spacecraft would be winged, and it could fly like a DG, but its engines would be placed in rotating pods on the wingtips. The pods can be rotated down to take off vertically, rotated foward for retro and backwards for thrust. The aircraft would be able to do STOL with the pods rotated at an angle.

I think it would be interesting to fly such a vehicle in atmospheric flight, it would be like a rocket Osprey or something..

 

[Tommy]

The main problem I see here is that on a delta wing aircraft the wingtips are located well aft of the COG. Thrusters located there would need to be balanced by a nose thruster to use them as hover thrusters. That being said, I'm sure someone here can come up with a plausible design that does what you want. Locating the thrusters inboard of the wingtips and placing the rotation point towards the front of the thruster may work. Think of a XR-2 Ravenstar where the thruster rotates around a point at the leading edge of the wing. It wouldn't be aerodynamically sound at hyper-sonic velocity, but then again you wouldn't want the thruster rotated forward at those speeds anyway.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Also, what purpose does the rotating engines have? since the XR series all have hover engines which can perform the same function. The other issue I see is thrust. Winged aircraft are designed for thick atmosphere primarily, where the wings provide the lift. The shuttle A is more aimed at low/no atmosphere's where the thrusters provide all the lift. You would need very strong thrusters to achieve your idea and it consumes a lot of fuel. Even the Harrier jumpjet only uses it's VTOL ability for very low flight so it doesnt burn all it's fuel.