I'm out on a mission to prove why the Proton is my favourite stock rocket of all time. At this point I have it working to standard spec for the most part, and exactly to scale. In fact all I need to add are the visual details. Here she is in the bare metal:
I have done a few things which are quite exceptional for myself when building her. For one, something for which I'll probably get hanged around here, is stretching the main engines by 14,2857%. That is to make the hawk engines 3½m rather than 3m. the objective was not to increase the power of the engine even though it does so by the same percentage as which I stretched it. Even so even after stretch it is actually underpowered. It produces just over 822 tons of thrust. The real thing does 960 or so. But my actual reason for stretching it was to avoid adding unnecessary and non-standard lines to my rocket, and also to avoid having overlapped tanks as far as possible. In the interest of realism I did use 6 Hawk engines, and I added all six external booster fuel tanks which makes taking off quite difficult with my limited thrust, but it sort of makes up for using all 6 engines. My focus on an accurate rocket layout necessitated the use of the no heat cheat. But as matters stand I did not have much of an option anyway because there was no other way that I would be able to reach LEO in StigSpace... err... IRIS.
I did the exact same for the second stage's four Valiant engines so that the two centre engines are overlapped, although they are not stretched and I really am trying to make as accurate as possible a replica without using any unnecessary cheats or anything else I can avoid. In my 1.4 replica I had 2 hidden Titans in the core and one hidden Frontier in the second stage. This rocket has no such thing. Also, the 3rd stage and Briz-M engines do not use the no heat cheat, those that do had it activated by .bp editing.
One of my objectives was that my rocket should lift the payload to low-earth orbit in Iris that the standard rocket does in reality which is around 23½ tons on the latest model Proton-M. And that she does. Barely. Right on target. Even my rocket mass is near spot on, even on a per stage basis.
Here's how she flies:
She's not as powerful as her real life counterpart, so that should make up for the stretched engines. She practically crawls off the launchpad at TWR 1.13.
MECO and separation.
These four Valiants have a lot of work to do...
... And that's as far as they take her. Shortly after SECO, the fairings go. I could drop them earlier, but that would be contrary to reality.
Briz-M has a Kolibri, shrunk to 60% in both dimensions. In this size it produces only 9t of thrust. And um...
... yeah...
... but she levels out at the equivalent of 170km. So not a problem. She establishes an apoapsis of 80.8km, then coasts. A 9 seco d burn puts her in orbit.
And not much margin either. All in all, a great rocket and a good old-fashioned challenge.
And that is Proton putting 23.5 t exactly in orbit. What a beaut!