Simple SpaceShipTwo

A simplified version of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane and its carrier aircraft White Knight Two.

SpaceShipTwo is meant to serve as a ride to suborbital space, with the main goal of carrying tourists. This makes it a competitor of Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital rocket. The key difference between the two is that SpaceShipTwo is a spaceplane while New Shepard carries a capsule.

SpaceShipTwo functions unlike a conventional spaceplane. It burns a hybrid rocket motor and uses its wings to coast into space, then flips up its tail boom to perform a "feathered reentry". This form of reentry essentially turns the vehicle into a capsule shape, so that it remains stable. Once it is low enough, it folds the tail boom back down and glides back to the runway for a touchdown like a plane.

In my design, I chose to use solid fuel as there is no hybrid motor option in SimpleRockets 2. I tried to make everything as to-scale as possible, but nothing except some of the major dimensions are accurate.

How fly this craft:

First, get off the runway. The plane lifts off at about 70 m/s.

Climb up to 5-7km ASL with White Knight Two.

When you want to drop the spaceplane from its carrier, make sure the craft is level with the horizon.

Before you release:
- Lock the heading on Current
- Set AG 1, 2, and 3 to True

Active the next stage to release the spaceplane, then pause immediately.

Switch over to the carrier plane and set its pitch to around 45 degrees.

Unpause and repause quickly.

Switch back over to SpaceShipTwo and pitch down a bit.

Once there is enough separation between the vehicles, stage again to ignite the rocket motor.
Wait a few seconds for the plane to pick up speed. It will angle upwards automatically.

When it is a few hundred meters from the plane, pitch up to nearly 90 degrees. Try not to pass this because you will lose control.

Keep the plane pointed in this direction until the motor burns out. You should be on a trajectory going nearly vertical.

When the craft is in space (past 60km), slide Slider 1 to max, then slowly drag the pitch on the navball to flip the craft so that the nose travels about 270 degrees. It should be facing perpendicular to prograde when it reenters (the wings should be level with the horizon, too).

Set AG 3 to False.

Use WASD to keep the nose of the craft pointed a bit above the horizon as it falls through the atmosphere.

Slowly drag Slider 1 back to 0 starting at around 30km and ending around 20km ASL. By the time Slider 1 is at 0 and the tail boom is down, the craft should be going about 200m/s and the prograde marker should be pointing 20-30 degrees below the horizon.

You can then fly the craft like a standard glider to a soft landing back to your runway.

This SpaceShipTwo glides best between 170 m/s and 70 m/s. It stalls at around 65 m/s.