European Agency of Space Stuff

Reminder: Our mission objective is fly a sub-orbital trajectory travelling over 3000km across Africa, putting us in Egypt (or thereabouts). Our payload is not expected to survive re-entry in to the atmosphere. Just a video this time, I don't want to spoil anything: Next Post: Dogs (and cat) of space

Time for our first rocket-plane flight! I will be performing this flight in full virtual reality, using the amazing Kerbal VR mod. I've had to reduce the graphics somewhat (disabling scatterer , specifically) in order to maintain VR compatibility. Unfortunately I haven't yet unlocked one of the plane cockpits which supports all the fancy buttons either, so I'll be controlling it using the Oculus Touch controllers for now. The objective of this mission is to drop launch our Y-1 rocket plane from our mothership , maintain level(-ish) flight at a speed of at least 343m/s for at least 30 seconds, then touchdown on the Saharan desert. In the cockpit is heroic test pilot Matt Clarkson . You'll notice that after I turn off the engines I start performing banking turns. Generally, in flight, you control your speed with your throttle and control altitude with your pitch. However when your engines are off and when you are in a state of gliding, you have to control both by maneu...

I noticed in the final simulation that sometimes the design re-enters on the opposite end of the payload than I'd planned. Rather than adding more ablative steel I had a bit of a rummage through the other equipment we already have. I decided to re-purpose a thrust plate. Thrust plates are designed for separating fuel tanks from rocket engine(s) and allowing the mounting of multiple engines. Since they sit directly above rocket engines, they are rated for around 2000K instead of the 700K of steel, making them effective as heat shields for our purposes. As you can see, the flight went well:  aaaand touchdown: Our payload returned successfully and we're now drowning in Science™! We also have enough money to fund the Y-Plane project, finally coming up next...

Here's the SR-2 first flight video (raw unedited): No problems! Nice, easy flight, sneaking our payload up to a comfortable 140km. Still, this is quite modest given the capabilities of our rocket. We'll want to take the core concept and develop it at a bit to push the envelope and score some more contracts. In the next post we'll look at developing the SR-2b, a multi-stage variant of the SR-2 taking advantage of our rocket's untapped power.

SR-1 Flight 2 was a routine mission to continue gaining telemetry for our space program. I've recorded this flight so it's available for a watch below (warning for audio loudness!): After this there was a third flight of the SR-1, designated SR-1b. In order to get maximum value out of the SR-1 before we move on to other programs, I decided to take advantage of existing production lines by effectively sticking a SR-1 rocket on top of the existing one, creating a three-stage rocket: This worked well and reached a height of 240km for almost no extra expense. Such is the value of having multiple stages taking advantage of already tooled parts, especially when the final stage has less gravity to fight due to our altitude. This makes it sound like we've solved rocketry; just slap more rockets on top of each other! But eventually we'll run against the fundamental nature of rocketry governed by the tyranny of the rocket equation, which can be summed up as: " But to get tha...