[Spaceships] Is This Legal?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by scc

OK, I'm kicking around the idea of a flyback booster, specifically a winged spaceplane.

1) Does the booster stage need a Control Room so that it can glide or possibly even fly to a landing once the orbiter has separated?

Yes, no control room means no control. You could omit it if it uses a soft landing system, probably.

A small control room might suffice, though for atmospheric flight it might not.

Originally Posted by scc

2) I'm thinking of using Jet Engines to get a better price per mps to orbit, the question is do I count the tank of jet fuel (Which I assume will be empty or nearly so) when calculating the Delta-V increase for chemical rockets?

Definitely not.

If you want to account for those emptied tanks, you can multiply the number of tanks or rocket fuel by 20/(20-jet fuel tanks) and using that to calculate dleta-V. This isn't given in RAW, but it whoulc be correct.

Originally Posted by scc

3) The booster needs to be streamlined, normally as this has an Upper Stage it doesn't need armor in it's forward section, but this one isn't discarded, so does that rule still apply?

It seems a bit questionable to allow a vessel that has a hughe hole in the front from where its forward parts flew away on their own to be streamlined at all.