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ES-95 WHALE

ES-95 WHALE (European Spacecraft model 95, Wave-riding Hypersonic Ascent, LEvel landing) is a medium-sized SSTO shuttle with 16 seats. It’s designed to look cool comfortably transport larger groups of passengers to and from LKO, such as space station crew rotation missions.

- Looks like a hypersonic waverider.
- 800m/s dV @ 85x85km orbit, 570m/s dV @ 250x250km orbit
- Balanced and almost constant CoM (beneath the docking port) regardless of fuel comsumption. Acceptable maneuverability and great stability during the entire flight. No need to transfer fuel.
- Balanced RAPIER thrust in rocket mode for better spaceflight and orbit insertion accuracy.
- High TWR both in atmosphere and space.
- "Flat top", no tall vertical stablizers.
- Redundant LF for atmospheric flight after reentry.

- ES-95 WHALE is a pilotless spaceplane controlled by an unmanned core inside the service bay.
- Action Group 1-3 and 0 are used.
- Delievered with unshielded docking port (some of the screenshots are outdated).
- I play with auto-strut and joint reinforcement mods, so add some struts if you find it necessary
- It’s inspired by many crafts using Mk2 parts in such a way, and greatly by the Rockwell X-30 - I didn’t mean to replicate it, however.
- Imagine its nose to be a flat duckbill-like hypersonic nose. This is the best I can do on this craft.
- This thing took me too long to finish. I loved how its prototype looks, especially the intake section, but it was miserable to fly and can’t get to orbit with reasonable payload and dV. It was a PITA to redesign and balance everything. Now I’m very happy to finally make it flight-worthy and even quite useful, while fulfilling all my "being reasonable" criteria.

- In short: Rotate at 120m/s and 10 degrees to space! I’d say it’s easy to fly, although not agile.
- Switch RAPIERs mode when speed drops (should be ~1500m/s near 25000m).
- If done like I do, an 85km AP would be 4-5 minutes away when you cut off the engines, and the circularization burn takes only ~130m/s dV. Then you still have ~800m/s dV to spare.
- Open service bays and let the whole craft cool down for better reentry safety. (Reentering directly after reaching orbit is not recommended. Parts might overheat, although it never happened to me.)
- This is the best I can do, but I guess there would be a more efficient ascent path. Suggestions welcome!

- Burn PE to 40km and much further than target.
- Do aerobrake with 90 degrees pitch, until no longer possible. It could only maintain an AoA of 5-10 degrees in denser atmosphere.
- Beware of long blackouts (if you allowed it in settings). However it’s usually safe and stable during blackout.
- Use engines or simply glide to land. A pin-point landing without engine assistance requires practice and experience.
- Shortly before touchdown, shut down engines, deploy chutes and engage brakes. Airspeed should be no more than 180m/s at this point.
- Gently touchdown with lowest possible airspeed.

Wish you enjoy and happy landings!

100% Stock, 111 parts. Root part is the structural tube inside the service bay.