A humble suborbital spaceplane mission.

[Hyperspace Industries]

This mission is not very impressive, but I think it is interesting enough to get a tiny mission report: After watching virgin galactic's spaceship 2 fly with passengers, I decided to do a similar mission in ksp, my plane was comparatively tiny and I decided not to have folding wings, but I replicated the landing skid with a small non plane type landing gear at the front, I had one crewmember, (the carrier craft was basically a wing with engines and parachutes attached with a radial decoupler). I took off from the desert runway from making history, and for the first while, my plane kept banking down, so I had to correct for that, once I got bored of slowly climbing with jets, I set the throttle to zero, and decoupled from the wing, expecting it's parachutes to violently pull it backwards, but I forgot that jet engines take time to throttle, so it went forward while I pulled up with the spaceplane and ignited the engine, just as it's parachutes opened, after that I used the plane's engine to get suborbital, and then on reentry, the plane was in a constant nosedive until I was going slow enough to pull up and stay up, unfortunately I was in the absolute worst terrain to land, so on my first landing attempt I deployed all of my drogue chutes and only one part broke, unfortunately that happened to be the cockpit. I reverted to a quicksave after reentry and immediately turned to the left, on that landing attempt I deployed my drogue chutes earlier, and when I crashed into the hill some stuff exploded, I think it was the two rtg's I bolted to the front, but otherwise it was intact, I immediately quicksaved, and then timewarped until it had stopped sliding enough to recover it. And that's a wrap!

I also made a video of it if you are not in the mood for reading: https://youtu.be/tpJ9wx-HOm4

Edited August 2, 2021 by Hyperspace Industries

[Vanamonde]

Congratulations on your lack of fatalities. With some work you can probably get that craft to make orbit. 

[Hyperspace Industries]

@Vanamonde thanks for the suggestion, and the congratulations.  

 

A humble suborbital spaceplane mission 2: why on Duna did you put space in the title?!

I tried to make it an ssto, and didn't even get suborbital! It also reminded me of why I don't like flying ssto's, they are astonishingly boring, with no staging, and a really long time to orbit, and needing a very precise accent profile, And that's when they are properly designed! Mine wasn't . Anyways in the intervening time between these posts, I installed some mods on my main (previously stock, now Stock+) game instance, a couple of part mods (atomic age, kas, 2 landing legs and an engine from reusability expansion and some other minor (or atleast with many parts removed), very stock alike mods) Trajectories (which is preposterously handy) kerbal engineer redux, and eve and scatterer, And even though I didn't get to space, this was ridiculously pretty, making it no waste of time.  I landed in a flat area, and had a minor explosion, but no major damage.  Btw: the plane used only stock parts.

 

It will probably be a while before my next try, but I have a few ideas, like using virgin galactic's design for an orbital one, strapping boosters to the sides, or using nuclear thermal propulsion. 

screenshots, because the video is too boring to upload:

 

carrier and plane flying

 

plane flying high, but not in space

 

Landed

Edited August 16, 2021 by Hyperspace Industries
Screenshots!