Longbow. Long range SSTO with auxiliary Rover and full Science!â„¢ compliment.

[Rune]

Hello guys! The first one from the "look what I found in my ship folder" pack is ready! It got most of the comments on the SSTO thread preview, so there, here you have it, so you can take it apart and learn how I crammed a full science-equipped rover inside a cargo bay and manage to make it recoverable, put a science lab on the plane, and still have 2.9km/s left in the tanks after reaching LKO. But before I get into details, it's only fair I show it properly so you get a sense of what I'm talking about. Here, the beauty shots:

Note the large amount of building tricks to get a cool-looking fuselage, including the white underside. Lots of clipping and liberal use of Ed Tools during building, but the result looks good, and as an added bonus you don't have to clip the camera inside the build to select any of the tanks, they all have at least part of them visible form the outside. The engines are another thing, but you will use those through action groups,a s well as the landing legs, and the release of the rover (mapped to abort, in case you want to try a risky drop without landing).

As to flying characteristics, with nothing but LFO and a 80l liquid fuel reserve on the tanks she can make 4km/s at T/W 0.4, which in plain terms means she has the legs to make a Duna mission with surface sample return if you refuel on LKO before departing. That in turn also means Laythe should be a breeze, and of course anywhere closer in terms of delta-v is trivial. The kerbin system doesn't even need refueling, both moons are well within its capabilities and the auxiliary landing legs are placed so that landing on the tail is both easy and safe, for those places where you don't have an atmosphere to glide with.

But all of that performance is not free, of course. First, by the time you can build this on a career save, you don't need it (as usual). It uses pretty advanced nodes, though I suppose it could be somewhat simplified (i.e: substitute RTGs by solar panels). Not the point of the build. I guess with the new contract you might very well do this for the √ (BTW, √188k on the runway, but the idea is to recover pretty much all of it). Second, it is pretty deep on the low side of T/W. The climb to orbit is looong, and you have to know your airhogging stuff to make orbit at all, the nukes alone can't cut it unless you are already going over 1,800m/s, and you can't really go that fast on jets alone, so the final speed run is done on a combination of half the jet engines and all the nukes blasting at full thrust. Still, only 4:1 intake ratio, four jets, and three nukes, for what it does, it is pretty efficient.

Also, some balancing magic went on in the build. The low altitude benign flying characteristics when full come from the engines actually giving a slight pitch torque keeping your nose pointing up, but when you go ballistic at high altitudes, you have to shut off the inboard jets of said torque will flip you out of control or at the very least mess with your vertical velocity management. Good thing that starts to happen when you have to shut off a pair of jets due to low air and open up with the nukes, but this is definitely not a ship for beginners , you have to manually correct her at several points, fighting her a bit at times. Don't worry, once in space she is perfectly balanced on nukes alone, and she glides great.

Now I'll leave you with a couple more pics, and the download link. Enjoy!

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DOWNLOAD

http://www./download/kz9b2menwx2lh44/SSTO+Mk+XXVIII+-+Longbow.craft

Rune. For Science!â„¢

[LvL]

you said you would show how you did the cargo bay!

[Vagani]

Oh I like that rover, very nice, good job rune

[Rune]

Oh I like that rover, very nice, good job rune

Thanks! If the car guy likes my car, I must be doing something right

you said you would show how you did the cargo bay!

Hahaha. Ok ok! Here goes an explanation just for you. First, fire up your KSP copy, DL the file, and load it up. Having Editor Extensions will help greatly if you want to replicate, but you can make it in full stock just by adding a cubic strut, or if you are just going after destructive inspection.

Got the ship in front of you on the SPH? Great, then look at the top of the plane, right in the middle under the Jr Docking port, the gray band that runs all the way to the vertical stabilizer. That's a couple of I-beams, and they make the central spine of the ship. They are attached to the end of the science lab, topmost of it so they fit cleanly but are still visible with no seams. Now careful, because we are going to start breaking things. Grab the MkIII fuselage and... wow, all the rear part of the SSTO including engines and wings goes out with it. At a weird angle, too. And then you will be able to see a small I-Beam hanging from the spine some distance from the rover. That's what the fuel tank is attached to, using the "enable surface attachment" feature of Editor Extensions. In order to stick it back in, you either have that feature on, or you have to put a cubic orthogonal strut in there to create an attachment node and then move the whole thing forwards later by grabbing the I-beam. I aligned it by putting temporarily another lab behind the first one to get the vertical alignment right, then moving the I-beam front and backwards until I had a bay of the desired length, which I then paneled with wing sections.

Rune. Also, the option to limit angle snaps to up to 90º allows you to place parts where you never thought you could.

[Darthzeus]

So you'r saying you just made a brace around the desired cargo space, correct? So this one doesn't have any "Splitting in half to RCS Back together around payload" functionality, or any Rune voodoo like that? Anyway, sweet craft, keep it up

Darth. Still confused why anyone would want to stick their last thoughts in like this

[Rune]

So you'r saying you just made a brace around the desired cargo space, correct? So this one doesn't have any "Splitting in half to RCS Back together around payload" functionality, or any Rune voodoo like that? Anyway, sweet craft, keep it up

Darth. Still confused why anyone would want to stick their last thoughts in like this

Haha, yup, as simple as it gets, all the specialty in this design is the thrust placement and curve during the launch. Well, other than the ship tilting more than 30º smoothly without nothing exploding or resting on engines and such, and the rover clearing everything. It's tight. Oh, and if you are having problems with the bay door in the Nodachi (as your comment seems to suggest, though I could be wrong and you just like how I complicate my life needlessly), I'd suggest to just ditch it in the SPH, it's purely ornamental and the ship was actually developed without it.

As to the "signature" thingy, I started with quotes, run out a long time ago, but by then the custom had stuck, so I kept on going with (supposedly) witty unrelated comments and the custom kind of took on a life of its own. In general it's stuff that doesn't have to do with the rest of the post and/or should be taken with a lot of humor. Kind of a dynamic sig that never repeats itself. It's also handy to distinguish me form the gazillion other Runes that must be out there on the internets.

Rune. Would go through a lot of trouble to stand out, it seems.

[Darthzeus]

]Oh, and if you are having problems with the bay door in the Nodachi (as your comment seems to suggest, though I could be wrong and you just like how I complicate my life needlessly)

Nope, Nodachi works great, and it was also Kinda a poke at your need to over complicate things. However, it is amazing