KSP: An AIR-LAUNCHED Rocket!

greetings and salutations my dudes and welcome back to another Kerbal Space Program video and in today's Kerbal Space Program video we're going to be doing a remix soft Recreation uh inspired by build ship of the Pegasus air launch system which I'm surprised I've never done a video of before in this Channel's history I've done a lot of air launch system Recreations in the past but never the Pegasus until today so you can see me constructing it here I'm constructing the payload first and then I'm going to construct the aircraft around it the Pegasus for those that don't know is a small rocket designed for carrying approximately 450 kilos or 977 pounds for viewers in Orange man land into low curb in orbit no low earth orbits I always do that I always say curb now Pegasus rocket doesn't have the Delta V to make it into a stable orbit from a launch pad instead it's carried up by a carrier aircraft up to about 12 kilometers where the atmosphere is much thinner and therefore does not require as much thrust to power through and then is deployed from there another advantage to launching higher up is that the engine nozzles don't need to be optimized for the high ambient air pressure found at sealer a rocket engine can be designed to work efficiently in high air pressure I.E ground level and at low air pressure I.E higher up it's impossible to make a conventional rocket engine Beyond Aero spikes and all that to be efficient at both altitudes but since the Pegasus doesn't need to operate in high ambient air pressure it can be optimized purely for high altitude flight therefore achieving greater thrust and efficiency throughout the entire operation of the engine further advantages to an air launch system include reduced susceptibility to weather conditions since the carrier aircraft can simply fly around and above the weather conditions and it can also fly to more optimal launch locations and launch a payload into any orbital inclination at any point in time Insurance costs are also typically lower since there are there aren't many buildings at forty thousand feet could be destroyed by a mishap launch and there's obviously no need for a launch pad or block house either however there are some notable reasons why a SpaceX style recoverable booster is a better solution than the Pegasus your boy Elon Musk argued that the advantage gained from an air launch platform was only about a five percent Improvement in payload to orbit plus there's the issue of needing to set up fly and maintain the aircraft launch platform itself so from spacex's standpoint they felt that simply increasing the size of the first stage by five percent was a far easier option than what we're seeing here an air launch platform further to this air launch is quite limiting when it comes to the size and mass of the payload and the airplane itself can generate quite large lateral forces which can damage payloads now what I'm building here isn't really a recreation of the Pegasus rocket I'm sure someone has probably already typed into the comment section the key difference between what I'm doing here is and the Pegasus is that the Pegasus is a just a standard like normal aircraft that hasn't really been modified all that much initially in the 90s in the early 90s it launched with a B-52 as the carrier aircraft and now it uses a Lockheed l-1011 but the reason a pegasus rocket can launch off kind of any aircraft ready that doesn't require much modification is because the rocket itself sits below the fuselage of the aircraft what I'm doing here is the rocket sits inside a custom cargo bay inside the aircraft itself uh I like to think that this improves about a couple of aspects of the Pegasus program first of all at least for this kind of setup here the payload itself is a bigger scale than the Pegasus rocket it can carry an actual crude vessel all the way to another Celestial body rather than simply to lko furthermore the rocket itself is housed within the payload Bay of the aircraft meaning that will be immune to any aerodynamic stresses during the initial initial Ascent to the launch location plus and this is a very crucial detail it looks much cooler than the Pegasus when we reach that launch point we can press action group 5 and watch those Bombay doors open together and then we can watch the rocket to plummet out of the aircraft it looks very cool I'm looking forward to uh showing you guys how it looks but here is how it looks on the ground Jedediah waddling with their true determination towards the craft to do a final quick inspection of the payload before we can close up those doors and get our launch underway there he is looking on there's back uh her wheels are wobbling a little bit but they are holding steady nonetheless so yep looks good Jebediah is satisfied with his inspection he can get on board this aircraft now there is one major disadvantage to air launch systems in Kerbal Space Program at least in stock Kerbal Space Program in that they don't work because you can't recover the aircraft and keep control of the rocket at the same time so this is unfortunately an Expendable aircraft that we're using here this is just you know my completed sandbox mode uh play through so funds are not an issue it's pretty just a show-off so let's pretend in I don't know the story of this Aerospace company this was an experiment they took a decommissioned aircraft that was going to get scrapped anyway because it was used for drug running and so legally they had to destroy it so they decided to experiment with this new air launch system and ditch the uh ditch the aircraft once the rocket was free that would of course mean the Gemini has to do a a physically impossible transfer into the rocket itself but he's Jebediah he always finds a way he can transfer I don't know I guess he can do an Eva inside the cargo bay and climb to the rocket that way but there we are launching as those four Goliath engines power us into the air the Lockheed plane used by the Pegasus only has three engines but we've got a bigger payload at least the payload is heavier relative to the size of the aircraft carrying it compared to the Pegasus system so I've got a four engine craft would definitely serve us better as well as that unlike the Pegasus we're going to be launching our rocket at about 60. uh sorry six kilometers not 60 six kilometers above sea level rather than 12. just because I guess that's how kerbin's atmosphere scales to Earth and uh you know this plane can't really get much higher than six kilometers but there's a beautiful shot using the camera tools mod which is part of BD Armory in case you're wondering how to download camera tools one of my most asked questions is how I have camera tools that is how I have it it's part of BD Armory but there's see there goes 57 kilometers 5.7 kilometers I'll say that again so we are approaching our launch altitude for the Rockets So what I'm now going to do is kind of do a quick save which I think I might have cut out me doing the quick save movements but uh we're going to do like an alternate history mode and then an actual history mode so we're gonna do this version here which is where we launched the rocket and we get it into space then we'll do a quick rewind a Reload of that quick save and recover the aircraft instead there goes the rocket we can fire up that Vector engine and get it clear of the planer that was pretty epic come on guys as far as things I've done go that was pretty satisfying to watch it was very satisfying to be for me to pull off anyway so we have all three kerbals there Jebediah successfully transferred into the rocket and we can see the plane dipping safely below us normally that would be a crude plane that would then turn around and land on either the island Runway or the uh you know Kerbal Space Center or even the desert Airfield or the womb around okay it could land anywhere feasibly if the fight is skilled enough so what I'm doing now is holding 45 degrees until we get nice and higher from the atmosphere at which point we're going to start following prograde a little closer as we Coast our way into orbit we are going to be ending up in a fairly aggressive ballistic trajectory and that we're not going to be spending much time in space so our circularization burn will be fairly long um we won't be able to complete it with a lower stage it will run out of fuel which is a good thing because it means you have to worry about ditching it prior to completing the circularization burn in order to ensure that no debris gets left in space so we're cutting out that engine now getting ready to perform our second ignition once we get to our Apple apps this point and uh you know commence our circularization burn there we go there's the the stars come into view and we are now in space technically and we can perform well first thing we're gonna create a maneuver node at our perhaps this point and what you'll see if you look at the yellow bar although a lot of people point out that it's actually green I don't know I see it as yellow maybe I'm just weird like that but I I always thought that that burn bar was yellow any kind of a weird point because he has some of it's red when uh when are like burn indicator reaches that red point it means we'll have run out of fuel in the current stage but we have fuel are plenty in the upper stage and we're going to be taking this rocket to uh minmas we're gonna do a minus Landing because I thought about putting a payload into orbit or maybe doing an extension of the space station but I extended the space station not that long ago uh two weeks ago and you know we've done a lot in low carbon orbit I thought it might be more fun to try and land somewhere because I'm not landed anywhere significant for a while let's try and land on midmus well I say let's try an anonymous like that's going to be a challenge I mean we have loads and loads of Delta V in this stage and we have the poodle engine as well which Finn Minimus has like loads and loads of thrust so it's not going to be an issue but now we've got it to space we need to do a rewind what we do here is and here we are back in the atmosphere ready to launch our plane our rocket I should say and recover the plane now I did want to have this automated but I forgot to put a probe core on the rocket and so I had to put Jebediah on the craft just to make sure it could fire its engine and get clear of the plane okay and have it still fly away and not just drop to the ground like a bomb so big F for Jebediah there he will unfortunately die on this Mission luckily this is just a showcase that the plane does still fly without the payload there to kind of provide kind of a balance for it I guess okay the balance isn't thrown out of whack if it's uh deployed there it goes there beautiful disappearance into the black there we'd have to show the entire flight in its entirety wow that was a bit of a rewind on Words there fitting with this whole theme of rewinding back to uh you know the aircraft there's a wow it does have a fair old Pace this thing doesn't it it's breaking the sound barrier using the Goliath engine ends I decided to cut out two of them because then you know a plane of this size probably wouldn't have four of those engines but the payloader had to carry I thought four engine would probably be the best choice maybe it would have worked with two I don't know maybe not who knows really now I started getting my ascent and I realized I was going very fast so I tried to create a bit more drag by doing this crazy maneuvering upon uh approaching the runway didn't really work we're still going very fast so I uh maxed out the brakes on those rear wheels and hoped for the best when we touched down we were still going very fast so then I had the bright idea of uh you know using the Reversed Thruster on the Goliath engine but I only did it for one I forgot that you know toggling reverse thrust doesn't happen bilaterally it only affects the engine that you did so I ended up making everything worse and we overshot the runway but uh actually uh the thing is though guys that didn't happen because if we just quickly do a turn around I'll bring it to a stop and we can quickly uh I just want you guys to close your eyes for a second just look away and think about what makes you happy and uh just open your eyes and look at that there I was just saying guys we managed to do a perfect touchdown we didn't overshoot if you thought I ever shot you were mistaken I have just touched down in the perfect spot and the plane is looking good you know we have our uh everything looks fully functional doing a little visual inspection of the fuselage and I'm pretty happy with how this looks we can do a beautiful cinematic pan around goodbye played for the last time because now we're going to be going back to the alternate back to the true reality where that plane unfortunately met a rather soggy demise players splashed into the sea uh back to space where you can perform the rest of this Mission as intended which is taking our three Brave curb booster members and yes that's our three kerbils because obviously in this reality Jebediah cabin was not killed so uh don't worry guys it was very distressing having to watch him sail away to his Doom but and I did actually check I what I did wonder if you know keeping him on that 45 degree Vector he would just Coast his way into orbit and would be saved but unfortunately once the plane got far enough away the game couldn't kind of keep both vessels running so it just terminated the rocket and Jebediah was then automatically uh killed to death so mimus was not at a great point so I had to kind of get to my apothesis to roughly where I thought mimus was going to be and then do a quick maneuver node halfway along the original planned node to sort out our inclination so that's how you get a mimus encounter if you're not getting one just You by making a maneuver node at the ascending and descending nodes around low carbon orbit because of course mimus is in an inclined orbit so it's quite hard to always get an encounter with it but as you can see it's fairly trivial once you know how that's how you do it not much more to say now other than just time warping around our orbit and getting to our maneuver node ready to perform it and as always you always want to start your burn when you're about halfway uh so you take the estimated burn time cut it in half when that time that you get is the time to maneuver node that's when you perform the bone so 30 second burn you wanna you'd want to start burning 15 seconds before you reach the node there are kerbals excitedly looking around the cabin soaking in the views uh you're very excited by the looks of things I guess they are just filled with determination at this point they've got to concentrate on this very complicated burn it does look funny doesn't it there's nothing about this ship just looks so squat uh I guess it wasn't the most aerodynamic ship in hindsight it did have those big ladder pieces and Landing legs sticking out during our atmospheric flight but yeah they're pretty they're pretty uh sturdy Parts though we didn't have to worry too much about overheating or anything like that and the vector engine is very very powerful it can power its way through any aerodynamic in in um insufficiencies so I haven't even have resulted us in a burn that wasn't quite the same as the one we planned so I had to redo the second burn but it was a very cheap burn nonetheless like still so it wasn't really too much of an issue so creating our uh inclination adjustment and then we're gonna do our retrograde burn planning as well just to enjoy we definitely definitely have enough Delta V here which of course we do we have over a thousand meters per second which is more than enough for members I mean a member's Landing is like uh less than 200 meters per second too it's like 180 meters per second of Delta V and of course that would be the same for getting back into mimus orbit so we really are spoiled when it comes to uh Delta V I think I'm just gonna let the footage play out and kind of speak for itself because I've done lots and lots of members missions on this channel at this point so I'm guessing you guys are probably familiar with the ins and outs of them I thought about I could just talk about some of the other aspects of the Pegasus and indeed the other kinds of air launch systems that I've done on this channel and just you know their real life counterparts because I've done a done quite a few air Lord systems I've I made a drone that went to Junior after launching off the back of an SR-71 Blackbird replica because of course the sl71 Blackbird did have a variant an unsuccessful variant but a variant nonetheless which would launch a drone not into space but it would still be a drone nonetheless so I kind of expanded upon that for Kerbal Space Program uh sake um I've also done a soft replica of the Virgin Galactic strata launch system which is you know the spaceship uh two I think it was that I did a recreation of and then I did a recreation of these Scaled Composites strata launch system too uh the big strata like strata launch is a better system for Pegasus than Pegasus when it comes to launching heavier payloads though it does cost a little bit more because it requires a fully custom-built aircraft that's kind of designed from the ground up to be a strata launcher like I said the great thing about Pegasus is that the carrier aircraft doesn't need to be designed from the ground up at all it initially launched from a lightly modified B-52 and now launches from a Lockheed l-1011 as we discussed earlier but for those that don't know a strata launch aircraft typically has two fuselages that are connected by a wing and the rocket sort of hangs in the space between the two fuselages they tend to resemble two normal planes bolted together at the wing tips so virgin galactics and scaled composite strata launchers are probably the two most notable and two most well-known and famous examples uh scaled composite strata launcher is currently the biggest aircraft in the world by wings spam and it was quite an exciting project to watch I was even inspired to make you know my own Recreation of the strata launcher However unfortunately it's founder passed away almost exactly a year ago to this day actually and you know since since then the company has ceased all operations and now their assets are sadly up for sale so you know that's probably dead in the water that project now that was a really insensitive choice of words I didn't even mean that it that project is probably uh gone it's probably not going to advance much further so you know uh if you want to buy it if you have a spare 400 million dollars then you can snag yourself a strata launcher of your very own actually now coming to think of it there is a link to my patreon in the description and if this video gets 400 million views which I think let's face it is a fairly realistic goal and if everyone donates one dollar then I on this day pledge that I will purchase the scaled composite strata launcher myself and make some YouTube videos of me attempting to fly it and launch payloads into orbit so guys make sure to like And subscribe and ring that Bell to be notified of all of my strata launch Adventures once we've raised the 400 million US Dollars required to purchase it which like I say I'm very optimistic check out the patreons buy some merchandise together guys we can pull together and we can make something special we can use it in next year's Area 51 raid or something I don't know I haven't thought this through very much but I'm pretty sure being a fairly seasoned Kerbal Space Program pilot I'm pretty sure I know what it takes to uh you know conduct a strata launch uh but that's that's the strata launch system and that's the air launch system as a whole so Pegasus still going strong strata launchers in general not quite as successful yet but you know virgin are currently building their next iteration of spaceship and who knows that maybe someone will buy the scaled composite strata launcher and use it to launch vessels thing is though like Elon Musk said a lot of companies like you know Jeff Bezos and SpaceX value Rockets a bit more that you know recoverable Rockets I should say because all it takes is to scale up the first stage by about five percent and then you've kind of gone away with all the advantages air launches have but like I say air launch is cheap for small payloads and they do have advantages like not being affected by weather conditions and they're a little bit more diverse in to what orientation and what orbit they can launch payload into so I think they'll always have their Niche purposes especially for something like Virgin Galactic which is just the same payload over and over and over again I can see why air launched makes a bit more sense from a viability point of view because the payload has to re-enter Earth's atmosphere once it's done all its mission in space and it doesn't need to enter orbit so it doesn't need anywhere near as much Delta V at least I don't think virgin have any intention of getting into orbit at least the current version I could be wrong I haven't done that much research prior to this video but there is a beautiful cinematic re-entry we've got a nice fireworks display slightly disappointing the whole thing didn't explode but as in the whole part of the lower stage didn't explode obviously I'm very glad that our curb was in the capsule are fine and they didn't even hit their G-Force limit so pretty successful Mission overall if I do say so myself and this was a very fun mission I enjoyed this one a lot so I I hope I hope you guys enjoyed it too are there any other launch systems you'd like me to see me I feel like I've these past few weeks I've been doing quite a few launch systems I did an ssto I did a rocket I've done reusable Rockets before and I've done now I've done a pegasus and I've done strata launch in the past uh you know I've done quite a lot I was thinking maybe when 1.8 comes out and we have the space shuttle boosters I'll do a space shuttle just and then we can do a space shuttle properly for the first time ever income herbal space program but then after that I've got all the launch musicals maybe we could do a big project like do the construction of a space station using different kinds of launch Vehicles so maybe the core of the space station is launched with an ssto the fuel tanks are launched with the Falcon 9 Recreation uh a strata launcher launches the lab uh Pegasus launch like something like that now that might be quite a fun thing to do who knows all in the future though because uh we haven't got that yet there's the capsule all splashed down we're going to cut it way to an end screen now on the left hand side was a video chosen for you based on your kind of viewing Habits by YouTube's recommendation bots on the right hand side is just my most recent upload this is a link to subscribe and check out patreon so we can we can buy the strata launcher if we can pull together guys uh there's also links to Twitter Discord Instagram merchandise in the description if you'd like to check those out as well but other than that thank you for watching

Channel: Matt Lowne

Views: 1,685,557

Keywords: ksp, kerbal space program, air launch, air-launched, rocket, pegasus, pegasus recreation, cargo, minmus, landing, amazing, l1011, l-1011, flying, flight, aircraft, boeing, airbus, lockheed, starliner, star, liner, matt, lowne, matt lowne, copyright

Id: WyAlZ9Hoxtg

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 21 2019