80% Recoverable Bizarro-verse Space Shuttle (Orange tank to orbit)

[Red Dwarf]

After a lengthy, lengthy development process, the No Way In Hell shuttle has been completed, and re-christened! For your viewing pleasure, the Lepton!

First off, yes, this thing looks absolutely ridiculous. It's funky features are part of it's charm. The inspiration for the Lepton comes from the fact that your standard, side-mounted shuttle clones are a pain in the butt to build, and are fiddly to fly into orbit. You need to very precisely offset your engines, and you have to worry about shifting center of mass, as well as payload weight, blablabla. To that end, the Lepton mounts it's external fueltank on the nose, meaning that the center of mass is in line with the center of thrust. Problem solved!

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A neat little side-effect of the construction and ascent path is that it's super easy to recover the external tank, for that sweet sweet recovery money.

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Lepton craft file

Lepton Recovery Vehicle craft file (just in case you fall short of the runway)

Edited January 9, 2015 by Red Dwarf

[zekes]

I can put an orange tank into orbit too! It just.... takes.... 2400 tonnes of shuttle to do so...

[Guest]

Looks very crazy! That´s pure KSP.

[spiritplumber]

Actually, there's a Soviet design. that is similar... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAKS_%28spacecraft%29

[Yukon0009]

Why not use action groups for the Lepton's 'chutes?

[billbobjebkirk]

http://www.wired.com/2013/09/building-a-better-stronger-safer-space-shuttle-1982/

[T-Bouw]

I'm thinking of adding landing gear to the tank, so that it doesn't roll down hills and explode like it normally does.

Perhaps it's sufficient to use a couple of small struts on the side of the tank instead.

Landing gear would only add more clicking anyway...

Nice unorthodox design by the way!

The article in the link provided by billbobjebkirk was an interresting read.

If you only look at the outlines of von Pragenau's designs, you would see that the stack almost looks like a regular rocket! Complete with tail fins and all!

But we all know that the Space Shuttle was actually the weird one. Even the Buran had a more sane design.

Though in defence, the Buran and von Pragenau's designs were thought up after the Space Shuttle.

Hindsight is easier than foresight...

Edited January 16, 2015 by T-Bouw