KerbalX

Description

The Atlas-Agena B launch vehicle was extremely important for the U.S. back in the 60s. As the name may suggest, it was composed of an Atlas booster and an Agena upper stage, and it worked as a 2-and-a-half stage rocket. A few notable payloads include the Mariner Program, which sent probes that flew by Venus, Mars, and Mercury, and several reconnaissance satellites which were key to win the Cold War for the U.S. and keep the USSR somewhat controlled.

The Atlas booster consisted of a skirt that hauled 2 LR-89 engines (represented by Swivel engines), which would decouple, showing the main first stage sustainer engine, the LR-105 (represented by a Mainsail engine). It also had 2 small vernier engines to control yaw, pitch and roll (represented by Twitch engines).

The Agena upper stage consisted of a Bell 8081 engine (represented by a Cheetah) powered by Aerozine 50 as fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as oxidizer.

Action Groups:
1) Deploy solar panels, extend retractable antennas.
2) Shutdown Swivel engines.

Thankfully, for this replica I managed to make the skirt decoupler work, which is something I have never been able to do before. I believe there’s a chance it might not work, but on the 7 different tests that I’ve tried to decouple it with different inclinations, it worked. To use it, you use Action Group 2 to disable the Swivel engines, and then stage to decouple the skirt.

KerbalX says it uses 3 mods. This is not true, and its a bug. You only need the game and the MakingHistory DLC, as well as the ReStock mod, just like with all of my replicas.

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: ship
• Part Count: 93
• Mods: 3
• KSP: 1.12.0