KerbalX

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.10.0
- Squad (stock).
Root part is mk2Cockpit.Inline.

Action group:

[1] Terrier toggle
[2] Fuel Cell Toggle
[3] Flaps extend toggle
[g] Landing Gear toggle

Inspiration

Hermes (Dassault 1985 draft) + Ariane 5 G (ESA)

Description

The Talaria is a more economical spaceplane compared to Porter shuttle system – when launched with a modified Ariane 5 LV, the total cost is about 1/3 of the cost of its full-size brethren While it cannot carry large payloads (in both size and volume) of the Porter, thanks to its inline launch stack, it provides a much more reliable (read: easy to control) alternative to transport and return of small payloads and 6 crews to and from LKO.

Real life Notes

While Ariane 5 is now famous for being the workhorse of ESA that sent the BepiColombo and Rosetta (both of which are now included in KSP 1.10), it started out as part of the Hermes shuttle project, and as such is human rated. Playing around the stock Ariane 5 made me realized it’s actually overpowered even with the detuned mainsail, and thus I swap it out for a RE-I5 Skipper engine instead. In a way it make sense: Ariane 5 actually gone through quite a bit of revision, which is actually affected by Hermes’ design until the shuttle’s cancellation.

As for the Hermes, you will notice it has the airlock/dock in the mid-front position, instead of the rear docking port which most replicas use. The reason is that I actually want to replicate the Dassault 1985 draft, which has an unpressurized cargo bay. What most people see with the rear docking port is a major revision that took place after the Challenger disaster, which aside from halving the crew capacity down to 3 (so the front cockpit can be ejected during an abort), also made its cargo bay pressurized and not opened to the vacuum of space (how else can the crew go to the rear? There’s no magic teleport IRL), as well as having a disposable service module at the rear that contains the airlock/docking mechanism. As a disposable module greatly minimize the reusablilty – and overlapped with one other future design I have in mind – I ended up going with the Dassault 1985 draft.

For anyone interested, I recommend reading http://www.capcomespace.net/dossiers/espace_europeen/hermes/index.htm through Google Translate.

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: spaceplane
• Part Count: 85
• Pure Stock
• KSP: 1.10.0