Major Progress!
The space station was expanded with larger habitat modules and is now capable of supporting many more kerbals.
I wanted to make a heavy lifter that wasn't too close to the usual asparagus heavy-lifter, so I made this monstrosity:
The initial stage consists of the big orange tank with 5 LV-T45 (because thrust vectoring is a must) engines and 9 aerospikes. I think. It's aided by three liquid fuel booster rockets with two aerospikes each and their own droptanks supported by girders. And struts. Lots of struts.
I love the girders. They're so badass they don't even care if the booster rockets come crashing down on them and explode.
The second stage is a booster stage as the nuclear engines themselves are unable to achieve orbit alone with such a heavy payload.
The third stage is the orbit transfer stage. With nuclear engines, we're sure to reach our target destination. The cap is popped and it gets to burn up in the atmosphere (technically collide with the planet).
Then it's just a matter of intercepting, line up and dock. Once docked, the engine decouples and its on-board "AI" deorbits itself. I also launched up a second habitat module for symmetry's sake.
Now the space station has so many parts KSP has to slow down time to prevent physics from committing suicide.
And finally, after gruesome testing, many revisions and hair-pulling moments, the Populator Mk I:
Okay, that's the alpha version. But the newer version has ladders, RCS and a docking clamp. This SSTO ship has been a real pain to design. Note to self: Fuck the Mk3 Cockpit. It's too heavy, has very bad support for gear placement, its adapters make it too long and places too little mass at the tail and generally screws everything up. Use the Mk2 or Mk1.
Originally planned to transport 7 kerbals up to the space station, it's capability was reduced to 5 to save my sanity. This design went from Populator I-IIi (sic) to Populator Crazy, Populator Sane, Madness and finally Pigs and all their own revisions. The current design was derived from the Pigs series (also somewhat derived from the Skybee IX). Many kerbals were lost in its creation. So many that time slowed down at KSC. It's a wonder why the KSA didn't rescind its funding after so many deaths and catastrophic failures. I bet they won't be writing that in the history books.
In any case, the Populator Mk I achieves orbit around 70-80 km and has barely enough rocket fuel left to reach the space station at 200 km. Timing is of the essence. Flight plan is critical:
- The moment the plane loads up, HIT THE BRAKES. Check the controls that they work. Pre-trim the pitch to the fourth notch above 0º, activate avionics and set to full throttle.
- Turn on the turbojet while hitting the brakes. Stop hitting them once the jet engines reach 100 kN. Accelerate to 100 m/s at least and deactivate avionics.
- Let the plane raise its nose to roughly 70º and activate avionics. Climb steeply to 10-11 km. Around 8-9 km incrementally lower your nose to 30-40 º. Maintain 90º heading.
- Climb slowly up while picking up horizontal speed. At 18-19 km activate rockets and lower the thrust to 2/3. Increase pitch slightly for higher vertical speed. Watch your total air intake. Decrease throttle if needed to conserve fuel while still accelerating.
- Once total air intake reaches 21, cut off jet engines and climb steeply up to 35 km with full throttle. Don't forget to close intakes.
- At the mark, lower pitch to 30-40 º. Set throttle to 2/3 or less once apoapsis is 50-60 km.
- At mark, level pitch and slowly burn for orbit at 70 km or higher.
In the end, I ended up with 300 total rocket fuel. Orbit correction and transfer took that down to 100.
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1448733 times)