Science Shuttle (Hummlebee Inspired) (hard mode)

[Trios]

Kuzzter's amazing Hummlebee inspired me to create a similar shuttle. I know I could have just picked his up, but I wanted to make one of my own.

This is not a 'Space Shuttle' and I made no attempt to make it behave like one. For that, please see my space shuttle.

An earlier version of this shuttle made it to Duna, Ike, and back again bringing home over 15k science (and about 2 mil in contract funds). It would have been loads more science, but somehow I forgot my barometer and temperature probe, so at least 20 science payloads = gone . This version has that problem fixed.

The cost is a not-insignificant 295,434. However, you'll get at least 100k of that back when you land at KSC, so just about any 'explore Duna' or similar mission should cover your costs and then some.

Craft file here!

Action group 1 is to enable or disable the Hummlebee style 'VTOL' vernier engines.

Action group 2 grabs all easily-reusable science.

Action group 3 grabs science from the goo and materials bay.

Action group 0 extends/retracts solar panels.

Getting the behemoth to orbit (I ain't gonna lie, this is hard):

Z, T, space. Fly straight up for about 3000m, then begin to slowly pitch over. Around 12-14k meters (about 15 seconds left in outer booster stage), you will need to take what fuel has left the top of the center tank and refill it from the bottom of the center tank; this balancing is important or you'll tip out of control just before first stage cutoff.

At 15k meters you should be at a 45 degree angle; at 20k, you'll be nearly ready to discard the outer boosters. I suggest shutting off all engines for a moment to do this; the seperatrons don't seem to do a great job here for some reason.

Now, turn on RCS and throttle back up. I have yet to not lose control for a bit here; if you do, just turn off the engines and get back on course with RCS.

You'll find that at first, the off-center thrust of the shuttle is causing you to veer a bit off course; then, the thrust of the mainsail will shove you the other way. Once you're almost about to lose control from this (watch your pitch meter), hit space to stage on the other shuttle engines and it'll even out for a while.

Again as you near booster cutoff you'll have to take manual control of the mainsail thrust limiter to keep from veering, but it'll only be a few seconds of manually throttling it back before you cut it free. Throttle down to about 70 percent for a couple seconds, then about 40 percent and then it'll flame out and you cut it away with spacebar.

You should be at about 100k at this point and ready to burn prograde to circularize.

I can prove it's possible:

Drills deployed, maybe this empty space has ore!

As you can see, I have enough delta-v to make it directly to Duna or Eve without needing to refuel on the way. You could head out to Minmus and fuel up there if you wanted to bring some extra fuel with you to brake (I did a very, very careful aerocapture at Duna).

No amount of fiddling with the launch window planner gets you to Jool with this craft, unfortunately. If you really want to bring it there, you'll need more fuel, or nukes, or some sort of booster.