[SSTO] Galactic Swallow

[starleaf1]

I present to you the Galactic Swallow (not related to the real-life commercial space travel/tourism company). My first attempt at building a spaceplane that can do more than just strand crews in orbit. It has 6 Whiplash engines and 3 Vector engines.

It also has a cargo bay into which I put science stuff, the battery, monopropellant tank, and the antenna. See? It can do science and strand Kerbals in space.

Craft stats:

• # of parts: 81
• mass: 85.41t
• height: 7.4m
• width: 18.4m
• length: 20.8m

Performance notes: This thing can barely reach LKO. The placement of RCS thrusters needs a lot of work. Take off can be problematic, but if you don't have any fancy aerodynamics mod installed, just hold S on full throttle and you should be just fine.

Download on KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/download/craft/19846

 

Feedbacks are always welcome.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Nice looking SSTO!

[Zamolxes77]

Nice looking SSTO, I like the way is streamlined. You might want to consider altering the number of engines. From my experience, Whiplashes and vectors don't mix very well: Whiplash has great atmo ISP and Vectors have great thrust in atmo, but poor one in vacuum. Couple that with the weight of Vectors, I'm not surprised you can barely reach LKO.

To "give some legs" to this design, I would replace the Whiplashes with Rapiers, drop their number to 4 and replace the 3 Vectors with 2 Nerv's. That way you have just 1 set of engines for your orbital insertion and a second set for vacuum movement. Is also easier to manage, since you only have to take on board a small oxidizer amount, rest is liquid fuel.