LARGEST REUSABLE SSTO! The Kerbus Space 380. 1100 ton spaceplane.

[Moar Boosters]

Today I have entered a new level of Kerbalness.

After several unsuccessful prototypes, and many unfortunate and often spectacular deaths.... I have created what Werner Von Kerman previously thought was impossible. A 1000+ ton reusable spaceplane, successfully carrying 16 kerbals into orbit, and then landing in a field on the wrong side of the mountains near KSC. (I failed my astronavigation exams 13 times).

100% stock apart from a mechjeb module, no cheat menu. 1202 parts (-17 launch clamps), 1107 tons, 4815 atmospheric Delta V.. It doesn't have jets, it's powered by 4 mainsails and 36 aerospikes.

Crew capacity is 18. I thought I loaded it fully, so either I missed a couple of spots when loading, or there was some sort of sinister altercation during the flight, because only 16 guys came out after I landed it.

Vertical takeoff, and then horizontal landing. I did manage to launch an earlier prototype from the runway, but it exploded about 30 seconds into the flight, so I decided vertical was safer.

In the VAB. It was built in the SPH and then transferred across for the launch.

Launch

Flying Vertically

Orbit Achieved! With a tiny smidge of fuel left for the deorbit burn.

Descending for re-entry. The pink target is where KSC is, but I completely miss-timed the re-entry burn.

Warming up.

Holy-Mary-Mother-Of-God.

Yeah..... KSC is the other side of those mountains. The Kerbals prepare for a rough landing in what is now a 242 ton glider.

Final approach. Actually glides quite nicely, at around 45-50 m/s.

Touchdown!

Here are the crew. They look confused that they're actually still alive.

I will be honest...... it wasn't a 100% successful mission. A few wing parts did drop off when we landed, but that was down to pilot incompetence rather than the design of the plane. The real life shuttle was known to lose tiles from the bottom, and they never landed that in a field. With a bit of spacetape it'll be fine for another launch.

https://mega.co.nz/#!8wQ0GAJL!Ul3d7BN29oKOK9jQ1PBMbktQjXwnT8ylsSk6j8MAFPM

Craft file is here.

I accept no responsibility if it crashes your computer or falls apart on the launchpad (it's done both for me!). 1000+ part ships are rarely totally reliable. It takes off like a rocket with a regular gravity turn.

Make sure the time/deltav slider in the options is all the way to the right.

Action groups -

1. disables the vectoring on the mainsails. Turn off for launch, turn on again if you need more turning power..... but they have been known to rip the craft apart, so have them off for general flight.

2. Disables the mainsails. When you're well into the gravity turn and TWR doesn't matter, you can gain a little more DV by disabling these engines and just running on the aerospikes.

Edited December 21, 2013 by Moar Boosters

[Retread]

Good God, man! I salute you and your dedication to, um, size... Plus the sheer leap of faith it took to even imagine such a thing.

[Steamtex]

Sweet jesus.

[GROOV3ST3R]

I have a feeling we will see more of these now that KSP works better ^^

[Francesco]

Jesus H. Christ

[RSwordsman]

In case you want to put the Spruce Goose into space XD. Great plane though! Looks like an awesome design.

[Moar Boosters]

I have a feeling we will see more of these now that KSP works better ^^

I just tested it with the new patch, and it does indeed perform quite a bit better. Everything is relative though. It's gone from about 5, to about 10fps. As much as I enjoy building giant spaceships, they can be pretty tedious to fly.

The good news is it seems much faster when in orbit, so that's going to make giant space-stations a lot easier.

[KissSh0t]

You are a crazy person.

[Moar Boosters]

You are a crazy person.

I like to think of myself as a pioneer.

I have added the craft file at the bottom of the OP if there are any crazy fools insane enough to try and fly this thing.

[FosterBDAV66]

To put this into a little perspective, the Forrestal class of Aircraft Carriers (the very first of the "super carriers", which means they have an angled deck) displaced 80k tons fully loaded for sea. 1/80th of the smallest of the "super carriers" that's just nuts.

Hey, wait a moment! You work for DARPA under NASA don't you!?! LOL

[Sgt. Cookie]

By the 6 gods of Jool, that thing is massive! How did you even design that thing? Can it go any larger?

[The Destroyer]

Wow.

...the only thing that would make it better is a 100 to cargo bay

[inigma]

yup, this is the Spruce Goose of KSP. Great job!

[xtremespino]

Wow, that is pretty amazing, your computer must be a beast to run that at 5 fps.

Anyway, well done

[panfish5]

Holy crap that is crazy! Looks like whackjob has a competitor .

[Moar Boosters]

By the 6 gods of Jool, that thing is massive! How did you even design that thing? Can it go any larger?

The original idea was to make something like a full sized Venture Star. That was supposed to be around 1000 tons, powered by loads of aerospikes.

I started off by sticking a bunch of fuel tanks, wheels and engines together, and then trying to get the whole mess to drive down the runway with rocket power, and then brake before I got to the end. Once it was able to do that without it falling apart, I knew the structure was strong enough to start adding wings and stuff too. To begin with it was going to have 6500 DV so it could do interplanetary flybys, but it lost quite a bit during the building.

I think I could scale it up somewhat. There's a sort of optical illusion in a lot of these photos that make it look like it's got a sort of ridge going along it's spine, but really it's completely flat, just 1 orange tank thick with girders and wing pieces on the bottom and the top. I guess the next level would be to try and create one that's two orange tanks thick.

I think the next one might be smaller, maybe 500-750 tons , but use the new rapier engines to see if it can get further than just LKO.

[TMS]

Download contains "locked or invalid parts" in sandbox.

[Moar Boosters]

Download contains "locked or invalid parts" in sandbox.

It's got a mechjeb module on it.

When I get home later I'll take it off and re-upload.

[Moar Boosters]

Right. I re-uploaded it without the mechjeb module, so it should work now.

[The Jedi Master]

I didn't know Whackjob had two accounts.

[TMS]

Quite spectacular in orbit, even if it does put up the occasional fight along the way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SxSC9UUfO0

[Tw1]

That is an impresive craft. You've outdone yourself again.

Though it's a pity there's so little delta V left once in orbit.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Tw1

[TimePeriod]

Wait so it launches from the VAB? Ain't SSTO's supposed to launch from the runway? O.o

[The Destroyer]

Wait so it launches from the VAB? Ain't SSTO's supposed to launch from the runway? O.o

Usually SSTOS are spaceplanes. This is a rocket with wings.

SSTO means Single Stage To Orbit.

[Moar Boosters]

Wait so it launches from the VAB? Ain't SSTO's supposed to launch from the runway? O.o

Well most of the spaceplanes we build in this game are very futuristic designs. This is much closer to real life spacecraft like the Shuttle or Buran, launching vertically and coming back as a glider. The "SSTO" part just indicates that nothing drops off, and it can all return back to solid ground for re-use.

I've been working on a larger version..... around 1800 tons, but with all-rocket SSTOs adding more DV is pretty difficult. When you add more fuel you have to add more engines to keep the TWR above 1, and you quickly reach a point where you add 100's of tons for barely any extra DV.

The next version should be able to do a flyby of the moon and minmus, but that's probably about it. Maybe Eve and Duna if it's possible to get a free return encounter. To maximise DV I think I've probably gotta go smaller and add atomic engines, but that'll come after the jumbo version I'm working on now.

The new patch should actually help a lot...... because with the tweakables I can drain the fuel tanks and see where the center of mass and lift are when it's coming back to land.