pTrevTrevs

Apollo 17 Part 1: Last But Not Least, and Also Not Last: For most of human history, the far side of the Moon has been shrouded in mystery and speculation. Entirely invisible to observers on Earth due to the Moon's tidal lock, men have spent millennia wondering what that unknown yet just-out-of-reach place could be like. It wasn't until 1959, when an American Juno II rocket launched Pioneer 3 around the Moon [Author's Time-Line] that humanity received its first glimpses at the region. The grainy and colorless photos revealed something which to many on Earth appeared anticlimactic, to say the least; the Moon is barely any different on this side than on the one with which we're familiar. To the geologists and astronomers under NASA's umbrella, however, the far side had a few distinct differences. First, the area was almost totally devoid of lunar mare, the dark, volcanic lowland regions which cover a significant portion of the near side. Second, compared to the near side, the far side was absolutely peppered with impact craters. This wasn't unsurprising, as the near side's oldest craters were likely covered up by the eruption of the lava flows which formed the mare. That great volcanic cataclysm which masked the scars of the near side had also complicated Project Apollo's efforts to acquire samples of the old lunar crust, and although highland material from before the formation of the mare had been recovered on Apollos 15 and 16, scientists still wondered if yet more ancient material could be retrieved from the far side. The decision to send an Apollo crew to the far side was not taken lightly, and many within NASA remained opposed to it right up to the day of launch. By 1970 it was clear that Apollo's days were numbered. Apollo 20 had been cancelled in favor of additional funding for Skylab and Apollo Applications. Apollos 18 and 19 also came under fire in April and May of that year, however the highly successful missions of Apollos 13 and 14 provided the administration with the evidence and trustworthiness it needed to convince Congress to finance the final two missions alongside a refit of their Saturn V launch vehicles. Still, with landing sites confirmed up to Apollo 16, there remained only three landings left. In an effort to squeeze as much of a return out of these final three flights as possible, radical mission planners began to lobby for landing sites that would have been laughed out of the room in 1969, from the great ray crater Tycho to the South Pole, to the far side. In particular, the farside advocates argued for a prominent crater known as Tsiolkovsky, named for the great Russian rocket scientist of the early 20th century. Here they would find much more than just the prestige of a far side landing; Tsiolkovsky was a geological treasure trove in its own right. The gigantic central peak within the crater could contain material forced up from deep within the far-side's crust, and the lowest areas of the crater had been filled in with volcanic mare material, making Tsiolkovsky one of the few places on the far side to feature such terrain. The questions raised by this unique region were infinite. Would the mare at Tsiolkovsky differ chemically from what was seen on the near side? Just how old would the material be around the crater rim? What kind of primordial relics could be embedded in the central peak? As these questions tugged at the back of the geologists' minds, two more Apollo landings proceeded smoothly, each one pushing the envelope a little bit farther. New hardware entered the field enabling more advanced exploration, while the astronauts, flight controllers, and technicians gathered ever more experience and familiarity with those systems already in operation. Fearful again of losing the American public's attention (and funding along with it), NASA Administrators reluctantly authorized studies into the feasibility of a Tsiolkovsky landing. The extra technical hurdles were considerable; with no Earth overhead the astronauts on the surface would require a communications relay to link them to their flight controllers in Houston, and the lighting conditions required for an Apollo landing necessitated a highly unorthodox launch window. For the first time in American space history, a manned spacecraft would be launched from the Cape under cover of night, in order to reach the Tsiolkovsky basin just as the sun was rising. Furthermore, with the far side itself being illuminated for the astronauts on the ground, the near side would be in darkness, and invisible from Earth. To surmount the communications problem, NASA acquired two Nimbus weather satellite busses and a pair of Titan 23C rockets to launch them. Each satellite was modified to serve as a communication relay from the Moon's L4 and L5 Lagrangian points, but when further studies showed that only one satellite at the L5 was necessary, the spare was rebuilt as a scientific spacecraft to supplement the upcoming radar mapping experiments on Apollos 17 and 18. The mission profile underwent massive changes from its inception to its execution, with some coming to refer to it as the "J+ Mission", for all its added complexity compared to what had come before. Thanks to this, the launch date slipped further and further back, from July to December of 1972. At long last, however, on a cold winter night at KSC Saturn V SA-512 began its journey to the unknown... Frustratingly, about half of the screenshots I had selected to upload just... didn't work for some reason, like imgur just forgot to upload them. So, I guess they'll just be moved into the second part of this. Not a big deal, I guess, but damn that's annoying. I pay how much a month for internet, again?

Pretty sure we've already got one. Some people have done Saturn-Shuttle builds and posted pictures of them either here or in the Shuttle Adventures thread in Mission Reports. So, I have noticed a very slight effect from the offset CoM. In order to test how well it works I checked my landing point prediction in MechJeb and then assigned a landing target as close to it as I could on the map view. During reentry I spun the capsule and watched the MJ readout showing my projected distance from the target to see if it changed. It did fluctuate a little bit and I was able to steer myself slightly closer to my target, but the cross-range was so low (and recovery logistics so unimportant in KSP anyway) that I decided it wasn't really practical to use. Another time during a particularly high-G reentry I swear I was able to lower my rate of descent enough to keep the crew from passing out from the acceleration, but for all I know that could be a placebo effect at work. Now I do my lunar reentries by pointing down into the atmosphere early on to make certain that I'm not going to overshoot my landing area or bounce off back into space, then rotate back around to point up when the deceleration reaches peak levels to mitigate the G-forces and prevent G-LOC, then point downward again between exiting plasma blackout and deploying drogue chutes to eliminate any lingering horizontal movement. It probably doesn't do much other than make me feel more comfortable about the whole thing, but it is what it is.

Let me be the first to pay the screenshot tax for this mod:

This is certified Gang Delta turf. Something about a long slender rocket with nine SRBs just checks all the boxes for me.

Does anybody know how to get in contact with Harrison Schmitt? Asking for a friend... I uh, solved that stowaway issue from earlier.

Why are the hatches between the USOS and ROS closed during EVAs? Just general safety precautions, I assume?

I thought ullage motors on the S-II were completely done away with from Apollo 15 onwards.

Ah, the good old days of 2001, we didn't realize what we had until it was gone... Pretty stoked to hear that Landsat parts are coming, it's one of the big satellite families of the 1970s that's still missing from the mod.

Honestly looks like something right out of Animusic.

Was hoping to have posted Apollo 17 photos by now, but I uh... accidentally launched the mission with a fourth Kerbal in one of the LRV's seats. The guy rode all the way to lunar orbit folded up in the LM before I realized he was there. Talk about duffle bag press... Anyway, somehow I don't have any quicksaves or backups from before the launch, so I'm currently doing some questionable tampering with the persistent file to try and remove him. Will it work? I have no idea. Is it cheating? Maybe. Do I care? No. Since that's going on, I guess I'll just post some more miscellaneous screenshots this time. Anik A1 on Delta 1914: Another [fictional] commercial launch, Tundra 1, placed into a southward-pointing Molniya orbit by another Delta 1914 from Vandenberg AFB: Atlas E/F with reentry vehicle from Vandenberg AFB: Landsat 1 kitbash on Delta 900: Finally, some stuff actually related to my Apollo 17 mission: When the time came to select the landing site for the final Apollo mission, a faction within NASA (mainly composed of scientists, geologists, and Apollo 17 LMP Harrison Schmitt) pushed incessantly for a landing at the far-side crater Tsiolkovsky. This crater is unique in that its lowest areas have been filled with mare material similar to that seen on the nearside. Since the lunar far side has much less mare material than the near side, a landing at Tsiolkovsky would be an incredible boon for lunar science, as well as a technically impressive flight to end the program on as high a note as possible. In order to raise support for his scheme, Schmitt drafted a proposal to launch a communications relay to a lunar Lagrange point (probably the L2 point) to provide a connection to the astronauts during the landing and surface activities. A Titan III could easily place one or more relays into the proper position, and by modifying existing TIROS weather satellites the mission could operate on a shoestring budget. The plan was received poorly by the rest of NASA, who felt that the added risk and extra cost were too great to justify the benefits of such a flight. With the infinite budgets of Apollo coming to an end and NASA still trying to save what post-lunar programs it could from the Nixon Administration's chopping block, there was just no way Schmitt's plan could work, and Apollo 17 eventually went to Taurus-Littrow instead. But in the Bluedog Cinematic Universe nothing ever goes wrong, the only thing Richard Nixon is president of is his local used car dealership, and crazy schemes are not only allowed but encouraged! Under these circumstances, I can finally perform the ultimate lunar flight and land at that Holy Grail of landing sites, Tsiolkovsky. Since we don't have any TIROS spacecraft appropriate to the era (the TIROS-1 design that we do have was long since retired), I've opted to modify Nimbus equipment instead to prove to people just how versatile it really is. There are two spacecraft involved in this plan; the first is actually a mapping satellite, since the SIM instruments don't seem to have the SCANSat modules that they should. This satellite will be placed into a polar orbit around the Moon a month before Apollo 17 launches and will generate up-to-date altimetry and multispectral maps for the crew to use. The second is the relay itself, which will be placed in an orbit identical to the Moon's in a position roughly equivalent to the lunar L5 point about two weeks before '17's launch. Meanwhile, Apollo 17 stands ready at the pad for its historic nighttime launch. The closeout crew is sweeping the vehicle with flashlights and nightsticks for stowaways that might be trying to tag along.

Uh, for what it’s worth none of the Saturn IB launches used an SLA with blow-off panels, I believe that was exclusive to Saturn V. Only one I’m not sure about is ASTP, because it actually involved extracting something from the SLA like on the lunar missions.

So, is there a particular reason why ASTP and Skylab had slightly different service modules than lunar spacecraft? I know Skylab’s CMs had the white paint to protect them during long-duration spaceflight, but ASTP didn’t last any longer than a flight to the Moon and spent a lot less time in direct sunlight.

Didn’t Soyuz use the automatic Igla system, or was it forced to do without it on this one-off mission?

Please, just let me stir the pot.

But a dry lab requires MOAR BOOSTERS Maybe such a massive payload would finally give Cobalt a reason to do Saturn C-8.

No, I want an S-IC drylab. I'm calling in whatever favors I've earned by posting my screenshots here every couple of days.

S-IC dry workshop when

I wouldn’t be surprised. Even if the hardware was technically capable of it, a polar landing wouldn’t have been able to use a free-return trajectory or a hybrid trajectory, and the lighting conditions at the poles are a lot less reliable. Still, I’m really tempted to copy For All Mankind…

Indeed, in addition to its rocky terrain, Tycho’s extreme southerly location made it extraordinarily difficult to reach with the operational limits of the Saturn/Apollo hardware. Jim McDivitt was so ardently opposed to a landing there that he once told the site selection board that a mission would go to Tycho “over my dead body”. A lot of these same reasons are also making me doubtful about a polar landing, the extreme latitude will only get worse if an attempt is made for Shackleton, and the terrain isn’t bound to be much better near the poles. Depending on the landing site, I would have the opportunity to sample both the South Pole and the Aitken Basin biomes, but I just don’t know if it’s feasible either. Actually, if anyone knows of information about a hypothetical Apollo polar landing (or if it was even technically possible) I’d be very interested in reading it. Copernicus, while definitely a scenic landing site, might not be a practical one either. It was thought that Apollo 20 would be sent there to close out the program with a bang, but as the last three missions were cancelled Copernicus slipped lower and lower on the priority list. After all, Apollos 12 and 14 had recovered Copernicus ejecta, and a landing inside the crater wasn’t likely to uncover much that couldn’t be gleaned from the material already in hand. For my part, I’ve already sampled Mare Imbrium on Apollo 15, and I’ll recover Major Craters material on Apollo 17. Those are the two biomes I can get science from in KSRSS, and without a practical reason to go there I find it a little harder to justify it as a site.

Harrison Schmitt. He aggressively lobbied for a landing at Tsiolkovsky, and from a technical standpoint it was possible. There were proposals to modify existing weather satellite hardware (probably TIROS/ITOS) into a communications relay and send it to the lunar L2 point with a Titan III, but with NASA’s budget being practically confiscated in the early 1970s there just wasn’t enough money to pay for that, and Taurus-Littrow won out. Anyway since I already visited Taurus-Littrow on my Apollo 14 flight I’m sending ‘17 to Tsiolkovsky. Planning on doing at least two further landings, but I’m still debating where they should land. Current candidates are Aristarchus/Schroter’s Valley, Copernicus, Shackleton, Tycho, and Hyginus Rille.

Apollo 16 Part 2: Personally, You Know, This is My Favorite Apollo Mission of them All: Next Time: I make yet another Apollo astronaut cry by doing something they dreamed of but never realized...

Gonna go ahead and ask this here, since I expect a number of informed people to see it. Where can I find information on the hypothetical second production run of Saturn Vs? I know that if ordered they would have had propulsion upgrades to the F-1A and J-2S, but do we know of any other notable changes that would have been implemented? I’ve heard that these Gen 2 Saturns would have also removed the fins on the S-IC, but elsewhere I’ve read that those fins were necessary for mitigating vibrations during the early part of launch. Man, I missed Delta II a lot today. Maybe this is the boomer part of me speaking but the Delta IV and Atlas V just aren’t the same as their legacy ancestors…

Ah well, it's nothing but smoke and mirrors. Clever use of MMB to shift the camera, FOV narrowing, and other people's TUFX configs; nothing that other people haven't already figured out before me.

Interlude to Apollo 16: Orbital Launches of 1972: For all the publicity that accompanies a Saturn launch, 1972 was a very big year for spaceflight in general. The first mission to the outer planets was launched, Delta 1000 arrived on the scene, and astronomers gained another valuable tool in the form of a new space telescope. I really do enjoy these smaller launches, even if I don't need the science or funds they produce at this point, and I've got to showcase them somewhere.' OAO-3 "Copernicus" on Atlas-Centaur, performing celestial observation and astronomy from a near-Earth heliocentric orbit: Jumpseat 2 [Approximation] on Titan 33B to perform [REDACTED} from an elliptical polar orbit: Nimbus 5 on Delta 900, performing detailed atmospheric and weather observation: Intelsat-4 1, on Atlas-Centaur, providing civilian communications networks from geosynchronous orbit: [REDACTED on Titan IIID, performing {REDACTED] from a sun-synchronous orbit: Pioneer 10 on Atlas-Centaur, set to become the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter and escape the solar system: JunkSat 1 on Delta 1910, a [fictional] commercial satellite constructed to study the polar regions of Earth's magnetic field: As an aside, the next time someone does touch-up work on Thor-Delta, could you guys consider a texture switch for the intertank structure as well? While it stayed white on most Delta II launches, virtually all of the photos I can find from the Delta 1000 era until Delta II was introduced shows it being the same color as the rest of the first stage. I've emulated it with a conformal decal as you can see below but it's not an ideal solution. Also @Invaderchaos, standardized satellite busses when?

Haven’t had any problems with sagging so far; usually I lock the hinges once they’re unfolded.