Realistic 'Spruce Goose' Class Space Shuttle

[samhuk]

Hello again fellow KSProgrammers!

I present the Vulture Space Shuttle, a 'Spruce Goose' class Shuttle.

Too long, don't want to read: Basically a really big shuttle with deploying RCS units

I haven't posted a craft in a while and I recently spotted a tumbleweed in my recent posts page so I decided to do something about it.

I haven't seen anything like this done before so I thought I would do it, and not contribute to forum-clogging with a "moon-landing replica mission look here!!!" post (*sigh*).

This spacecraft is a Buran-Styled Shuttle, with the shuttle and main fuel tank having rocket engines. This removes the need for ridiculous gimbals (which is one of the main reasons why NASA's Space Shuttle met it's day-one-predicted demise), and so reduces fuel waste, and so reduces cost. The unique thing about this shuttle is it has a mini cargo-bay up front which stores RCS units, which attach to the payload in the main cargo-bay, and guide it to docking to a space-station/other vehicle.

Here is the vehicle with bays open on the pad ready for launch. This image shows most of the vehicle's details.

And now here is a full mission gallery, however since I didn't want to spend ages building a space station for it the actually fuel-tank docking is cut.

Enjoy

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited February 21, 2014 by samhuk

[barrenwaste]

It does look a bit like a goose in flight. I like it. Very good looking craft, nice payload, what is it's range?

[samhuk]

Barren: Well it gets to 120km orbit with about 1300m/s of delta-v to spare, with a 32 tonne payload. However, using fuel from the "jumbo orange tank" payload increases this to something like 3000+ m/s of delta-v to spare after getting into 120km orbit. It can ultimately deliver one jumbo orange tank to lunar orbit and return, which I think is pretty cool for a half space-plane half-rocket thingy!