How Heavy Are The Payloads That You Can Lift?: A Mission Report

[Selective Genius]

CHAPTER 1: CRA~ZY DIAMOND

Gene stared at the folder on his desk. He had read it's contents, twice. The higher ups had ordered him to shift focus to reusable vehicles instead of expendable rockets.

"What an absolute mess." Gene sighed. "Mortimer would be liquided off. He won't get those gifts from Kerbodyne. I dont think he would stick around anymore. Kraken knows he has been getting offers from corporations all around Kerbin to join them."

"Don't worry about him. He may be a greedy leech, but he wont abandon ship." Wernher said. "You should worry more about the type of reusable vehicle you want to develop." The middle-aged, internationally acclaimed rocket scientist was flanked by his apprentice Linus, who looked like he would float out of the room given the first opportunity.

"It's not like we have a lot to choose from. It's either the Rocket Conglomerate's Two Stage to Orbit vehicle, or C7 Aerospace's SSTO spaceplane. We choose one, we are bound to anger the other." Gene whipped out two old folders from his desk. "You were at C7,a few years ago. Did you not work on a spaceplane?" He asked Linus

"Hmm wha? Oh yes, of course! The pizza bases, they are missing from the cafeteria. We have been eating only the toppings.... er... Umm sorry, I was not paying attention. What was the question again?"

"C7 Spaceplane. Can you work it out?" Gene tried his best to keep calm.

"Of course, of course! I have a 10 ton to Orbit SSTO designed and it has worked perfectly in computer simulations. But we still need to figure out the practical problems in a R.A.P.I.E.R Engine"

"Good. Wernher, we will pursue the SSTO route for smaller payloads, and the TSTO route for the larger ones."

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Thus, a SSTO was prepared with the objective to send light 10-12 ton of payloads to orbit. With the assistance of C7 Aerospace and the knowledge of Wernher Von Kerman, the dual mode R.A.P.I.E.R engine was perfected and was the main power-plant on the SSTO. It was projected that the savings from the SSTO in that payload market, even if not large, would still be enough to recompense the development and fabrication cost after 20 reflights.

After months of fabrication and quality control testing, the completed SSTO was rolled on to the runway for it's first developmental flight. Nicknamed 'Crazy Diamante', it's job today would be to fling a light 12 ton inert payload to orbit.

However, a minor embarassment happened on the runway in what seemed to be a minor bug in the computer program controlling the SSTO. Since the program was instructed to deploy drogue chute on 'landing', the program did so as soon as it came online and found  itself on the runway.

The bug was sorted out, and after the parachutes were repacked,  the test was started afresh. The 4 R.A.P.I.E.R engines roared to life and started pushing the craft on the runway

The SSTO soon picked up speed and was breaking Mach 2 without any issues whatsoever.

In the upper atmosphere the engines switched over to rocket mode and carried the craft to an apoapsis of 110 km. The ascent was very efficient, so the craft needed just 80 m/s to circularize.

The craft was safely in orbit, even though it had overshot it's intended apoapsis of 100 km. The Cargo bay doors opened and revealed a fuel tank with RCS and small deorbit engines.

"Wait a second! There's no electric charge on that payload! How are we going to get it out of the Cargo hold?" Linus exclaimed.

"Isn't it simple, all we need is a little nudge." Bob furrowed his eyebrows his concentration and took manual control of the SSTO.

"Nudge? What do you mean...." Linus felt true fear as he realized what was on Bob's mind."No NO NO NO NO Dont DO THAT!!!"

"Too late!" Bob pitched the SSTO just a little, nudging the tank out of the cargo bay. Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief when the tank was ejected without any further damage.

Someone is going to get fired for this oversight. Now we have a 12 ton heavy addition to LKO space debris. If it causes Kesslerization, that would truly be a sight to behold. Like a trainwreck. Terrifying but you can't take your eyes off it.

The craft swooped in flaming hot towards KSC, undershooting it a little, as planned. The lift from the wings of this flying brick did the necessary course corrections. After a few frantic last minutes maneuvers by Bob, who still had not given the control back to the autopilot lined up the SSTO for a decent runway landing. The parachutes were deployed as intended and slowed the craft down to a safe velocity.

Come to think of it, this is perhaps the first intentional runway landing of the space program. Most pilots would rather land on the grassy plains surrounding KSC.

The first test flight, with 12 tons of inert payload was completed and the SSTO aced the test with flying colors. The engineers figured out that 14 tons to LKO seemed very feasible. With further optimization, they were positive that payload capacity could be stretched to 15 tons.

"Sure, just like how they are positive that Fusion will be ready '20 years from today' for the last 40 years." Mortimer scoffed at the After Mission party. He was a staunch rocket supporter, and was only in the party for free snacks. Free snacks always taste better, no matter how rich you are. It's always more fulfilling stealing someone else's food, according to him.

"Boss, should I find my diamond pickaxe? It has some nice new enchantments." Linus asked a puzzled Werhner. "I need to mine this salt mine calling itself Mortimer Kerman."

"Don't be sassy with me! This was just plain stupid luck. If you did not have Bob at the controls, you would have failed." Mort huffed. "One more test flight, and this one will be completely autonomous! If you lose even a little bit of control of the craft, I am shutting you down!"

The rest watch Mort leave the party angry as heck, but not before he pocketed a few handful of snacks.

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Edited December 30, 2019 by Selective Genius