The spaceplane handles in space exactly how you'd expect something the with the size and balance of small airliner would, making docking with a port on the top interesting. At this point the ship is committed to docking, it's unlikely there's enough to de-orbit. The climb and orbital insertion burn went a lot smoother than earlier prototypes and none of the engines overheated and exploded (a key feature of this version).Īfter some fiddling and extremely cautious burns, there's just sufficient fuel to wiggle the circular things enough to make an intercept with the station. Because it cuts the fuel very close it requires a near perfect launch profile to make orbit, so it's a bit more interesting to fly. The launch profile consists of a climb to 12,000m followed by almost leveling out to build as much velocity as possible while still in the atmosphere (unlike a rocket, I try to stay in upper atmosphere as long as possible a take a very shallow launch, the huge wings and intakes allow it to continue to accelerate and climb. ![]() ![]() On the ground, with a crewmember demonstrating the proper emergency exit proccedure Might do a cargo version in the future, just swapping out the 6 person passenger section for a small cargo bay. So far it's pretty efficient, took a tad over two big orange tanks of fuel from the runway to docked at 200km orbit (The "big orange tank" unit of fluid will make sense to KSP players :D) and is 100% reusable, doesn't throw away perfectly good parts like a rocket. Next time I fire up KSP I'll undock, swing by minimus to pick up the crew of a mothballed station, and then land back at the KSC runway. Putting this design through it's paces, docking with the KSS to top off the tanks and change out the station crew. This is just a brief screenshot AAR of pt1 of the flight. ![]() I keep coming back to designing a really good Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) space planes, it's a lot more an interesting balancing act than rockets.
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