Hello, Spacecraft Builders

[XtensionCord]

Hey there forum-goers! I’ve been playing KSP for about a year now, and it has been a very, very fun rocket-fueled ride. I’ve flown a lot of the more ubiquitous missions, building a space station and sending a few rockets to the Mun and Minmus. I’ve also launched an interplanetary probe to Duna in my career-mode save in desperate pursuit of science!

I’ve been spending most of my time playing with spaceplanes though. I didn’t think too much of spaceplanes while I was struggling through my first few SSTOs, but I’ve come to really appreciate them. I even got the idea to try to make a spaceplane that carries cargo. I’d seen a few spaceplanes that could carry cargo on the forum, but it seems like they are uncommon for a reason. Wow, that was a hard project. It took me a long time to get a spaceplane that could carry small probes to orbit.

Have any of you had the urge to experiment with crazy spaceplanes? I’m always amazed by the things people on this forum come up with, so I’d be really interested to hear about any crazy designs you’ve been working with.

[I.T Marcus]

Well I built a small shuttle-thing called "Hermes" (after the greek messenger god) this was it's name because he was built to carry cargo from my LKO space station to my Kerbosynchronous "Olympus" space station.... it had a really big and square hole in the middle of it with a docking clamp inside.... it looked very strange..... sorry no screens, I deleted my save (I do that a lot for some reason)

[Claw]

Hi, and welcome!

Yes, large spaceplanes are a bit uncommon, especially stock ones. I don't think any of my designs are too crazy though. They can be a bit tricky to build and fly, but they certainly a lot of fun.

[XtensionCord]

Well I built a small shuttle-thing called "Hermes" (after the greek messenger god) this was it's name because he was built to carry cargo from my LKO space station to my Kerbosynchronous "Olympus" space station....

I like how you chose a meaningful name for your vehicle. I normally end up calling the first few versions of a new vehicle some weird acronym before I can come up with a decent name for it.

Was your shuttle vertically launched or horizontally launched? I haven’t experimented with a lot of vertically-launched spaceplanes yet. Side mounting the vehicle like the Space Shuttle was configured is really, really hard, and putting the spaceplane on top of the rocket tends to cause stability issues for me. I could put bigger fins on the booster, but that makes the booster look bad…

I should probably make a dedicated supply vehicle for my own space station sometime. Currently, it gets all of its fuel from experimental vehicles that I send to the station once I’m done experimenting with them. It has a bunch of orange tanks, but only one of them is filled.

Hi, and welcome!

Yes, large spaceplanes are a bit uncommon, especially stock ones. I don't think any of my designs are too crazy though. They can be a bit tricky to build and fly, but they certainly a lot of fun.

Hearing about spaceplanes being difficult to design makes me think of how long it took me just to figure out how to get around fuel flow issues when I started building spaceplanes. They are really fun to fly though.

Also, I just bookmarked your Frequently Asked Problems thread.