SKS-1 Trinity: A space shuttle that can carry an orange tank to orbit and flies easy

[ShadowZone]

I decided to finally to a Mk3 Space Shuttle that can get an orange (36 ton) Rockomax tank into LKO. The result is the SKS-1 Trinity, which is of course very much based on the NASA shuttle. One big difference: I am using liquid fuel boosters instead of SRB because the ones in KSP are not powerful enough. Also: the shifting center of mass makes it necessary to have some degree of throttle control. The parachutes for the boosters are on the exact center of mass after depleting them. If you use stage recovery or flight manager you should be able to recover them.

Why am I using 3 skipper engines? Well if you take the S3 Kerbodyne cluster which is modelled after the NASA's SLS, the real world version consists of 4 RS-25 boosters, which are basically shuttle engines. So if you devide the cluster's thrust by 4, you get a thrust rating of 800 and the closest thing to that is the Skipper with its 650.

For the OMS I am using Monopropellant engines. Due to the CoM issue they can't be fired at more then 50-60% throttle unless you want your shuttle to spin around like crazy.

The gist of it:

On Launch: Pitch up to get thrust vector straight, then ride until it tips over (around 11000 meters), throttle down to prevent catastrophe.

After booster separation, throttle back up so TWR stays above 1.01

Use OMS (final stage) carefully. Don't go much over 50% throttle and use RCS to balance your trajectory.

Action groups:

1 - toggle OMS

3 - open cargo bay

5 - decouple cargo

Landing this thing is fairly easy once you get a good approach to the runway. You can see that in the video below.

Here's the craft file:

http://www./download/wir7gevo8vea0d9/SKS-1_Trinity.craft

The mentioned video:

And some pics:

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[Sampa]

Very cool. You went the same route as,inigama with his space shuttle