BAK Goes Laythe

[Guest]

Here are some craft Brikoleur Aerospace Kombine has built for operation on Laythe, with a bit of commentary.

BAK Durandal -- a single-stage to Laythe and lots of other places light spaceplane, carrying one pilot and two crew. She's capable of horizontal take-offs and landings from Kerbin and Laythe, and vertical ones on airless bodies the size of Vall or smaller. Among other things, she's capable of doing a return trip from KSC to the Munar surface, from Laythe to Vall and back to Laythe, from Laythe to Pol and Bop and back to Laythe, and one-way trips from Kerbin to Laythe, or vice versa. She's easy and predictable to fly; the only thing to watch out for is that she doesn't like to fly all that slow so touch down at 60 m/s or so.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/Durandal

BAK Sindbad -- An extreme-range scout, carrying a personal micro-tilt-rotor equipped with an ore scanner. Her primary mission is to scout for base locations. She could easily be adapted to other duties as well, e.g. by swapping out the chopper bay for a Mk 2 passenger module.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/Sindbad

BAK Sea Legend -- A nuclear-powered light twin-boom, twin-prop amphibious passenger aircraft. She flies liaison duty between Laythe Kosmodrome and Sea Base. She's capable of take-off and landing from water, but is equipped with landing gear for dry-land operations as well. Top speed is about 250-260 m/s, but she's designed primarily to handle well at low speeds, however, and on Laythe can stay in the air below 40 m/s. Capacity is one pilot + two passengers.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-Sea-Legend

And last but not least, BAK Perch: it puts the mini in mini-sub. A ludicrously expensive, ludicrously small nuclear-powered sub equipped with a full-size docking port. She cruises at about 11 m/s, is almost perfectly neutral in both buoyancy and attitude, and is capable of fine manoeuvring at < 1 m/s, which makes docking with any submarine bases a breeze, even in choppy water.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/Perch

 

[modus]

TIL you're the BAK guy!  I've downloaded and used several of your craft!

[StrandedonEarth]

Oh hey thanks, just in time too. I need to scan a Laythe geyser but my capsule-based landers haven't come down remotely anywhere near one.  I wasn't looking forward to the chore of designing a spaceplane, so I searched for Laythe spaceplane tips and this came up, only 13 hours old at the time. Now I just need to stretch the cargo bay a little to accommodate the scanning arm, without messing it up (E: I can wedge it in there if I  angle it. Now to build an arm to bring it out). Then I have to learn to fly the thing properly.

I can build planes well enough when the mood strikes me, but I've never been much good at getting a spaceplane to orbit, so I've generally stuck to rockets. But this mission seems to be begging for a spaceplane, so here I go...

This is the first time I've gone looking to use a craft not of my own design, but I really wasn't in to designing and tuning a spaceplane when I haven't even tried in ages, so I'd rather just use (or start from) a proven design. Learning to fly it will absorb enough of my limited time already. So thanks again for the .craft! 

Edited February 16, 2021 by StrandedonEarth