Journey to the land of 8-bits

[Randazzo]

Moving forward with the plan to take a round trip to the North Pole, a new SSTO would be required. While the program had some limited experience with aircraft, possessing designs for a short-range recon Jet, "Icarus", and an experimental aircraft for bombing the VAB atmospheric free-falling payload delivery, "Aerotroll Bomber", this would be the first serious endeavor into a large SSTO vehicle. It would also be necessary for the craft the actually be able to lift off the ground on it's own, rather than relying on the runway dropoff to get airborne as the two previously built aircraft.

Designs were laid out for the "Kestrel", a two seat craft capable of orbit. For this particular mission, it would not be required to attain a full orbit (not that it could do so in it's first iteration anyway), but two make two suborbital hops. The first hop would be to reach the North Pole, the second to return to KSC. After rigorous testing of the ladder systems, the Kestrel was deemed airworthy. Bill and Jeb would crew the craft on it's maiden voyage. Kestrel lifted off the runway with ease and was quite stable, and was taken into a northerly heading. All went well until the first attempt at reaching a suborbital trajectory. Upon switching over to Aerospikes at 24 Km, Kestrel proved entirely unable to reach an altitude over 42 Km. With the Aerospikes providing a TWR of 1.6, this was baffling. Assuming it was the flight profile, control over the aircraft was regained at 20 Km with turbojets and a second attempt was made. Again, the Kestrel topped out at 42 Km.

There was no time for a third attempt, as though the aircraft failed to reach the desired altitude of 75 km, it had reached the pole. Because of the fuel consumption associated with extended Aerospike burns, it would not be able to return to KSC. As the pole came into a view, the startling realization was made that some sort of barrier had been broken. Bill and Jeb had flown into the land of 8-bits, inhabited by the likes of Mario and Luigi. The poles also appeared to be far less smooth than assumed from the map view. As Kestrel got closer however, this bizarre 8-bit fog cleared away to reveal the more familiar 16-bit landscape that was expected. Flying directly over the north pole was disorienting, as the rotation of Kerbin can actually be observed from this point. Or at the very least, the camera can detect it and was continually rotating. Moving away from this nauseating vortex, Kestrel touched down. Much to the delight of both Jeb and Bill, the ladder functioned perfectly.

After recovering the vessel, it was back to designing to figure out why this bugger wouldn't get orbital. After two test "simulations", the realization was made that due to the placement of the Aerospikes just ahead of the tail assemly, thrust was being directed into the wings and therefore not producing any actual forward thrust. This set up had been a point of concern from the beginning, though concern was centered around the fact that the rockets should probably be incinerating the tail. The tail assembly was altered to allow the thrust vector of the Aerospikes to pass through, and another test flight was made. This time, the Kestrel successfully achieved a 76 Km orbit with plenty of fuel to spare.

All went well with re-entry until an attempt to turn Kestrel back toward the airstrip was made. At this point the craft began to tumble, and could not be recovered with RCS or stability control. All thrust was cut until the vessel had stabilized into a semi-prograde heading, when engines were punched full with Aerospikes burning to assist. Control was regained, and another attempt was made to turn. Once again, Kestrel went into a tumble. After recovering a second time, fuel was re-distributed to balance the craft, after which it performed to it's expected profile. Unfortunately no photographs were taken during either of these events as I was too busy spilling coffee and uttering profanities. After re-balancing, Kestrel landed at KSC's airstrip and the program is now in possession of an honest-to-goodness SSTO.

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After the excitement of nearly offing Bill and Jeb, some work was done on the standardized rockets for the program. The "Boone" series was created for Duna and Ike operations.

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