Icarus: Re-usable space plane

[_Jay_]

Hi All,

First post here, thought it was about time I put up one of my most successful vehicles. It\'s a re-usable space plane that uses a chunk of parts from the Kosmos pack. You should only need Angara rocket pack - but the whole lot is awesome

The Icarus was named after the Greek Myth following early test flights of the prototype, where it had a habit of landing in the water following losing the ability to fly and crash landed in water causing Kerbals to drown. It wasn\'t until Kerbin\'s elite team (Jeb, Bob and Bill) flew it that scientists began to fully understand it. Jeb had noticed that the reason it didn\'t fly too well at times is because it was very heavy with space fuel, he pointed out to the scientists that for testing the atmospheric flight part of a re-usable plane that it is often a good plan to test with the amount of fuel you\'ll have by that point!

Following this it was quickly realised that this machine could take off horizontally with a rocket burn and fly vertically straight into an orbit. By the time it came back in for landing all the heavy rocket fuel was burnt and it could be landed by a mere mortal Kerbal.

On the runway initially use the jets, light the rockets (second stage) towards the end of the runway - pull up as you go off the end and you\'ll take off cleanly. I could have changed the plane for a bit more front lift but it didn\'t look as nice

From here you can burn vertically or any other angle you could chose to get into an orbit you want (it\'ll get into a orbit around the Mun no problems, not tried Minmus yet) - you\'ll ideally need to keep the rockets lit most of the time, it handles like a brick without the rockets lit as the jet engines don\'t have enough thrust to keep a full tank of fuel\'s weight in the air well.

On your return trip to Kerbin you\'ll be low or empty on Rocket fuel leaving just the jet tanks in the middle hopefully (note that both engines can use both tanks, the big side tanks are used first) and will find it a much more manageable beast. It can even land and take off without falling off the end of the runway with rocket engines lit!

Did a quick flight this morning, straight into an orbit around Kerbin, dropped back into atmo above the Space Centre. Judged it near perfectly and only had to fly for about a minute on jet engines to come in and land on the runway.

I\'ll point out that I fly this on a gamepad, so have the benefit of analog control. There is no ASAS as it\'s really quite stable once you are moving. For burning out of atmo leaving it on precision control mode and using the keyboard should be more than enough. Imagine landing will be a pain though.

Hope you enjoy!

Any feedback would be great.

Jay

[PianoBasher]

Just tried it out, I think it needs a bit of tweaking as it seems a bit easy to lose control completely. Maybe that\'s just fail on my part, but SAS would be useful!

I did stick a SAS on, but it goes absolutely crazy, suggesting that overall stability needs some tweaking.

Looks superb though, nice job.

[Seanoog]

Welcome to the forums Jay.

PS: its a Overclockers, members reunion here.

Havent tested your craft yet, but will do shortly.

It however does look cool, an your Icarus Thread is wonderfully created an presented, Bravo.

[_Jay_]

I guess maybe flying with a pad makes more difference than I thought. Don\'t have much issue flying it myself :/ Only issue is lift at low speed (ie full fuel and no rocket) is a bit weak.

How are you losing control completely? Are you finding it just doesn\'t go in the direction you want it to or similar?