Farnsworth Dyna-Soar

[Dr Farnsworth]

Good news everyone!

Do you have a hankerin for the good old days? Well now you can fly like they wanted to in the early 1960's

Introducing the Farnsworth Dyna-soar.

1.1.3 friendly

Back in the early 60's Boeing designed this neat rocket concept. Unfortunately, it never left the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-20_Dyna-Soar

Instead of the glider being attached to the side of the rocket like we are accustomed to seeing with the space shuttle, Boeing attached it to the top of the rocket.

The space shuttle suffered from some inherent design flaws right off of the drawing board (due mainly to government budget cuts).  The main one being that it has the thrust and mass are out of alignment. To compensate for this the designers mounted the SSME's (Space Shuttle Main Engines) at an angle so that the thrust could be brought inline with the center of mass. Unfortunately, this flight attitude brought the orbiter directly under the external tank. The orbiter was pretty fragile and could not handle much fod (foreign object debris)hitting it. The external tank was huge, covered in finicky insulation and was directly over the orbiter during assent. A great way for the orbiter to get hit with stuff... The External tank that was filled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Those tanks had lines on them while it was on the pad to boil off some of those gasses that were in liquid form to control the pressure in the tanks. The result was the external tank would get cold enough sometimes for patches of ice to form on the tank out of condensing humidity in the air. Technicians would check for ice before launch but invariably, some would be missed. At launch by the time the shuttle cleared the launch tower it was already hurtling towards space at over 200 mph. Plenty fast enough for a piece of ice mingled with some foam from the external tank to break off and slice through the brittle carbon/carbon leading edge of the orbiter wing. This is the best guess as to what happened to the Columbia in 2003

...Sorry for the history lesson...

Anyways, The Dyna-Soar avoided all of these problems by mounding the glider on the top of the rocket. This however limited the size of the glider.  It required the modified Titan rocket to have large fins on the bottom to compensate for the glider moving the center of lift too far up the rocket.

 

So here is my take on the Dyna Soar

All stages can take advantage of the "stage recovery" mod if you use it.

The glider retains the last stage to use for orbital maneuvers, docking and solar energy.

150k orbits are achievable for crew rotation at your station. Final stage has a Clamp-0-Tron jr docking port to attach to the station.

More fun than exploding!

Perform your deorbit burn and then detach from the final stage.

The glider should enter the athmosphere perpendicular and with the elevators deployed. There is no fuel you can move around. Once the air thickens up, the glider will drop to about 30 deg. attitude.

The glider is not a "true" glider. It has two juno engines and 100 units of fuel so if you over or under-shoot your landing there is some adjustments that can be made.

The glider flies very well and has an awesome glide slope. This does make it hard to burn off airspeed. Try to cross over the runway at well under 100 m/s and you shouldn't overshoot.

Download here!  https://kerbalx.com/Dr_Farnsworth/Dyna-Soar

[Exothermos]

Looks good!   Downloaded.  I love making these kinds of designs.

[pTrevTrevs]

Wow, it looks pretty nice, especially with those visual mods!

Its just EVE + Scatterer, right?

[Dr Farnsworth]

Scatterer + stock visual enhancements + distant object enhancement + real plume + engine lighting

I have to ice down my computer every half hour so it does not melt.

[SSgt Baloo]

Thanks, large! I've been wanting to build one of my own, but want to benchmark (steal) more design techniques before attempting one.

Edited July 18, 2016 by SSgt Baloo

[Dr Farnsworth]

1 hour ago, SSgt Baloo said:

Thanks, large! I've been wanting to build one of my own, but want to benchmark (steal) more design techniques before attempting one.

It's not "stealing". Let's call it "creative copying". 

Glad you like it! 

[RRFroste]

You may want to straighten the rear landing gear.

Otherwise it can cause problems.

BTW nice work!

[Dr Farnsworth]

1 hour ago, RRFroste said:

You may want to straighten the rear landing gear.

Otherwise it can cause problems.

BTW nice work!

RRF, my test pilots reported no stability issues in regards to landing or taking off in glider form. Extensive testing actually shows the glider to be quite stable. Under-powered, but stable. 

Take the craft out for a spin and let me know what you think.