KerbalX

Description

A stock rocket called Bison I. Built with 82 of the finest parts, its root part is probeStackSmall.

The Bison I is an interplanetary fuel tanker, with liquid-fuel-and-oxidiser tanks (for refuelling craft using conventional rockets), liquid-fuel-only tanks (for refuelling Nerv-and/or-jet-powered craft), and a monopropellant tank (mostly for its own RCS thrusters, but it can be used to top up other crafts’ monoprop tanks in a pinch). I mostly use it for sending propellants to Duna, since it has plenty of Δv for the transfer and Duna’s gravity well is shallow enough (and, thus, the speed-at-periapsis of an incoming craft on a hyperbolic trajectory slow enough) that it can safely aerocapture with very little expenditure of propellant (depending on the timing and geometry of the transfer and the aerocapture pass, it may not even be necessary to retract the antenna or solar arrays; having these extended during the pass through Duna’s atmosphere considerably increases the craft’s aerodynamic drag, making it easier to capture). However, it can probably be used for other destinations as well, albeit burning through a greater proportion of its fuel supply in the process and/or requiring a pre-transfer topup or assistance from an external tug.

The first stage is a Buphagus Ia solid-fuelled Kickback cluster, which gets the craft onto a suborbital trajectory and most of the way to orbital speed. The second stage is a Poodle-powered Centaurus stage; when it ignites depends on the mission profile:

• For missions utilising an initial parking orbit (sometimes for quite a long time, as the craft circles Kerbin waiting for the planets to line up), the Poodle lights up near apoapsis to circularise the tanker into a stable Kerbin orbit. (To keep the Poodle from starting as soon as the first stage is jettisoned, be sure to hit X to set throttle to zero before staging.)
• For missions where the tanker instead launches directly onto a hyperbolic trajectory for an immediate transfer, the Poodle starts up when the first stage separates, unless thermal constraints imposed by aerodynamic shock heating make this unsafe, in which case the Poodle starts as soon as is possible without the added speed causing something to explode.

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.8.0.

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: ship
• Part Count: 82
• Pure Stock
• KSP: 1.8.0