Shuttles

[LordFerret]

I've not bothered with shuttles yet. When KSP's flight model can manage gliders, then maybe.

[Rusty6899]

I've made a Mk2 shutlle, but not a Mk3 one. I may look to make one soon. I think some dedicated parts would make it much easier. The fact that it is so uneconomical doesn't help. Maybe if the fuel tanks cost a lot less, it would become more feasible.

[WWEdeadman]

Did it as soon as 0.90 had released. (Full coverage of the process available in this playlist. (stream 3 is the one)

)

Pics here:

[vitekc45c]

Theres a Buran/Energia replica that i build shortly after 0.90 release.

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Edited March 16, 2015 by vitekc45c
for some reason the post editor was olny showing some broken icons istead of BB code.

[MGCJerry]

I built this... Empty payload, and it handled pretty straight up to about 5500m, then all hell broke loose...

Just after taking these pictures, it flipped out of control, so I separated the boosters, then the tank. Once that happened it took me another 2500m to regain control of the shuttle and ended up landing it in the grass mostly intact 38km north of KSC. I lost 2 engines on touchdown.

[Merinsan]

I can, but they don't really fly well, and end up crashing very fast, so I voted no.

I have tried very often, and have got one into space, but not into orbit. The biggest problem is getting the thrust vector right with respect to center of mass, and then accounting for the changing mass as you stage.

[Francois424]

I have tried making one, and most of my RL friends where impressed by it... but it never made it into space.

And I'm a stickler for perfection. Unless I install/debug the mod that includes the shuttleparts, or that KSP makes some stock (that would rock to have the Space shuttle "lego-set" if only for the wings and the engine!), then I'm not really wasting time making one.

It was fun trying tho.

[prophet_01]

Definetly the most time consuming launcher developments I ever did. They aren't rly worth the effort as the low gimbal requires me to design it's payload with a rather specific mass and cog.

I prefer to strap my shuttle's directly on top of a massive, mostly srb-powered stage and put a huge amount of fuel directly onto the shuttle itself. This 2-stage profile isn't efficient (fuel-wise) and also requires me to go for a non-optimal gravity turn, but it's still rather cheap since I only drop a bunch of srb's (and an additional mainsail+orange tank for my 50t-payload shuttle). I'm pretty ok with that as I can avoid the design challenges of big cargo ssto's and theire stupidly time consuming ascents...

Btw I rly love esa's XIV. I adapted it as a small launcher (up to 5t). I still have some control issues on reentry (it doesn't burn up or shreds itself, but that spining doesn't feel right). it's pretty cost efficient and works good on my masochism career configuration (FAR, DER, TAC, RT2)

[Wahgineer]

I just cut to the chase and got the ditobi shuttle engine mod, since I really didn't feel like spending for ever to make a space shuttle that probably wouldn't fly well.

[Van Disaster]

Can make one just fine, but they're such a stupid vehicle design that other than doing one to do it I've not bothered again.

[inigma]

Has anyone here tried downloading and reverse engineering my successful mk3 shuttle? 0-42 ton payloads to 300km orbits and higher. 282 all stock parts. No tweaking necessary except fuel amounts. See link in my sig for the STS Space Shuttle download. SAS is a very Kerbalized solution for lack of gimbal. 300k credits per flight, 2/3rds of that are recoverable. Glides well.

Edited March 19, 2015 by inigma