KerbalX

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: ship
• Part Count: 16
• Mods: 2
• KSP: 1.11.0

Mods

• Bluedog DB
• Squad (stock)

The Space Race officially began with the launching of Sputnik 1 on October 4th, 1957 and gave the Soviet Union its first of many initial victories over the United States in the middle of the Cold War. The United States had its own satellite program which had begun in 1954 but had been delayed in part due to the Eisenhower administration’s decision to approval the US Navy’s Project Vanguard instead of the program that eventually lead to the first American satellite, Explorer 1. The delays allowed the Soviet Union to also launch the second man-made satellite, Sputnik 2, before the Americans finally successfully launched their first satellite, Explorer 1 on January 31st, 1958. The Explorer satellite was launched on-board a Juno I rocket which was, confusingly, just a Jupiter-C rocket with the addition of the Explorer payload and which in itself was a variant of the Redstone rocket.

The Etoh-C is an approximation of the Jupiter-C / Juno I rocket which carries the Sienno probe which is an approximation of the Explorer 1. The launch has four different stages with the first being a fairly typical Etoh liquid-fueled rocket. The second and third stages are a combination of 11 and 7 Vicenza rockets respectively and informally dubbed the tub which act as the upper stage. The Sienno payload has a single Vicenza rocket which acts as the final stage although it may be unnecessary depending on your mission parameters.

The typical mission parameters are for the Sienno to be launched into a high Medium Kerbal Orbit (MKO) or even a High Kerbal Orbit (HKO) to conduct a couple of basic experiments with its own board geiger counter. Since it uses a series of solid rockets it’s impossible to put it into a precise orbit and as a consequence can be easily be placed in a much lower or higher orbit than initially planned.

The first stage is the only stage that can be reliably controlled and is a simple Etoh rocket which should put the upper stage and payload easily into space. I recommend a simple gravity-assisted ascent by pointing towards prograde which should put you towards an apogee of between 700 and 900 km. It’s important to have a curve to the ascent or else the upper stage and payload rocket won’t be able to establish a stable orbit. Additionally you may run into some overheating issues depending on your trajectory but it probably won’t cause any serious issues before the stage is exhausted.

The upper stage contains the telemetric guidance unit which can safely be detached from the spent rocket upon exhaustion. You should wait until you are close to your initial apogee before pointing towards prograde and firing both the second and third stages in quick succession. This will probably put you into a stable MKO orbit and if so technically makes the final stage unnecessary.

The payload itself has a single Vincenza rocket which if used historically will continue to boost its orbit; conversely you might experiment with trying to use it to de-orbit the payload or change other orbital parameters. The probe is attached to the final stage much like its real-life counterpart

This craft was constructed in KSP 1.11.0.