The Minotaur V rocket (There's one going to the Moon today)

[samstarman5]

So I was browsing Space.com and came across this bit about the Minotaur V rocket sending a probe into lunar orbit to test the atmosphere. I got a glimpse of it in this article, http://www.space.com/22682-ladee-moon-rocket-minotaur-v.html and its concept here: http://www.space.com/22579-minotaur-v-rocket-explained-infographic.html, and got to thinking, dang that thing is tiny. And it got me to thinking: why can't I send a rocket like that to the Mun in KSP? From the diagram, it uses stacked SRB's for launch, and then liquid fuel for the last two stages, the last one probably more for orbital adjustments.

So, any ideas on it? Share!

[Motokid600]

I'm having some friends over tonight and were watching this thing ascend from my backyard. Can't wait. What baffles me is the shear amount of stages used to get this tiny probe into orbit. I swear this rocket is ripped right out of ksp.

[SRV Ron]

I'm having some friends over tonight and were watching this thing ascend from my backyard. Can't wait. What baffles me is the shear amount of stages used to get this tiny probe into orbit. I swear this rocket is ripped right out of ksp.

Main engines, recycled from Peacekeeper missiles, add on smaller liquid fuel engines. Very Kerbal in design and usage of stuff found lying around in surplus.

[Nibb31]

Ariane 6 will also be mainly made of 4 SRBs as first and second stage. Only the upper stage is liquid.

You see, there are several ways of lowering launch costs. SpaceX believes in reusability, so it is going for relatively complex designs and they hope to recoup the cost by reusing the hardware over frequent launches. This will lead to fewer launchers being built. Another approach is to build cheaper dumb boosters and to mass produce them. The more you make, the cheaper they get.

[RuBisCO]

From the wiki and the Orbital Science Fact Sheet it looks like it 5 stages ALL solid fuel. Awhile back (1970's) they developed solid rockets they could shut down (by causing flame-out via different mechanisms like blowing off the nozzel) to do this in KSP would require solids that could be shut down like Minotaur V IRL ones. Either that or playing around with existing solids from different mods that can launch a specific mass into a specific orbit with 100% of it fuel, no more or less. OR try somekind of crazy scheme to jettison the unfinished solid manually and not have it crash into your cargo pod... that sounds like a lot of fun!

[samstarman5]

Well, I actually gone and accomplished it. An munar orbital probe launched solely by solid rockets, with liquid engines for orbital injection and adjustment.

http://imgur.com/a/831ne#0

First image shows the entire launch vehicle. Second is a close-up of the liquid stages and probe body. Third shows the probe in munar orbit, 10k-18k. I made a straight shot to the Mun, as I figure establishing Kerbin orbit with SR's to be rather silly. I can probably trim it down a bit, but I have to say, launching and trans-injection with just solid rockets is rather fun. I will definitely remember this when campaign mode comes into play and I have to watch my monies.

[RuBisCO]

No no, ALL solid fuel, no liquids what so ever, call it the "Minotaur-LADEE Challange": get a probe from Kerbin to mun transfer using ONLY solid rockets.

[SgìobairOg]

Took my son (6) out to watch the launch last night. We were out on the causeway to Chincoteague. The immediate thing I noticed; the thing was fast. I didn't have the experience or tools to time it (and didn't know I'd want to either). I used the diagram below, to try and work out how high up the thing got and how fast. If I'm doing it right, using the viewable radius and working backwards through the line-of-sight horizon formula, it took it 30 seconds to hit 147m, 60 for 2.526m, and 120 seconds for 46,188m. It was an awesome experience to say the least.

[SgìobairOg]

As far as recreating it in KSP goes, my attempts have failed but I'm trying to make it a stacked rocket. The solid fuel boosters I've got are no comparison.

[SRV Ron]

Did a design with a huge tall solid fuel booster from Nova Punch. Upper stages liquid fueled. Probe stage uses mono propellent thrusters. Easily made low Mun orbit.

Edit, Craft renamed KSP Minotaur V. Added launch pic. Launch weight 18.48 tons. Low Mun orbit with 60% monoprop left, 0.67 tons

Edited September 8, 2013 by SRV Ron

[Rage097]

I watched this on the NASA livestream. looked awesome. And oddly enough is the first Rocket launch I've seen live.

[Motokid600]

Good to hear LADEE is doing good. They ran into a problem. The probe was spinning too fast after it separated from the last launch stage. The reaction wheels were pulling too much energy and had to be shutdown temporarily. Supposed to arive at the moon Oct 6. Now I just hope they put a camera on it as well. I'd die for some HD close up satellite pics of the moon.

[Kryten]

There's no imaging system of any kind. More than enough lunar probes have done that already; if you want HD closeups, look up SELENE.

[RuBisCO]

I've did it, 5 solid stages, using several mods's solid rockets. The final stage though did not have enough delta V to get all the way to the mun even with some extra solids strapped on: had to use liquid thrusters on the probe to finish the job. I used stock tiny solids attached to the 4th stage sideways to blast the stage off when I reached the correct speed/orbit (according to mechjeb) sort of as a crude cut-off for solid fuel stages. Had a real problem with stages reaching 6+ G of force by the end of their run and the whole thing coming dangerously close to

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I'm most interested in the laser comms experiment, hope that works really well (also will have hyper accurate ranging such that they will know the LADEE position per instant of time down to the centimetre!)

Edited September 11, 2013 by RuBisCO