Temstar

I wonder, could you turn steering on for the back two wheels (assuming they're also small landing gears) to get similar effect as "four wheel steering" in cars? Four wheel steering decreases turning circle. I suspect in KSP with planes you will need to have steering inverted on the back two wheels though or else the plane will just crab.

When you say model, you mean "made a working version in KSP" right? If so someone did make a Dyna-Soar/Hermes: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/128332-105-hermes-shuttle-lifterdeorbiter/

Since no one is putting their hands up for recoverable rocket category I figure I'll get us started: Presenting Hurricane Duo Block II: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/128674-stock-105-hurricane-launch-vehicle-family/ 97.095 / 624.402 = 15.55% payload fraction by my calculation. Should be plenty of opportunity for increasing that payload fraction too, although this is first and foremost intended as an operational vehicle to achieve low cost/ton to orbit. This particular vehicle will give you $478.28/ton to orbit or more depending on how good you are at landing the ET near KSC.

Consider this spacecraft: Makes sense doesn't it? Once the crawler transport it to the launch pad it is already in the correct orientation so that it just needs to pitch down to initiate the gravity turn. Pitching down is the standard manoeuvre for starting gravity turn in real life. In cases like Apollo spacecraft where it's going to a target on an inclined orbit they would first roll the rocket on launch to line up the pitch axis with the target orbit, then pitch down to start the gravity turn. Yet in KSP when you first lay down a root part it has the pitch axis lined up to North-South. To build the above spacecraft you would first have to do a 90 degree clockwise turn with the capsule. I see very little benefit to make the pitch axis line up with North-South by default, we should instead change it so the pitch axis line up with East-West by default.

I'm with @Snark, I consider any rocket that has the navball lined up so pitch down is North to be a travesty. First thing I always do when selecting a root part is to hit the Q button. I do have the rocket on screen when I launch because rocket exhaust is pretty. But you could just as well give me a navball that took up the entire screen and I'll fly to space just the same.

That's crazy enough that it might just work. You will need double dock for sure though, wouldn't want to have to try to fly back to KSC with lop sided wings. All the RCS stuff will probably need to be on the wing part too for simplicity.

Yeah I know about the Ariane 5 flyback booster thing. And yes It's named Hurricane because of the Uragan connection. Interestingly both Ariane 5 LFBB and Baikal (flyback booster proposed for Angara) have nose mounted jet engines to give them powered flight capability. That's something I might have a look at. Putting the jet engine in the nose is quite clever and I know why they designed it like that - otherwise the empty booster will be extremely tail heavy and will naturally want to flip around in flight. I resolved this on my flyback by putting the biggest fuel tank in front. Now if only Squad would give us hinges so I could make proper viable geometry wings.

It's Scatterer and SVE on medium resolution texture. SVE is like EVE but fancier, it uses a lot more memory though and I notice KSP crash more often with it installed. But looks amazing.

Hey Rune, you'll be interested to know this was a shuttle concept too: Man those shuttle proposals are a gold mine for KSP rocket designers.

Hurricane Duo Block II HLLV is released! By utilising parachute recovery on the External Tank, this version of Hurricane Duo is now fully reusable! The recovery equipment decreases the payload slightly by 2 tons compared to the Block I design. The ascent is still the same as Block I. ET recovery typically go like this: Craft file is in the OP I must say I wasn't convinced that recovering the ET would make that much difference in terms of cost/ton to orbit. Now looking at the numbers (the ET recovery amount is assuming you average 80% value recovered. With practice you should be able to get even higher than that) I can see it does make a difference. I probably won't be making a Block II for Hurricane Trio though. The plan is now to proceed directly to a Block III for Hurricane Duo and Trio with winged ET so the ET itself can also make a precision landing back at KSC for that 100% recovery.

I may have to steal that winged ET idea for a Block III version of my reusable lifter @sgt_flyer In other news, after much tedious trial and error I got parachute recovery ET tank worked out, thanks to @Darth Lazarus and this thread for the inspiration.

Yeah true enough, but I suppose generally when people think SSTO reusable rocket they expect the entire rocket to come back in one unit as well. That's certainly doable but if you want that kind of reusable SSTO to also have precision landing capability AND be able to scale the design up and down then it becomes really difficult. Meanwhile I've been working on this: Credit goes to @Darth Lazarus to demonstrate to me that this method does indeed work. And yes @Rune it will be called "Hurricane Duo Block II", ditto the Block I.

Hmmmm, how does that winged ET fly? Can it safely re-enter and land at KSC?

I don't use FMRS, but seems like a good option. However if you do use it to recover stages then it's by definition not stock With stock I've seen three methods: SSTO, the whole rocket goes up on a single stage, release payload into orbit and then deorbit itself. Eg: SKRV two stage, where the first stage separate quite early during flight after providing a huge amount or acceleration. The upper stage coast up to above the atmosphere, during this coast you switch to the first stage and land it on Kerbin. Once it lands you immediately switch back to the 2nd stage and it will just about reach AP for the circularisation burn what I've done here I'm planning to work on making the ET for Dual and Trio recoverable, shouldn't be very hard. Although I don't think it will make the economics much better as the empty ET is worth very little.

Craft files: Aurora Winged Booster (SPH) Block I Hurricane Solo Block I MLLV Hurricane Duo Block I HLLV Hurricane Trio Block I SHLLV Block II Hurricane Duo Block II HLLV Block III Hurricane Duo Block III HLLV Hurricane Trio Block III SHLLV Background: Those of you who tried to reproduce the Space Shuttle in KSP knows the number one problem is asymmetric thrust. There I was wrestling with the same problem when I had the brilliant idea of "why not just use more of them?" A pair of shuttles sandwiching an ET between them, now there's some symmetric thrust. But then I thought about this idea some more, why a shuttle in the first place? Well by attaching your expensive engines to a winged... thing you get to recover and reuse those engines. But the "thing" part doesn't actually have to mean "aircraft shaped fancy payload fairing". Seen as my double shuttle idea calls for the "shuttle" part reaching the orbit together with the ET I may as well put the payload on top, then move majority of the fuel tanks to the "shuttle" part. Then I recall I saw something similar once, and then sure enough after some research I realised I came upon the same idea as Energia II (Uragan): | Or at least, the winged booster part of the idea. Hurricane Launch Vehicle Family Block II parachute ET recovery assumes average recovery rate of 80% of the value of the ET, otherwise all recovery are assuming 100% recovery value as they are flyback. Awww yes the convenience and familiarity of vertical rocket launch with the low cost/ton of SSTO spaceplanes. Normal vertically launched rockets, even partially reusable ones specially designed to offer low cost to orbit can barely break the √1000 per ton barrier, so under √600 per ton in a rocket is amazing. The Hurricane launchers achieve this by using the reusable Aurora Winged Booster (more on this later), throwing way only the cheap, engine-less External Tank. As these launchers are all based on the same propulsion unit they fly just about the same way (they're basically the same rocket, just on different scales), let's have a look at the typical mission profile: Aurora Winged Booster The basic propulsion unit for the Hurricane Launch Vehicle family is the Aurora Winged Booster separately developed in the SPH. The extremely low cost per ton achieved is done via recovering the Auroras which represent a significant proportion of the launch vehicle, including all of its engines. Let's have a look at a typical flyback process: The craft file for Aurora Winged Booster is intended for SPH. Note that it's partially fuelled as this is the test fuel load for horizontal take off to orbit and deorbit mission. For use as actual booster I recommend filling all bipropellant fuel tanks and then retract the landing gears before you save the subassembly. Speaking of subassembly, here's a how to: Of course just because I used the Aurora to create the Hurricane launch vehicle family doesn't mean they are limited to this, they are useful for all sorts of payloads that can support radial boosters such as this interplanetary ship:

I took out my credit card within 15 minutes of firing up the demo.

With a medium-high TWR craft, you can in fact support at least 3.5 Rapier per shock cone: This craft was 135 tons on take off, so just 19.29 tons per Rapier.

What else would you call it? When Einstein first published General Relativity he had zero experimental proof either. He actually had to go beg astronomers to do eclipse photography so that his theory had grounds to stand on. Or alternatively think about it this way: how do experimental physicist know what machines they should design if they don't know what they should be looking for?

You don't actually need upgraded Astronaut Complex to do lots of rescue missions, the contracting companies will happily give you more rescue missions even if the new guy causes you to exceed your maximum astronaut headcount. But still, it's good for early upgrade because not only does EVA allow you to gather lots more data on the same flight, the ability to gather up the experiment results to bring back to your capsule makes returning the data to Kerbin much easier.

That's a reusable Zenit right? My own attempt at horizontal landing was focused on splashdown which meant it had to land very horizontal and below 6m/s. I couldn't get that to work. You inspired me to have another go with your system. The Zenit diagram is shown with landing legs. Is there any advantage to using landing gear in ksp over landing legs?

ZOMG reusable booster, I'm making one as well but using wings. How do you setup the parachute landing so it lands so horizontally? I tried to do parachute horizontal landing but it's very difficult to get the CoL and CoM match up. Is it just trial and error? You know what your system reminds me of? The MTKVP: https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/mtkvp-glushkos-opening-gambit/

Back in my days Kerbin's atmosphere was so thick, you could bit off chunks of it and chew it. *shakes his old man stick*

AFAIK Dyson himself is saying by his calculation each Orion launch will cause somewhere between 0.1 to 1 additional death per launch globally. He considers this to be unacceptable and said maybe if the bombs could be made clean enough so that they can get less than 0.01 death per launch then he would consider it. 1 death for 1500 ton payload is interesting because it might not be that bad. I wonder if it's possible to put together "death per ton to orbit" for chemical rockets like say the Proton over its history. The shaped charges Orion is suppose to use produces a cigar shaped fireball instead of the usual sphere so it's more efficient. The same technology is also behind the Casaba nuclear howitzer which fires a nuke that then explode into a spear of nuclear flame. This is why Project Orion is still highly classified: the technology behind its fuel can also be used to create highly destructive directed nuclear explosions.

That's a lot of faffing about to get it to work though. If you want a reusable booster in KSP it would be easier to make it single stage, release the payload and then deorbit the whole rocket to land tail first at KSC.

It's not done in KSP for practical launches because if you focus on the first stage and fly it back to KSC it means you're not focusing on the upper stage to actually get the payload into orbit.