KerbalX

Description

This converted airliner flies up to altitude before releasing a rocket. The rocket flies to orbit.

Simple!

A stock aircraft called Hastur-1. Built with 140 of the finest parts, its root part is mk3Cockpit.Shuttle.

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.11.1.

Derived from the Stearwing A310, the Hastur-1 has a pylon on the underside of its left wing root which carries a Yellow King two-and-a-half-stage orbital rocket and its sample payload (a Small Secondary Satellite); it also has a bunch of prettily-coloured position lights.

As usual, pitch trim is provided by adjusting the elevators’ neutral position with I/K; additionally, to ease flying with the asymmetric mass and weight of the Yellow King hanging from the left wing, the rudder can be trimmed gradually to the left or right with J/L.

NOTE: If you want to both get the satellite to orbit and land the plane intact, you’ll have to go into your KSP install’s physics.cfg and alter the unload and pack distances for the FLYING and SUB-ORBITAL flight regimes from their default values to something much farther (I suggest 300-350 km).

Recommended launch procedure: after taking off from a runway, carefully climb and accelerate (using rudder trim to compensate for the asymmetric rolling and yawing moments created by the presence of the Yellow King) until the vehicle is both at least 5 km altitude above mean sea level (and still ascending, even if at a very low rate) and travelling at a speed of about 200 m/s. When both of these conditions are satisfied, pitch up by applying full up elevator and simultaneously trimming nose-up until the aircraft’s flightpath angle exceeds ~+35°, then roll right and stage away the Yellow King. Immediately fast-switch to the Yellow King, press 9 and R to shift its control point to the satellite’s HECS probe core and activate its six tail-mounted bipropellant RCS thrusters, and stage again to ignite its main Dart aerospike engine; from here on out, the process (as far as the satellite is concerned) is nearly identical to that of a regular rocket. At this point, switch back to the plane and fly it back to a suitable runway.

Details

- Type: SPH
- Class: aircraft
- Part Count: 140
- Pure Stock
- KSP: 1.11.1