KerbalX

Description

Despite being sci-fi and very very cheaty, this is an extremely well balanced personnel transport spaceplane, in both air and orbit. I have successfully completed one full round trip to a space station in orbit of Kerbin, and landed on the runway at KSC, with no drama. Even docking was a breeze.

Now, to fly this thing, you need to know a few things. First, it’s engines are dual-mode and rely on electricity. Lots of electricity. So there’s a small nuclear reactor shoved inside. You can toggle the engines and reactor both with [1]. Once you have the engines started on the runway, it should show them using liquid fuel over in your staging sequence. That’s normal. What isn’t normal is the intake air it requires, which is managed by the intakes. First, you need to deploy them with [9], and second, activate the ‘neptunian gas separation’ with [0]. When you switch modes, you’ll shut them down by pushing the same buttons in the revers order, [0] then [9]. Now, this particular mod seems to be a bit finnicky when it comes to mode switching. You’ll have to do it manually, but don’t worry, I’ve got that on an action group as well. Push [5].

In the atmosphere, [2] will operate the airbrakes. They are very effective. RCS is available with the defauly key when you’re in space. I suggest keeping it turned on, along with SAS, when performing burns, especially hard burns. While it is a well balanced spaceplane, it isn’t perfect, and tends to pitch up just a little when burning. RCS manages to keep it straight, however. Just try not to use it all up, it’s the only thing this craft is really short on, and you’ll really need it for docking.

I haven’t put the docking port on any action groups, but you can manage that yourself. The only other thing it has is the drag chute for landing. [3] will deploy the chute, [4] will cut it if needed (for example, accidental deployment). Definitely do not deploy the chute until the wheels are on the ground. Deploying it a few metres above the ground will result in rapid disassembly, and it will void the warranty.

Upon closer inspection of this craft, I suspect I could get a good result using the RAPIER engines and not cheating with magical sci-fi engine mods, so I’m going to give that a go as well. In the meantime, as usual, feel free to tear this craft apart and lemme know if you come up with any improvements in the comments. Cheers.

TAILSTRIKE CAUTION: steady flaring with airbrakes strongly advised on landing approach. Touch down flare should be very shallow.

A mod aircraft called HPX-1 Rocketman. Built with 61 of the finest parts, its root part is x1cockpit.

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.7.2.

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: spaceplane
• Part Count: 61
• Mods: 8

Mods

• Airplane Plus
• Aviation Lights
• Hyper Propulsion Sci-Fi engine pack
• Near Future Launch Vehicles
• Procedural Wings
• Squad (stock)
• TweakScale - Rescale Everything!
• USI Kolonization Systems (MKS/OKS)