Heavy Crew Transfer Vehicle

[CalculusWarrior]

I've always been a fan of Dream Chaser-styled crew transfer vehicles, so I decided to build one that had decent capacity for kerbals. Behold, the (relatively) Heavy Crew Transfer Vehicle, or HCTV:

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This ship's primary mission is to travel to Kerbin orbit (I have not tested the upper limits of its capabilities, but it theoretically could perform a Munar flyby), transfer crew to/from an orbiting platform, and return to land horizontally on the runway.

It flies well when reentering, and a competent pilot can put it down on the KSC runway (I managed to undershoot it in the example album).

While you could use it for space station crew rotation, it also has a use when bringing crew home from interplanetary starships. If you're like me, you find dumping an entire ship, nukes and all, just to bring a couple of kerbals back home rather wasteful. As such, you now can just aerobrake your mothership into Kerbin orbit, bring your crew (and science!) home, then refuel it and launch again for another planet.

It is, in short, what the Space Shuttle was originally going to be, a reusable crew transporter to low orbit.

Feedback is always welcomed, and happy flying!

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Edited March 18, 2014 by CalculusWarrior

[Ravenchant]

Very nice! Stubby as it is, it reminds me of the Kliper rather than Dream chaser

[CalculusWarrior]

Yeah, it sort of evolved from a Dream Chaser styled craft into its current form. I actually posted a more true to life Dream Chaser somewhere on the forums. It's much less polished than this though.

[DunaRocketeer]

That's a nice design, I've been contemplating the idea of a Dreamchaser/Kliper/Hermes/ concept since my orbital taxi's are just a standard capsule design. This sort of thing really shakes up a launch vehicle inventory

[Jeb Cubed]

Very nice, now I am simi tempted to remake my space station.