[1.11] Enterprise Single Stage To Anywhere Spaceplane

[Chris_2]

This is a stock spaceplane that can go anywhere (well I didn't dare to land it on Tylo and Eve...). I tried to use is as little part clipping as possible (only wings and structural parts).

Download

 

Mission to bring an asteroid in LKO

Spoiler

Grand tour of the Kerbol system:

Spoiler

 

From Kerbin launch try to get to 1400m/s on the airbreathing engines on a steady 10° climb.

There is a nuclear engine (Nerva) in the cargobay. Save some oxidizer for your Mun/Minmus landing (100 is enough for Minmus, try to save 300+ for the Mun which will make your orbital insertion more difficult if you want to go to the Mun).

You should end up with loads of Liquid fuel and enough Delta-V to get beyond the orbit of Duna if you'd wanted to (you could fly straight to an Asteroid).

There is a multi functional rover in the cargobay, that can refuel the craft. It can be docked to the front of the craft, there is a claw to harvest or push Asteroids around. There is a high-gain antenna in the cargobay of the plane to remotecontrol the rover.

The rover ('hopper') can mine, and can fly with the monopropellant engines making long expeditions possible. It has enough Delta-V to get to orbit and back on Minmus!

Once refueled from the Mun or Minmus you can really go anywhere. I did fly to Duna:

Duna takoff needs a lot of fuel, so I went refueling again on Ike

Then a long trip to Jool, using a gravity assist of Tylo to get into orbit.

To Vall

Aerobreaking into orbit of Laythe

Touchdown on Laythe!

 

 

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Older versions

First version of the craft:

Spoiler

Action key 9 activates the spoilers, and this is the only thing I use during atmospheric flight. Activate it near the end of the runway and then use the 'Authority limiter' to control the pitch/speed and let the plane fly itself on SAS Try to get to 1400m/s on airbreathing at 23km before switching to rocket power (action key 1).

Shutdown the rapiers and save 100 oxidizer (you'll need that for landing). Then, open up the cargobay door (action key 2) and fire up the Nerva (action key 3) and fly to Minmus!

In the meantime, you can so some orbital operations with the rover just for fun.

Stow the rover back in the cargobay and continue to minmus. There is an ore scanner in the cargobay, use it to find a nice landing location. Once there, open up the 'bomb bays' (action key 0) and fire up the VTOL landing engines (action key 5).

Unload the rover. There is a relay antenna in the cargobay so it can be remote controlled. By the way, when driving, disable the torque on the reactionwheels of the rover...

By lowering the front landing gear, the rover can be docked (and be used as a tractor to move the plane too!), and you can start mining ore and timewarp to full fueltanks.

Or, send jeb and bill on expedition with the rover and find a better ore-site. The rover has enough delta-V to get to minmus orbit and land again!

Fly the plane to join the new site of the rover.

Once fueled up (after 100 days of mining), you can really go anywhere with that much fuel.

Just find a nice asteroid

And fuel up some more for our journey to Laythe

 

Improved version of the craft (KSP 1.2, 22/10/2016):

Spoiler

Updated / optimized / improved version (22/10/2016;  KSP 1.2):

Updates includes bigger landing gears (no more drifting around the runway), before the front gear there is an airbrake that can be used to position the nose-docking port to the correct height to dock to the rover more easily, a slightly improved mining rover (more solar panels etc) and about 30% more deltaV once in orbit (!) caused by: better wing design, better aerodynamics (gets through the sound-barrier at a steady 10% climb and up to 1400m/s on airbreathing) and ‘OMS’ engines to burn off unused monoprop. Further improvements includes canards and air-brakes, which gives the plane much more maneuverability and makes it much easier to return to the runway. Also, the top cargo-bay is now usable without clipping, with added a radial docking port and solar panels in that cargobay.

Action keys have changed: (basically the sequence is now how I use them to orbit)
1 Switch mode of 4 of 6 Rapiers
2 Switch mode of 2 of 6 Rapiers
3 Toggle Rapiers on/off
4 Toggle OMS on/off
5 Toggle (rear) Cargobay
6 Toggle Nerva engine
7 Toggle ‘bomb bays’
8 Toggle VTOL engines
9 Undock rover
10 Toggle spoilers

 

New useable cargobay:

 

OMS engines in action just after switching from airbreathing to rocket:

 

 

2/11/2016 version of the crafts; this is the one that did the 'grand-tour' to Laythe.

Spoiler

The main improvements in this version of the craft are a new aerodynamic nosecone (radome) with the ore-scanner inside (it's a bit clippy ), and more fuel (liftof weight has increased from 80 to 85tonne). More Delta-V and it allows for single-stage to mun also.

There is now a small docking port below the fuselage. The rover can dock to this, and still be used as a tractor and the claw can be used to mine and push Asteroids. Going straight from Kerbin to the Mun has little margin of error. I'd recommend going to Minmus to refuel.

Ouch, I'd run out of oxidizer shortly before landing. The Nerva does not have a positive thrust to weight on the Mun!

Landing on Duna can almost entirely done by aerobraking.

The last 200m/s I did a big breaking with the main-engines (Rapiers) and then I'd use the VTOL engines to keep airborne and the drogueshute to slow down further.

Takeoff from Duna was also harder than I'd expected. I had to use all of the oxidizer to get my Apoapsis high enough so the Nerva could do the orbital insertion...

So the solution is to refuel on Ike after leaving Duna.

Landing on Ike is easy with liquid fuel only.

 

Edited January 3, 2021 by Chris_2

[Somtaaw]

Nifty, a nice blend of the mk2 goodies like small and agile with vtol, but the advantages of mk3 too. I like

[Chris_2]

31 minutes ago, Somtaaw said:

Nifty, a nice blend of the mk2 goodies like small and agile with vtol, but the advantages of mk3 too. I like

Thanks. It's not very agile though. It flies more like a big elephant and that's why it's best to let SAS do all the work and touch the controls as little as possible. I did get it once back to the runway though (with a lot of quicksaving...). But I'm not a very good pilot...

[Majorjim!]

You used auto-strutting on the wing pods right? How strong are they?

[Chris_2]

18 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

You used auto-strutting on the wing pods right? How strong are they?

No autostrutting.. Actually,  I've heard of it but I don't know what that is so I don't think i've used it

There are some struts in the wings to connect them together. They are strong. Little flex and little problems with the landing gears. I might add some bigger gears...

I've been experimenting with canards and air-brakes, and that gives it -much- better atmospheric flying characteristics. Makes reentry and returning to the runway a whole lot easier. And it can actually fly slow enough to survive a water landing intact. And take off again from the water. Might be useful for Laythe...

It all adds weight though, but right now I've got a small performance margin until Minmus.

 

Here is a crew variant too!  : https://kerbalx.com/Chris_2/Enterprise-crew

 

 

Edited September 25, 2016 by Chris_2

[Somtaaw]

16 hours ago, Chris_2 said:

Thanks. It's not very agile though. It flies more like a big elephant and that's why it's best to let SAS do all the work and touch the controls as little as possible. I did get it once back to the runway though (with a lot of quicksaving...). But I'm not a very good pilot...

It's agile because it's not a long mk3 cargobay, "capable of flying a big red or more into orbit" type of plane. That alone makes you more agile than the vast majority of mk3's, unless they're specifically designed as some form of mk3 "space fighter" 

 

 

And you altered for a passenger just like I was looking for Awesome planes are awesome, and inspiration is always great

Edited September 26, 2016 by Somtaaw

[SnoopSLR]

These planes are awesome and great inspiration. trying to build something similar that can be used for a variety of things and with that docking port up front makes posibilities endalss. Look forward to seeing your next creation

 

That rover looks pretty cool too

Edited September 28, 2016 by SnoopSLR

[Chris_2]

I've been working a bit more on optimizing this craft. Updated the startpost of this topic with the updates!

[FahmiRBLX]

Elegant aircraft, but any slips happened? I think rudders needed for improvement on stability.

[Chris_2]

7 hours ago, FahmiRBLX said:

Elegant aircraft, but any slips happened? I think rudders needed for improvement on stability.

There are (small) vertical stabilizers / rudders on the engine nacelles

Edited October 23, 2016 by Chris_2

[Chris_2]

Bump! New version, hopefully the final one (errr, until KSP 1.3?). New nosecone, more fuel, and I finally did the 'grand-tour' of the Kerbal system! Kerbin -> Mun -> Duna -> Ike -> Vall -> Laythe (->Home?)

 

Updated the topic startpost.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Chris_2

[ZakalweNr1]

Hi Chris, awesome work! But I've an issue. To take rover control, I first decouple top rover clamp 'o tron port, switch to tracking station and double click on rover. Camera change on external view of Enterprise and immediately the rover explode inside the ship. Do you maybe know why this happen? Thanks

[Chris_2]

16 minutes ago, ZakalweNr1 said:

Hi Chris, awesome work! But I've an issue. To take rover control, I first decouple top rover clamp 'o tron port, switch to tracking station and double click on rover. Camera change on external view of Enterprise and immediately the rover explode inside the ship. Do you maybe know why this happen? Thanks

Hi Zak. For stability, the rover is docked to both the front and top docking ports when in the cargobay. If you first open the cargobay, then pressing action key 9 decouples both docking ports at the same time. Then, pressing keys [ or ] will cycle through the vessels in range.

I've never tried going to the rover through the tracking station while it is still inside the cargobay. Maybe, that way, It'll get eaten by the kraken.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Chris_2

[ZakalweNr1]

Hi Chris, yes, I found the second docking port, thanks. I've solved the issue. The problem was that the rover had brakes on. And switching to it from tracking station trigger the explosion. I've disabled the brakes before switching and now it's all working. Oh, awesome rover too!

[Lojik]

Awesome work, love the design and the rover bay is cool

What is the overall part count, weight and science required to get this beast running in career mode?

[Chris_2]

16 hours ago, Lojik said:

Awesome work, love the design and the rover bay is cool

What is the overall part count, weight and science required to get this beast running in career mode?

Weight: 85.61t

Part count: 244   (of which are 65 small cubic struts (the rover and for all the construction in the cargobay...) )

Science required? Probably all? You need the Nerva nuclear engine... If you empty the cargo-bay and trade some liquid fuel for LF+OX (replace the four jet-fuel tanks 'on top' by rocket fuel tanks) you would have a nice medium cargo SSTO for if you have only the Rapiers and all the mk3 stuff unlocked.

[Chris_2]

Update. Did some small tweaks to the craft (added more oxidizer to have some more 'high-thrust' rocket power available) and rover, did an actual mission to bring an asteroid into LKO, and made the nice 'blue-print' image . Now its possible to remove the stuff in the cargobay (including the Nerva), and it will be a nice general-purpose SSTO cargoplane, for example to bring space-station parts into LKO:

[Chris_2]

Bump! Still love this craft and I'm regularly using it to fly missions all over the Kerbol system Still haven't really found anything that can be improved or updated! So the above is still the latest version that just works.

[Chris_2]

Bump! Updated for KSP 1.7

[Chris_2]

Updated for 1.11. For some reason the rover was clipping in the cargo bay so now the cargo-bay is reconfigured to have a bit more room to get it in and out. Small changes like some cargo pods, new lights, and using the new style ‘Spark’ engines as the VTOL engines. The tailfins are now by default in 'deployed' state to give a bit more pitch and stability on the runway. Use actionkey 0 to toggle to off when later in flight (or just use the deploy angle for pitch control)

Download

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Pitch control using the tail-fins angle

Smooth landing with VTOL engines

 

More spacious cargobay for the rover

 

If the drills don't make ground contact (on low gravity body like Minmus), just retract the front wheel to push the rover into the ground

Edited January 3, 2021 by Chris_2

[redivh]

Are there any instructions on how to get it to orbit? I can't seem to figure it out.

[Chris_2]

5 hours ago, redivh said:

Are there any instructions on how to get it to orbit? I can't seem to figure it out.

I think it should be relatively straight-forward for a SSTO spaceplane. Takeoff, point nose at 10 to 15° ascent and keep it that way until you are above 1400m/s on airbreathing Rapiers at 22km altitude. Then when the Rapiers lose thrust you switch them to rocket mode using actiongroups 1 and 2. Coast on rocket mode (just keep pointing at 15°) until the Apoapsis is at 70+km with some oxidiser left.  Now you can open the cargobay (actionkey 5) and fire up the Nerva engine (action key 6) to circularise orbit. You should begin this burn at least a minute or 2 before actually reaching Apoapsis because the Nerva is low on thrust.

Some particular optimisations about this craft: There is a lot of excess monopropellant so its ok to use it to get rid of some weight. You can use it using action key 4 to fire up the 'OMS' engines for extra thrust where you need it. Ususally I use it a bit to break the sound-barrier a bit faster around 350m/s, and when I'm circularising with the Nervas and I feel i'd need more thrust. You can control the pitch using the deploy mode and deploy angle of the tailfins. Standard these are deployed at 10° to make the plane more stable and help pitch up a bit, but you can toggle it using actiongroup 0, and you can use that later in the ascent once the fuel-balance has shifted rearwards to reduce drag a bit.

Doing this a bit efficiently, you can reach orbit with 2100 liquid fuel and 300 oxidiser left to get to Minmus (Mun is a real challenge).

Good luck and thanks for trying out my craft!

Edited January 5, 2021 by Chris_2

[redivh]

I can't get this plane to go in a straight line on the runway and It always crashes and blows up before I'm able to take off. Should I be doing something different?

[Chris_2]

9 hours ago, redivh said:

I can't get this plane to go in a straight line on the runway and It always crashes and blows up before I'm able to take off. Should I be doing something different?

Press and hold the S key. Make slight steering corrections with A and D. Turn SAS on

I'll make a video of a flight to orbit

Edited January 9, 2021 by Chris_2

[Chris_2]

9 hours ago, redivh said:

I can't get this plane to go in a straight line on the runway and It always crashes and blows up before I'm able to take off. Should I be doing something different?

Here's a video of the complete ascent to orbit