Stock SpaceM Nastybird 4 Family of Shuttles

moogoob · February 5, 2016

Hello everyone again! Ever since the Nastybird 2, I've been playing with that form factor. It took a while, but I finally got around to trying the Vector as a main engine. It's super-powerful, compact and efficient - and shuttles were what it was made for, after all!

These are a family of 3 -\

The Nastybird 4, an all-purpose shuttle that can transport 4 Kerbals, plus a pilot and co-pilot AND a ~1-ton satellite. It can easily do crew rotations at an orbiting station or rescue missions.

The Nastybird 4 - Nastylab edition is a science-oriented vessel, intended for role-play mostly. I can't really think of many practical reasons for why you might need it, other than perhaps for the extra Kerbal storage.

The Cargobird 3 is, despite the number a full member of the Nastybird 4 family. It sheds the docking port and passenger cabin in favour of an extended cargo bay. This model needs boosters to get off the ground, but can space a whole interplanetary probe mission in one launch.

All four models fly similarly and can easily land at KSC for full recovery of everything but the drop tanks. (and payload, of course. ) They feature parachutes for landing in water or rough terrain and are easy on re-entry so long as you follow my instructions.

Behold:

Instructions:

Ascent: Just do a gravity turn like normal - MJ can handle this fine without much trouble. The Nastybird 4 and Nastylab both have a slight issue with developing a slight roll to one side during ascent - be sure to correct manually or your orbit might be at an odd inclination. The Cargobird is a bit tougher as it's much heavier, in fact during the stratoscpheric part of your ascent it actually relies quite a bit on it's wings' lift. This is normal - as long as your time to ap keeps going up you should be fine.

Remember to stage off your drop tanks before you fully circularize if you want to avoid orbital debris! Also, remember to engage either the main or backup fuel cell located in the service/cargo bay, or you may run out of power and that would be bad. Lastly, I'd seriously suggest limiting the main engine's thrust to 50% or lower once on internal fuel - if only for the fictional Kerbonaut's comfort.

Re-entry: Schedule a burn to bring your Pe down to about 15km and centered somewhere east of KSC. I use MJ's landing prediction and put the blue marker somewhere in the eastern sea. Then, pump ALL your remaining fuel into the front tank to adjust your centre of mass. If there's too much (3/4ths of max, for example) left, you might be too unstable in descent. Then, adopt a 45 degree or higher angle, engage both air brakes and elevon flaps and hold on. Keep this high angle-of-attack until your velocity falls below 1100m/s, then make a decision:

If you're close to or over KSC, keep the AoA until you go subsonic, then glide into a landing, turning around if need be. Use bursts of your engine to keep up air speed if you go too far downrange.

If you're still uprange from the landing strip, you may want to enter hyperglide, To do that, just disengage the brakes and flaps and point your nose forward. Then see how long you can keep up some absurd Mach number without engine power - you can go a pretty large distance if you keep a gentle drop. When you get closer to KSC, drop your nose and descend even faster into thicker air and slow down a bit before landing.

Action Groups:

1:Start fuel cells

2:Toggle docking port

3:Toggle cargo/service bay doors

4:Unlock front-wheel steering AND toggle front gear light

Lights: Toggle cosmetic cockpit and crew cabin lights

Gear: Is self-explanatory

Brakes: Activates A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S. and landing gear brakes.

Abort: does nothing.

Download link: Dropbox (If you don't have Mechjeb installed, grab the files labeled "No Mechjeb")

If anyone uses this I'd love to hear what you think!

Edited June 18, 2016 by moogoob
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moogoob · June 18, 2016

Some new images:

MrChumley · November 25, 2017

I've been using this shuttle for a couple days now. It works quite admirably. Low part counts ensure a smooth experience. I am impressed.

I did a test to check the maximum range. After making orbit, it has enough fuel to dock to something in LKO. After re-fueling, I was able to make a flyby of the mun with a free return trajectory. Luckily there was fuel cells to recharge the batteries before re-entry.

Here are some pics: