Astraeus VTOL Cruise Liner

[Redshift OTF]

Named after the Greek Goddess of stars and planets this is the Astraeus VTOL Cruise Liner. Weighing in at 157 tons and made from 294 parts she can carry 11 Kerbals into LKO, refuel and then travel to wherever you need it to go. Simply fly up to 25km, fire the big engine and then fly into orbit like a rocket! It also has a couple of LV-N engines for interplanetary travel giving you around 7000 DeltaV, although burn times are fairly long. The main engine can give you around 3200 DeltaV if you want to get somewhere in a hurry!

Hotkey 4 deploys the ladders so the passengers can board her without trouble.

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I have modified the ship slightly since these pictures where taken. Just added another set of wheels and altered the docking nose slightly as it had some clipping issues.

Hotkey 1 toggles the VTOL Jet Engines

Hotkey 2 toggles the Main Engine

Hotkey 3 toggles the pair of LV-Ns

Hotkey 4 toggles ladders

Fully fuelled she can take off on 2/3rds throttle and can hover a click below this. Mostly empty she can take off on 1/3rd throttle and hovers a click below that.

It took a long time to balance this craft for VTOL under all conditions. All fuel drains from the outer fuel pods first, then the 2nd front fuselage section, then both the front and back main tanks and finally the central main tank. All engines will drain fuel in this order ensuring the centre of gravity stays put however much fuel is left. The front fuselage fuel section, (above the hitch-hiker containers), is empty and it is recommended not to fill it for balance reasons.

Craft file here.

[eorin]

well done, i like it very much!

[Jeb Cubed]

That is really nice, a lot different from the other wingless VTOL's, which I am not a big fan of. Well done indeed.