SSTMLAB spaceplane

[katateochi]

Last weekend I finally manged to make a craft that's been on my KSP bucket list for a long time, and which I've tried and failed to make many times in the past.  A "Single Stage To Mun Landing And Back" - SSTMLAB.  The design criteria was for a spaceplane that could take a dual crew (ie 2 of each class) to the surface of Mun and land on VTOL engines and then return to KSC without refuelling.  But to complicate things, because the acronym SSTMLAB has the word "LAB" in it, the craft also had to have a science lab (and then somehow a tiny rover was also added to the list of requirements).  

This is the end result:

I'm really pleased with the overall look of the craft and it performs to spec, although it's quite on the edge of dV requirements so requires quite careful/efficient piloting. Aside from only having just enough dV to reach the surface of Mun and return, she handles really nicely.  The rover, SVSR (small, very simple rover), is kinda a joke, fine for just pottering around, but too slow to be worth trying to drive to another biome (unless you landed right on a border).

A long, long time ago (I can still remember....) I made an SSTO which was capable of landing on Mun and returning, but it could only take a single pilot and had no extra features.  Wow, that was a long time ago, look at that jet engine! But since then I've been unsuccessful in making a larger more useful version....until now!

But this craft almost failed in the design phase too.  I'd made the mistake of using one of the new parts from the DLC to make the nose cone; the FL-C1000 Fuel Tank.  I really liked the aesthetic of this design and despite the problems it caused I was determined to find a way to make it work.

The tank caused two major problems for re-entry.  For all other parts of the mission it was fine, but the craft had all the re-entry durability of Stefanyshyn-Piper's toolbag.  The first issue was it produced a huge amount of lift at the front, making the craft very prone to pitching up hard and tumbling out of control (if I was lucky, most times it would just rip apart).  This resulted in the large tail being added (it was much smaller initially), but even with that it was still very hard to keep a good reentry pitch. But even if I managed to control the pitch, the craft then ran into to the second problem; the FL-C1000 couldn't withstand the heat.  This part just isn't intended for reentry! It was possible to survive reentry if I took it very carefully and did several areobraking passes to lower the Ap gradually, but it was just too fragile and only a couple of test craft managed to make it back to the surface.  I even toyed with the idea of making a MM patch to increase the thermal properties of the part, but I wanted to share the craft and that would just add complications.  So I finally gave up and removed the FL-C1000 nose cone.  I knew I could make a nose cone with fairings but I didn't want a perfectly conical shape, I wanted the wide, flat shape that I'd got with this tank.  

By merging a main central cone with two smaller ones either side I was eventually able to get the look I was after.  All the tweaking to try and get the original nose cone to work wasn't in vain as it's added to the craft's stability and now with this fairing based cone it's very stable in reentry and can handle quite aggressive areobraking.

 

Having got this version with the lab working I also made a smaller, slightly lighter variant without any of the science parts or the SVSR and added a second crew cabin.  This crew transport variant has more dV once in orbit so has a better margin for error and makes for a very cost effective way of transporting tourists to Mun or Minmus.  Both craft are now up on KerbalX and there's more info and pics there.

SSTMLAB Science	SSTMLAB Crew Transport
https://kerbalx.com/katateochi/SSTMLAB	https://kerbalx.com/katateochi/SSTMLAB-Transport

 

 

[AVeryNiceSpacePenguin]

Oh, wow! Congratulations on making an SSTO that can reach the Mun. My SSTO's seem like they have a tendency to stay in LKO .