Spaceplane Fuselage Brainstorming

[Oblate Prince]

I'm contemplating making a few spaceplane parts with an eye to a more conservative (and easier to texture  ) style than Porkjet's parts and properly balanced for a 2.5x-3.2x scaled game.  Also, jets are a hard no.

The goal is to make parts that are clean enough to blend in with BDB, Tantares, or ReStock but simple enough to be within my very limited texturing abilities.  

To this end, I'm looking for suggestions from the community as to what fuselage profiles would be the most useful to people without overlapping with other mods (in particular, Moroz).  Reference images and documentation of serious orbital spaceplane proposals would be a great help in  deciding on the exact size and shape of the fuselage parts.  I'm not interested in airbreathing designs or far-fetched proposals.  I'm also not likely to do any reach-y requests.  Don't expect IVAs, RO configs, etc.

 

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Tentatively, I'm shooting at least one set of parts: something substantially larger than the Moroz spaceplane but smaller than the Mk3 fuselage.  This might hopefully cover the Boeing XS-1, MAKS, the upper stage of various Saenger concepts, and (with the help of tweakscale) the X-37.  Definitely looking for good reference and thoughts on what people think is best in terms of size and shape.  

I'm also considering a larger fuselage but at this point, I'm unsure what I want to use as my template.  Suggestions and references are particularly welcome here. 

 

 

 

 

[Kerbals_of_Steel]

Something I'd particularly like is a largish lifting body, like a 2.5m MK 2 that doesn't suck.

[JadeOfMaar]

@Oblate Prince If you're still looking for something to roll with, I'd highly recommend the Soviet concept air-launched spaceplane: Tupolev OOS. It's a very inviting (simple geometry) and promising design and there's decent room for slipping in new parts for modularity's sake (like a crew cabin. There will always be a demand for a high capacity cabin. As for IVAs, just use the placeholder. It'll be sufficient for many players just to get to see a crew portrait to know that there's a kerbal in the cabin or cockpit). As an air-launched spaceplane its engines are therefore high thrust vacuum engines (Poodles on steroids), very poor in thick atmo (unlike the stock Rhino or the SSME which are mid-range or sustainers).

The body itself should definitely be just over 2.5m tall and over 3.1m from port to starboard (you can anticipate a great need for a spaceplane body that can hold 2.5m cargo and has lift surface, or a 2.5m-alike spaceplane body...which will, of course, hold < 2.5m cargo). Skipping the cockpit for a drone nose you can make it fill X-37's role with Tweakscale. With some adapters and/or angled engines it can fit the MAKS's role too.