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Aeris 4A - From runway to orbit

1,824 views · Published 11 December 2012 · 11:14 · Indexed 8 October 2026

Channel: Brian Sweeney · 2012 · Science & Technology

I wanted to test a new video recording program, so I decided to take the Aeris 4A to space.
I love the jet engine sound as it gets faster and faster. Also, our pilot needs a new pair of underpants

From Harvester, the developer that created the game
The Aeris 4A isn't an easy craft to fly. It's meant to be a real challenge. However, if flown right, it is capable of SSTO, and with enough to spare to make it to a space station.

If you just go for orbit straight away, you'll flameout and go into a flat spin at around 18km altitude, just as you described. To get it to orbit, there are a few things you must do:

Turn on your turbines by pressing '1'. Don't use staging.

Take off, taking care to not tailstrike and lose your rocket motor, and engage SAS as soon as you start to pitch up. Retract gears.

At low speeds, the aircraft will try to pitch up by itself, so SAS is your best bet to keep it stable. Leave it on, and release it in short "bursts" using the F key.

Leave throttle at full, pitch up to around 40° as you climb towards 10km.

As you pass the 5km mark, you'll notice the atmos engines will start gaining thrust, since they operate better at higher altitudes.

As you approach your 10km mark, start pitching down to slow your rate of ascent.

You want to try to level off at about 20km, so you need to climb slowly towards that, to give the craft time to accelerate.

The higher you go, the less drag there is to hold you back, so you'll be able to go faster. However, at those altitudes, the air is very thin, so you'll need to be going quite fast so the intakes can scoop in enough air to keep the engines running.

As a rule of thumb, you should be going at about 600-800m/s as you level off at 20km.

Once there, fly level and let your speed increase.

Around 1200m/s, press 2 to ignite the rocket motor.

The rocket motor will accelerate you even more, so you'll be going fast enough to be able to fly above the 20km threshold without flaming out. You should be able to make it to 24km before your engines sputter.

By this time you should be going at around 1600m/s. Press 3 to shut the turbines down and close all intakes. This will cut a lot of your thrust, but the closed intakes will also have less drag on them (currently there is no animation for the intakes closing, just use your imagination there).

With the engines shut down, you'll be flying on rocket power alone. Turn RCS on, and pitch up slightly to get yourself out of the atmosphere quickly, which now is only slowing you down.

If you do it right, you should be able to make it to low Kerbin orbit with some fuel to spare.

Good luck!

Cheers

Aeris 4A - From runway to orbit

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