Zeiss Ikon

Really? You don't think the Doomsday Device, the Mugato, or the Gamesters of Triskellion qualified as monsters (and never mind Nomad)? What about Charlie? Or Landru? Like all TV SF of the 1960s, it was pretty much "monster of the week" -- the thing that made Star Trek different was that the "monster" was often a human, and sometimes (often?) turned out to be just misunderstood, mistaken, or salvageable. Thanks, it looks pretty much the way it has to look to fly correctly. I haven't tested, but the fins might be optional by this time (3 degrees of thrust vector isn't much, but a rocket this long doesn't get out of line quickly).

As the program progresses, the vehicles go higher, faster, and heavier -- and eventually, if "faster" is in the correct direction, they just stay up there. Meet Diana Mk. 1. Named after the huntress of ancient myth, whose bow appears as the thin crescent moon a couple days each side of the new. A pair of RD-103 boosters (1 minute burn), air-started RD-103 core (shortened tank, ~1:50 burn), kerosene nitric acid third stage (copy of the Wasserfall missile engine, from the Forgotten Real Engines mod, I believe), and two AJ10-27 unguided upper stages (the final one launched with only a partial tank of fuel, to adjust dV for the very light payload on the initial launch -- and needed an early shutdown even so to avoid an excessive apogee height). https://www.dropbox.com/s/0b6tc97ynenv2nl/Diana Mk_ 1.craft?dl=0

Obviously, the propellant couldn't be pumped out because it was frozen! Oh, wait, not that kind of cryogenic engines?

(1.6.1, RSS/RO/RP-1) Test Flight makes the early space program more realistic -- look up old video of the "fun" the American military and NACA (not yet NASA at the time) had with early launchers, and then multiply that by the number of failures the Soviets covered up (there was a very good reason they generally only announced early launches after success) -- failing to develop thrust to actually lift, turning pinwheels at low altitude, and various other stunts that had been largely forgotten due to the very high reliability of modern rockets (we were reminded of this over the past few years, with in-flight and pad failures of Falcon 9 and other launchers -- which made headlines because such failures are so rare today). Even with "maximum flight data", however, the old alcohol-burning engines were less reliable than modern restartable kerolox designs -- and if playing an RP-1 career at a difficulty level that precludes reverts, a couple consecutive engine failures can sink a program, driving it into bankruptcy from the combination of destroyed flight hardware, potential damaged to launch facilities, and contract failures (with accompanying funds penalties). Fortunately for my sanity, I'm currently playing on "Easy" mode. Because by the time I got Diana Mk. 1 into orbit, I'd had at least fifteen engine failures, ranging from failures to ignite the RD-103 booster on the pad, to core ignition failure at 15 km and near Mach 2, even to a solid separation motor exploding on ignition (never seen that before, despite playing with a couple versions of Test Flight for a combined total of well over a hundred launches). Diana was a huntress in ancient myth, whose bow was set in the heavens as the crescent moon. Her name was chosen for this save's first orbital launcher because the intention of the project was to give the Earth a "new moon". Complete launch album here. Any resemblance to a Star Trek: TOS episode "monster" is completely unintentional.

Mechjeb is constantly under construction, as it were. The version I have in my 1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1 has a notification in Ascent Guidance that one of the options is out of service. Fortunately, I've never used g-limit, haven't even used MechJeb with a rocket that had throttling engines. Point being, MechJeb is a large mod that has a lot of code behind it, and it's created and maintained by game players and enthusiasts -- like us! -- who don't get paid for their efforts. The landing function will probably get fixed -- but your guess is as good as mine as to when.

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) No new photos, everything was done in simulation, but I can now confirm that my current career will become orbital NET (to use a SpaceX term) end of 1959. Darned rockets have a build time longer than a year, might need to buy some upgrade points with part of the contract advance.

(1.6.1, RSS/RO/RP-1) Working through my second career attempt in the 1.6.1 RSS/RO install. Things are going a bit better; it's only 1956, and I've got Tank III upgrade in hand, as well as the same engines I had last attempt as of 1959. I won't make orbit in 1957, but likely will before 1959, which I find acceptable (we still apparently can't change the start date -- WAC Corporal was ready to fly in 1944 and Project Bumper ran from 1948 to 1951, which would have all the starting parts available in 1948). With an RD-103 and Tank III, you can do some good stuff. Javelin Mk. 4 is the RD-103 upgrade of the original RD-100 Javelin. Ethanol 90 has replaced Ethanol 75 (so more energy per mass of fuel), and Tank II, followed by Tank III upgrades have lightened the tank that forms the main fuselage. Lightening the vessel allowed slightly reducing the size and mass of the avionics package, as well, which added another small increment to dV, now above 5000 m/s vac dV on the pad with a payload about 2/3 maximum. The original Javelin could launch a mid-range payload plus a bus of science experiments to around 200 km; this one can launch the exact same payload and instruments above 800 km, or about 1200 km downrange. I'll put the rest of the pictures from this mission in a spoiler.

I wonder about this -- I clearly recall back in 1.4.1 I was able to make a Minmus landing, in the dark, with a lander on which I'd neglected to install floodlights, by watching the navball (for attitude) and the dim, faint spot of light on the surface from the lander engine. Now, this wasn't the all-illuminating flare of a kerolox flame, but there was light, which I took to be the glow of the combustion chamber cast through the nozzle throat. It was about what I'd have expected for a hypergolic fuel set like a hydrazine derivative and a nitric acid derivative (MMH/N2O4, for instance) -- the same mix the LEM descent engine used (though in fact a bit dimmer).

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) No new photos, I'm afraid. I started a new career last weekend after concluding that a) I wasn't going to get to orbit with the engines available, short of building a 1940s-style monstrosity with a cluster of RD-103 that I'd never get to all ignite, and b) useful kerosene engines were still years out, as were the other enabling technologies. The new career had a change in settings, returning to the old style "upgrade points from tech tree" (instead of getting an upgrade point every 20 science -- which makes it much, much harder to get upgrades early on, with few instruments and rockets that can't reach many biomes). I understand the perceived need to rebalance RP-1 for advanced players, as it was "too easy" to significantly beat the historical timelines (i.e. players able to complete crewed orbit missions as early as 1956 with "Hard" settings), hence the change in upgrade earning and current recommendation that newer players start off playing on "easy". Worth remembering however, that some of us, despite a desire to play with real performance and actual Earth parameters, aren't experts in managing the game. I can build an orbital rocket with RD-100 series alcohol burning engines, if I have the other tech needed (RCS with at least HTP propellant, appropriate avionics, adequate tracking center capability), but when I look at the Tech build list and add up the times and get a figure exceeding ten years to get to the equivalent of Mercury program tech, and it's already 1959, and I still can't reach biomes I haven't already exhausted with the instruments available, it loses a lot of "fun" factor. "Upgrades from Tech Tree" adds a bunch of upgrades to the early game, as those first dozen or so tech nodes cost less than 5 science each, and each brings an upgrade point. The relative abundance of upgrades then makes it "easier" to put some of those into R&D which helps get the tech sooner (otherwise, build times get so long that by the time you need a 60T launch pad you're looking at six months to get a rocket from order to launch, which makes it a hard decision to put the few upgrades you gain or can afford into anything other than VAB).

Hmm. I still think you're going to have trouble with engine failures from overburning; I've never gotten a WAC/Tiny Tim above 120 km, as I recall, and that was building to the 305 mm diameter of the WAC sounding rocket controller -- most recent save (1.6.1) I built to the 375 mm diameter of the Aerobee controller; that way, I don't wind up with a rocket ten meters long including nose cone, payload tank, and fuel tanks, by the time I get the AJ10-27 upgrade. The "Fat WAC" (internally "Dart" -- sounding rockets are named after primitive missiles, with the RD-100 series named "Javelin") is good for about 90 km with a modest overburn. it doesn't, however, have the very long, slender nose cone and it's almost double the frontal area... I don't even spin this one -- completely unnecessary. Even upgraded versions that can get into true space are so steady by the time the fins quit working that they just keep pointing up until the fins start turning them over at around 70 km altitude on the way down.

Not sure what tutorial you're referring to -- and I never went through the tutorials anyway -- in the base game I jumped right in after finding instructions for making orbit in the demo, and when I came over to RP-1 I started right off with WAC Corporal, A-4, and Bumper (I was familiar with those rockets fifty-plus years ago). The trick with a Tiny Tim is to hot stage the sustainer -- I think it was Nathan Kell who I saw starting the booster, and sustainer and releasing the launch clamp simultaneously. Only 2.6 seconds until you need to stage, the sustainer takes a third of that to come up to thrust, and if the WAC Corporal is already burning, you won't have a big deceleration from air drag after burnout, so you can stage a few tenths of a second late without a shutdown (stage early and you'll still have trouble). Of course, when you make a Bumper (WAC Corporal on top of an A-4) you'll have to manage ullage differently. Lots of options there. I'm surprised your sustainer doesn't tumble anyway, without fins -- you must have hit just the right spin rate. Too slow, and the aero forces on the nose will push it over (and the angular momentum will produce a flat spin); too fast and the engine will shut down because the propellants fall to the outer surface of the tank and don't cover the feed lines.

You probably want to put some kind of fins on that thing. Otherwise, it'll be prone to tumble after MECO. 'doh! Just realized that's a WAC Corporal engine. Screenshot froze the spin...

If you have more than one installation of KSP, you can tell CKAN where your installs are, and (optionally) which one to connect to as a default on start. If you don't set a default, CKAN will ask which install to look at each time you start it, and even if you do, you can still switch from one to another with a few clicks.

I wonder if something hasn't changed in FAR. I've got a 1.3.1 RSS/RO (FAR is part of RO) save in which I've made several airplanes that, while not long-term hands-off stable, could be flown for long periods using only the trim controls (if I could ever get them off the terribly bumpy RSS runway). Now, in a new 1.6.1 RSS/RO game (with a much smoother runway, thanks to a mod I either didn't know about or didn't exist when I set up my 1.3.1 RSS/RO install), I haven't been able to build anything that would rotate for liftoff at a reasonable speed. For instance, I've got a replica of a Beechcraft Bonanza -- Bonanza cabin, IO-550 engine, correct-looking wing, tricycle retracts, absolute minimum stability margin -- even the V tail (made with all-moving surfaces, not those wimpy little fin-and-surface things the real Bonanza used) -- and while the RL Bonanza can rotate and lift off at under 40 m/s at maximum gross, mine, even with only a single pilot and half fuel, won't even rotate at 60 m/s. Now, I've heard Nathan Kell, on video, say that RP-1 is more about rockets than airplanes, but still, there are all those X-plane contracts, and a plane I can land and park, and refuel and relaunch without having to build it again, would let me grind a bunch of those while waiting for the new, slower rocket build times to complete (and the Bonanza, at least, took a LOT less time to build than even a fairly simple rocket). So, something seems to have changed in FAR between, roughly, eighteen months ago when i installed RSS/RO the first time on 1.3.1, and 3-4 weeks ago when I installed 1.6.1 RSS/RO. Either that, or I completely forgot how airplanes work in the year I was away from the game (unlikely, since I built then and build now on the assumption that if it looks like a real airplane, it ought to fly more or less like one -- and it worked then).

Realistic Progression 1 -- the career mode/tech tree for Realism Overhaul. https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0 The links call it RP-0, but internally it's been RP-1 for a year or more. Contracts are compatible with real space program progression, from sounding rockets and basic aviation up to exploring the Real Solar System.

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) I spent a lot of time trying to design a rocket that could put a minimum payload into orbit with the available and affordable hardware. Please note that I do not yet have any kerosene engines except the s2.253 (Russian copy of the Wasserfall missile engine, kerosene/nitric acid) and a number of vastly overpriced kerosene/HTP procedural engines (I still don't fully understand the procedural engines, but I know overpriced when I see it). As things stand now, Little Moon (I told you, my program can't spare brain power to name routine contract mission rocket, but manned craft and the first orbital launcher get names) has been as high as 9400 m/s vacuum dV in the VAB -- which would almost do the job -- but with no guidance after booster MECO (too high for the fins to do much by then), and a coast phase before second stage ignition, getting anything like a horizontal start for the second and third stages is more a matter of luck than planning. The backflip during coast phase of simulations is interesting, but not really desirable. I did fly a crewed suborbital contract with Tricycle Blk. 2 (all crewed suborbital rockets are Tricycles). On the pad (a simulation, hence the different lighting from the next shot). Launching south to try to fly Jeb over some biomes he and Val haven't already reported from on Blk. 1 flights. After stage separation, there's a lengthy coast phase, during which the decoupler impulse has time to produce some separation. The booster and second stage can push the vessel well above 4000 m/s, more than 3000 m/s horizontal component. Unfortunately, simulations showed that the capsule will burn up completely at that speed (so much for the sacrificial heat sink ballast), so Jeb was convinced (after seeing the simulations burn up four times) to use the second stage to slow down. The second stage has almost enough dV to bring the vessel to a dead stop in space -- horizontal velocity here was below 100 m/s, despite being above 1500 at booster MECO. The vehicle is oriented to "SVEL-" using Smart A.S.S. guidance, and is near vertical, almost a minute past apogee. There are a dozen 90 N peroxide thrusters on the base of that cockpit, plus four RCS quads at 19 N each. As I figure it, that's 1156 N of thrust on less than half a tonne of capsule -- but the game reports it as .01 G acceleration. Ought to be about ten times that, by my math. None the less, it does nothing to slow the capsule down, just reduces the rate at which it acclerates as it falls. Nor does it keep the base tank (containing that 170 kg of lead ballast plus 134 L of HTP additional to the cockpit's 100 L internal tankage) from coming apart under aero loads near max-Q, allowing the capsule to reorient to its unballasted nose-first stable position, where Jeb gets to watch to ocean come at his face while he hangs from the harness straps at 10+ G. Fortunately, the parachutes held. Deployment is set low to allow maximum deceleration of the capsule (below about 20 km, the capsule decelerates as it falls due to the air getting thicker -- the lower you can open the 'chutes, the better chance they have of staying attached). Here's an early concept for Little Moon. This is the one that does a backflip during its coast phase (because fins aren't much good above 60 km, just about enough to lift the nose after spending the last fifteen seconds before MECO boosting horizontal to avoid raising apogee further). No doubt MechJeb could do it better, but MechJeb doesn't handle coast phases, last I looked.

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) I've reached that point in the career where sounding rocket contracts no longer pay enough to continue developing the larger and more expensive rockets required to launch heavier and heavier payloads to higher and higher altitudes (or farther and farther downrange). It's time for heroes to step up. Fortunately, I was wrong about Jeb, Val, Bill and Bob retiring. Apparently they don't retire in "Easy" settings. That's good, I'd have hated to try to hire a new astronaut on the budget I had available. Speaking of budget, this looks like an old 1.5m sounding rocket with a cockpit added. That's because it is an OLD sounding rocket with a cockpit added. Specifically, it uses the A-4 engine, the oldest and best-researched large engine in the inventory. A cockpit with a pilot is a pretty light payload, and this old booster is perfectly adequate to send it far higher than we need to go at this point. Everything possible, within the available technology, has been done to ensure the pilot's safety; the entire cockpit decouples from the booster, and can do so under boost any time before the last few seconds of thrust (when the acceleration climbs above what the separation motors can provide). The single small motor on the side ensures that an abort clears the booster, which would otherwise overhaul the cockpit because of its much higher sectional density. The entire cockpit is lowered to the sea or land with a redundant parachute system -- either parachute can provide a safe descent rate (though pilot comfort on landing is much improved if both are fully deployed). The cockpit has independent RCS control with 100 liters of HTP for the thrusters (far more than the most profligate pilot can reasonably expend during a suborbital flight). The intent was to reenter base first, to decelerate faster and limit heating (uncomfortable for the pilot, but safe as long as the time at high G loads is limited) -- however, without base ballast, the conical shape is point-first stable at high speeds and the RCS doesn't have enough authority to override aerodynamic forces. This gives the pilot an excellent view of the reentry, if rather uncomfortable as he/she hangs from the safety harness during the high G loads. The next version will incorporate appr. 170 kg of lead ballast in the base, which will allow base-first reentry as well as potentially acting as a sacrificial heat sink/shield. Thrusters have also been added to allow greater use of the HTP propellant to slightly reduce velocity and lighten the craft. R&D is working on better solutions for reentry heating, but it'll be years before they bear fruit. And here's the next step. A significantly upgraded booster engine (RD-103) and a modest second stage (2x AJ10-27). This has more than half the delta-V required to reach orbit, and is intended to verify the capsule's ability to reenter at higher speeds and shallower angles. Replacing the capsule with a sounding payload will permit fulfilling some contracts that required much larger rockets. Unfortunately, this vessel or an earlier prototype seems to have triggered a bug in my install -- I attempted to use the S2.253 engine (a copy of the one from the Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile -- like a miniature A-4 with tiny wings -- converted to burn kerosene and nitric acid) for a second stage, and every time I'd get the engine mounted to a tank and centered, it became invisible. A new engine from the parts bin would show its Test Flight tag (but not the engine itself) as I drag it around the VAB, but i could neither see nor click the installed engine. This was 100% reproducible, simply by selecting and installing one of these engines (quitting to main menu and reloading the saved game would temporarily bring back the model). After several iterations of this, trying to see if there was a way to work around the bug, the lights went out in the VAB -- clicking "new" and then leaving and reentering the VAB would let me see the bay and out the door to the launch pad, but as soon as I'd load that craft, the view would go black (UI visible, but not the construction bay). I abandoned that engine, built the Tricycle Blk. 2 with AJ10-27 engines for the second stage, and all seemed well -- until I tried to do a KRASH sim launch. Then the sun went out. The launch pad with UI would load, but with everything dark. I could see Val in the pilot view window, barely, and mousing over would highlight parts of the rocket, but the view itself was as dark as the blackest night (darker -- no stars in the sky). Nor could I launch anyway; I couldn't activate SAS nor throttle up, and staging would not function. That was where I stopped for the evening. Hopefully, a full game close and restart will have fixed this; otherwise, I'll have to salvage my craft files and start a new career... Edit: the bug(s) must have just been due to having the game open too long; after a shutdown for the night and reopening the next day, not only were the lights back on, the S2.253 engine would install and, at least within the VAB, function correctly.

There have been a number of upgrades on the 1.5m platform since last post. I abandoned the A-4 engine with its Ethanol 75/LOX (in the face of its A-9 upgrade to Hydyne/LOX) for the RD-100 sequence; I'm currently using the RD-101 (Ethanol 90/LOX) because the RD-102 has barely more thrust and a slightly shorter rated burn time, i.e. it's no extra performance but at a higher price -- and I can't afford the RD-103 upgrade yet (not sure it's a significant improvement, either, and I've got the Redstone's engine with its Hydyne upgrade path on the way). Meanwhile, we all know that if you put a small rocket on top of a larger one, and stage at MECO, you add their burnout velocities instead of their altitudes, and your altitude gets LOTS higher (Project Bumper, 1949-1951). Here's this career's take on that. Early film camera to 800+ km, even when angled off by around 5 degrees early in the booster burn. This camera payload was recovered between the Florida Keys and Cuba (launched from Canaveral, of course). https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0yw0k3uypo5pgm/SR-2b-RD1-fc.craft?dl=0

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) Last night, I launched this. First vessel in this career that genuinely needed the upgraded launch pad. Fortunately, I built a second pad a while back and built it for 60T vessels from the start. Those with sharp eyes will notice the date in early 1957. By the time this rocket is ready to launch and rolled out, it'll be early 1958; Jeb, Bill, and Bob will have retired and Val will be getting short. They haven't flown, in part because I can't seem to build an airplane that will fly in this career, and in part because a cockpit that would let me send crew up on a rocket only became available while this rocket was under construction. I still have no kerosene engines (okay, the Russian copy of the Wasserfall engine, burning kerosene and nitric acid, also became available during construction of SR-2b-RD1-f), and my past experience is that orbit, while possible, is very dependent on luck with Test Flight if you're flying with ethylox. The RD-101 is coming up to pressure. We'll have about 1.8 TWR at launch clamp release, and that, of course, will build up rapidly as propellant burns off. We'll be pulling close to 8 G just before MECO. The ethylox is spent, fairing away. Time to stage. We're around 55 km high at this point, roughly 1800 m/s. Good staging, ullage and spin motors three for three, opening propellant valves. Headed for 700+ km. Upper stage engine discarded. The decoupler provides that last little bit of impulse, good for 20-30 km additional apogee height if done immediately at SECO -- and the payload will burn up on reentry if we try to keep the engine and tanks. As it is, the film camera, with parachute and sounding rocket core, will pull close to 25 G during reentry, slowing from 2000 m/s to 200 m/s in a few short seconds -- but everything holds together, at least until we go a little higher. This payload was recovered a little closer to Cuba than to the Florida Keys.

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) Don't try this at home. This should actually be SR-1c-Nike -- it's a C-model sustainer, with AJ10-27, not a B with XASR-11. The Nike booster is WAY too much -- this thing is about Mach 1.7 in the 4 seconds or so of the booster burn, and if staging isn't precise to a tenth of a second or so it'll either break up as the booster overruns the sustainer, or the sustainer motor will shut down when the drag of the booster causes deceleration leading to vapor in the feed lines (fuel and oxidizer fall to the front of the tanks, pickup pipes are at the rear). Cheap to fly, but maximum altitude with no payload is under 600 km, making it mostly a waste of money (especially given the upper stage will flame out about 4 attempts in 5 because it's almost impossible to stage precisely enough). This booster gets the sustainer going fast enough, low enough, for the (B9 Procedural Wing, Early) fins on the sustainer to start to overheat just before it gets high enough for them to cool off again. In my 1.3.1 RSS/RO/RP-1 saves, I'd have had the fins burning off at around 13-15 km altitude...

I was just thinking about this today, as I was helping a co-worker (who, at 70, isn't the most computer literate person) get a bookmark from his IE into his Chrome, one that got missed in the wholesale import when we got him to start using Chrome. Thinking about how nobody should still be running any version of IE, and there's no good reason to do so as more and more web sites are no longer serving non-standards-compliant code specific to IE. We're on Windows 10, in theory (running in a virtual machine hundreds of miles away, accessed by graphics terminal), and they've already turned our email over to MS by putting us on Outlook Web App (resulting in three interface changes in the past year -- that in itself must be a support nightmare). So why wouldn't they dump IE and switch everyone to either Chrome (which we have an an option, at present) or Edge (which I might have used, once, as it's on my laptop's Windows, which I hardly use)? The only reason I can come up with IT inertia.

IT organizations have a hard time of it when it comes to upgrades. They have to test everything they support internally against the new version, and make it work (by hook or by crook). It's often the case that they'll put off upgrading as long as they can because of this, and large organizations have been known to pay out large fees to software vendors to continue some level of support for another year or two.

I'd seen assorted random YouTube videos -- this was around four years ago, so most of the videos were based on 1.1.3 or 1.2.2 -- and then I heard there was a free demo. Ho hum, I run Linux, not Windows (i didn't know then that the game was available in Linux native version, but I knew the demo was Windows). Then i found instructions on getting the demo to run in Linux (well behaved program, easy setup). I tried it, instructions handy on how to build a rocket in demo that could reach orbit. I bought the game the next payday (fortuitously, it had gone on special, so I paid half the then-current price). Far and away the most entertainment I've ever gotten for fourteen bucks (plus another sixteen or so for the Making History DLC -- still have to buy Breaking Ground).

I've recently installed RSS/RO/RP-1in 1.6.1, and flown a few missions. First up was a basic sounding rocket (as is generally the case). I was pretty pleased with the increased performance over a similar setup based on 1.3.1 (though there is the annoying parts bin graphics bug in 1.6.1, I may try an install on 1.7.3 based on reading a couple folks who said it works the same). For lifting heavier loads and flying higher (it's based on a rocket that could kick 700+ kg above 200 km on the way to a 200 km ground target, after all), there's this (it's been improved and upgraded several times since this image was made). This version had a stability problem after MECO (apparently it needed the 3 degree gimbal to keep the nose pointed straight). Current version has the fins offset down onto the engine shroud. Newer versions, with RD-102 and AJ10-27 spin stabilized upper stage can throw 360 units of sounding payload, biological sample capsule, barometer and thermometer, plus two parachutes and a sounding rocket telemetry unit, well above 400 km. Unfortunately, when it's been that high, it burns up on reentry. need to work on that... Craft files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jcjylxy3z08rsgy/SR-1.craft?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dxquzafnhxrwqae/SR-2.craft?dl=0 (updated, current version)

(1.6.1, RSS/RO RP-1) I had a sounding rocket contract that I could fill with the early, small hypergolic vehicle, so I remembered to get some screen shots. The sustainer is actually already started (has to be, so it has stable propellants during the half second or more it takes to come up to thrust). Due to the startup lag, however, you can't yet see the plume. In this configuration, with empty payload bay, this rocket is good for about 96 km. A fraction of a second after staging, the sustainer has already pulled away from the booster and the engine is at full thrust. About a third of the way through the burn; the sustainer is supersonic. Either there was a parameter change in the B9 Procedural Wing (Early) part since I installed 1.3.1 RSS/RO, or I finally hit on a fin shape that doesn't heat as badly -- in any case, these fins don't even get thermometer bars when passing through the Max-Q region just below 20 km at around Mach 2. Two thirds of propellants consumed, bird is now around Mach 2 and nearing 20 km. Either there was a parameter change in the B9 Procedural Wing (Early) part since I installed 1.3.1 RSS/RO, or I finally hit on a fin shape that doesn't heat as badly -- in any case, these fins don't even get thermometer bars when passing through the Max-Q region. The very mild down side is that if I delete the payload section for a max altitude shot, the rocket is barely stable, but that configuration doesn't get flown much, since all the relevant contracts after the first couple are "X payload to Y km altitude". Halfway to the top. About two minutes after MECO, near 50 km. altitude. Nothing that depends on wings for lift flies this high, though there are balloons that can get here. They spend longer at altitude, but we're rapidly headed for their limits, and the next upgrade of this rocket (better engine, more thrust and longer burn, plus a better booster) will go well beyond the high altitude balloon realm into true space.