Kerbal Space Program - Building A Shuttle Clone In 30 Minutes 

12:00 I love how that SRB is doing donuts in the air.

12:18 Loving that SRB in the background.

Asymmetric thrust should be the bane of the vast majority of scifi spaceships. i.e. what happens when artists don't know basic physics.

I like the spinning booster in the background at 12:18.

"How hard could rocket science be right?" That was the day I laughed so hard I subscribed.

I put a skipper engine on the bottom of the external tank, then just adjust the thrust limiter on the skipper to keep my pitch adjustment within the boundaries as the fuel burns off and the CG shifts.

12:18 lol the rocket in the background

But really this video is all about how amazing that plane was against all odds! Great video Scott!

3:30 the wing was inside the thing that holds it, that's why it blew up...

Scott, been awhile since I've commented on one of your videos. Very informative and awesome as always. I learned a lot of cool new concepts I wasn't even aware of, like the gimbal rockets adjusted to align with the center of mass. Keep it up!

Gravity. It's the law

I made my own version of an Mk2 space shuttle (obviously thanks to this video). I spent maybe 2 hours, in part because I wanted to make it stable without SAS and I wanted to add more to the space shuttle and make it very flying-friendly. Thank you so much for this tutorial. The lesson about the whole balancing of the center of mass to thrust really saved me some time!

Why dont you just stick 2 shuttles on the fuel tank: problem solved

Always love your videos, subject matter and your voice. You're live-streams are hilarious as well :)

Scott, I must point out something about your physics commentaries. Your channel is one of the few (if not the only one) that takes into accounts what the physics engine of a game actually mimics from the actual physics on reality. Pointing things such as torque and center of mass, considering the delta V of a vessel, all of that are vary nice things to see in a channel. Keep up the good work and every once in a while get the most specific you can.

Its cool to see your contribution to the stock shuttle creating community. The FAR version that you made in your Interstellar series, out of B9 and KW parts mostly, was a fantastic craft and I based my own design on it. Those few videos you did focusing on that shuttle really taught me the essentials and fundamentals, alot more clearer than many RU-vidrs manage. I also love that you did not rely on specialised gimbaling engines or fuselage models etc that so many content creators do. Modded parts yes, but nothing beyond stock functionality. I've started my career game anew for 0.25 and have updated my shuttle to match the new features and options of the current B9 and KW, it's quite a beast! I am infact thinking of making a larger one, basing it on the HL and 5m parts, I really wanna be able to use it to help create space stations beyond some small tanks and life support supplies. If you intend on doing a "proper" video in the future could I request that you make a craft using the larger parts as a base, that have the ability for station construction. Would be fantastic to see your take on a "real" shuttle. :)

Thank Scott, this video helped me make my "Space Race" mock up movie for History class

I was just trying to build my own space shuttle as it happens Scott, now I can steal your tips and designs, thanks! :D

Love your videos and your narration. So fun.

Had forgotten about this tutorial...very useful, now that i´m playing science mode

I find this games terribly complex and time consuming, so I can't believe I just saw your entire video. Great game, awesome narration. Keep up the good work!

Nice. As a console player, I treat your videos like gold. So informative. I'm building a space plane since I kinda stranded some brave kerbal in a orbit around kerbin while trying to get to the mun. Hope this will rescue them .

the new rocket engines make this so much easier! thanks ksp!

During the second launch part of the docking clamps were inside the wings in the back of the shuttle, thus causing them to get torn off upon launch

Loving the space based series... Thanks

That sped up version of KSP ost is sooo awesome creepy...

Holy balls, I asked that you did a shuttle a few videos ago and you did it! Thanks for the amazing videos!

The space shuttle, besides being the most expensive spaceplane indeed, was a very good adventure and an interesting way of studying the possibilities of SSTO in the future as it gives very valuable data on the case. SSTO is the future by its efficient fuel cost and reusability not to mention the fast deployment time(which is a part of reusability bonuses you might say :p), the only challange I foresee is: will it be able to carry as much cargo/crew as the space shuttle and if yes how will they increase the actual capacity for it. In any case, the first man to reach orbit in a SSTO capable plane will earn his place among the legends.

Ive found that the Energia Rocket design works really well for me. massive tall talk in the center with quad engines, and 4 extra large liquid fuel boosters on the sides. It thrusts so much that even the slight weight imbalance means nothing.

I really like informative and educational videos from you! Please tell more. I suggest salut7 case - where they had to dock to a dead and rotating station and repair it.

i did the same shuttle design with aerospike engine at the top of the shuttle to limit the pitch coming down and it works just great!

Hey scott Manley if you want to adjust the thrust "Pre flight" you can always right click on the solid booster, and limet the thrust impact

wow. i had tried to make a space shuttle in KSP, but had put probably only about 1% of the thought into it compared to what you are. there is so much more to this game and so much to rocket science and physics that this game teaches, and i absolutely love it. in fact, today i made it to minmus for the very first time. i had only done the mun twice before, and my first attempt took me probably about 12 hours and countless tries. but somehow i made it to the mun my first try on my second run, and minmus on my first try as well.

Hey Scott Manley, love the channel! I too have been playing with making shuttle like spaceplanes and have created a design that launches pretty well. But I do use mechjeb, as I use it to create a pretty precise launch profile. I'm pretty sure the NASA shuttle launches were all programmed in, so I don't see it as cheating. The main problem like you say is the asymmetry with the boosters and the orange tank. With the boosters in KSP, they are a fixed thrust, so as it burns the thrust to weight changes. I know Bob Fitch has created a way to mimic the real life boosters where they are not throttle-able but do change their thrust for the amount to fuel left, which means you can drop the TTW as you go up. For the offset of the orange tank, I have 2 sets sets of engines, yes it makes it heavier, but mimics the real shuttle as it doesn't use the main engines once it drops that main tank. So I have 1 set with large gimble and offset, then switch over to thrust through the shuttle only CoM. I will post up a vid when I get the chance. Cheers Azza

I DEMAND HORIZONTAL LAUNCH OF A SPACE PLANE CLEARLY INTENDED FOR VERTICAL LAUNCH. because losing is fun.

I used robotics to be able to adjust the engines angle enough. Not stock KSP though, but also not just using a pre-made shuttle mod. Took quite a bit of work to get it to do what I wanted, but it worked really good once done.

I wish the dev can make us the standalone version of the SSME instead of the RS25x4 fuel tank-engine combo, that would release a lots of design freedom.

It looked so easy when you did it on the video until I tried it myself! Several hours into the game and I still can't seem to get it stable in the midst of leaving the atmosphere! Anyway, great video!!!

This inspired me to launch my own shuttle the same size. Same basic design, but with the FAR mod. Used those same SRB's, the 650kn engine under the orange tank, staged when the SRB's run out, and the aerospike engines on the shuttle. It works if you can modulate the thrust on the way up to compensate for the change in CoM. I actually started adding weight to it to see how much it can carry up on a mission, and ended at around whatever 1200 liquid fuel and oxidizer weighs.

I'd really love it if you gave this concept another go with all the new stuff in the retail version

21:02 that music starteld me xD

Personally, I'd connect the solid boosters to the fuel tank via a single strut each. I've found that one strut is strong enough to hold them in place (to stop wobbles, and to keep them pointed in the right direction), and weak enough to break when the decouplers blow.

I've always been a fan of TheWinterOwl's shuttle designs. He's very detailed and uses a lot of mods, but they're all designed towards making pretty accurate representations. (And yes, shuttles are seriously challenging designs!)

Yes Scott, it is exceptionally hard to do. I took a couple of days of free time to get an accurate-ish representation of it working, and they are great for taking probes to space! But, you did it in half an hour :/ Kudos.

I think that, if you rotate the shuttle the toward the ocean on the runway, the turn-over is actually helpful

Hm, just thought of a great mod idea. Maybe its already out there. Wouldn't multiply thrustcontrolbars help greatly with planes like this. You already can alter the thrust of one of your engines at the same time, but i mean something like a group of engines, that you define in the assembly building and then controls the thrust of all the engines at the same time. There could even be a new bar in the interface next to the standard bar and you could switch between them with a key.

Honestly the hardest problem with shuttles for me with FAR is getting a clean booster separation. I usually get SRB sep in the high-teens (18-19) kms, which is still low enough for the boosters to veer off wildly upon separation as they are prone to do in FAR. Even with half a dozen separation boosters, its usually only enough to get them to spread out wide enough long enough for the shuttle to get away, before inevitably colliding together again. I'm about the build a shuttle again using the combination separation rocket/radial decouplers featured in the new SpaceY parts pack, maybe those will help.

Great video

It's alot easier in 1.0.5, with the vectoring engine. There are now also three stock craft replicating the shuttle.

dayum that little truck drifting in the background at 9:12-9:20

Wish I'd seen this a year ago. I built a design that worked without the powered external tank or the torque modules. Used a mk2 4 engine adaptor with offset main engines with their vector aligned with the launch center of gravity, then added a small side-mounted engine on each side aligned with the center of gravity without external tank or boosters. At launch, the main engines and the orbital maneuvering engines initially fire at full throttle, resulting in a vertical launch, then I back them off to allow the boosters to push the ship over inverted into a gravity turn. Once the boosters are spent, I throttle up the mains fully, but by this time, the now offset thrust from the mains is countered by the mass of the fuel tank and the lift from the wings. Once into space, I cut loose the external tank, deactivate my main engines and operate using the small orbital maneuvering engines only. Voila. Took hours of trial and error to learn the hard way why the real shuttle does it the way it does, but it was fun and informative. And now I have a mk2 shuttle to ferry space station pieces with.

9:13 kerbals doing donuts on the runway awesome!!!!!!

When I designed mine, I took a page out of the Buran's book by putting my main thrusters on the tank so I don't have to lug that weight around.

There is the Space Shuttle Engines Mod that really helps with FAR. They have some extreme Gimbaling that solves the thrust-through-COM problem very well. From there is just sensible wing design for the shuttle really.

Hey Scott I just thought of two designs that might be an interesting thing to try. Both require the mod Infernal Robotics but with one design you could adjust the angle of the engines with one of those hinge type parts. With the other I was thinking it might be possible, though a bit more complicated, to set up a third engine that would be moved into place once in orbit and take over for the two launch engines. Possibly a LV-N, but I fail at planes in KSP and making one able to fly to space is beyond my grasp lol.

lol Love the way U casually say "how hard can rocket science be?" Great video Scott...Keep them coming. Also, aren't the alternators generating electric charge while the terriers are firing?

On the actual shuttle, the shuttle's inline engines were slightly angled away from the main tank, along with 2 smaller radial engines pointing straight.

There was also a similar (and similiarly crazy) idea of launching a rocket off the back of a jumbo jet. I tried creating something similar in ksp but had trouble flying the plane back safely when it lost its massive payload, it just wanted to do back flips since it needed some massive lift

2:15 Solid rocket boosters are made with a hole through the solid rocket fuel. It's designed to burn from the inside out.

Your crew are impossibly lucky!

Didnt you notice those release clamps were hitting your wings!

The wings kept hitting the launch clamps! :D

I used the "Tiberdyne" space shuttle mod for a while, which was a legit recreation of the Space Shuttle with appropriate RCS-based engines and the works. Just like a stock one, however, it was very hard to keep it properly balanced, and ultimately it was a big time consumer with little reward. One thing that is a huge buzz kill for me on the stock parts is the limited space in the cargo bays. They are RIDICULOUSLY small, especially if you want to build a space station using parts like the science lab and things! I've given up on space planes and space shuttles for now, especially in stock, there just isn't enough parts yet that are big enough.

Put a very large radially-mounted engine between the main engine and the shuttle and adjust the thrust of this, and the main engine, with the thrust limiter as you launch. It's the only way I've managed to do it, and it is difficult, but it works.

I did almost all of this once like a no brainer (it was my first genuine try at a space shuttle), and I never watched this video until now. Oddly enough, my space shuttle configuration was about twice larger and functioned perfectly until the boosters were jettisoned, then, due to not knowing a valuable piece of advice about performing the roll manuever, my spacecraft pitched downwards like a beast and ultimately crashed. I was to come back to it later to review designs and plans, but due to mysterious reasons, the saves, along with all of the rocket plans got deleted, so that's a bummer...I'll have to start again...

Wow! Thanks so much for posting this. My Brother n Law is a Flight Director/Engineer at JPL/NASA. He tries to briefly explain things to me when he's visiting. But it's usually over my head. This video has taught me a lot. What software/Game is this? Kerbal Space Program? I'd like to show it to him. I'm sure that they use something much more professional. But this would be great for his two children to learn from. As well as, Non Rocket Scientists such as myself. Thanks again!

Scott, you weren't overcompensating as much as you think, the towers were clipping with the wings on liftoff and that tends to mess up launches in many ways.(I've broken the world a couple times with those things)

I didn't know that about the Space Shuttle's thrusters, woulda been nice to know when I made mine. mine took like a month of trial and error to finally get an empty one to make it to orbit, also had to look up how the actual shuttle launches and flew mine upside down to succeed. It's only mission to was to recover the crew of a bugged station that was being decommissioned... so many things went wrong with that mission yet somehow that shuttle still made it home marking the first successful aircraft landing in my KSP career. It also had off center thrust (even as just the shuttle) since I picked "cool factor" over logic. lol P.S. I too had to use the Braun style launcher and a lot of thrust limiter management to succeed.

Energia-Buran type rocket seems far more easy to make and more efficient, though probably a bit more expensive since you lose more main engines.

Look, brilliant!

Scott Manley, have you considered the idea of a winged orbiter launched piggyback on a winged booster? the booster carries it's payload up using a ballistic arc trajectory (booster does not enter orbit) and releases the orbiter at top-of-climb, then re-enters, ignites onboard sustainer turbojet, and flies back to the hangar to be refurbished for the next launch. meanwhile, the orbiter circularizes, and enters orbit! the advantages are that each "stage" can be highly specialized for it's intended flight regime, the booster uses engines optimized for max thrust in atmosphere, while all the orbiter needs is a tiny OMS engine, making the orbiter much smaller and lighter. this is the system portrayed by Arthur C. Clarke in his book 2001: Space Oddysey. (the Orion Spaceplane System) when (if) I get around to it I might try this out in my copy of KSP. don't hold your breath, though, I currently hold the title of World's Champion Procrastinator. if you (or anyone else want to try this out, go for it.

You should use your throttle to keep the whole assemble flying straight. Because the SRB cannot be throttled, only the SSMEs are controlled by the throttle gauge; and by controlling the throttle you can keep the rotation torque low enough that the fins can stabilize.

Could you do a Buran-Energia rocket system, too? The Energia would be fun because once you got that able to launch a shuttle you could use it as a regular payload launcher as well.

It would be interesting to see if it would be possible to achieve near-parity with the shuttles using Infernal Robotics to gimbal the engines, though I suppose the problem would remain the 909's not having enough thrust to overcome the weight of the fuel in the tank.

You see Scott, the reason this didn't work out so well is that this shuttle looks too much like an actual plane, not a flying brick as it is supposed to. A "spatial bus" as it is named here in Brazil.

Shadow zone: building space shuttle in 10 minutes scott Manley: building mini shuttle in 30 minutes

I used thrust limiter adjustables to get my shuttle replica to orbit. But that was rather finicky to fly and adding payload made it unstable again.

Good job

AWESOME!👍🏻👍🏻

The test at 12 minutes actually Looked awesome, like a ship out of starwars, just didnt fly so well. Alot of flexing scott you should add a couple struts. it might help with the start.

The shuttle pitches up, not down as is ascends into orbit FYI. Orbit is achieved inverted to the earth from the passengers perspective.

hey scott something i think a lot of people would like to know how to do is to setup a interstellar networks that would be a handy tutorial

Not only did the space shuttle have a large range of gimbal on the main engines but the SRBs could be gimballed. Not nearly as wide a range though. Thrusting through the center of mass was not an uncommon practice before the shuttle though. The Saturn V, for example, would gimbal the outer four engines through the CoM in case one of those engines failed, the whole spacecraft (hopefully) would not be doomed.

Falls from atmosphere and survives with no parachute = Scott Manley

Wonderful.:) The 2.4 km magical dissapearance of parts, however, is the single most vexing problem in a n otherwise wonderful game.

This is a bit off topic, but I kinda just thought of it.. You should totally build your first production model warp ship to resemble the ship from Starflight ^_^

Adding a third booster opposite of the craft works wonders

That one ended up looking almost identical to the stock spaceshuttle I built in my game.

Nice XKCD reference there at 11:45

3:13 the problem was not the boosters, it was the fact that the clamps connected to the boosters clipped to the wings. This caused them to explode, making everything go to s**t.

When you were shifting the solid rockets forward, the supports were cutting the wings apart on liftoff. Had you moved the supports on the solid rockets, the rocket probably would have been fine, or at least fared a lot better.

I use 4 rocket boosters placed diagonally at my space shuttle but it cost over 1 million (I used 3 KS-25 as the shuttle engine to circularize orbit,the boosters use Mammoth engine,and I need to attach parachutes on my space shuttle because I can't land planes)

Scott you need to check out the winter owls videos on Space shuttle design

What if you mount the engines on infernal robotic parts so you can adjust the engine angle on the go?

The new vector engines are basically the space shuttle engines :)

Your shuttle is a lot more like the soyuz shuttle than the standard space shuttle because of mechanics of how you designed it, with the rockets on the fuel tank and without the monopropellant thrusters by the tail

12:50 - Just use angle snap with shift

I just use infernal robotics to add extra gimbal range to the engines on the shuttle...

Scott, here's something I found comes in handy with shuttles. Use IR hinges to mount the rear engines. Gives the gimble range needed for a shuttle, yet also can act as a trim. When well balanced, you can basically just pitch the engines and fly with the trim. www.thekerbalspacecenter.com/2014/10/karbonite-minmus-and-new-shuttles-oh-my.html I made a shuttle using that design here. The S2 > 2.5m adapter plate hides the hinges. They actually perform quite well under thrust.

Hey Scott, what kind of microphone do you use? Thanks for all the wonderful videos!