VTOL Black Night III 42 Tons to LKO!

[Andrakon]

Do you even lift? The Black Night III certainly does! With a max payload of 42 Tons it can get your fuel or station parts to LKO with loads of fuel to spare!

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The Black Night III has 8 Turbojet Engines with 64 Ram Air Intakes and 6 circular air intakes, 1 LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor for orbit and maneuvers and 8 Rockomax 48-7s's for emergency maneuvers.

I know what your asking. How can anything get to orbit without a serious amount of rocket thrust? SUPER SPEED! It can easily achieve 2300ms and a altitude of 100km on Turbojets alone! Once above 70km use the LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor to circularize the orbit and do orbital maneuvers. You don't even need the 8 Rockomax 48-7s's in most cases. I've only used them once when I was about to hit a station and had to stop ASAP!

The Black Night III also has landing gear, 8 Radial Mount parachutes, and 2 Drogue chutes to make landing easy! Just lower the landing gear, hit the 0 (zero) button around 2,500 meters, turn off the sas and it should land in one piece, usually.

Note: with payloads above 36 Tons you may want to add wings and an extra set of reaction wheels to your payload. This makes flying a lot easier!

Downloads:

Craft file: Download

Subassembly: Download

Action Groups:

1: Toggle Jets 1-4

2: Toggle Jets 5-8

3: Toggle All Air Intakes

4: Toggle all 8 Rockomax 48-7s's (small rockets)

5: Toggle LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor

0: Deploy Chutes

Flight Directions:

Enable SAS immediately

Activate all jets (hit 1 and 2)

Go straight up until 12,000m

Tilt to 45 degrees

At 18,000m to 20,000m try to almost completely level off and pick up speed you are aiming for 1800m/s+

At around 30,000m you will have to throttle down when the engines start to burn out. If you are carrying a heavy payload, burnouts will not tilt you much. (below 0.20 air intake in the resources bar)

By 40,000m you may want to cut jets 5-8 and turn up the throttle on the remaining jets. Air for around 2300m/s soon.

By 50,000m, 2300m/s+ and 0.1 air intake left you should be at the lowest throttle that is not completely off. Toggle off jets 1-4 (press 1 button), turn off air intakes (press 3), turn on the LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor (press 5) and throttle up all the way.

You should have no problem getting to LKO from there and circularizing your orbit.

You may have to practice, with payloads smaller than 36t it is very easy to accidently fly above 30,000m and not have enough speed built up to reach a proper orbit, just let the Black night drop down to near 25,000m, level off and try to get a high speed before going much higher.

(Fine Print: No cheats were used in the construction, not even part clipping. No mods were used to make anything any easier either.)

Edited November 20, 2013 by Andrakon

[Jeb Cubed]

Impressive, I am going to have to try this out.

[pinolallo]

Nice Idea: download.

[Andrakon]

It is fun to fly with smaller payloads.

Added a subassembly download. Just chuck it into your subassembly folder! Have fun!

[Mesklin]

It is very clever and robust design, you inspired me for create my own version of it

[Thourion]

I cant see how you did this without using the part clip toggle. And anyway even if you managed to place the pylon parts without using the clip mode, the rest of the parts attached to them are clipping, at least thats what i see in the pics. Btw i dont have anything against clipping im just clipp..erm saying.

Anyways good stuff.

[Rune]

I cant see how you did this without using the part clip toggle. And anyway even if you managed to place the pylon parts without using the clip mode, the rest of the parts attached to them are clipping, at least thats what i see in the pics. Btw i dont have anything against clipping im just clipp..erm saying.

Anyways good stuff.

What an obsession with turning part clipping on or off people have. Anyhow, just in case you want to know, 90% of the time the clipping bug has to do with either putting the part on a cubic ortogonal strut and/or placing the part somewhere else, then moving it to the clipped place. The order in which you place them is also at play. And all of that to cheat the game into... well, using a "cheat" you can just activate in the debug menu. Same difference.

[Thourion]

What an obsession with turning part clipping on or off people have. Anyhow, just in case you want to know, 90% of the time the clipping bug has to do with either putting the part on a cubic ortogonal strut and/or placing the part somewhere else, then moving it to the clipped place. The order in which you place them is also at play. And all of that to cheat the game into... well, using a "cheat" you can just activate in the debug menu. Same difference.

Obsession? Dont look at me, i already stated i dont have anything against clipping. And as far as cheats go, you cant really cheat in a bloody single player game. Unless by cheating you mean oneself.

I simply wanted to see how he got it, after reading the fine print in his post.

[Andrakon]

Yep, Orthogonal struts are definitely used. There are 8 Mk2 to size 1 Adapters that are definitely clipping over eachother. Also the Rockomax 48-7s's are attached to the bottom of those and the jets are on struts too. The previous version of this I built with out clipping except the air intake stacks but it turned out to be way less capable, probably should have put an atomic rocket motor on it.

VTOL Heavy Lifter V

I usually try to build without much clipping but a good VTOL is pretty hard to make without it. Also it seems to be pretty common especially in VTOL design.

Edited November 20, 2013 by Andrakon

[Andrakon]

It is very clever and robust design, you inspired me for create my own version of it

Sweet! I would love to see it! Please share!

[Mesklin]

Here is imgur album with some photos of my "Cart-horse 44":

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Craft file is here

Edited November 21, 2013 by Mesklin

[Andrakon]

Hey pretty good! It looks quite capable! I noticed the little battery on top of the docking port. I had no idea you could put something there and the dock would still work.

And I see how the 1 center engine could be a big help, if you turn off all the rest at really high altitudes. Neat choice of landing gear, is all gear weightless in flight or just those ones?

Thanks for sharing! I love to see other peoples designes!

[Guest links123]

Putting battery on top of docking port is a good idea. I did it and everything works fine.

[Mesklin]

The liitle batteriy on the top of docking port is replacement normal payload for better observation this craft. This design was constructed for use as subassembly also and at first I constructed payload and then simply add dropship from subassemblyes at the bottom of it.

I use planes gear for 3 reasons:

1. No weight

2. Inline light

3. This gear is very strong and opened at the start of flight. In case of this craft you do not need to use additional details for prevent damages of engines when payload is really heavy.

[Odo]

"Do you even lift?"

Why yes, yes I do!

N-5, capable of 120 tons to Munar insertion.