KerbalX

Description

A stock rocket called Hercules Booster. Built with 100 of the finest parts, its root part is fuelTank1-2.

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.3.0.

This is an SSTO liquid fuel booster built to carry a maximum payload of ~20 tons to LKO and then return to the surface. It uses 2.5m parts and is meant to serve as a lower tech booster until the 3.75m parts are unlocked. I’ve found it to be excellent at putting space station modules in orbit - space tug sold separately :)

The rocket has some flaws I was unable to fix, however they are all insignificant and in some cases they were even beneficial(read point 2 in the list below).

Important:

1. If you are good at predicting reentry trajectories, do your best to land on the flat land around the KSC. If not, try to land in the ocean near the KSC - when landing in the ocean, try to land sideways(cut one of the parachutes, enable actuation on all of the control surfaces and set the bottom ones to -150) so the parachutes bring the top of the craft down slowly into the water, as if it falls over it will destroy some parts. You can also try to recover the craft as soon as it lands if you want to avoid having it fall over.

2. In case you are unable to land on flat surfaces, don’t worry when the landing legs explode. They are SUPPOSED to explode when landing on sight slopes - they protect the engines from exploding and the remaining landing legs help keep the rocket upright. Transferring all the remaining fuel to the bottom tank also helps.

3. When reentering, keep pointing retrograde and disable actuation controls for the bottom control surfaces and enable them for the top ones(no need to change the authority limits).

4. If you have plasma blackout enabled, activate the parachute stage at 50km before signal is lost, incase you end up with a mountain blocking the signal. It is safe to do so.

5. Unfortunately, clamshell deployment for the fairings does not work correctly as the fairings get stuck between the docking port and the fairing mount. If you insist on using clam shell however, this is easily avoidable if the craft is spun up before deployment.

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: lifter
• Part Count: 100
• Pure Stock