Solar spaceplane

[diegzumillo]

It's a spaceplane with a turbo jet engine and two ion engines. Solar powered space planes are nothing ground breaking or anything, I've done similar things before, but this one surprised me with its efficiency. I'm always trying to make spaceplanes with lots of dv to spare, which usually requires nuclear engines, which adds weight, resulting in big spaceplanes. Using ion engines forced me to think minimalistically and voila! the solar spaceplane.

This thing reaches a circular orbit of 77km with more than 10000 dv! Ion engines being what they are it's probably a challenge to take this craft to the mun or minmus, as burn times are pretty long.

But there it is. Easy to make too, just look at the picture if you want it (easier than downloading a craft file). Just remember to empty the tank of its oxidizer as you won't need it.

[TheFlyingPigs]

Thanks...

TIME TO MAKE IT THE EXACT SAME AND CALL IT MINE...

cough cough lol im joking

[diegzumillo]

lol Just a quick note: that picture is from the wrong version, you have to add a whole bunch of xenon gas to have that much dv. That version was just to see if it reached orbit, when it did I packed it with xenon

[diegzumillo]

Solar spaceplane: Minmus edition. I call it 'Photon'.

Problem: Even with a lot of dv minmus is the only place you can actually land using ion engines so for this version I reduced the dv in favor of more engines. I don't see myself making any other version for other planets/moons. Ion engines are a pain in the ass.