SkyLab Program :: Crew Rotation Vehicles :: Mün Crew Shuttle

A repurposed LKO Crew Shuttle to attend the (currently still being planned) Mün Station.

Mark 0

The premise is simple: what we can do about with this Dream Chase alike thingy to attend the (currently planned) Mün Station in the most cost/effective (and safe because... Tourism!) way possible?

Well, looking again into the inspiring project I found the Shooting Star attachable service bay! Couldn't be more Kerbal! 😀

The Service Bay

First things first: a attachable, disposable service service to allow the LKO Shuttle to reach the Mün, rendezvous with a Station and go back - ideally without refueling, as fuel would be a very expensive resource there until I manage to establish a ore refinery on Mün.

And I came to this, it was pretty straightforward to tell the true:

Mün Crew Shuttle Vehicle.jpg

Not bad, and costing only 26,109F (with consumables, only 2,185F more than LKO) and (assuming landing on KCS with fully depleted consumables), 25,292F on recovery.

With this thing attached to her... humm... back 😅... I managed to:

From LKO, reach a retrograde equatorial Münar orbit at 2.200Km high;
From that orbit, to rendezvous with the (planned) Mün Station, also on retrograde equatorial orbit but at 1.200Km high;
Dock with it;
Then transfer back to Kerbin on a highly elliptical orbit;
And still having about 200 m/s of delta-v on the budget.
Unexpected bonus: I managed to reentry and even land this baby with the service bay attached, as long as I have some fuel on the nose tank! 100% reusablity! 😉

Problem. From this point, there's no hope for a circularisation on LKO before a reentry, and you will need to rely on aero-braking for that, i.e., kiss sweet tourists money bye-bye on this configuration, the KSC Tourism Department will never approve such maneuvre with civilians aboard.

So Tourism will demand in-situ refuelling, what may reveal itself too much expensive until I manage to establish a Münar ore refinery - but, until there, at least I will be able to cheaply rotate crew there.

Or not...

The Launcher

Boy, I got screwed by this one. I tried to reuse the LKO Launcher that, besides tricky to fly, worked. But couldn't - no matter what I do, the damned thing always ended up needing:

Moar trust;
Moar boosters, but then the thing loses control due that damned Shuttle's wings and I have to throttle down the engines, increasing the fuel consuption due the gravity toll;
Moar engines, but then I need even moar fuel;
Moar trust again, or she will not leave the ground;
Rinse, repeat, get MOAR screwed again.

The after math:

Or the CoM ends too high, and it flips before leaving the lower atmosphere;
Or the fuel depletes before reaching orbit;
Or the thing gets too wide, and I can't steer it;
Or the whole vehicle gets too tall, and became uncontrollable while reaching the ~~Kerman~~ Karman Line.

Apparently I managed to hit a very finickle and unstable sweet spot for the Orbital Crew Vehicle, and utterly failed to find another one for the Münar variant.

Getting fed up of processes and cyber-safety and compliance and what else (don't ask!! 🤪), I concluded that it was time to let Jebediah Kerman meddle into the R&D facilities to let him give to the engineering team his insights about the problem: to pursue the possibility of making my LKO Crew Shuttle reach the (planed) Mün Station and get back - in a cost/effective and safe way. Or the most it can be done when Jeb is involved...

What could possibly go wrong, right? 😅

And then Jeb saw this on Youtube (Kistler Fully Reusable Launch Vehicle):

And then Jeb did this on R&D:

Mün Crew Shuttle Launcher Top View Mün Crew Shuttle Launcher Oblique View

And... The damned thing works. 🤣

However, as it's usual On the Kerbal Way™, the price tag is a bit eye watering, 70,138F, giving us a cost per seat of (70,138F - 25,292F) / 6 = ~7,474.34F .

Ok, still less than the cost per seat from the SkyLab Crew Rotation Vehicle, but yet...

The Rocket Equation is unforgiven, no doubt. I will try to optimise the Launcher to see if I can squish some more savings from it but without some compromisings as relying on in situ refuelling before going home (but, by them, I need to calculate the cost of the local Fuel when delivered from Kerbin!), I think that I will need to scale seats (and taking the cost toll) to make this thingy more cost/effective.

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