Sounding Rockets

[Volt]

I recently made a suggestion in the KSP Development forum about Sounding Rockets, and rdfox and I decided to try and make some of our own. My result was this:

The HSSR Merlin I. (High speed sounding rocket.) It uses two clusters of 7 MiniBoosters along with 6 initial acceleration Radial solid boosters and can carry the currently oversized command pod to escape velocity easily. Seriously. It really is ridiculous:

If you fire the first stage and manage to decouple it safely while going straight up and flip over to 90 degrees, then control it long enough, it can reach over 800m/s straight across at <10,000 feet!

So, I put a challenge to my fellow Kerbonauts: Create your own \'sounding\' rockets, using just 0.5m parts and radial attachments (you will have to graft the pod on top using struts and mini decouplers for now) and post some pictures here of it in the VAB and in flight.

Recommended Mods:

MiniBoosters, Mini Winglets

Help! I can\'t find or remember the mods for these parts! Anyone got any input/links? If you have the mini winglets, recommend you mod the lift back down to 1 or 0.5 deflection lift. They start at 4 - far too overpowered.

Novasilisko\'s SIDR&SD

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=1109.0

I think most of us already have this pack, but all the same here it is. This pack contains a 0.5m decoupler which is very valuable for those of you who are too faint-hearted for fire in the hole. Or if you feel sorry for Bob and Bill.

Mini-Winglets

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=2205.msg20594#msg20594

Amazing for stabilisation when their lift coefficient is quartered from default. They\'re also fantastic for things like Air-to-ground missiles mounted under spaceplanes. I\'ve achieved extremely precise hits with these winglets and miniboosters.

WARNING: When you get the part, go into the \'part\' file and change DeflectionLift to 1.0 or lower! Don\'t say I didn\'t warn you!

CaptainSlug\'s Radial Boosters.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=1460.0

Damn useful pieces of kit for this purpose. Can add a bit of extra BANG to your crash. Ahem, I meant thrust to your rocket.

Quabits Parts

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=537.0

Contains a useful mini-liquid engine and mini-fuel tank kit. Don\'t ask me how to use the Advanced Decoupler.

[Tim_Barrett]

Usually souding rockets have some sort of equipment or instrument on them for expirements. On the top, try using two CaptainSlug\'s 1.75 Bulkhead parts, with something in the middle. I love these because you can attach things to the side of this wonder ring!

[Volt]

It would be rather difficult to launch anything that size on this kind of rocket and not have a major tumble almost immediately.

Also, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Brant.jpg

Even just the Command Pod is already wider than a standard sounding rocket. In fact, my craft is over size in terms of width as it is. But they most definitely don\'t have 1.75m ugly circle things carrying all their equipment. Miniaturization is one of the beauties of Aerospace technology.

[rdfox]

Yeah, sounding rockets are *tiny* little suckers. Though really, they\'re not intended for great downrange distances; their primary goal was getting up through the upper atmosphere and back. Here\'s the results (so far) of my sounding rocket program...

After my first two tries (involving my 'command pod as launch pad' concept) failed in various entertaining manners, I switched and put the command pod on top to allow manual flying.

The results were dramatic... and I think I managed to crack one of the mysteries of KSP! Specifically... what makes Bill happy? (Warning, MANY images behind spoiler tag, for those of you on dialup!)

The VK Sounding Rocket Mark 3 on the launch pad:

Launch was nominal, with the kickers on the pad holddown arms giving a good burst of initial acceleration to clear the flame pit.

Because I was concentrating on flight photography and letting Jeb and the SAS do most of the steering, we did have a *slight* attitude problem at first-stage burnout...

But after second stage ignition using 'fire in the hole' staging, the guidance corrected nicely and started returning the rocket to its planned vertical attitude.

Second stage burnout occurred at a slightly lower than planned altitude, due to the first-stage guidance error, but a slightly higher velocity.

Staging and third stage ignition (again, 'fire in the hole' style) proceeded nominally.

Third stage burnout occured at about 57km altitude and a peak velocity of just under 1200 m/s.

It was promptly followed by jettison of the third stage and the now-superfluous SAS module.

The first hint to my mystery: Bill started smiling the instant the first stage crashed.

Yet he was screaming in terror again well before apokee.

Hint #2: Bill grins after the second stage crashes.

While I didn\'t get a shot of it, he started screaming again just before apokee. However, immediately after apokee, he\'s grinning again.

Apokee for this mission was 158,197 meters.

G-loadings were also acceptable, at a peak of 4.1 during boost.

Peak G-loadings during entry were 8.9

So what do I get from this experiment? My guess is that Bill is smiling when A) G-loading is in the green arc, and all non-destroyed parts of the vehicle listed in the staging diagram are traveling in the same vertical direction. Notice how he was grinning when all the parts were still heading up, but screaming when a spent stage started to fall back to Kerbin.

I then flew a second mission, not trying to get boost photography, instead concentrating on manual control to fly as vertically as possible. The results were pretty good:

I acheived a higher apokee and top speed...

Albeit with entry G-loading spiking even higher, and still being above 2 when I deployed the parachute at 3000m altitude...

And the 'probe' landing within sight of the launch pad, for easy recovery.

If it\'s technically feasible (gonna check the Wiki and maybe the SDK about this) and I can get permission to use the mesh and texture, I may convert Oniontrain\'s 'suspicious-looking object' into a half-meter command pod for these, so we can have a nose 'instrument pack' that *looks* correct on top, too.

[Volt]

Indeed, if you can manage to make that work that would be great for our little hobby. The only real reason I used the two-seven cluster layout here, which has turned out to be rather overpowered, was because it had much more pretty-looking provisions for stability boosting. I reckon if I cut baggage, parachute, etc. and removed some struts it could probably leave the atmosphere on first/early second-stage.

[rdfox]

Hm. Can\'t find anything in the SDK or the Wiki that says the command pod has to be 1m base diameter, so I\'ll give it a whirl. I wonder if we could get Sunday Punch or NovaSilisko to make us a 0.5m-1m shroud decoupler, so we could use a 1m SRB as our first stage instead of a 0.5m cluster? (I seem to recall at least one sounding rocket having a fat first stage...)

[AstroAndrew]

Hah just got vert burnout at 125,000m and over 3,700m/s Straight up! ;P Is it legal to mount SRB on side of SRB for sounding rocket?

Anyways .craft below! Uses Nova/Winston parts, and uhh I think its TOO OVERPOWERED for sounding role, it catapulted them to like freakin 1570 KM from that vertical launch, their still slowing down 10 minutes into flight.

[Commander Zoom]

I used 'sounding rockets' to cover my initial, dead-simple, stock-parts-only designs - pod + one SRB or tank-plus-engine. These weren\'t really supposed to be kermanned or to scale or anything; they were just so that I and/or the KSP could get a feel for launching stuff.

[Volt]

@AstroAndrew when I first testing my two-seven design, as I said in the OP, it propelled itself into deep space. Twice. I\'m thinking of changing it from two-seven to one-seven with a five- or four-piece cluster on top just to reduce the dV enough to keep it within Kearth\'s gravitational pull. Once we have the Micro CM, if we can have one, I\'ll also add more SAS nosecones to make the ascent more optimal. At the moment I can\'t really even consider a single stage burn because it only gets up to about 9-10km due to the weight of stage 2 including parachute and 1m pod.

@rdfox IIRC Wobbly Rockets currently has a funny-looking curved fillet nosecone thingy that goes from 1 to 0.5. Problem is, well, it\'s... wobbly. Wobbly as in it oscillates under any kind of G-forces especially the 10+ at ignition. This, I have experienced, causes my model to lose control and snap at the centre, resulting in chunky guacamole. Anyone that could develop a little baby decoupler for that purpose that doesn\'t destroy rockets would receive a Jeb.

@Anyone I would still be very grateful for a nudge in the right direction as to the mods and links for Mini-Winglets, MiniBoosters and Mini-Decoupler. I have a sneaky suspicion that the booster and decoupler are SIDR&SD.

[AstroAndrew]

Hm. Can\'t find anything in the SDK or the Wiki that says the command pod has to be 1m base diameter, so I\'ll give it a whirl. I wonder if we could get Sunday Punch or NovaSilisko to make us a 0.5m-1m shroud decoupler, so we could use a 1m SRB as our first stage instead of a 0.5m cluster? (I seem to recall at least one sounding rocket having a fat first stage...)

HAH A .5-1m part is already made, it\'s Nova\'s GSH-30 nosecap, might need to tweak mass to make it useable and stable! GL! now we need 1m-.5 part and perferable a shroud... Also I believe sunday pack has a short fat 1m low burntime SRB.

[TimothyC]

Mini-Winglets

[Volt]

Thank you very much good sir.

To everyone: Use these wherever you can - they\'re a much better stabiliser enatmos than SAS. They\'re also beautiful when you symmetry-place three of them in spaceplane AGM\'s.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=2205.msg20594#msg20594

[Volt]

Snippy snippy, I suck. >

[Kryten]

It looks more like he\'s scaled up the launch tower-which means it should get in the way less, at least.

[Volt]

Balls, you\'re right. I got excited then. :\'(