Astrojet Lancer, Duna SSTO

[AeroGav]

I finally managed it, a spaceplane that can SSTO to Duna and back.

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Astrojet-Lancer

It started life as a replacement for the Astrojet Citation, which worryingly vulnerable to aerodynamic heating with its airliner wings. Using a larger amount of smaller wings means we can no longer afford to run fuel ducts, so it's manual transfers into a feeder tank scenario.  The game is confused by multiple transfers, necessitating a single core/engine design.

note - i have GPOSpeedFuelPump installed but am not using it for this flight.

note 2 - you have to stop the transfer before the tank fills completely, or it will drain unevenly from the wing tanks and make inbalance.

note 3- it took almost 28 minutes to raise our AP out of the atmosphere.  It was also somewhat reluctant to cross the sound barrier, i don't think you could increase the fuel fraction much more than this.

Finally in orbit.  The calculated dV is wrong because we still have all this fuel in the strake tanks the nuke cant access, it's not being added to the total.

After landing on Duna, we take off to orbit again.  This time our fuel reserves are small enough to all fit inside the fuselage tanks, which means the dV reading is accurate.  It's enough to get us back to Kerbin though, if you're any good with launch windows

Edited May 31, 2016 by AeroGav