Azure Sparrow [Vanilla Low orbit SSTO]

Description:
Hello everyone,
It is with great pleasure that I make my first post to simplerockets.com! Today I introduce to you the Azure Sparrow, which is a vanilla SSTO. Now, before I go any farther there are a few things you should keep in mind. 1: This is my first time playing a game like this, so I’ve had no beforehand experience. 2: This is my first time making an SSTO. And 3: I’ve done this without any mods (hence vanilla) and in the early access release, so my options for design where pretty low. Anyway, it took me about ten prototypes to land a fully functioning design. A lot of them spun like crazy when I was trying to land. I ended up putting on some big-ish fins for extra stability. They create a lot of drag so that when the parachutes are deployed the rocket will eventually settle into an upright position. Now having said that, I should warn you that this is a functional craft, not an elegant masterpiece that lands smoothly. When you first activate the parachutes, it’ll flip and twist around like crazy. But if you give it time things will straighten out. I’ve included some RCS nozzles so that you can orient the craft in space. They can also help with settling the craft down after parachute deployment. One other thing I should probably mention about Azure Sparrow is its’ performance. This rocket has just enough fuel to put it into low orbit and then de-orbit. Also, It’s TWR is about 1.2:1. So it will take off and climb rather slow. In the future I’d like to re-design Azure Sparrow to perform better. But for now, this is the best I can do. Alright, enough talk. How do you fly this thing?

Flight guide:
Unfortunately, I don’t have much of a step by step guide for you guys. I just got used to flying the design. It might take some practice, but once you get used to the craft, it’s not very difficult to handle. At any rate I can at least provide some description of how I fly and what to expect during your flight.

At launch I deactivate AG 10 so that my RCS nozzles won’t burn up all their fuel. After that I lock the nav thing, set power to 100% and take off. At about 700m-ish I pitch 5 degrees. After that I just pitch whenever it feels like I should. But as far as I recall I stay above 45 degrees until about 25,000m. When the craft is just leaving the atmosphere I quickly level off and then wait till I have 25% fuel before cutting the engines. My apoapsis is typically anywhere between 50 and 95km. While coasting to apoapsis I’ll use the RCS nozzles to set my pitch to 9 degrees. At 31 second to apoapsis power goes back up to 100% and then I lock my prograde. Just after an orbital path is reached I cut my engines again, with about 4% fuel left. I set up a burn node near apoapsis to roughly circularize my orbit. After the burn, fuel is usually at 2 or 3%. When I’m done orbiting I place a burn node near the periapsis and plan the deorbit. Once the deorbit burn is complete I use the RCS nozzles to spin my craft so that it points towards the ground at a slight angle, a bit like an airplane landing. Within 20,000m of the surface I deploy the parachutes and set my pitch to 90. After the craft spins and flips like crazy for a minute or so, I turn on the RCS nozzles to help straighten out the ship and activate the landing legs. From there it’s just a wait out till touchdown. If I’m lucky I’ll have 1 or 0.5% fuel remaining which can be used to do a burn right before touchdown.

Tips and tricks:
1% of fuel will get you about 1.74 seconds of burn time.
The parachutes are in AG 1. You can retract them via AG 1.

Notes:
I’m running this game on a lot of the lowest settings, so I have not tested the Azure Sparrow with re-entry heat or anything like that.

Well, that’s about it folks! Have a good one!