So, with the addition of the RAPIER engines, I decided to do my first serious attempt at a spaceplane. I did make one small RAPIER based plane earlier just to test the engines, which I got into orbit but it wasn't sable enough to handle reentry and I killed poor Philorf Kerman. He was my testing bro, HE KNEW THE RISKS.
So here is the plane I made and a few shots of it in action.
Takeoff
Protip: Let go of the satellite before deploying. I added this small satellite to the plane, just to give the mission some sense of purpose. Is there a decent way to transport actual cargo with a spaceplane?
I reentered way too early, so once I got into some decent air, I forced the RAPIERs into air breathing mode and went MAXIMUM WARP back to KSC.
PABLO'S MIND: I'M GOING TO SMASH THEM INTO THE GROUND I KNOW IT
NAILED IT
So that went pretty well. It took me a few times to get this plane into orbit. I probably could have on some of them but without fuel to deorbit, so I aborted and landed across the ocean. I added a couple small tanks into the main tanks, but that wasn't helping much, so I ended up having to use some drop tanks. I wasn't happy about having to do that, but oh well.
What? You can send up empty fuel tanks now?
There's a SABRE-like engine?
Yep. Right click a tank in either VAB or SPH and click on the fuel bars to adjust, is one of the various new tweakables. (I wish though that you could set a docking port to be open with a tweakable. I wanted to stick something on the inline port of my plane.)
The SABRE-like engine is the RAPIER. It is neat-o.
