[Showcase] Show me Piggy-Back ships!

[xtoro]

I was looking to land a spaceplane on Duna for a quick visit but never found an elegant way to attach the plane to a transfer ship while keeping a nice center of mass. I wanted something I could reuse to bring the plane back to Kerbin and land.

So I came up with this, and I call it "The Roamer"

It's mostly stock except for the Lightbulb nuclear engine from Atomic Age to prevent clustering a bunch of Nervas, and Quantum Struts to keep the docked plane steady. The way I set it up keeps the CoT behind the CoM nicely when the plane is docked. And the torque of the MK3 cockpit is enough to keep it flying straight even with the plane undocked.

I have more than enough dV to get to Duna and back. My next trial will be to get to get to more than one surface in one trip. The plane itself glides down nicely into the atmosphere with no heating thanks to the airbrakes.

I have another design in the works as well. Anyone else have some piggy-back designs to post up?

EDIT: The spaceplane and the roamer are launched into orbit almost empty using rockets. The plane doesn't have any air breathing engines so SSTO isn't an option. I have an orbital refueling ship around Minmus to fill them up.

EDIT 2:

Craft file download from MediaFire

Required mod : Atomic Age

Required mod : Quantum Struts Continued

Action Groups:

1-Toggle LANTERN engines on plane (Note that the engine has 2 modes available)

2-Toggle Aerospike engines on plane

3-Toggle Lightbulb engine on transfer ship

Don't forget to disable crossfeed on the docking port so that the plane's tanks don't get emptied by the transfer ship. Transfer ship has over 5600 dV and should get you almost anywhere you need to go and back.

Edited May 20, 2015 by xtoro

[Yellowburn10]

Wow, that's a pretty unique design right there! Don't think I would of thought of that before.

[nfpinto]

hey OP , craft file please? liked your idea

[xtoro]

Wow, that's a pretty unique design right there! Don't think I would of thought of that before.

Thanks, works out nicely for me

hey OP , craft file please? liked your idea

Updated the OP with a download link, and thanks!

[skepticon]

I really like the design. You've basically got crew living quarters and huge fuel tank seamlessly blended into the piggyback module. Very well done!

[xtoro]

I really like the design. You've basically got crew living quarters and huge fuel tank seamlessly blended into the piggyback module. Very well done!

Thanks! I like including some kind of living space for two reasons; realism, and having the ability to swap out crew members between different planets.