Maiden voyage of the K.S.S. Starflyer

[mr. engino]

 Spaceplanes are really difficult to properly design, more so if you try to include a cargo bay and have the center of lift balanced enough to compensate for changes in overall mass and center of balance. After 2-3 whole days of testing, frustration, and sweat, I finally created a spaceplane capable of carrying a payload.

 I named the craft the K.S.S. Starflyer, and she is quite capable! Using a mk2 size fuselage, she has a crew capacity of 6, ample fuel with a proprietary fuel generation system (read as personal mod in development and yet to be released), and a somewhat complex propulsion system composed of the following:  two atmospheric nuclear jet engines, two Nerv rockets as main propulsion, and five auxiliary rockets (four thuds and a terrier).

 For the Starflyers' maiden voyage, I figured a ground mission to Duna would suffice, with a small space station as a payload. Takeoff was a little rough, kept having trouble with staying on the runway, I nearly collided with the lights at the end! Getting into orbit was not as easy as I hoped, but the auxiliary engines really helped. When I got into a low orbit around Duna, that's when I detached the miniature space station. Thanks to mods, making a small space station with a mpl is doable, the only hindsight to the station was that I forgot to add more batteries to keep it active...  (Ah well, could always send another mission to fix that!) While I was entering the atmosphere of Duna, I had noticed a slight flaw with my craft design: the parachutes weren't evenly placed, the craft was pointing upwards instead of level(ish)! In my attempt to try to level the craft so it could land on the landing gears, I failed to notice how close I was to the surface! The Starflyer landed, but not perfectly; I lost one of the main engines and two auxiliary engines.

 Now at this point I thought the mission was a failure and that I'd need rescuing by Matt Lowne's Blunderbirds, but nope! Turns out the Starflyer is quite resilient; it was only crippled, not disabled! Since the atmospheric engines were both intact, it was not that difficult getting into orbit, sort of. I used up the rest of the oxidizer circularizing my orbit, so the remaining auxiliary engines were useless. Because I only had one nuclear engine, the thrust was imbalanced, forcing me to lower the thrust of said engine. Getting back to Kerbin was very lengthy, but at least the mission was successful!

Edited June 5, 2018 by mr. engino