orbital launch from back of a plane?

[tjsnh]

Seeking advice;

I'd like to craft a mission profile to launch an orbital vehicle from the back of an aircraft. That part isn't especially difficult. However ...

Anyone know of any addons or something that can be done to prevent the plane from flying out of control and crashing while you are "focused" on the orbital vehicle, and the launch plane is still in the atmosphere?

[Kerbart]

It's not even the "out of control" part that is the problem. Even if you'd have an autopilot (and that's a big if), the moment your aircraft is outside the "physics bubble" (and with your spacecraft reaching orbital velocity, that will happen) it will cease to exist as it's inside the atmosphere on a suborbital trajectory, and that's how the game deals with such objects on rails.

[Spricigo]

 

[A_name]

On 17/9/2017 at 11:31 AM, Spricigo said:

 

 

This is the only real way to do it reliably.

[Vanamonde]

Modding question moved to the modding subforum. 

[Spricigo]

5 hours ago, A_name said:

This is the only real way to do it reliably.

Technicaly one can do it in stock.  But that requires the going suborbital then release the rocket, circularize and switch back to the plane before it disappeas. In other words: cool but impractical. 

[danielboro]

using stage recovery you can get the $ (and parts if you use scrapyard) of the aircraft back and pretend it landed

[A_name]

11 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Technicaly one can do it in stock.  But that requires the going suborbital then release the rocket, circularize and switch back to the plane before it disappeas. In other words: cool but impractical. 

But how reliable would that be, that was my point. You can definitely pull it off more often than not but it's not a solution.

[Spricigo]

5 hours ago, A_name said:

But how reliable would that be, that was my point. You can definitely pull it off more often than not but it's not a solution.

And I was not disagreeing. Technically it can be done in stock, but one need to design the aircraft to be almost an SSTO without all the convenience of a SSTO.

Still, maybe motivated by the rule of cool, that is a possibility. 

[ForScience6686]

17 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Technicaly one can do it in stock.  But that requires the going suborbital then release the rocket, circularize and switch back to the plane before it disappeas. In other words: cool but impractical. 

Not exactly, you don't have to reach orbit, just be on a high enough sub orbital path that you can land the plane before you start coming back down.

https://kerbalx.com/ForScience6686/Goose-x

[Spricigo]

10 hours ago, ForScience6686 said:

Not exactly, you don't have to reach orbit, just be on a high enough sub orbital path that you can land the plane before you start coming back down.

https://kerbalx.com/ForScience6686/Goose-x

You nitpick of my nitpick is correct.