KerbalX

About Astraeus:

Astraeus was my last attempt to do something ridiculous in KSP. So I made a Mk3-SSTO-SpacePlane-TailLander-Miner-Interplanetary ship. This biggest challenge was getting this thing to feel like a much smaller craft while in the atmosphere. Lots and lots of tweaking. Then one day, it flew beautifully. This thing is so (luckily) balanced that you can set pitch to 25 degrees, throttle to 100%, and it will fly itself into orbit. It won’t overheat, it won’t stall, it won’t shake itself apart. It just soars. Once you are in space, you have a slim margin of liquid fuel that can get you to Minmus. Landing on the Minmus flats is a great refueling base to prepare for any mission you like. So far I haven’t taken it out of the Kerbin SOI. I did nab a few asteroids through. One more thing, its 100% STOCK!

How to take off:

-Full throttle (you won’t touch this until we are in a circular orbit). -SAS on. -Space bar Twice -RAPIERs should be active in air breathing mode. -Whiplash and Intakes should be active. -When you get to the end of the run way, pull up (hard) until the nose is pointed up 25 degrees. -(~ 24 km up) When you run out of air to run both the RAPIERs and Whiplash, switch the RAPIERs to Closed Cycled (#3) -(~ 25 km up) After you shut down the Whiplash engines, toggle the LV-Ns on (#4) -(~ 26 km up) When you run out of air to run the Whiplash engines, toggle them off (#1) -When Apoapsis is about 80-90 km, turn off the engines. -Set SAS to pro-grade. -Circularize (still with RAPIERs) -You should be able to put this bird in a 90km circular orbit, with > 5000 LOX and > 300 OX.

How to station keep:

-Open the cargo bay -Extend the solar panel -The cargo bay also contains the ISRU, disabled fuel cells, and 2 drills for runway landings.

How to land on Minmus:

-Burn for Minmus. -After your transfer burn, you should have around >1200 liquid fuel. -Aim for a low perigee around Minmus -Circularize around Minmus <10 km -Air for the flats, set SAS to retro grade. -Lower tail gear (#5) and lock it (#6). -This is basically a suicide burn (you should have about 100 liquid fuel to spare). -If you still have oxidizer, you can use RCS to help land. -Bring it down nice and easy (<1 m/s)

How to mine Minmus:

-Extend the tail drill -You may need to retract the tail gear to make contact with the drill -There are fuel cells (disabled) in the cargo bay (but for some reason drilling doesn’t take electricity?) -Depending on your mission, you might want to produce only LOX and skip the OX! This ship has more delta V if you only use the LV-Ns -Once you are fueled up, you are ready to go anywhere!

General Tips:

-Don’t go from 0 to full throttle in space with the RAPIERs, you will lose your wings. -Sometimes locking the tail gear is safer than leaving it bouncy. -You have RCS, its well balanced, but requires LOX and OX. -Usually you don’t want to fill up on OX, use LV-Ns unless you need the extra thrust (Tylo anyone?)

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.0.5.

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: spaceplane
• Part Count: 141
• Pure Stock