Put a temporary hold on my "return Kerbals from MIR without a capsule" project because good grief is that difficult. I finally managed to get a craft that flies fairly well on its own but the moment you put a Kerbal on it, the goddamn Kerbal slides right off. And turning it into a flying box defeats my hopes for an aerodynamic, lightweight return vehicle.
So instead I decided to spend part of my day messing about with spaceplanes. Though they're mostly just planes with rockets attached at this point, since they haven't been doing very much space-ing. The primary issue is balancing plane side of things with the space side of things. Air breathing engines need air (obviously) and liquid fuel, which you get in the fuselage parts. But rocket engines need liquid fuel and oxidiser, the mix of which you only get in the rocket parts. So any spaceplane has to have enough plane-fuselage-fuel-carrying parts to get it to the point where the air is too thin for them to be any good, plus all the rocket-fuel-carrying parts so that the rocket engines can take it the rest of the way. And for both stages you have to lug about the unused/unuseable fuel.
In steps Test SSTO 3.8!
I had a variant of this craft with three turbojet engines at the back on the main fuselage attached to a tricoupler, but during the first two attempts at take off I clipped the lower two on the runway and they exploded. The plane still flew really well though, so I figured I'd just move the wheels and raise them so I could use all three engines. Turns out that it actually flies better when two thirds of its engines have been blown up.
So this is the present iteration that has completed its atmosphere trials for the time being. The image doesn't show a plane that has drifted off centre on the runway on take off (as so may are wont to do), but rather a plane that has landed successfully and safely on the runway once again. In fact I landed it on the plains to the west of the Kerbal Space Centre too, then took it off again and flew it in.
It still needs its alterations for spaceflight and docking, namely the addition of RCS tanks and thrusters. I was originally planning to put the docking port on the roof of the main fuselage, but the nosecose might be a better option, considering I've left it open for the time being and it'd allow for this craft to be refueled more easily (yessiree, I'm planning a refueler so you never have to End Flight on one of these).
Once they're complete and the MIR is in a good shape and I've sorted out some sort of docking area for it to attach to safely away from other fragile things, it'll be part of the routine flights to the station. And if anyone else wants the .craft file when its completed, they're welcome to it. Though I still need to name it... But only once it's passed its tests!
