Andrew Kerivak Assembly

[Korivak]

Background

Andrew Kerivak went into business for himself assembling a particular brand of cheap imported big box chain furniture best known for its wordless and minimalist line art instructions and whimsical foreign first names branding. Business has been good, especially since he alone seems to be able to intuit the hidden meaning of the instructions and finish without having any pieces left over.

After John F. Kerredy\'s bold promise to put a Kerbal on the Mun by the end of the decade ('...explosions permitting'), the Kerbal Space Program suddenly found itself woefully understaffed. Kerivak has started moonlighting for them, assembling equally poorly documented rockets for them using the traditional tools of his trade: long wooden dowels and tiny disposable hex keys. Surprisingly, he is doing only slightly worse than the average Kerbal rocket scientist.

Projects

The Apex Program: Stacked SRB-only powered craft attempting height records.

[Korivak]

The Apex Program

Due to a general desire for plenty of thrust and a general inability to do simple math where rocketry is involved, the Kerbal Space Program has massively over-ordered solid rocket boosters. Every time someone took one down off the shelf, there would still be at least a thousand left.

But you can\'t just throw them away...they are way too dangerous and too large to fit in the dumpster. The obvious answer? Launch them into the sky!

AKA was hired for this project. And because Kerbals are nothing if not curious, the question quickly became 'I wonder how high these things will go before they cut out and fall back to the ground?'. The Apex Program is an attempt to do some spring cleaning around the Space Centre and answer that question at the same time...with Science! Rocket Science!

Crew: Dunler, Nedlong and Wehrfel Kerman

Apex 1: 5 km, straight up and straight down, landed on the space centre

<|SRB - Just an SRB and a decoupler. Barely counts as rocket science, really.

Apex 2: 11 km, drifted slightly, landed 3 km out to sea

<|SRB|SRB - Two SRBs for twice the fun!

Apex 3: 17 km, fairly stable flight, landed 5.5 km out at sea

<|SRB|SRB|SRB - Getting just a little silly now.

Apex 4: 21 km, sluggish off the pad, wobbled a fair bit, 4 km at sea

<|SRB|SRB|SRB|SRB - The ridiculous height gives a slight head start on height records!

Apex 5: 34 km, fought the stick at first, then settled down, 7 km at sea

<|SRB|SRB|TC-SRBx3 - If only we could burn three at once...oh, we can? Yes, we can!

Apex 6: 48 km, wobbled badly during first stage, landed 17 km inland

<|SRB|SRB|SRB|TC-SRBx3 - Looks like a broom standing on end; about as stable as same.

Apex 7: 45 km, first to not set a new record, landed only 3.4 km from pad

<|SRB|TC-SRBx3|SRBx3 - More like UNlucky number seven!

Apex 8: 70 km, stable at first, more twitchy at the end, 19 km to the north

<|SRB|SRB|TC-SRBx3|SRBx3 - Back on track! Go baby go!

Apex 9: 81 km, tricky to fly, but gets incredible height

<|SRB|SRB|SRB|TC-SRBx3|SRBx3 - Now with some supports to prevent that tiny little wobble.

All nine craft can be downloaded as a zip file (or quickly thrown together from the descriptions above).

[kevinlacht]

Keep going, this just like me when I started with ksp. After 2/3 months I already learn how to get to the moon and land on it. ( whit ofcourse a program like apollo and gemine). Succes!

[Korivak]

I\'m working on the Ballistic Program now, a series of somewhat successful sub-orbital flights. a few more designs and launches, and I\'ll write up a report.

[zombiphylax]

Hahaha, the Apex program is very Kerbal. I don\'t know if I ever tinkered around with pure SRB designs.

[Korivak]

Pure SRB is actually pretty challenging. They have very little stamina and you have the weight of a lot of extra engines and decouplers dragging you down. Even the nine-engine stack for the last flight didn\'t even really get to far up, and escape velocity is out of the question. Without throttle control, you get very twitchy flight controls. The constant staging means the balance changes every sixty seconds, making them even trickier to steer. There were some pretty bad prototypes that I didn\'t show, and more than a few launches that the crew only just barely walked away from.