RSS Mission to Jupiter & Moons (WoT)

[Bornholio]

RSS Mission to Jupiter & Moons.  By Jove its a lot of work.

Flyby mission, in my first year of operations I sent a flyby mission, basically minimal dV to get a probe into Jupiter SOI, several years later it passed in while I was doing my mars landers (unmanned yet).

I next sent a deep system Commsat with a 10T antenna to Saturn along with four more missions.

Out went a wave of heavy “Science Orbiters”, large nuclear drive and massive fuel tank pushing a full space science package and SCANsat gear. They included drop tanks, deploy-able probe for the main planet and a return package. Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter all had one fired at them. Additionally the First SCANsats went towards Jupiter.

At this point I decided to clean up my craft on rails. Performance was dropping since there was so much relatively high part count hardware. SCANsats of venus, mercury and mars, Landers on venus and mars. Wreckage of manned Venus missions that awaited the final two missions. Lunar mission debris like fuel stations, comnet, scansat, spent stages, landers, rovers and miscellaneous objects.

Everything in earth orbit except a set of comsats and planetary band timing satellite was de-orbited and many other things either de-orbited or terminated at cost. I charged my operation 30k funds for venus tonnage, and 40k for mars tonnage. The scansats terminated at no cost if they had 100% and left the rest.

I order to get the other things off the map I needed to allow it to complete missions. So my mars sample returns came to earth, the saturn comsat was coasted out and my Jupiter science orbiter was run into SOI. Other things had several years of coasting left on KAC.

As the space science mission came into soi, aligned pretty well with a ganymede intercept, i swepth in and used it as a starting place to make an orbit. This allowed me to dip into its near surface space. I used this orbit to tune into Europa and Io. Finally lowering my PE into about 1450km of Jupiter. At this point i did a flyby discovering that my research on RSS Space High/Low and atmosphere was in error. It was not at 1400km it was at 1550km. Thankfully this onyl slightly lowered my AP and did no damage. My main transit bus was down to only 230m/s of fuel left and not worth using as it was burning into carried craft RCS reserves. I dumped it at AP and lowered the PE down using the now slightly large dV that remained. As with all my stages it had Pressure, Accel, Temp and Gravity sensors aboard. Probe core, and power generations along with basic communications allowed it to be controlled as long as the main orbiter was in LOS. No RCS remained and only a small amount of SAS for control. I tested Aerocapture with it and found my solar panels burned off vary fast. after several loops through I got a very hard full capture at ~800km PE. The G-meter peaked at 26.3. I loaded and re-tried this a few times and could not get a lower capture load force without burning up.

My mission notebook has a page of reading from this fun. (Dwarf fortress kind of FUN)

Thermal shock heating really started at 775km and I started a 75 minute descent (real time) at x4 physical time warp.

• Altitude(km ASL) Notes
• 800km Full Aerocapture
• 775km Thermal Shock
• 670 Pressure 0.001atmospheres (atm)
• 570 Mach effects
• 536 1 atm
• 500 330m/s Terminal Velocity (TVel)
• 460 10 atm
• 418 200 TVel
• 360 150 TVel
• 350 50 atm
• 298 100 atm
• 272 100 TVel
• 257 150 atm
• 240 Overheat warning on parts starts again
• 228 200 atm
• 214 80 TVel
• 202 250 atm
• 186 now flying low (no coms to send out science though)
• 180 300 atm
• 169 70 TVel
• 161 350 atm
• 145~ 400 atm, 65 TVel (needed a break, got some tea)
• 126 450 atm
• 112 500 atm
• 110 60 TVel
• 84 600 atm
• 75 55 TVel
• 67 666 atm (Kinda hellish down here)
• 54 Temp readouts in high red, 1150K
• 49 750 atm
• 38 800 atm
• 33 1200K temp (things burn up and control is lost except for that darn Mechjeb)
• 28 Blackness, most of the screen turns black but some effect is below me.
• 18 900 atm
• 11 More thermal on tougher parts, not sure of temp since that burned up already.
• 0 1000 atm (This is peak and stays constant farther down)
• 0 All black except for craft and GUI, 48.4 TVel, followed down until
• -115 Flight end

Terminated flight using object thrower. Could not leave since it was in atmospheric flight and didn't wat to wait 500+ more km at 50m/s.

Somewhere in the deep solid hydrogen waits a sentient mechjeb case plotting its rise!

 

I mean literally plotting its rise ascent guidance was running as it vanished.

To be continued...

(SAMPLE RETURN!)

Edited March 9, 2017 by Bornholio
pictures, table format

[Bornholio]

I felt bad about that poor mechjeb.

So using [Descent Data], I started designing an ascent sample return vehicle.

Has a retro thruster stage with 1500m/s dV for de-orbit into aerocapture. Then a heatshield plus aeroshell. Inside is the science package and power needed for the down trip. Everything is in an actively cooled cargo compartment. This needs to be opened for the atmospheric sampler. Attached to this from the top is a coupler and nuclear drive.  Guessing that i need 10k+dV so the design gets 15k, collect all to the probe core in it, coms, power and minimal rcs along with a docking port so it can transfer its sample or be refueled. on Top is a balloon package ready to be inflated and tuned to 14km buoyancy on Earth.

Attempt One:  starting from a 3200x1590km orbit the system enters shallow, I'm aiming for the Great red dot in all these tests because it is a tighter target and tests control too.  Missing a capture ruins the aim.  Evidently needs a lower AP to get longer in high drag mode. A bit after PE i start using the last of the fuel to get the AP down and slightly reduce the PE to 780km, an hour later I start getting the first heavy thermal, my ablator is long gone from the capture.

Shedding De-orbit tanks

Chart 3.75m Heat sheild

• 1460km    Full, Orbital Velocity 42km/s
• 1100km    850kg Ablator
• 1000km    790kg Ablator
• 900km      620kg Ablator
• 850km      425kg Ablator
• 800km      200kg Ablator
• 765km      0kg Ablator

After this point it looked good then in full thermal heating I flipped the fairing burned up and a cascade of explosions.

Heating Up

over the course of 6 hourse i crashed three more designs.

Final design, on target and ready to start the dive.

Final design re-entry main heating phase