like a vast predatory rocket powered bird
i’ve been messing around in Kerbal Space Program this morning and i was thinking about making a supermassive cargo plane for transporting vast squadrons of planes around kerbin, but i thought i’d start small first and so this is the condor.
it’s powered by 8 j-33 “wheesley” jet engines on action group 1 drawing around 0.85 liquidfuel/s which means it can travel the 26 and a half miles to the island runway using about 1/1oth of the base fuel capacity (~9000) (-2880 from the number shown in the picture, i had a big orange tank in the hold to simulate cargo)
it can then land on the island runway with much quick loading, the trick i’ve discovered is to come in with the brakes on at 2/3rds thrust, hit the retro thrusters on action group 2 and try to touch down with the vertical velocity dial at the top pointing at around -5ish and then cut the main engines (1 again) so that you roll to a stop hopefully before the end of the runway.
actually looks a bit like laserbeak, or in japan “condor”
it’s probably easier to use air brakes but i’m stupid and also this is literally the 2nd iteration of this thing, earlier one showcased below that uses 4 j-33s and 2 turbojets with less thrust and less ISP, also no retro thusters but i somehow brought it to a stop with the manoeuvring emergency RCS.
this also flew first time. plane design is easy if you don’t VTOL or SSTO.
anyway the end goal of this was to be able to ship other vessels around, a big orange tank weighs 36 tons, which to put into context is about…
generic plane thrown together in about 60s
hollow, like a car.
…7 of these small planes. volume wise its hold is about yay big and…
i just wanted to use a group shot
…the door is this big
so that’s the condor, link to the download here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3bAkbqjp8mGOTRScHUxbF9ZVUU/view?usp=sharing
however you will need these mods to use it:
Kerbal attachment system (which in turn requires kerbal inventory system) and infernal robotics for the cargo door and latch
Tweakscale (the front intakes were resised, and the headlights i added after these screenshots)
enjoy!
and my trusty co-pilot radarr…
masterpiece laserbeak, year of the pale chick from thunderbirds edition.