Anastasia - Heavy cargo aircraft and shuttle carrier

[Zwolff]

First off of the KSC assembly lines in the new year is the heavy cargo aircraft Anastasia, designed primarily to carry hardware to and from the island airbase of the cost. The Anastasia is capable of carrying heavy cargo in its cargo hold, or if it is to large to fit inside, mounted on top of the aircraft. It comes with a rear access ramp for loading and unloading cargo and a forward boarding hatch for the pilot and engineering crew to board the aircraft. Anastasia can be flown remotely through a probe core, but a crew is preferred, especially an engineer to fix wheels that might break when loading or unloading cargo.

I did some experiments using a simple fuel lorry to test cargo loading. It is possible to take of and fly around with the lorry as a separate craft inside the cargo hold with its parking breaks on. But eventually it slides backwards somewhat and shifts the centre of mass, which causes the aircraft to pitch up, stall, and explode from things coming apart in the cargo hold. I also tried to mount a claw in the front end of the cargo hold and attaching the lorry to that, but as soon as the crafts merges, the wheels stop colliding with the deck and it hangs out through the belly.

Does anyone have a good stock solution to this, or do I need KAS or something similar like that to place struts in the field.

In addition to cargo transport to and from the island airfield, Anastasia will also be of great use for further development of the Duran Duran shuttle program. If flown to high altitude, gliding and landing exercises can be performed without the need to waste an external tank and solid rocker boosters and to perform an abort during the ascent just to test flight characteristics of the orbiter during approach and landing.

Get the craft file here. A few additional images can be found in the album below.

 

Edited January 1, 2016 by Zwolff
Added link to craft file

[Speeding Mullet]

14 hours ago, Zwolff said:

Does anyone have a good stock solution to this

Hey there nice cargo plane, I'm also trying to develop one to hold my Buran for transport!  Re: stuff falling out of the seemingly virtual cargo bay once the crafts join forces, the only way I have heard to get around this is a couple of well placed docking ports.  See this thread for more information.

 

As a side note: if you are converting that beast for air drops and experiencing explody things when you try and drop the payload, then I found this little solution which works brilliantly, and doesn't affect the looks of the plane apart from little nodules on the outside of the hull.  I haven't tested to see if it would help with your specific problem, but it may be worth a quick try... Check it out:

EDIT:  I tested and the wheels will not prevent something falling through the cargo bay.  Docking ports it is!

SM

Edited January 2, 2016 by Speeding Mullet