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The C-141 Starlifter on display in the SPH.
- The fuselage is nothing but cargo bays with external command seats inside arranged in four lines - each fifteen seats long. This is to maintain the image of a real-life empty fuselage with seats installed, just like with the real-life Hanoi Taxi. It also looks way smoother than a cargo ramp that leads up to four Mk3 passenger modules - and given that I ended up with a passenger capacity of 60 as opposed to 64 (plus the 4 crew in the cockpit), that’s not a bad trade.
- If you want to modify this plane to carry nothing but cargo, feel free to remove the seats as necessary. Although I wouldn’t say
no
to this being used as an airliner either - especially one with no class division. Everybody rides coach, after all. - This plane has multiple separate SEQ-3C Conformal Storage Units lined up in the fuselage. Most of them are empty, but the two units in the rear each have four EVA kits and large work lamps. The cockpit has eight repair kits and a couple of small work lamps in the highly (opposite of) unlikely event the plane takes damage during its mission.
Historic photograph of recently-released POWs in a Starlifter before taking off.
- Just like this photograph from Earth’s history records.
- Although the photographer was competent at his job, he often had trouble keeping his camera still while the plane was moving. Especially with a plane not designed for comfortable rides.
- Nobody named Jane on board this time - mostly because all the plane’s passengers and crew for that mission were men.
The Starlifter doing its best to stay at cruising altitude and speed. At first with MJ aircraft autopilot on, it was bouncing up and down a bit. Eventually, it managed to keep straight and level.
- Whatever you do, DON’T time warp. Otherwise, your flight will get bouncy (at least mine did) and you’ll waste fuel.
Description
The Lockheed C-141 Starlifter was a military long-range strategic airlifter that served under the United States Air Force – and NASA as an airborne observatory. Introduced in the early 1960s to replace slower, propeller-driven cargo planes such as the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II and Douglas C-133 Cargomaster, the C-141 proved itself more reliable than the Boeing C-135 Stratolifter due to being able to load and unload oversized/bulky equipment. For 41 years since its introduction, it served in Vietnam, Desert Storm, Desert Shield, and even Operation Deep Freeze in many roles such as cargo transport and drop, medevac, and personnel and paratrooper transport. For the space exploration enthusiasts, one of its more somber roles was transporting what was left of the Challenger crew. Since the C-141 was retired in 2006 – and replaced with the C-17 Globemaster III – (as of May 2023) only 15 C-141s are now on static display at various museums around the United States and the remaining airframes were sent to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona to be scrapped.
One of the most famous Starlifters, now on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, is the “Hanoi Taxi” (serial number 66-0177). In 1973, as the Vietnam War was coming to an end, this plane airlifted the first American POWs to freedom from Hanoi, North Vietnam to the Philippines and then from the Philippines to the U.S. It has flown other humanitarian missions since then, including the repatriation of remains of two American servicemembers killed in action during the Vietnam War in 2004 and evacuations from Hurricane Katrina the following year. Finally, when the C-141 was retired in 2006, the Hanoi Taxi flew for one last time on May 6th before it was put on permanent display at the Air Force Museum.
A stock aircraft called C-141 Starlifter (Hanoi Taxi). Built with 178 of the finest parts, its root part is mk3Cockpit.Shuttle.
Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.12.4.
400 km away from the KSC, and that is where I made my range estimate.
- On Hotel26’s recommendation, I used the equation below to calculate how far I should expect this plane to fly.
- {(2463 kal)/(0.23 kal/sec)} * {(260 m/s)/(1000 m)} + 400 km = Approx. 3,184 km
The range calculation done on Symbolab. The complete flight test proved this estimate to be more conservative (as in leaving some leeway), but not too far off.
- Especially since I had to make a turn later (stay tuned for the full story).
Nothing beats actually flying and landing the thing, sure - especially when determining if you need to set up fuel flow priority in order to maintain balance during landing - but this equation proved useful. This can come in real handy if you’re under a real-life time crunch, like if you need to go to bed.
Real-life Counterpart Performance Stats
(C-141B Starlifter)
Maximum Speed: 567 mph (253.5 m/s)
Service Ceiling: 41,000 feet (12.5 km)
Range: 2,935 miles unrefueled (4,723 km)
Ferry Range: 6,140 miles (9,880 km)
Source: Wikipedia
Details
- Type: SPH
- Class: aircraft
- Part Count: 178
- Pure Stock
- KSP: 1.12.4
Rare footage of the Starlifter with its cargo door open mid-flight and its bay empty.
RECOMMENDED CRUISE
Altitude: 7.9 km (~25.9k ft; Class Alpha airspace)
Velocity: 260 m/s (~582 mph)
Flight time: 3 hours, 30 minutes
EXPECTED RANGE
3,250 km before immediate landing necessary
DO NOT FLY OVER WATER WHEN THIS HAPPENS
- First test run ended up with me over water when I ran out of fuel. Fortunately, I had set up a quicksave before I went over the coastline ahead of time. So, all I had to do was revert to that quicksave and turn south so that I would be over land.
- More on how I calculated the actual range later, although I must say that this is close to what I estimated would happen.
The Starlifter flying over the ocean to bring POWs back to their home region.
And this began how I determined the plane’s range despite having to make a turn.
- Using MJ’s rover autopilot, I set up a waypoint at my plane’s longitude but its latitude would place it at the equator. That way, I would use trigonometry to see how far I was (straight-line distance) from the KSC when I made my turn. For future reference, the
distance-at-turn
value will be r. - I then used the Law of Cosines and arc length to determine the ground distance on Kerbin from the KSC along r. Since I had already passed the halfway point, I subtracted that value from Kerbin’s circumference - and got Rarc = 3,122 km.
- As for the ground distance covered after making my turn, I used the Law of Cosines on Kerbin again. After that, I used arc lengths (and accounted for altitude) to get Tarc = 128.4 km.
Put Rarc and Tarc together, and you get an estimate of 3,250 km flown. Although I doubt that such a range is necessary, given that you only need 1,885 km to cover anywhere on Kerbin.
The Starlifter landing with its thrust reversers on.
- I don’t know if the real-life Starlifter had reverse thrusters, but I wouldn’t be surprised since reverse-thrust systems were invented before the C-141 was introduced. Even if it didn’t come with any, I thought it would be cool to have on a KSP replica.
Ladi… um, gentlemen, before we take off, please rise and salute the flag for the playing of our National Anthem.
