KerbalX

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: ship
• Part Count: 16
• Mods: 2
• KSP: 1.12.5

Mods

• Bluedog DB
• TweakableEverything

While a moon landing program had been in the works for a number of years it didn’t really take off until JFK’s famous address on May 25th, 1961 and with that there had to be a decision on how such a landing would take place. The original plan was for a single spacecraft to directly ascend to the Moon, land, and takeoff back to Earth which is known as direct ascent. This would require an extremely large and powerful lifter of which in many proposals was commonly known as the Nova rocket. The opposite approach known as earth orbit rendezvous would use numerous launches to assemble, and possibly fuel, the vehicle in low earth orbit. A third approach, initially deemed extremely risky, was lunar orbit rendezvous which separated the ship into two vehicles, a mothership, and a lunar lander which would be used exclusively for the landing. This plan additionally called for it to be handled with only a single lifter, the Saturn V.

Both earth orbit rendezvous and lunar orbit rendezvous required NASA to develop procedures and astronauts to develop experience with rendezvous and docking between two vehicles operating under orbital mechanics. This would also be a requirement if NASA or the USAF were going to develop any reusable space stations which, at that point, were already in the works. This was addressed by future moon walker, Buzz Aldrin, in his doctoral thesis on manned orbital rendezvous with the first serious rendezvous attempt being with Gemini 4 which attempted to keep station with its own spent upper stage although this was a failure. The first successful rendezvous occurred later on 15 Dec 1965 between Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 setting the stage for docking practice.

The Gemini Agena Target Vehicle (GATV) or just Agena Target Vehicle (ATV) was developed from an Agena-D which was the latest (and most successful) model of the Agena upper stage which had been flying since 1959 with the Agena-D having been flown since 1962. It would allow astronauts to rendezvous and dock with an unmanned vehicle, learn crucial EVA techniques, and remotely activate the target vehicle’s engines to boost the manned vehicle.

The first GATV for Gemini 6 exploded on the launchpad which altered Gemini 6’s mission to rendezvous with the two week long Gemini 7 mission. The first historical docking would occur on Gemini 8 which almost ended in disaster except for quick thinking by future first man-on-the-moon Neil Armstrong. The following mission, Gemini 9’s target vehicle would fail to reach orbit and NASA came up with a backup measure called the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) so Gemini 9 could accomplish some of its target vehicle goals.

The ATDA was effectively an ATV minus most of the actual Agena which was replaced by a reaction control system developed from the Gemini’s own nose cone RCS. It would allow, in theory, Gemini 9, to rendezvous and dock with a target vehicle and even conduct some experiments but wouldn’t be able to boost either itself or Gemini. However as luck may it it suffered its own failure when its shroud failed to fully open giving it the appearance of an open alligator jaw. The failure was taken in some light and was deemed the angry alligator incident by the crew of Gemini 9.

The Belle ATDA is an approximation of the real-life ATDA made by Bluedog Design Bureau and like the Belle Leo Target Vehicle (BLTV) it is launched on-board a Bossart SLV-3 rocket. The Bossart’s stage-and-a-half design handles the rest ascent and orbital burn due to the lack of a full upper stage. This will leave you with a considerable amount of additional debris as the full rocket, minus the booster skirt, will be let in orbit.

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.12.5.