KerbalX

Description

A stock aircraft called Laythe Science SSTO. Built with 155 of the finest parts, its root part is mk2.1m.AdapterLong.

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.3.0.

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: spaceplane
• Part Count: 155
• Pure Stock

-Basic Description

This is a fairly large science SSTO designed to land on, and return from Laythe with minimal gravity assists. Like my Duna Science SSTO, this was designed to complete it’s purpose as easily as possible. It has massive control surfaces and large amounts of lift, allow it to land on Laythe with little effort. It has over 5 km/s of delta-V, which is far more than it needs to complete its mission. To give the craft this excess of delta-V, the craft was optimized in a few areas, for example the crew was relegated to the cargo bay in order to reduce mass and drag. The entire craft was built within the space of 2 hours (during a Matt Lowne livestream), not including additional alterations to the design during Its testing phase. I’m now realising how similar this craft’s design is to my Lowtech 40 Ton SSTO.

-How to Fly

-When taking off from Kerbin: Simply activate the R.A.P.I.E.R.s and allow the craft to fly off the end of the runway, then pitch up to 9-10 degrees and allow the craft to accellerate, allow the craft to fly until the R.A.P.I.E.R.s switch over to closed cycle mode, at which point activate the Nuclear Engines, the R.A.P.I.E.R.s will run out of oxidiser rather quickly, so you will have to make sure the craft stays pitched up to give the craft enough time to accellerate to orbital velocity, you should be fine to relax once your apoapsis reaches 80 kilometers.
-When going to Jool: This craft can burn directly to Jool, no other gravity assists required, though I do reccomend that you split your ejection burn into atleast two seperate burns to increase efficiency.
-When getting an encounter with Laythe: You can use any combination of gravity assists that you wish to get you an encounter with Laythe where your relative velocity is low enough to safely preform an aerobraking maneuver. Personally, I used a Laythe gravity assist to put me in a highly eccentric orbit around Jool, with the apoapsis well outside the orbit of Pol. This orbit allows you to raise your periapsis to the height of Laythe’s orbit with only a tiny delta-V expenditure, from there you can get a gravity assist from Laythe that puts you into a very similar orbit to Laythe, giving your final encounter a very low relative velocity.
-When landing on Laythe: This craft can easily handle a single aerobraking manuever, however multiple passes may be neccessary in order to pinpoint a landing spot. The craft glides very well and is very easy to control in Laythes relatively thin atmosphere, the craft also has parachutes to aid in landing, but with a stall speed of 50 m/s this craft really doesn’t need them to slow down safely.
-When taking off from Laythe: Find a conviently placed hill, and use it as a ramp for take off. Once in the air, pitch up to 15 degrees, and let the craft go, it shoud be able to reach about 1630 m/s, at which point the apoapsis will be at 110 kilometers, circularize with the Nuclear engines.
-When returning to Kerbin: Preform a burn in Laythe orbit that gets you an encounter with Tylo that will eject you into an orbit of the Sun that goes down to the orbit of Kerbin, a burn at Tylo periapsis may also be required. Once you’ve done that, you will need to preform several Kerbin gravity assists in order to get you an encounter with Kerbin with a low enough relative velocity to aerobrake, at this point the craft should have enough delta-V remaining to preform some retroburning as well to help you get captured. Multiple aerobraking passes will be required in order to prevent rapid fiery unplanned disassembly.
-Obviously many correction burns may or may not be required throught the mission, don’t stress about being crazily efficient as this craft has plenty of excess delta-V

-Known Issues

-The craft tends to pull to the right when taking off from the runway, I am unsure of the cause of this, but it does not persist after the craft takes off from the runway. I suspect it has more to do with the Kraken’s phantom forces than a design problem with the craft.

Obligatory beauty shot

Who needs visual mods anyway?