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Sometimes KSP, or Kerbal Space Program is mentioned here on TRF. A recent thread here: www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?70621-KSP
And an older one here: https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?47704-Any-Fellow-Kerbonauts
Kerbal Space Program Website: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com
I'm posting this thread to give an example of a rocket designed for a purpose, with some details about the rocket and the mission. it's not the most sensible rocket, since there is no good reason to send a winged spaceplane to a moon with no atmosphere, but I wanted to challenge myself into doing just that with a newly built spaceplane.
So, those who know nothing about KSP may get some useful insights, even though some of this is more advanced stuff that you do not need to know to start playing the game. You do not even need to fly into space to have fun but it's more of a challenge to get into orbit and go farther. For those who have done KSP, a lot of this will be familiar.
I've done some playing of Kerbal Space Program this week. I had made a "Spaceplane" that could make orbit all by itself (SSTO), due mostly to a theoretical Jet and Rocket engine that in jet mode can use fuel only, using air for oxygen, until it gets high enough that the air is too thin, then it switches over to being a rocket engine, using onboard liquid oxygen. The plane I made can make orbit with fuel to spare. In theory I could use it to fly to a space station in orbit, or go rendezvous and dock with some other vehicle in orbit. But I do not have a mission in mind for that.
For the heck of it, I decided to fly it to the Mun. That's the name of Kerbin's largest moon, Mun. So I gave it some landing legs for a vertical landing, and extendable ladders. Most importantly, I built a rocket under it to be able to get it into Kerbin orbit, take it to the Mun, get it into orbit around the Mun, and de-orbit it almost all the way to landing before dropping the last stage so it could land upright by itself.
After lot of the usual trial and error with tests of a new launch vehicle for it, it ended up as a very capable vehicle. It might be able to fly to Duna, the game's equivalent to Mars, but it would never be able to get back (Duna's air is too thin for the wings to be of much use for a safe landing and it has no oxygen for the engine to use in jet mode so it might be able to land vertically on rocket power but never get back).
With the performance being far more than needed, I could have given the final transfer stage about half the fuel capacity for a Mun trip, using a smaller tank. But that's OK, that leaves some room for future capabilities. Such as giving that transfer stage, and spaceplane, the capability for docking, so some future mission could get into orbit around the Mun, the spaceplane undock, land itself, take off, dock with the transfer stage, then fly to Minmus (another moon that is in a bit higher orbit, with a bit less gravity), transfer fuel from the transfer stage to the Spaceplane, undock the spaceplane, land on Minmus, take off, dock with the transfer stage, and fly back to Kerbin. Maybe the transfer stage would not have enough fuel to do that .but it could have more fuel tankage added .thanks to the launch vehicle having a lot of performance.
Of course if I wanted to go to both of those moons, the gimmick of the spaceplane that does not use that great engine in jet mode, and not use the wings, until getting back to Kerbin's atmosphere, is not really worth it. So I'd swap out the Spaceplane with a more efficient lander, maybe one carrying two or three crew members rather than just the one. And actually in the past I tested out my favorite lander design (Synchronicity) by doing a mission to Minmus and then to the Mun, then back to Kerbin. But that lander dropped tanks and engines along the way, no Apollo-like orbital re-docking with a transfer stage.
Anyway, back to this new launch vehicle. The main core stage uses 5 liquid engines, the lower part of its tank is orange (I could have used one big engine, but the big engine is not as efficient as the ISP of the 5 clustered engines I used). It has two liquid fueled boosters, which also have an orange tank as part of it, plus some big fins to make it aerodynamically stable due to the plane's wings on top. The liquid boosters have 5 engines in the bottom plus 2 more on the sides. The main core has fuel lines running from the outer booster tanks so that the main core can use fuel from those tanks and not use any core fuel until the side booster tanks run dry.
It also uses two big SRB's, which are black and white. Their thrust level is so high that the whole vehicle does not need for the center core engines to ignite at launch. So only the SRB's and outer liquid boosters burn for launch. And after it gets moving fast enough, the liquid booster engines are throttled down to optimize efficiency, so as not to exceed terminal velocity.
The SRB's burn out 52 seconds into the flight, at 6.5 kilometers (Kerbin is smaller than Earth, and it's atmosphere extends only to 70 km) They are jettisoned and separation rockets help push them away to avoid colliding with the core. They also deploy parachutes and landing legs, so they can land back at KSC (Kerbal Space Center) for re-use.
Also when the SRB's burn out, the center core's 5 engines ignite and use fuel from the outer liquid booster tanks.
The vehicle begins to curve from vertical to begin to increase the horizontal velocity, at 10 km up. This is another basic part of flying into space, and learning the tradeoffs of the right kind of curving path to fly to get into orbit the most efficiently. So that either you have more Delta-Vee left to use once you make orbit, or in the case of a marginal rocket to make orbit at all. If you have a rocket that has 104% of the Delta-Vee to make orbit, and you fly it inefficiently so that it wastes 6% of its fuel, you're not going to make orbit.
So, this rocket curves more and more as it gains altitude, the air gets thinner, so it is more efficient to fly at shallower angles to increase horizontal velocity. Along the way, the liquid boosters run out of fuel and separate, at 2:20 and 41 km up.
Eventually when its Apoapsis (apogee) is projected to be at the desired orbital altitude of 100 km, the engines are shut down. For this one it is 3:16 into the flight, at 74 km. Then it coasts until it is nearly at Apoapsis of 100 km, coasting a sub-orbital arc. . Shortly before apoapsis, before it stops coasting up and starts to fall down, it is aimed horizontally and the engines fireat 4:28, 98 km up. The firing is to increase the horizontal velocity, to stretch that sub-orbital arc into an full circle that is larger than the diameter of the planet, plus atmospheric height, so it will reach orbit. Of course that is not just for this ship, or this game, it's true for anything going into orbit, it needs a final burn of some type, but the path used varies a lot depending on the vehicle.
Burnout at 6:00, in this case an orbit of 101 km by 98.9 km.
With the vehicle finally in orbit, the core still has LOTS of fuel in it, a bit over half. That is enough fuel left in the main core to send the vehicle from Kerbin to the Mun, and retro burn to begin to get into orbit around the Mun before that stage runs out of fuel.
I'm leaving out the orbital mechanics part of how to actually get to the Mun, just covering the vehicle. Once the core runs out of fuel, it has put the vehicle into an elliptical orbit around the Mun. It is jettisoned, and the transfer stage takes over.
The transfer stage has a nuclear engine in it (NERVA-like), with an ISP of 800, more than double the best conventional liquid engines in the game. If I were trying to build a more efficient rocket, I would have reduced the fuel in the core stage and given the transfer stage more fuel, so that the more efficient nuclear engine could do the work of getting from low Kerbin orbit to the Mun. And indeed some of my better launch vehicles often have very little fuel left in the stage that gets the vehicle into orbit, then is jettisoned (I sometimes fire the engine in a jettisoned stage to make it de-orbit, it does not take much to "nudge" the orbit enough to cause it to dip into the atmosphere.
Sometimes a stage with nuclear engines is fired before reaching orbit. It is the most efficient, but the nuclear engines have very low thrust, part of the tradeoffs. So if the stage with nuclear engines takes over with a LOT more velocity needed achieve to be able to make orbit, it is not going to accelerate fast enough to reach orbit before it begins to fall back into the atmosphere. Possible solution, add more nuclear engines, for more thrust. But the engines are VERY heavy for the amount of thrust they produce, so it is not worth adding more nuclear engines just for the sake of trying to reach orbital velocity soon enough (as far as radiation, well, uh, the Kerbals apparently have no problem with radiation. Though I know a few players who design their ships in a way to minimize radiation effects, of their own choice).
OK, so, back to the Mun, the Spaceplane with nuclear powered transfer stage. The engine fires to change the orbit from elliptical to circular, at an altitude of about 10 km. A landing site is chosen and the nuclear engine fires to begin the decent, much like the Lunar module of Apollo. It slows the horizontal velocity, and the ship begins to descend at more and more of an angle. Eventually it is almost vertical, less than a kilometer above the surface. The transfer stage is not built to be able to land, it has no legs (though it could have). So, it is being used as a "crasher" stage, like the Russians were going to do with their N-1 rocket Lunar Lander, use the crasher stage to retrofire nearly all the way down, then jettison it to crash when close to the surface so the lander only has a short time and distance that it needs to burn its engine to land.
The Spaceplane is on its own now, firing its engine for the last few hundred meters and the landing legs are deployed. It lands slowly, fortunately on a reasonably level surface.
The engine shuts down and it's safely on the Mun. The Kerbonaut onboard has the ladders deploy, climbs out of the ship and down the ladders to set foot on the Mun. He plants a flag to show "been here, done this" , smiling for a photo taken by means unknown, and then gets back aboard.
He plans out the new launch flight path and takes off. With no atmosphere, it does not need to go very high to get into orbit, 10 km is plenty. And once it gets a bit of initial upward velocity, it can be pointed horizontally the rest of the way. it almost looks like it is "flying" like a plane across the Mun, but the wings are not doing anything since there is no atmosphere.
Once in circular orbit at 10 km, he waits for the orbit to be at the right point for do a burn to return to Kerbin. He fires the engine to accelerate from the Mun, but the position of the Mun's orbit he is in will also mean that the ship is in effect doing a retro burn relative to Kerbin. The end result is an elliptical orbit that dips down to a very low Periapsis, that is almost into the atmosphere of Kerbin.
He does a tweak burn that will cause the Periapsis to be about 40 kilometer above Kerbin's surface, 30 kilometers inside the atmosphere, Fuel is getting low, at least the liquid oxygen portion is, there is not a lot left for firing the engine in rocket mode in space. The Spaceplane will do an aerobrake maneuver, slowing it down but skipping back out of the atmosphere so that it the next Apoapsis will be only a few hundred km above Kerbin. He does a tweak burn to make the apoapsis a little bit closer to Kerbin, so the apoasis after the aerobrake will be about 180 km. Then he sits back and waits to coast back to Kerbin, and finally into the atmosphere on the night side. During the peak of the aerobraking, the plane glows orange-hot, then skips out of the atmosphere, to coast to a apoapsis of 180 km.
If he does nothing, the plane will re-enter and land a couple of thousand km short of KSC. So at apoapsis he does a burn to raise the periapsis to above 70 km so the plane can get into an orbit. It does. Then he finally makes a retro burn to bring the plane into KSC. But the oxygen tank runs out a bit short, the plane will overshoot KSC by 20 km, over the ocean. The space plane does not have a parachute (there is a mod one can add that let Kerbals have a parachute), and won't ditch safely in water.
But, the plane does have wings, that was the reason to have them. But it is so high, and it cannot get a big enough "bite" into the atmosphere to do "S" turns like the shuttle did, that it can't shorten the distance it flies until it has gotten down to about 10-12 km up. So, it overshoots KSC.
It finally is in enough atmosphere to turn around and glide back. But now it is too low to glide back. Well, I said it had run out of . oxygen. But it still has a reserve of fuel which the engine can burn in jet mode. PLENTY of fuel for jet mode. It only needs about 5% throttle to hold the right descent slope to make it to KSC.
Hmm, some weird object flew past a minute ago, what was that? And then, holy .. the right forward leading edge of the wing has come off .and now I realize the object from a minute ago was the left front leading edge!
Well, this RARELY happens but I was doing a lot of saves and playing it over a few days. So, those parts . fell off, at almost the worst time coming in to land. Without them, the Center of Pressure is more to the rear, so the plane wants to dive. I have to keep using a lot of up elevator. I can't adjust the pitch trim (It is possible but I so rarely need to and it has been so long that I forgot what key combo to use), so I just fly it anyway. It's a close call but it does land safely on the KSC runway.
So, the mission completed safely. The Spaceplane will need some repairs but is reusable. And the SRB's are waiting to be retrieved and refurbished.
Of course I didn't put hundreds of dollars into that mission, so I guess it was meaningless? Nope, way more meaningful than throwing away a few hundred dollars in Vegas. It was fun, and challenging. Of course I ended up doing things that a person does not know how to do when they first start to play KSP. But it's not that hard to learn. Of course, I also chose what I wanted to do, for various reasons (in this case, a silly premise of a winged spaceplane to a moon, then seriously doing it). That's part of what makes it so interesting since there are so many things to try.
There is almost no "wrong" way to do it. Except for when I see people just crash and crash them pretty much on purpose with crew onboard. That's disturbing. Yes, its only a game, no "REAL Kerbals" are killed playing the game. But good grief, the ships can be unmanned (unKerbaled) if someone just wants to do a bunch of wild stuff that crashes and blows up rather than actually trying to learn how to make the rockets fly right. And i've made my share of crazy rockets, and have "killed" many many crews, but never any crewed ship crashed on purpose.
I have posted more images on this vehicle's mission here: https://imgur.com/a/9vq1f#0
Also, there are imgur albums for some of my other missions and vehicles at these links:
Eve & Gilly mission: https://imgur.com/a/TVAVI
Moho missoon: https://imgur.com/a/gXObE
Eeloo mission: https://imgur.com/a/0PKto
Various KSP rockets on these other albums:
https://imgur.com/a/qKn5u
https://imgur.com/a/y1RSc
https://imgur.com/a/gBTLn
Also,. I highly recommend Sport Rocketry Editor Tom Beach's KSP reports:
https://www.mindspring.com/~sportrocketry/ksp/
And there are bunches of KSP youtube videos by Scott Manley:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?an...tdEmqpOkQZCl5SZB5t0vXuxE0&src_vid=tgPr4q5tj-Q
- George Gassaway
And an older one here: https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?47704-Any-Fellow-Kerbonauts
Kerbal Space Program Website: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com
I'm posting this thread to give an example of a rocket designed for a purpose, with some details about the rocket and the mission. it's not the most sensible rocket, since there is no good reason to send a winged spaceplane to a moon with no atmosphere, but I wanted to challenge myself into doing just that with a newly built spaceplane.
So, those who know nothing about KSP may get some useful insights, even though some of this is more advanced stuff that you do not need to know to start playing the game. You do not even need to fly into space to have fun but it's more of a challenge to get into orbit and go farther. For those who have done KSP, a lot of this will be familiar.
I've done some playing of Kerbal Space Program this week. I had made a "Spaceplane" that could make orbit all by itself (SSTO), due mostly to a theoretical Jet and Rocket engine that in jet mode can use fuel only, using air for oxygen, until it gets high enough that the air is too thin, then it switches over to being a rocket engine, using onboard liquid oxygen. The plane I made can make orbit with fuel to spare. In theory I could use it to fly to a space station in orbit, or go rendezvous and dock with some other vehicle in orbit. But I do not have a mission in mind for that.
For the heck of it, I decided to fly it to the Mun. That's the name of Kerbin's largest moon, Mun. So I gave it some landing legs for a vertical landing, and extendable ladders. Most importantly, I built a rocket under it to be able to get it into Kerbin orbit, take it to the Mun, get it into orbit around the Mun, and de-orbit it almost all the way to landing before dropping the last stage so it could land upright by itself.
After lot of the usual trial and error with tests of a new launch vehicle for it, it ended up as a very capable vehicle. It might be able to fly to Duna, the game's equivalent to Mars, but it would never be able to get back (Duna's air is too thin for the wings to be of much use for a safe landing and it has no oxygen for the engine to use in jet mode so it might be able to land vertically on rocket power but never get back).
With the performance being far more than needed, I could have given the final transfer stage about half the fuel capacity for a Mun trip, using a smaller tank. But that's OK, that leaves some room for future capabilities. Such as giving that transfer stage, and spaceplane, the capability for docking, so some future mission could get into orbit around the Mun, the spaceplane undock, land itself, take off, dock with the transfer stage, then fly to Minmus (another moon that is in a bit higher orbit, with a bit less gravity), transfer fuel from the transfer stage to the Spaceplane, undock the spaceplane, land on Minmus, take off, dock with the transfer stage, and fly back to Kerbin. Maybe the transfer stage would not have enough fuel to do that .but it could have more fuel tankage added .thanks to the launch vehicle having a lot of performance.
Of course if I wanted to go to both of those moons, the gimmick of the spaceplane that does not use that great engine in jet mode, and not use the wings, until getting back to Kerbin's atmosphere, is not really worth it. So I'd swap out the Spaceplane with a more efficient lander, maybe one carrying two or three crew members rather than just the one. And actually in the past I tested out my favorite lander design (Synchronicity) by doing a mission to Minmus and then to the Mun, then back to Kerbin. But that lander dropped tanks and engines along the way, no Apollo-like orbital re-docking with a transfer stage.
Anyway, back to this new launch vehicle. The main core stage uses 5 liquid engines, the lower part of its tank is orange (I could have used one big engine, but the big engine is not as efficient as the ISP of the 5 clustered engines I used). It has two liquid fueled boosters, which also have an orange tank as part of it, plus some big fins to make it aerodynamically stable due to the plane's wings on top. The liquid boosters have 5 engines in the bottom plus 2 more on the sides. The main core has fuel lines running from the outer booster tanks so that the main core can use fuel from those tanks and not use any core fuel until the side booster tanks run dry.
It also uses two big SRB's, which are black and white. Their thrust level is so high that the whole vehicle does not need for the center core engines to ignite at launch. So only the SRB's and outer liquid boosters burn for launch. And after it gets moving fast enough, the liquid booster engines are throttled down to optimize efficiency, so as not to exceed terminal velocity.
The SRB's burn out 52 seconds into the flight, at 6.5 kilometers (Kerbin is smaller than Earth, and it's atmosphere extends only to 70 km) They are jettisoned and separation rockets help push them away to avoid colliding with the core. They also deploy parachutes and landing legs, so they can land back at KSC (Kerbal Space Center) for re-use.
Also when the SRB's burn out, the center core's 5 engines ignite and use fuel from the outer liquid booster tanks.
The vehicle begins to curve from vertical to begin to increase the horizontal velocity, at 10 km up. This is another basic part of flying into space, and learning the tradeoffs of the right kind of curving path to fly to get into orbit the most efficiently. So that either you have more Delta-Vee left to use once you make orbit, or in the case of a marginal rocket to make orbit at all. If you have a rocket that has 104% of the Delta-Vee to make orbit, and you fly it inefficiently so that it wastes 6% of its fuel, you're not going to make orbit.
So, this rocket curves more and more as it gains altitude, the air gets thinner, so it is more efficient to fly at shallower angles to increase horizontal velocity. Along the way, the liquid boosters run out of fuel and separate, at 2:20 and 41 km up.
Eventually when its Apoapsis (apogee) is projected to be at the desired orbital altitude of 100 km, the engines are shut down. For this one it is 3:16 into the flight, at 74 km. Then it coasts until it is nearly at Apoapsis of 100 km, coasting a sub-orbital arc. . Shortly before apoapsis, before it stops coasting up and starts to fall down, it is aimed horizontally and the engines fireat 4:28, 98 km up. The firing is to increase the horizontal velocity, to stretch that sub-orbital arc into an full circle that is larger than the diameter of the planet, plus atmospheric height, so it will reach orbit. Of course that is not just for this ship, or this game, it's true for anything going into orbit, it needs a final burn of some type, but the path used varies a lot depending on the vehicle.
Burnout at 6:00, in this case an orbit of 101 km by 98.9 km.
With the vehicle finally in orbit, the core still has LOTS of fuel in it, a bit over half. That is enough fuel left in the main core to send the vehicle from Kerbin to the Mun, and retro burn to begin to get into orbit around the Mun before that stage runs out of fuel.
I'm leaving out the orbital mechanics part of how to actually get to the Mun, just covering the vehicle. Once the core runs out of fuel, it has put the vehicle into an elliptical orbit around the Mun. It is jettisoned, and the transfer stage takes over.
The transfer stage has a nuclear engine in it (NERVA-like), with an ISP of 800, more than double the best conventional liquid engines in the game. If I were trying to build a more efficient rocket, I would have reduced the fuel in the core stage and given the transfer stage more fuel, so that the more efficient nuclear engine could do the work of getting from low Kerbin orbit to the Mun. And indeed some of my better launch vehicles often have very little fuel left in the stage that gets the vehicle into orbit, then is jettisoned (I sometimes fire the engine in a jettisoned stage to make it de-orbit, it does not take much to "nudge" the orbit enough to cause it to dip into the atmosphere.
Sometimes a stage with nuclear engines is fired before reaching orbit. It is the most efficient, but the nuclear engines have very low thrust, part of the tradeoffs. So if the stage with nuclear engines takes over with a LOT more velocity needed achieve to be able to make orbit, it is not going to accelerate fast enough to reach orbit before it begins to fall back into the atmosphere. Possible solution, add more nuclear engines, for more thrust. But the engines are VERY heavy for the amount of thrust they produce, so it is not worth adding more nuclear engines just for the sake of trying to reach orbital velocity soon enough (as far as radiation, well, uh, the Kerbals apparently have no problem with radiation. Though I know a few players who design their ships in a way to minimize radiation effects, of their own choice).
OK, so, back to the Mun, the Spaceplane with nuclear powered transfer stage. The engine fires to change the orbit from elliptical to circular, at an altitude of about 10 km. A landing site is chosen and the nuclear engine fires to begin the decent, much like the Lunar module of Apollo. It slows the horizontal velocity, and the ship begins to descend at more and more of an angle. Eventually it is almost vertical, less than a kilometer above the surface. The transfer stage is not built to be able to land, it has no legs (though it could have). So, it is being used as a "crasher" stage, like the Russians were going to do with their N-1 rocket Lunar Lander, use the crasher stage to retrofire nearly all the way down, then jettison it to crash when close to the surface so the lander only has a short time and distance that it needs to burn its engine to land.
The Spaceplane is on its own now, firing its engine for the last few hundred meters and the landing legs are deployed. It lands slowly, fortunately on a reasonably level surface.
The engine shuts down and it's safely on the Mun. The Kerbonaut onboard has the ladders deploy, climbs out of the ship and down the ladders to set foot on the Mun. He plants a flag to show "been here, done this" , smiling for a photo taken by means unknown, and then gets back aboard.
He plans out the new launch flight path and takes off. With no atmosphere, it does not need to go very high to get into orbit, 10 km is plenty. And once it gets a bit of initial upward velocity, it can be pointed horizontally the rest of the way. it almost looks like it is "flying" like a plane across the Mun, but the wings are not doing anything since there is no atmosphere.
Once in circular orbit at 10 km, he waits for the orbit to be at the right point for do a burn to return to Kerbin. He fires the engine to accelerate from the Mun, but the position of the Mun's orbit he is in will also mean that the ship is in effect doing a retro burn relative to Kerbin. The end result is an elliptical orbit that dips down to a very low Periapsis, that is almost into the atmosphere of Kerbin.
He does a tweak burn that will cause the Periapsis to be about 40 kilometer above Kerbin's surface, 30 kilometers inside the atmosphere, Fuel is getting low, at least the liquid oxygen portion is, there is not a lot left for firing the engine in rocket mode in space. The Spaceplane will do an aerobrake maneuver, slowing it down but skipping back out of the atmosphere so that it the next Apoapsis will be only a few hundred km above Kerbin. He does a tweak burn to make the apoapsis a little bit closer to Kerbin, so the apoasis after the aerobrake will be about 180 km. Then he sits back and waits to coast back to Kerbin, and finally into the atmosphere on the night side. During the peak of the aerobraking, the plane glows orange-hot, then skips out of the atmosphere, to coast to a apoapsis of 180 km.
If he does nothing, the plane will re-enter and land a couple of thousand km short of KSC. So at apoapsis he does a burn to raise the periapsis to above 70 km so the plane can get into an orbit. It does. Then he finally makes a retro burn to bring the plane into KSC. But the oxygen tank runs out a bit short, the plane will overshoot KSC by 20 km, over the ocean. The space plane does not have a parachute (there is a mod one can add that let Kerbals have a parachute), and won't ditch safely in water.
But, the plane does have wings, that was the reason to have them. But it is so high, and it cannot get a big enough "bite" into the atmosphere to do "S" turns like the shuttle did, that it can't shorten the distance it flies until it has gotten down to about 10-12 km up. So, it overshoots KSC.
It finally is in enough atmosphere to turn around and glide back. But now it is too low to glide back. Well, I said it had run out of . oxygen. But it still has a reserve of fuel which the engine can burn in jet mode. PLENTY of fuel for jet mode. It only needs about 5% throttle to hold the right descent slope to make it to KSC.
Hmm, some weird object flew past a minute ago, what was that? And then, holy .. the right forward leading edge of the wing has come off .and now I realize the object from a minute ago was the left front leading edge!
Well, this RARELY happens but I was doing a lot of saves and playing it over a few days. So, those parts . fell off, at almost the worst time coming in to land. Without them, the Center of Pressure is more to the rear, so the plane wants to dive. I have to keep using a lot of up elevator. I can't adjust the pitch trim (It is possible but I so rarely need to and it has been so long that I forgot what key combo to use), so I just fly it anyway. It's a close call but it does land safely on the KSC runway.
So, the mission completed safely. The Spaceplane will need some repairs but is reusable. And the SRB's are waiting to be retrieved and refurbished.
Of course I didn't put hundreds of dollars into that mission, so I guess it was meaningless? Nope, way more meaningful than throwing away a few hundred dollars in Vegas. It was fun, and challenging. Of course I ended up doing things that a person does not know how to do when they first start to play KSP. But it's not that hard to learn. Of course, I also chose what I wanted to do, for various reasons (in this case, a silly premise of a winged spaceplane to a moon, then seriously doing it). That's part of what makes it so interesting since there are so many things to try.
There is almost no "wrong" way to do it. Except for when I see people just crash and crash them pretty much on purpose with crew onboard. That's disturbing. Yes, its only a game, no "REAL Kerbals" are killed playing the game. But good grief, the ships can be unmanned (unKerbaled) if someone just wants to do a bunch of wild stuff that crashes and blows up rather than actually trying to learn how to make the rockets fly right. And i've made my share of crazy rockets, and have "killed" many many crews, but never any crewed ship crashed on purpose.
I have posted more images on this vehicle's mission here: https://imgur.com/a/9vq1f#0
Also, there are imgur albums for some of my other missions and vehicles at these links:
Eve & Gilly mission: https://imgur.com/a/TVAVI
Moho missoon: https://imgur.com/a/gXObE
Eeloo mission: https://imgur.com/a/0PKto
Various KSP rockets on these other albums:
https://imgur.com/a/qKn5u
https://imgur.com/a/y1RSc
https://imgur.com/a/gBTLn
Also,. I highly recommend Sport Rocketry Editor Tom Beach's KSP reports:
https://www.mindspring.com/~sportrocketry/ksp/
And there are bunches of KSP youtube videos by Scott Manley:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?an...tdEmqpOkQZCl5SZB5t0vXuxE0&src_vid=tgPr4q5tj-Q
- George Gassaway
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