Shuttle with quad boosters (instead of belly tank)

DeadJohn · September 23, 2021

This thing looks cursed but flies well during ascent and landing, and is mostly recoverable. Cargo capacity is 36 tons (one Jumbo-64 orange tank) to 250km Earth orbit (KSRSS 2.5x scale). It's still a work in progress subject to cosmetic and convenience tweaks.

The quad-booster arrangement allows for a conventional easy prograde gravity turn without having to offset engine thrust. I was concerned about the risk of boosters tanks hitting the wings, but multiple test flights say it's not an issue.

SRBs zip away while the main engines are at full thrust and don't have a chance to hit anything. The SRBs are recovered with parachutes and the Stage Recovery mod.
The external liquid tanks empty near sub-orbital apoapsis. I shut the main engines off to give those tanks time to safely drift away and burn up. A future revision will use sepratrons to nudge the tanks.
The shuttle fuselage has a small LFO tank to circularize orbit, and monopropellant OMS for docking maneuvers. The Puff engines are ugly so I might clip them into the fuselage, or add side tanks to look more like the real shuttle, or replace with modded parts (with an option for all-LFO thrusters to unify the fuel supply without any monoprop).
Wingtip rudders. I prefer that because a tall central tail can get in the way while unloading cargo.

I use some non-stock parts but something like this can be done fully stock. The external liquid tanks are from BDB and Restock Plus. Most docking ports are from BDB to match what's already on my Earth station. B9 Procedural Wings.

Comments welcome, especially if anyone knows of similar quad-core shuttles. I looked on this forum and KerbalX but didn't find anything.