KerbalX

Description

Another towing craft for getting space junk, derelict capsules, and stranded kerbals out of orbit. This one uses the super-efficient Dawn ion drive for orbital manoeuvring, giving it fantastic endurance and allowing it to drop many pieces of debris into the atmosphere (grapple debris –> thrust retrograde until on a suborbital trajectory –> release debris –> thrust prograde until back in a stable orbit –> watch as debris experiences uncontrolled reentry and surface impact) before finally parachuting to the surface of Kerbin with its last target in klaw.

Uses a three-and-a-half-stage design, with a pair of decoupler-mounted Thud booster engines bolted to the sides of the aft skirt surrounding the Reliant sustainer engine; the Thuds are decoupled partway up to save weight. When to decouple the boosters is left to the user’s judgement, but I recommend doing it when the vehicle’s sustainer-only thrust-to-weight ratio climbs through 1.5-1.8 (the first-stage TWR readout in the staging pane takes into account only the thrust of the sustainer engine, completely ignoring the Thuds’ thrust; this is a rather annoying bug, because it makes it harder to determine the vehicle’s actual first-stage TWR, but, in this case, the bug is actually helpful for once, as it allows us to judge when it’s safe to stage away the booster engines). Apart from the Thud boosters and the aft skirt, the lower stage is based on that used to launch the Trailblazer 0, although fully-fuelled this time (necessitating the Thuds to help lift it off the pad); the upper stage is a small Terrier-powered stage, and the topmost stage is the towsat itself with its ion thruster.

The Ionotow 1’s towsat also has a skirt (surrounding the Dawn engine), to give the towsat’s parachutes somewhere to be.

A stock rocket called Ionotow 1. Built with 50 of the finest parts, its root part is probeStackSmall.

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.10.1.

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: satellite
• Part Count: 50
• Pure Stock
• KSP: 1.10.1