A New Age in Rocketry!

1958 July 25, Illyrien Space Center,  Press Lounge

Welcome back fellow space enthusiasts and news reporters, today we are going to talk about a different topic, from what has become too common this year, namely the constant launches to other planets. No, this time, we are looking at nothing less than a new age of rocketry!

To put it plainly, many things have come together to create this event. New engines, new design solutions, better software, and huge development in rocket recovery and reuse. As such, we are creating a new generation of rockets.

The first step was the development of the J-2 hydrolox engine. A new powerful engine with high thrust and efficiency in vacuum. Since previous studies in fuel tanks proved that hydrogen could be stored, our new generation rockets are going to use hydrolox engines for 2. stages.  Transfer stages are also being slowly changed towards using hydrolox engines.

Secondly, we have managed to master recovery and reuse of boosters and main stages. Though only if they are dropped early in their flight. This also means that we need to ensure, that these stages are dropper a lot earlier than we did previously. Difficult, but our creative engineers are mastering it.

Thirdly, a breakthrough in interstages is also being added, which will finally put an end to the constant wobbliness problems which have frustrated efforts to years, and which have caused the crash of many of our launches

Finally, the DIKU group has improved our automated launch code, for a safer, more even and more efficient flight.

 

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the ISP

Gene: So, is the code upgrade finished? It was estimated a month ago..

Developer: Oh, no, not yet, but its almost.. 99% done!

 

Earlier…

Bill: Hey Gene, you know, while at the International Space Conference, I got talking with a few Kerbinian engineers. It started with just chats about special beers and eventually it turned into talks about rocket designs. It seems they have no Large Rocket Wobbly Issues.

Gene: Really? That has haunted us for years now… how did they solve it?

Bill : Their designs are almost identical to ours, except, that they use 1 to 2 stage interstages in a slightly different way. Where we use the decoupler/I-beam trick, they bypass that directly and put the structural strength into the interstage shell itself. I have run the numbers are set up a series of planned tests. Can I processed?

Gene: Oh absolutely, go right ahead! That is a priority issue! I can’t wait to escape that constant challenge!!

 

Gameplay

Early in the game, I discovered the decouple/I-beam solution for having multiple engines. It works great generally, but for some reason not with interstages. As such It’s been a challenge for many game years to launch anything heavier than 40t. This was due to the wobbliness and thus instability of launchers. The 40t launcher, Ze Wunder, worked well since it used single large (ISP 353) engines. Unfortunately, it could not really go heavier than that.

I had not noticed, that interstages have two connection points, and that if the upper one is used, decoupler/I-beam, becomes irrelevant.