Starduster - a 2 man SSTO

[Scarecrow88]

Need to get an engineer to your space station quick? Someone on your space station been taken ill and needs evaccing? Starduster could be the craft to meet your requirements.

Starduster was designed as an SSTO to ferry a small number of crew (max 2) to stations in LKO (up to 350km), whilst looking like something from a Kollywood sci-fi blockbuster.

Action keys:

1 Toggle air breathing/closed cycle mode

2 Toggle fuel saving mode in atmospheric flight

3 Extend airbrakes

4 Toggle crew ladder

5 Toggle docking port doors

Flight profile

Enable SAS, throttle to max and stage to fire up the engines.

Take off can be achieved at just over 100 m/s.

Nose up to 30 degrees to 10,000m then pitch down to 10-15 degrees to build speed.

You should be able to achieve 1300-1400 m/s by 21,000m or so before the acceleration starts to drop off. Press 1 to switch to closed cycle mode

Cut throttle when apo reaches 90k or so, coast to apo and then circularise.

Set up your rendezvous intercepts.

For re-entry, perform your retrograde burn, and before you hit the atmosphere press action group keys 1, 2 and 3

This will respectively put your engines back in air breathing mode, switch out the rapiers to save fuel if you need to burn back to KSC and extend the airbrakes to help slow down.

Due to the relatively high wing loading, Starduster doesn't fly too well at low speeds, so for landing I would recommend keeping the speed above 100 m/s and cut the throttle just as you cross over the runway. If you are not landing on the runaway, I would cut the throttle just before touchdown.

Starduster craft file

[Majorjim!]

Hey man.

There is an issue with your pics. The link is not correct, that's why you see text. Check the picture link carefully.

[Scarecrow88]

On my initial submission I missed the colon after the http, but they should be working now.

[Majorjim!]

On my initial submission I missed the colon after the http, but they should be working now.

Yup, working now. What a cool looking SSTO! Did you change the image sharpness? I like it.

Good work man.

[Scarecrow88]

I have a small routine I run in Photoshop for KSP images that reduce the size for web use as well as tweaking a few other elements of the image, including sharpness.