Kestrel-Kerbooster: Partially Reusable Flyback Booster

[Torquemadus]

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The Kerbooster is a proof-of-concept fly-back booster. The idea is borrowed from early Space Shuttle concepts, which called for a winged first stage booster that would launch vertically and then fly back to a runway. To save development money, the booster idea was eventually dropped in favour of the SRBs we are now familiar with.

I can't re-use my first stage, because it gets deleted when it falls back into the atmosphere. Therefore, I compromise by using a solid rocket "trash bins full of boom" first stage and make all subsequent stages recoverable.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

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This album shows the Kestrel upper stage visiting Minmus and subsequently returning to the KSC.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Rune]

That's quite a good looking chemical booster for such low tech! Now put chutes on the SRBs, and you can even roleplay 100% reusability.

[Torquemadus]

Edit: Images moved to album (see above).

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

Edit: Images moved to album (see above).

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[montyben101]

Wow some amazing engineering here! + rep

[Torquemadus]

Edit: Edited for brevity.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

Edit: Edited for brevity.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

Edit: Edited for brevity.

Edited July 11, 2014 by Torquemadus

[John FX]

far far too many pictures. I have no idea as to what you are showing. you know you can show an imgur album for the viewer to click through themselves?

in square bracketa you put IMGUR then the code for your album, Xw4Fe for example then /IMGUR, also in square brackets []

[Rune]

far far too many pictures. I have no idea as to what you are showing. you know you can show an imgur album for the viewer to click through themselves?

in square bracketa you put IMGUR then the code for your album, Xw4Fe for example then /IMGUR, also in square brackets []

Hear hear! (managed to reply among jumping windows with a wall of pics loading)

[Torquemadus]

Edit: I've now moved most of the images to albums.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[WooDzor]

Nice craft. Why didn't you land it on it's wheels and used your breaks to save DV? Also what are the ghost shadows next to your wheels?

far far too many pictures. I have no idea as to what you are showing. you know you can show an imgur album for the viewer to click through themselves?

in square bracketa you put IMGUR then the code for your album, Xw4Fe for example then /IMGUR, also in square brackets []

Hear hear! (managed to reply among jumping windows with a wall of pics loading)

Come on guys. Some people enjoy scrolling. BTW what hellish internet connection do you have? I am not far of the COG of Africa and I am happily scrolling through the images..

[Torquemadus]

Edit: I've moved all of my images to albums now. The ghost shadows are caused by my use of NVidia stereoscopic 3D, which often causes issues with shadows. I see them even with the glasses on. On the other hand, depth perception makes it a lot easier to land!

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

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This next album shows the development and demonstration flight of Kerbooster heavy. It uses the same design philosophy as before, but uses the heavy rocketry parts. Note that some of the wing parts have not been unlocked at this point in my career save, so I've had to add multiple smaller wings in order to generate enough lift. It struggles to take off when fully fuelled, but otherwise flies ok.

During the test flight, I turned off fuel drain from the central orange tank until the fuel in the other tanks was about to run dry. This meant that the fuel in the central tank was the last to be used, preventing issues with the centre of mass moving too far towards the rear of the vehicle during flight.

Similarly, when preparing to return from orbit, I transfer the remaining fuel into the orange tank. This keeps the plane from flipping or tumbling when it returns to the atmosphere.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

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This next album shows the mid stage (Midbooster) and Kestrel flying to the Mun. The Midbooster provides the extra delta V needed to place the Kestrel in LMO. Once again, the Kestrel uses it's wheels for surface mobility after landing.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

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The Kerbooster Heavy Mk 2 uses larger wings, making it easier to fly and land safely. I usually find that I have to burn a small amount of fuel after re-entering to ensure the vehicle has enough speed and altitude to make it back to the runway.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[aphenine]

I think you've been pretty clear and I like the idea. I was wondering if it was possible to create fly up boosters for spaceplanes and you've certainly shown that it's possible. Nice. Of course, I want to do this with B9 and really big spaceplanes

[Torquemadus]

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Bill lands the Kestrel near the Mun's East Farside crater and gathers science from six different biomes.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

Edit: Moved images to album.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Torquemadus]

Edit: Moved images to album.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Torquemadus

[Exclipse]

Pretty interesting stuff you came up with, impressed!

[Woopert]

This is really cool! I gave rep for it.

[Rune]

Ok, let's seee if we can't teach you how to do proper imgur albums. First, you have to know that the link imgur precooks you doesn't work at all. Imgur albums are implemented here in a special way. So open the album you want to insert, and look at the url. It should be something like: "http://imgur.com/a/GMvI2" (That's one of mine to use as an example). The only thing I want from there is the "GMvI2", which is the album ID. The put that ID inside imgur tags like these: [imgur][/ imgur] (I inserted a space so it doesn't read as code, but you should get the idea).

That would make me and the third world internet connection I use (which doesn't let me upload video or play online) very happy. If you ever go to live in the north of Spain, BTW, don't trust Vodafone to hook you up, my connection can do 300Kb/s at times... or it can get stuck trying to show four pictures for 10 minutes, and that happens more often.

[Fox62]

Looks like the Winter Owl has some serious competition when it comes to building fly back boosters and reusable spacecraft!