KerbalX

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: ship
• Part Count: 34
• Mods: 2
• KSP: 1.12.5

Mods

• Bluedog DB
• TweakableEverything

The Mercury program’s flights took place over the course of two years between May 1961 and May 1963 with six successful manned flights. However as early as 1960 there were more loftier goals set for Mercury and ways to extend the program and its technologies. This began with additional suborbital flights planned for the Redstone both because they weren’t sure how ready the man-rated Atlas would be and how long it would take to test and train the astronauts on the Mercury spaceflight. The additional Redstone flights were cancelled and after two sub-orbital missions they moved ahead to using the Atlas. There were also plans to potentially use the Jupiter-C for more extended sub-orbital missions with two unmanned flights to test out the plan but these were cancelled due to budget issues. Lastly there were additional Mercury-Atlas missions planned to keep testing the endurance of astronauts including a three-day mission but were cancelled in favor of reaching those goals with the Gemini program.

One proposal was to add a tiny one-man laboratory module to a Mercury-Atlas flight which would blurred the line between space capsule and space station. It would allow for limited experimentation and exposure of an astronaut to a free-floating environment, goals which weren’t achieved until the Gemini and Apollo programs. The Mercury’s side-hatch actually made such a proposal relatively easy with two ideas to allow access to the laboratory module. The first one would involve a pressurized inflatable tunnel attached to the side-hatch of both the capsule and module which the astronaut would have to crawl through which would be jettisoned along with the capsule upon re-entry. The second more complicated solution involved a hinge that turn the capsule 180 degrees to line the side hatch with the module allowing for a much shorter trip for the astronaut.

Such an ambitious proposal would require an upper stage for the Atlas to accommodate the much larger payload which was something unnecessary for the original Mercury program’s flights. The Centaur was still in development so NASA initially was developing the Vega as a stop-gap measure to handle such payloads. However it was developed the USAF was secretly developing the Agena which was similar to the Vega’s capabilities and thus the Vega was cancelled and the Agena was to be also adapted for civilian payloads.

The modified proposal was instead to use the Agena-A and then the Agena-B for a planned launch sometime in 1964 but ultimately it was rejected in favor of simply continuing with the Gemini program. NASA wouldn’t see an orbital laboratory until the launch of Skylab in May 1973 which came almost two years after the world’s first orbital laboratory with the launching of Salyut 1.

This ship represents another what-if scenario if the Mercury one-man laboratory had gone ahead with an Agena-B booster as planned in 1960 for a launch in 1964. Unfortunately one limitation is I have no way to approximate either the inflatable tunnel or the hinge proposal although a kerbonaut can still be transferred between the capsule and the lab module.

The Bossart is an approximation of the Atlas-D rocket as also used on the man-rated Atlas LV-3-B launch vehicle. It is a stage-and-a-half design with the booster skirt and its engines decoupled with approximately 30 seconds left in the stage burn. The heavy payload will cause a brief TWR (thrust-to-weight) ratio drop but should handle it better than the previous Atlas-Vega and recover much more quickly.

The Belle-B is an approximation of the Agena-B and in this case is connected to the Hermes lab module and a standard Hermes capsule. It is meant to handle the burn to complete your orbit and to make any other orbital adjustments, if so desired. This will you treat the Hermes capsule much like a Leo Vinci capsule connected to a Belle Target Vehicle. You should keep in mind that the Hermes’ re-entry rockets are limited so you should return to a low orbit in order to successful re-enter the atmosphere.

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.12.5.