The Whie Swan: single seater long range SSTO space plane.

[1greywind]

Description

The White Swan is SSTO spaceplane with VTOL landing ability. The space plane centers of mass is not moving during flight. All engines (air, orbital and landing) and RCS thrusters are carefuly placed in such way, so no parasitic torque is present. The plane has full set of scientific instruments (excluding Sensor Array Computing Nose Cone) and dV for LV-N orbital engines is ~5000 m/s then you reach low Kerbin orbit. With such amount of dV you can reach almost any place in Kerbol System: you can go from KSC to Mun, Duna, Lythe and back.

The only downside is low initial TWR of orbital engine - 0.25 (at full tanks) to ~0.44 (at half empty tanks). This makes typical LKO-Mun burn duration ~ 5:30 minutes and LKO-Jool burn duration is ~8 minutes. So using x4 physics time warp while burning is a must.

Tech info

Parts count: 94

Launch mass: 26,676 kg

Dry mass: 12, 876 kg

Atmospheric engines: x TurboJet

Atmospheric TWR: 1.73 - 1.85

Orbital engines: 2 x LV-N

Orbital TWR: 0.33 - 0.5

Landing engines: 10 x 48-7S

Landing TWR: 0.82 - 1.44

Action groups

1 - toggle air intakes

2 - toggle turbo jet engines

3 - toggle LV-N engines (orbital)

4 - toggle 48-7S engines (landing)

Typical flight profile

- Press 2 to active turbojets, set throttle to 100%, takeoff then you reach ~130 m/s on runway.

- Climb to 17-18 km altitude maintaining ~45 degree pitch, then reduce pitch to ~20 degree at 21-22 km, then to ~10 at 27-28 km.

- Slowly climb to 30 km while plane speed up to ~2000 m/s while altitude reaches 30-31 km. Reduce throttle in case of engines flameout.

- At 31-32 km press 3 to activate LV-Ns (at low throttle).

- At 40 km shutdown turbojets (press 2) and close intakes (press 1). Rise throttle until your periapsis is ~100 km.

- At periapsis burn until you are on circular orbit.

Images

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Selected screenshots:

DOWNLOAD (dropbox link)

WARNING: This crafts is not FAR compatible. Sorry.

Feel free to ask any questions. Thank you.

[Alephzorg]

Impressive craft. It looks like a lot of work went into it.

Plus it looks cool.

[TMS]

Interesting use of a winglet to raise the undercarriage. Very neat.