KerbalX

Description

When you’ve gotta deorbit a REALLY big stage…

A stock subassembly called Even-More-Fuelled QBE Reentry Controller. Built with 11 of the finest parts, its root part is strutCube.

It’s designed to be embedded into the side of a larger stage (as one example, it comes factory-installed on the Antilocapra II first stage). To do this, pick it up and then press S before placing it on the desired stage; if done properly, the only part visible from the outside should be part of the root cubic octagonal strut.

Quite useful in career mode, as it allows spent stages to be deorbited and recovered for funds; can also be useful even in sandbox or science mode, especially if you’ve got a lower-end computer, as the game runs faster if low Kerbin orbit isn’t cluttered with spent rocket stages.

The fuel tanks are locked out during launch, to preserve their fuel for deorbit; once in orbit, they can be manually unlocked by right-clicking on them and enabling fuel and oxidiser to be drawn from these tanks. The Probodobodyne QBE probe core is incredibly light and cheap, but has no internal reaction wheels and almost no battery capacity, so this deorbit/reentry controller features added batteries and reaction wheels to allow at least enough control to point the stage retrograde and perform the deorbit burn; the reaction wheels can later be used to induce some measure of tilting or tumbling during reentry to increase the stage’s aerodynamic drag and make it slow down more quickly, but they have fairly low control authority in-atmosphere (especially for heavy stages falling through the lower, denser parts of Kerbin’s atmosphere).

(The structural panel is not part of the subassembly, but is merely a display stand.)

Built in KSP version 1.7.0.

The Fuelled QBE Reentry Controller is a lighter sibling for jobs not requiring as much Δv, such as deorbiting smaller stages or those in very low orbits.

Details

• Type: Subassembly
• Class: probe
• Part Count: 11
• Pure Stock
• KSP: 1.7.0