KerbalX

Description

With a crew capacity of 10, IL-11 Stingray can equally serve as a spacecraft for space exploration and as an airplane for suborbital/high-altitude flights to various Kerbin destinations. As a spaceplane, ideally, after reaching Kerbin orbit, the remaining dV capacity of ~3000 ms is enough to allow for round-trip flights to Kerbin’s moons.

No LOx is included. The design operates exclusively on LF, but as a trade-off, it has a very low thrust-to-weight ratio, making orbital launches somewhat challenging. They require very shallow ascent profiles whilst you have to deal with the heat accumulation and excessive fuel consumption. The Nervs can be ignited as early as 10-15km alt. For attitude control in the lower atmosphere press and release F button (SAS) and in the upper part use prograde adjustment intermittently. This is to prevent the rolling oscillations as the control surfaces start to loose the authority in the upper atmosphere. There are also ballast compartments and flow priority settings in order to prevent shifting of the CoM.
Arguably, engine clipping or running the fairing inside the craft is not the most fair way to build in KSP, but I couldn’t find a better solution to simultaneously reduce the drag, maintain its orbital capabilities and preserve the aesthetics.

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: spaceplane
• Part Count: 100
• Pure Stock
• KSP: 1.8.1

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.8.1.

Notes/Updates:

• Thanks to the KSP 1.8.1 update the craft is functional again. I’ve made just some tweaks to wheel’s spring/dumper settings.
• The craft relies heavily on the fairings hidden inside to mitigate drag. After the last KSP release (1.8) it seems some MK2 parts are exempt from being shielded by the fairings (even if they are fully enveloped) which means the aircraft does not have any chance to achieve orbital velocity. The bug is confirmed. Until the issue is fixed the curent design is rendered useless. https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/23997