Zwolff

I had the same problem returning from my Jool mission. No middle ground between burning up and not slowing down enough to stay inside Kerbins SOI. What I do to save some ∆v on my more recent interplanetary missions is to slow down using engines outside the destination planets atmosphere just enough to get the apoapsis inside the planets SOI, and then circularise through aeorbreaking when the speeds are low enough to survive. Also when going to Jool, one can do a gravity assist manoeuvres around Tylo or Laythe to slow down enough to get an apoapsis within Bops orbit without ever having to use ones engines or enter an atmosphere.

Ever since the introduction of the new space plane parts, I had trouble recreating my old space shuttle replica using the new cargo bays and cockpit. With the introduction of the new aerodynamics I gave it another try, and can now present to you the shiny new Duran Duran v2 NASA space shuttle replica. The new Duran Duran is capable of placing a 22 kg module in low Kerbin orbit, making it capable of most space station construction missions. The orbiter uses monopropellant for both orbital manoeuvring and reaction control, and comes equipped with Oscar-B LOX tanks feeding two fuel cells for extended orbital missions where the cockpit batteries are not enough. The timed burnout of the 9 pairs of SRBs make ascent fairly simple, but care has to be taken to not have the boosters knock of the wings upon separation. The shuttle so far is designed to carry 22 tons in it s cargo bay, so if the cargo is replaced, the torque might become to large during some parts of ascent. After circulation, around 350 m/s ∆v is left which is more than enough for rendezvous with a station and docking a new module to it. If placing a module without a probe core and RCS in orbit, it can be relocated to the top-facing docking port in the orbiters cargo bay and docked to the station using the orbiters manoeuvring system. Upon returning for orbit, some parts can overheat if the entry path is to steep, and the orbiter can tumble into an uncontrollable spin if turned to tightly when lining up with the runway. Avoiding these problems, landing is quite simple provided you can find out how to time your deorbit burn to end up at KSP. A split tail air brake is available to slow down on approach and a chute to slow down once on the ground. When landed on the KSP runway, around half the launch cost is refunded. Mass: 652 kg Part count: 228 ∆v total: 4469 m/s ∆v orbiter only: 678 m/s Max designed payload to orbit: 22 tons to 75 km LKO Cost of Shuttle: 198.000 Cost of Shuttle and example cargo: 204.000 Cost of Orbiter: 98.000 Craft file: Dropbox link I will continue to refine the shuttle, and to figure out a way that makes SRB separation less risky and reduce the probability to end up spinning uncontrollably when landing. Below is an Imgur album showing select parts of a typical shuttle mission delivering a fuel tank to orbit.

This is really bad news. I hope you can use rover wheels as bearings instead, if you disable their motors and use SAS modules for rotation. I have some stations and interplanetary craft with artificial gravity sections on made with landing gear bearings, so fast rotation is not a requirement for me.

Very creative. If you use lights of different colours illuminating small signs at each board square, you could recreate the street colour sets properly.

My interplanetary craft, the Von Kerman Jool explorer, that will use the Striders is not a super large ship compared to what I see other people post on the forums, but it has a stock rotating artificial gravity section that eats part count because of the bearings. It will probably be a slow ride as my computer is not the fastest one. You are right that some fuel is clipped. The Strider has a FL-T100 and a FL-T400. The FL-T400 is clipped about half way into the Mk2 crew cabin, and the FL-T100 if clipped about half way into the Mk2 drone core. This gives it enough fuel to reach orbit with plenty to spare for orbital manoeuvres and rendezvous with a ship or station.

I needed a rather small craft for mainly personal transport to use as shuttles for my Laythe mission. As I just watched Interstellar, I was inspired to build this little ship to fill the role. If launched as an SSTO to an orbit of 75km, the Strider has around 700 m/s of ∆v left for orbital manoeuvres, and around 200 ∆v of RCS. It can reach around 2000 m/s at around 35 km altitude before rocket engine boost into orbit. Just like in the movie, the Strider also comes with a 2-stage launcher to get to orbit. However it is rather unstable to fly because of all the lifting surfaces an the top, so some extra wings and SAS-modules were required to fly it as a rocket to space. It can do an engineless glide back to KSC, both with full tanks if launched as a rocket, or with empty tanks if flown to space as an SSTO. Craft file Some more images in Imgur album below:

These are really fantastic! Have you tried electric propulsion? It would be nice to try a propeller aircraft as a first ascent stage from Eve.

I just posted my shuttle replica Duran Duran, including a guide on some design elements, over at the Spacecraft exchange: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93784-Duran-Duran-Stock-space-shuttle

Yeah, I did this in my earlier designs, but I found that the orbiter was easier to control than the bay door. So I ended up always flying the orbiter docking to the bay door, in staid of flying the bay door docking to the orbiter. Therefore I removed the RCS systems on the door to save weight.

Here is a download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iz9io0t2xwk1n4z/Duran%20Duran.craft?dl=0 Note that it has mechjeb on at the moment so I could figure out the ∆v and stuff. Some flight tips: Just after launch throttle back a bit so it is easier to straighten up the craft going up. Begin gravity turn around 8-9000 m. As soon as the solid boosters burn out, jettison them and be prepared for a shift in thrust vector from one side of the centre of mass to the other. Reach the desired appoapsis using the shuttle main engines, as you dont have much monopropellent for orbital manoeuvreing if you use it to also raise the appopsis. Especially for satellite retrieval missions, which use up a lot of monopropellent for rendezvous and docking. When opening the cargo door, I undock it from the closed position, wait for it to drift away a bit and time warp so it stops rotating, pitch up so I face the door with the orbiter and docks with it using the docking node in the nose. In the image above where the orbiter is docked at the asteroid outpost, you can see the open cargo bay door docked to the orbiters nose behind the orange fuel tank. Closing is same thing but in reverse. The tail fin goes between the 2 I-beams ensuring it goes on straight when closing.

Every now and then I see someone post their space shuttles, so I thought I would break my forum lurking by sharing my own, now that it might stop working when the space plane parts are redone, and stock cargo bays are introduced in the next update. I have also included some of the design commentary on how I solved the asymmetric design, for those that want to try building their own design. The shuttle with empty cargo bay have a total vacuum ∆v of 5041 m/s, where 633 m/s is shared by the orbiters orbital manoeuvreing system and reaction control system. The orbiter can reach around 85 km carrying a small satellite and 5 kerbals and still have enough ∆v for orbital manoeuvres and reentry. At main engine cut-off, the shuttles desired appoapsis can be reached, requiring around 2-300 ms ∆v for circulisation. Just like the real thing, if glides like a brick during reentry requiring a rather steep aproage and level out close to the runway. The cargo bay has a small docking port in the front and a medium docking port in the back for satellite attachment, and a medium port angled outward for docking to stations. The bay doors consist of a separate craft that is undocked from the closed position and redocked in the nose cone port exposing the cargo. The cargo bay craft has a probe, batteries and lamps making cargo bay openings and closings possible at night. During the flight to orbit, there are 5 critical points that causes problems when designing the shuttle because of the asymmetric thrust; take-off, just before solid booster separation, just after booster separation, just before external tank separation and in orbit. Solving one might throw off another, so a lot of back and forth testing is required. The in orbit point is the easiest and the first one I solved. After building the orbiter, with the desired cargo space and fuel, the only thing required was to attach the orbital engines to a small cubic strut and angle them slightly downward, through the orbiters centre of mass. When the orbiter attached to the external tank is flying only using the space shuttle main engines, there are two parameters that can be fine-tuned. One is the angle the engines are attached to the orbiter, and another is how the external tank is emptied affecting its centre of mass. I first tried out an angle of the engines that had the thrust vector approximately through the upper part of the external tank. Now I wanted to make sure that during the phase of the flight between solid booster separation and main engine cut-off and tank separation, the tanks centre of mass stayed as close to this point as possible. This was done by creating the external tank out of smaller tanks, and trying out different tanks to attach the fuel line to, varying how the tank is drained. The fuel line attachment, and the main engine angle, can be seen in the image Ascent in the Imgur album below. Before booster separation the fact that the shuttle main engines thrust vector is far of the tanks centre of mass is overshadowed by the fact that the solid boosters are of the shuttles centre of mass in the other direction. This was the hardest part of the problem to solve, as it is not possible to throttle the solid boosters and the problem worsen as fuel is burned. Replaceing the solid rockets with liquid ones was not a good option, as I only wanted to reduce thrust in the booster, not the main engines. The solution came when I realised that I needed 4 solid boosters anyway (2 on each side clipped into eachother) making it possible to do a different thrust limiting factor on them. One pair of sold boosters are thrust limited to 65% and one pair to 50%. This way, one pair burns out before the other, and the torque caused by of-centre thrust is never more than the SAS modules on the external tank can handle. For take-off, the most important factor is that the shuttle has enough thrust to weight ratio to take of, and to be reasonably balanced between main engines and solid boosters. This was reasonably easy to correct by varying the thrust limit on the solid boosters. The only problem I found left unsolved is the fact that just after launch the angle of the main engines pushes the shuttle horizontally, so one has to throttle down the main engines a bit and turn the craft so it flies upwards again. As the shuttle picks up speed, one can throttle up again. Images from a typical shuttle mission can be seen in the Imgur album below. I hope you enjoy the album and text, and that some of you will be inspired to try to create your own space shuttles. This is by far my most fun ship, both doing the design and to fly into space and land again.