RedDwarfIV

The Ibis, with careful guidance to keep it level, will make a perfect splashdown landing, with no damage whatsoever sustained in the process.

That wasn\'t the biggest problem for me. Its more along the lines of it taking five minutes to slow the craft by 20 m/s.

N translation also does good braking. It works especially well with K.

Who parked their X-42... on my sandwich? //Explodes //Tim laughs maniacally at the controls, firing weapons in all directions.

No. Its the Veto Aerospace AD1 Heavy, something I made. Its essentially a cfg modded Mk16 with a new texture I made for spaceplanes. Funnily enough, when you release jettison them and they open, they create so much lift that they start going upwards. All you need to do to get them sideways like I\'ve done is use the Probodobodyne struts, and hover them over the end. They turn sideways automatically. They don\'t glitch off like larger modules do, so I may use this to build a better looking Tri-Station at some point.

At first I was like 'What is that? It looks nothing like the Starship Trooper dro...' And then I was like 'What\'s that thing on top of it? Hang on... And finally I was like 8D

It has lots of spare RCS fuel. But the parachutes give the option of an easier landing. Surely you should be happy that it is an S/VTOL? The Kestrel only had parachutes, because the wings were far too stubby to do anything. The Ibis was actually developed because of this - among a large number of other problems - failure of the Kestrel to make a proper atmospheric landing. Whilst the parachutes can land you the wrong way up, or on one end, they are usually safer than landing properly. Which is why they are there.

Note the RCS. It has VTOL. But it only needs to use it to make a Munar landing. You carry the Space Shuttle on a lorry, you don\'t make it fly to its own launch pad. And the SRBs are to give it as much fuel as possible for Kerbin return.

So what you\'re saying is NASA should never have launched the space shuttle because they would have to put all the parachutes back in? And like the Space Shuttle, the Kestrel nor Ibis launch with SRBs.

Thanks.

And Time, the parachutes are fitted to decouplers. It is entirely possible to jettison the parachutes after using them as drogues before landing as with an orbiter.

EVE names a lot of ships after birds. So do modern day militaries. And in any case, KSP is set with the Kerbals having near-modern day technology, so quite why you think they might suddenly have a ship capable of hyperbabblespace jumps [or whatever EVE calls it], I don\'t know. Anyway, this image was taken on a Munar testing flight, eight hours before Veto announced it would be grounding all flights. Whilst the low fuel - half a tank remaining - is a concern, it is not greatly less than that which a Kestrel would have to return from the Mun with, and the Ibis\'s light weight and powerful engine gives little to doubt that it can make it back to Kerbin. The craft is currently preparing to return to Kerbin on account of the grounding order. It will give Veto their first chance to find out exactly how the Ibis fairs at landing from an uncertain orbit. If it loses the functionality of the main engine before it begins deorbital thrust, then RCS is in no way a reliable means of dictating exactly where the vessel comes down. It may be forced to make a sea landing - of which there have been no tests performed on the Ibis-type.

Did you get the crew back?

Nice work. Any way you could have tilted the rover back up for a vertical deployment of the return capsule?

Nuclear fissile and nuclear fusile. You use uranium for the former and hydrogen for the latter.

Looks good.

Following the recent spate of unfortunate losses of Kestrel and their salvage variation Kestrel Responder type spaceplanes, primarily due to control failures with the presumable cause of pilot error on account of the obscenely heavy weight of the craft, Veto Aerospace\'s design department drew up plans for and built a newer, better version. The Ibis-type. Whilst the prototype Ibis was a total failure - with as much stability as a mental health patient in a heavy-duty padded-wall affair of a cell for a good reason - the complete version has shown itself not just able to carry itself to 35,000 metres and drag itself into a decaying orbit needing constant attention of the crew, but to be able to power up to 45,000 and rising before ploughing with ease its way into a perfectly stable 115,000 metre periapsis orbit. All that with two and a quarter tanks to spare, an entire three quarters of a tank more than the Kestrel, which must use more fuel to pull itself around. The vessel sports the same high-power gimballing engine as the Kestrel Responder, which itself proved slightly better at lifting both heavy objects and itself. And lets not forget reentry. Whilst parachute drogue systems and final Advanced Decent Heavy chutes have yet to be added, the Ibis boasts a much larger wing surface area than the older Kestrel. And its smaller weight gives it less to be concerned about during touchdown. For munar landings, like the Kestrel, it carries an extensive RCS network, which should also assist during maneuvers and act as turbulence suppression.

Interesting. But I had a chat with my dad about this a while ago. Simply using solar panels won\'t cut it for powering cryo units. Which is why I like your design, Gaby. Of course, with nuclear fuels you have to keep them SCRAMed until they are needed. Solar panels are ok for triggering reactor startup though.

I noticed that on your Falcon. I still prefer the wheels though. Makes it look a lot more like its capable of taking back off, if only through aesthetics.

The C7 skids don\'t have suspension, do they?

Whilst the skids are very strong, and work very well for water landings, I have noticed that they can tear off whatever they are attached to, because unlike C7 wheel landing gear it doesn\'t have \'suspension\' and move around without putting much pressure on its host part.

Let me guess, you TL:DR?

Trust me, you can build one yourself if you use Probododyne struts and try putting the fuel tanks on the end of them. They turn over. Place them onto the strut - they should place underneath. You can use symettry for this part, though it does make fitting anything you want on the end of the centrifuge arms more difficult. Move them around by dragging the strut.