Exothermos

I played with recoverable lifter stages, and it was a success, but since KSP doesn't handle recoverable stages well, and this craft was a bit of a stunt / challenge rather than a "serious business" craft, I left the capability out. I don't think very many people use huge mark3 rockets and planes in career mode where recovery really counts anyway. If there is interest, however, I can polish these up a bit for release. Edit: Yes the new pork-product gear are going to be a God send!

Need something in space? Just put it on top of a rocket, man! Is that something really big? Put it on a really big rocket! This is the Auk Shuttle, a big drone shuttle on top of a big rocket. It can deliver big, heavy things to any Kerbin orbit, and slightly lighter things to Munar and Minmus orbit. Like its avian namesake it is a tubby vehicle with dubiously short wings. It has a standard rocket ascent. Lets pretend that those boosters are reusable. When lifting station modules, the main stage is usually sufficient to get the orbiter in a stable LKO. This allows you to take things places! The .craft file comes with a simple Assembly Tug for Orbital Maneuvers (ATOM), as well as a docking port in the bay. Here the ATOM is wrestling a habitation node on to my Minmus station. Heavy stuff like this simple gas station can be taken to stable orbits of a few hundred kilometers. Here the cargo bay is stripped of equipment in order to lift the over-sized part. Now the exciting part! How good are you at getting KSC glide slope landings? Well, after a few reentrys with the Auk you will either be a pro or you will hate me. Maybe both. The Auk glides with around a 3 to 1 ratio. Basically that is really just controlled falling. And that is when it is mostly empty; Make sure to use all your fuel before returning or you will show a lawn dart how to do its job. Hey, space is for those with grit, character, and all the Right Stuff! Come in high and hot then dive down to the runway, a 30 degree dive is ideal. Keep your speed above 120 m/s until you are within reach of the runway. Oh god... FLARE... uuuunggggghhhhh. Aw yeah. The ship is responsive and maneuvering is easy, but speed scrubs off surprisingly fast. Ideally you want to scrub speed over the threshold of the runway. Of course you can just land anywhere in the field too. I guess. DOWNLOAD

I really like your use of parts! Keeping it simple and still trying to evoke the shapes of the original is tough to do.

The model is SO impressive! That bomb bay, the nacelles, the blending of the forward fuselage into the shoulder coke bottle. Nothing about the parts in KSP makes that easy. You SHOULD be proud. Sigh, now my xb-70 I'm working on looks clunky in comparison.

Thanks everyone! Yeah, unless you put a silly amount of thrust on the separation engines, you need to throttle back on these kinds of designs. In this case, the separation happens at such a high altitude that there is not much penalty to throttling back momentarily. Infact, one can keep accelerating through the maneuver as long as it is at less than one gee. - - - Updated - - - Oh hay! Thanks for giving me a name to the one cruddy image that I had. It's a cool proposal.

It is amazing that you captured the compound curvy shape of The Bone. Super impressive building!

That's a really powerful hint, Rune. The cursor hovering over the wrong part very well could be the case as I've been relying on the 'alt' key for the snap-to-node function a lot, and this build transitioned from horizontal to vertical endless times. Who knows where that cursor was!

While cruising Google images for inspiration for SSTOs, I came across a design sheet showing a few early space shuttle mock-ups. The design that became the Alternus Space Shuttle (edit: the Lockheed Star Clipper) was one of the proposals, and it caught my eye as being the most plausible of the group (the Real Space Shuttle's bizarre design wasn't even considered at this point). So I set out to make it work under the time tested adage of "If it looks right, it flies right." I would come to the slow realization that this design needed more than my usual seat-of-the-pants engineering. One can see why the design was not adopted as the real shuttle's configuration is more efficient, even if it is overly complex. Every aspect of the build presented problems, but eventually dozens of flights ironed-out the kinks, and a reliable and docile alternative shuttle design is the result! Ascent is a standard Kerbal Rocket profile. Light the fires and drop the clamps at full throttle. Begin a gentle gravity turn a little early (9k meters and 250 is fine). There is lots of lift and control. Staging of the main tanks must be done with care! Throttle back and they will peel-away beautifully. Then punch it! Apoapsis and insertion is achieved on internal fuel. Center of Mass and Thrust are preserved, no need for complicated maneuvers. Make sure to unlock the rearmost fuel tank before insertion. It is a niggling fuel flow bug that I just couldn't crack. Oh well, it's a simple thing to do. The Alternus has a maximum payload of 32 tons, or one Jumbo 64 Orange tank. Plenty of Monopropellant is available for fine maneuvering and docking. Reentry is standard. Here I am trying to shed speed in high altitude turns like the real shuttle. Touch down is at only 50 m/s. The Alternus is a flying gas can, so when it is empty it is very light and has a huge lifting surface. This also means that it is "draggy" in the stock aerodynamic model, so come in 'Hot' and shed speed late in the approach, or you will run out of energy and land short. If you decide to download, I hope you enjoy, and as always feel free to comment! DOWNLOAD

Which one? I have no mods installed at all on the copy that I built these in. Just vanilla 0.90.

That's utterly massive, AND super cool looking.

Darn Latin! Thanks. Lets pretend I made an aesthetic naming decision here rather than fumbling my conjugation. I do have an old design that is an homage to the xb-70 (maybe it's time for an updated one). I think in this case, I saw something around the forums here with a similar "goose neck", and just decided to try it my self. To be honest I have no idea! Many. Most of the time it is around 3 to 4 intakes per engine. I should be more precise, but after building so many SSTOs I can eyeball it and get close. If my minimum climb performance isn't met, I add a few more and test. There is no way to build this style of SSTO (with large payload fractions, high performance and compact, attractive lines without airhogging. One can certainly build non-airhogging large SSTOs, but they will necessarily carry MUCH more internal fuel, and will balloon in size and complexity while losing payload performance. It's definitely a divisive subject, but I fall firmly on the pro-airhogging side because it allows me to play with spaceplanes in a way that I find fun. Are you very heavy on fuel? The Asp has very little in the way of sneaky hidden wings, maybe one or two for aesthetics, mostly. It doesn't need them because a full load of fuel is only 25% of the available tank space (those fuselage parts are all empty). If you are avoiding airhogging, you are definitely going to need a lot more fuel than what I designed it for. It will need a lot more wing. I'm really flakey with this game. I'll gladly build spaceplanes for any reason, but sometimes i burn out and disappear for weeks at a time. Be warned! #BitterVet I'm very glad that these designs have struck a chord with some. Building Spaceplanes is a much easier affair with the new parts and tools, but if you don't know how they are made, rip them apart and "steal" ideas. I do it with everyone's craft.

Really nice lines, but about a thousand more parts than my computer can handle. I'll enjoy it in pictures!

At least SOMEONE is working on giving us flying cars in 2015. Fun idea!

Lol, uh-oh. Am I a one trick pony? Oh well, it's a pretty good trick.

Thanks all! Glad you like them. Let me know if there are any issues (I posted this pretty late last night). Rune, you are probably right. I think swapping a set of jets for Rapiers might be a good decision, but I don't like having all that extra rocket thrust. It seems wasteful. I could be wrong though, the rapiers breathe longer on thin air so their reduced thrust rating in that mode might be compensated by actually staying lit longer. I'll play around with it on the next versions. (So many more in development that it is overwhelming, haha) - - - Updated - - - Do it! It's a whole different world of technical problems to solve (paradise)!

Those who follow the SSTO showcase thread will recognize these three craft. Iv'e been sitting on them for a while as I never took the time to polish them up for release. There are so many new parts and new opportunities that I can scarcely keep from building 3 or 4 proof of concept craft per night, then rarely revisit them. I figured I'd 'slow my roll' a bit and share some of the more successful ones. First up is the Asp, a mk2 cargo SSTO meant to share some design with the SR-72 Concept. It is a standard airhogging type (as are all these designs) and is very stable and simple to fly. It will effortlessly lift anything that will fit in the bay. DOWNLOAD Next up is the Arcus . I wanted to design an SSTO that was very nimble, and totally overpowered (efficiency be damned!). The cranked forward fuselage results in an unstable and highly maneuverable craft. Just make sure to fly with SAS on! Being over-engined, it will lift anything that fits in the bay (and more) straight to orbit very quickly. DOWNLOAD Last is the Auriga. When the Mk3 parts fell into our hands I died and went to heaven. This is the first thing i made. It is designed for a max payload of a single "Orange Can." This is quite tedious however, so it isn't something I'd recommend. My main use of it is delivering space station parts to LKO, which is a much more pleasant affair. DOWNLOAD Thanks for looking!

Ah, darnit. This thing just shows me how overbuilt my latest efforts are. Super Nice!

Yeah, I know... that's why it is still a work in progress (and probably why the design was shelved IRL when someone ran the numbers). The structural fuselages are comparatively light at 0.1 each, so they all weigh a total of 2. I tried structural beams to define the leading edge but that led to wing part intrusion into the payload bay. It's a tough nut to crack. I think part of the problem is that this shuttle design does not shed weight in the same way as a good rocket design. It must lift those heavy orange tanks, so it needs lots of thrust early, but is carrying way too many engines at higher altitudes. v0v WOW! Now THAT's a payload fraction. also, 250 parts? I'll go home now.

Here is a design that I saw when perusing over the early space shuttle concepts. I liked it, so why not try to make it a reality? It has been quite a struggle, but nothing about the design is inherently more difficult than the real shuttle design, in fact in KSP, things are much easier with this design as there is no asymmetry. It has just been a lot of test flights and engine arrangement tweaking. As it stands it is one KS-25x4, two Mainsails, and two Skippers. Shown here with maximum weight loadout. Lighter Payloads can be accommodated for by reducing Main-tank configurations. All that effort to lift an orange can to orbit. Maybe next time I'll stick with big rockets. Still, it's nice to bring all those expensive engines (and kerbals) back to a soft landing on a runway. The orbiter is having stability problems right now. The game seems like it doesn't know what to do with those heavy rocket engines actually flying back, as my Center of Lift and Center of Mass icons in the SPH do not match test results. I'll figure it out. I just wanted to share now; getting that -64 to orbit was quite difficult with the constraints of this design!

That's one of the fastest walking robots iv'e seen in KSP. Nice job!

This game makes me laugh. Why does a design like this, which has a grand total of 1 hour 20 minutes of effort invested (lighting quick for me), work so perfectly?

I just downloaded 0.90 tonight. Oooh this is going to be fun. Those Mk3 parts are surprisingly heavy. This one's been to orbit, but not with the payload I expected. Some tweaking is in order for sure.

Here's a design with a cranked froward fuselage, because why not? Well, "why not" is because it induces all sorts of minor stability problems. The SAS easily handles them, but it is just not as sweetly neutral as I like to make my craft. It does turn like a fighter because of this though; it will easily pull 9 Gs! And it goes to space with a good size 1.25m cargo hold while looking pretty good.

Thanks! Yeah, of course, use anything you want.

I'm sure many of you have played around with this idea recently, but here is my version of the Dream Chaser. It's a simple little craft, but I've really enjoyed messing around with it so I figured I would share. One of the nice things about the new Space plane parts is that the fuselage pieces generate lift. This allows nice compact little vehicles without huge wings. In this case I wanted to replicate the mission profile of the Dream Chaser. The Scream Chaser is not a nut-for-bolt recreation of the real thing, but rather it embodies the purpose of the original vehicle. The Orbiter seats up to 6 and is lifted to orbit on a hybrid booster. The first stage is solid rocket boosters, and the orbital insertion stage is a Poodle LFO rocket. The Orbiter includes a probe core, so that it may perform missions unmanned. All stages are recoverable. It uses monopropellant for orbital maneuvering and docks via a rear-hatch. Reentry is easy, and the vehicle behaves much like it's real life counterpart in the atmosphere. A relatively steep and fast glide-slope is recommended. DOWNLOAD