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"We choose to go to Mars!" - Chapter twelve: An even gianter giant leap for Kerbalkind


michal.don

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As I advance through my 1.1.3 Realism Overhaul/RP-0 carreer, the time to make the first manned interplanetary flights is slowly coming. Since I have never done this before, I thought that I might start this thread to document my progress, achievements, and surely, failures. I'll probably include a bit of a story, but most of the content will be screenshots of my spacecraft and description of the missions. If anybody who reads this is an experienced RSS interplanetary traveller, I'll be very grateful for any advice for my space program - nobody in my Space Agency really knows what they're doing :) 

Chapter one: "We choose to go to Mars!"

January 1st, 1971

It seemed that the glorious days of the space program are over. Yes, everybody remembers the nerve-wracking moments when Matdard Kerman made his historic first flight to space, and the relief when the chutes finally opened and he landed softly in the ocean. Everybody watched the first flight around the Moon, and the first landing of Grissom IX, as Lagerberta and Chadus became the first Kerbals to step on another celestial body. The world has seen several more Moon landings, and several more accomplishments of the program, but slowly lost interest. After all, the finals of the Kerbal Kup are on tonight, why would I watch another Moon landing, eh? The world has become apathetic about spaceflight. It seemed that the glorious days of the space program are over. Until today.

Today, in his new year speech, the president John F. Kerman surprised everybody, when he made a bold statement. "Kerbin should commit itself to send a Kerbal to Mars and bring him back before the decade ends. We choose to go to Mars. We choose to go to Mars and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard." From this very moment, space exploration was again a headline material, and several of the Space Agency directors were considering booking a one-way flight to Bolivia and never coming back.

Sure, the space program was a very succesfull bussines so far. The daring series of missions that lead to the Moon landing had a few bumps on the way, but no Kerbal was lost in space and all the objectives were ultimately met.

It all begun with the fifth flight of the Lovell spacecraft, that was sent on a free return trajectory and completed a lunar flyby:

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Then a new, three-manned capsule was developed. The Grissom spacecraft was the largest thing launched to date. On the ninth Grissom mission, the first Kerbals landed on the Moon:

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Eight of the nine Lunar landing mission were succesful, and helped us learn a lot about the Moon. The exception was Grissom X, which was aborted during ascent because of an engine failure - the crew survived, and later flew to the Moon on Grissom XIV.

Several satelites were sent to interplanetary space and to another planets. So far, the Agency has visited Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter and his moons, while a probe to Saturn is on its way and should arrive early in the 1972.

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As the first part of the Grissom program was coming to an end, the Agency started to explore the possibilities of long term space and surface exploration. They realized that the next step will eventually be to send Kerbals to other planets. They just did not expect that it would have to be this early. Considering we haven't even landed a probe on Mars, the timeframe was really tight. And a lot of the things we learnt during construction of the lunar base in Struve crater will surely come in handy - be it precision landings, surface assembly or long distance roving.

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We also had a bit of experience with prolonged stays in orbit - several crews stayed more than a month aboard the first space station - Skylab I:

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But this, this will be a different thing altogether. We will have to invent a spaceship of dimensions never seen before, using engines and fuels that haven't been invented yet. We will have to learn to live in space for years, much further from our planet than anybody has gone before.

Because we choose to go to Mars.

 

 

Edited by michal.don
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11 hours ago, michal.don said:

If anybody who reads this is an experienced RSS interplanetary traveller, I'll be very grateful for any advice for my space program - nobody in my Space Agency really knows what they're doing :) 

If we knew what we were doing, this wouldn't be called research, would it? :)

From my experience, a crewed mission to Mars is perhaps the most interesting challenge you can undertake in KSP. There are so many different ways of going about it, and without knowing the technology, engines and parts available to you, I can't really give you any practical advice except: test, test, test. Your lander(s), in particular. Forget everything you know about Duna: that Mars atmosphere is slippery.

Look at what other players have done and decide what type of mission seems fun for you. This is important, as it will be a huge task, and there will inevitably be some tedium involved. Youtube has many videos of players (winged, Chris P. Bacon, Sparker spring to mind) who have done this using conventional or proposed methods. I know you've been following some of the Camwise Logs, but as a reminder, this is where my slightly more unusual attempt began.

I wish you the best of luck and look forward to seeing what you come up with.

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5 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

There are so many different ways of going about it, and without knowing the technology, engines and parts available to you, I can't really give you any practical advice except: test, test, test.

That sounds very reasonable, thank you :) Most of the tech/part limitation is caused by the RP-0, the most important is no ISRU. I remember your epic mission well it was a joy to read your report. My mission will be quite humble compared to yours, at least in the beginnings. Since my tech is not very modern so far - think later Apollo iterations - I'll have to wait until my R&D department catches up a bit. I'll try to do the Mars exploration in several steps, each more ambitious than the last one, as the modern engine technology allows me to pack more stuff to take with me. To begin, I have to figure out the basics, especially how much fuel and how much food and oxygen to take for the first journey.

Thanks,

Michal.don

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While the ultimate goal of the Space Agency, and of this mission report is the journey to Mars and hopefully back to Earth, some chapters will focus on the other activities and missions that take place while I'm waiting for the transfer windows, or for the spacecraft to arrive to their destinations. Some of the chapters might not be exactly chronological, I'll rather try to focus on one project in one chapter and then move to another one, even if they run simultaneously.

Chapter two: "We need to learn to live up there"

1971

As the initial shock of the big announcement faded a bit, the board of directors realized how much work will have to be done. And will have to be done fast. We know nothing about Mars, we know nothing about deep space journeys, we know nothing about the effects of these journeys on the crew, yet we are supposed to send kerbalnauts on one and explore our closest neighbour. So, we should start learning. After a series of meetings of the board and the senior scientists and engineers, the decision came to focus on three main projects for now:

First - long term stays in orbit and finding out what the main issues are and how to deal with them

Second - a transfer window to Mars is coming soon. So we must send probes there and find out as much as we can

Third - We need to develop procedures and mission rules for working on the martian surface. It was easy on the Moon, the mission control could communicate with the kerbalnauts almost without delay. Mars is another story - it will take several minutes before mission control gets your message, and several more before you get your answer. So the crew must be able to operate without direct guidance most of the time.

 

Walt Kerman was named the head of the Skylab program. As of now, Skylab I has been in operation for a few years, and three crews of three visited the station. They have proved that it is possible to survive a month in space, and performed a few scientific experiments, but that's about it.

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Despite the conviction of Walt that the logical thing would be to send the next crew to Skylab for about half a year, and just see what would happen, the previous crews disagreed almost unanimously. Skylab was not ready for this kind of permanent stays. It was too cramped, lacked proper equipment and suffered from occasional power problems. The crew could tough it out for a month, but there's no way that they would stay there for half a year. The board disagreed, claiming that with all the investments in R&D and the martian probes, there wasn't enough money left for expanding the station - while kongress approved the martian program, no money had arrived yet.

Since there was no hope of an agreement between the two parties, Gus Kerman, the head of operations, suggested an experiment - the members of the board will try to live and work for a few days in the Skylab training facility, a scale model of the station, to see what the crew's reservations were about.

Despite the experiment was supposed to last a few days, it was a very short one. Which may or may not have been caused by the indian food the board had prior to boarding the simulator. After just two hours, Walt Kerman emerged from the hatch, simply stating "I have to go, and I'm sure as hell not doing it in there" before disappearing in the corridors rather fast. In a matter of minutes, the funding for expansion of Skylab was secured.

After the modules have been built, a crew consisting of an engineer Adfry Kerman, scientist Gusory Kerman, and a Grissom program veteran, pilot Melbin Kerman was sent to the station to oversee the construction and deal with any issues that might occur. The modules are to be sent on unmanned spacecraft, and guided to docking by Melbin.

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Grissom A IV, prior to launching the crew to Skylab

 

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A slight problem occured during the deployment of the solar arrays - one pair of the pannels failed to deploy. Luckily, the mission control diagnosed the problem as an instrumentation failure, and planned an EVA to deploy them manually. Adfry Kerman managed to override the system and do the needed repairs during one spacewalk.

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The construction took nearly eight months of 1971. Skylab was now able to hold 8 crewmembers with enough supplies for almost a year. Proper habitation modules were installed, and it was not a tin can floating in space anymore. It was the beginning of a new era.

An era where you could truly live in space.

 

 

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Edited by michal.don
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It seems that I'm getting a little distracted in my carreer. As I was waiting for the first batch of probes to arrive to Mars, I thought of a few more things I could do in the meantime. And, to be honest, I started to enjoy thinking and writing about the small backstories of the board and the crews more than I thought I would, so I'll probably include a little more of those than I originally planned.

Chapter three: "It sure is pretty out there"

1971

The first transfer window to Mars was approaching fast. Linus Kerman, the recently appointed head of the preliminary martian exploration program was an ambitious man, so the plans he made for this opportunity were not easy to accomplish. Engineers and technicians in the VAB worked around the clock to finish the several spacecraft that were scheduled to launch in the coming weeks to embark on the journey to Mars. If, however, everything goes to plan (which isn't very common in this business), we should learn a lot about Mars, which should help the scientists and engineers plan the crewed journey.

Thanks to the hard work of the VAB personell, the rockets were all finished in time and ready for liftoff a few days before the date of the optimal transfer. It was a bit complicated for the mission control as well, as they had to manage four separate interplanetary tranfers just hours apart, and later three injection maneuvers in a few days. It seemed that everything went well. The first spacecraft carrying three ComSats entered an eliptical orbit, from which the satellites could be evenly placed to maintain an optimal signal coverage.

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One of the satellites was also equipped with a high definition camera, so everybody was eagerly waiting for the first decent pictures. The results exceeded everybodys expectations, and even Linus Kerman, a strict man of science, was visibly moved. "It sure is pretty out there", he agreed.

The second probe to arrive was the scanning satellite that had a task of studying the altimetry of martian surface from a low polar orbit and picking suitable landing sites for later missions.

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The third probe wasn't meant to stay at Mars - it had a task of preforming a low flyby, and speeding off to interplanetary space again, while previously running simulations of different gravity assist scenarios.

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With communications secured, the last probe rushed towards the red planet. Its task was certainly the riskiest, and probably the most important one. To land. And, if it survived, send all the vital information about properties of the amosphere and surface it gathered back to Earth.

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Despite losing a solar pannel and a landing leg after a rather rough touchdown, the probe was in a good condition, and started streaming invaluable data shortly after landing. The first part of the martian mission was a great success.

 

While most of the flight directors were occupied by monitoring the progress of the martian mission, Dr. von Kerman came with an idea that he himself desribed as "pretty unconventional, possibly crazy, but quite interesting". It took some effort to convince the board, but in the end they agreed to provide the funding needed to investigate his concept, and, for the first since the beginning of the Grissom program, to hire four new kerbalnauts. As von Kerman demanded, the recruits were selected from the most experienced army test pilots, who predominantly flew experimental jet planes.

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Felix, Henzer, Maxdrien and Ronvis

 

After choosing his team, von Kerman started to work on his new project in a building that hasn't been used yet by the space program, the SPH.

 

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Chapter four: Holiday on the Moon

Late 1971

When all the chaos in the mission control ended after succesfully sending the group of probes to Mars, it was a good time for another project. The crew of Skylab has proved that spending long periods of time in space is not really an issue, as long as the facilities and equipment are adecvate. The next crew, pilot Donbree Kerman, and scientists Jesissa and Erissa Kerman were the first to live for a while on the surface of the Moon. The base in Struve crater had a spacious habitation module, an exploration rover and a science module was to be sent there a few days after the crew, so it was to be an interesting mission. Mission control was also developing procedures for longer stays and EVAs that were to be tested.

Erissa Kerman was the first Kerbal to land on the Moon twice. Being Grissom XIII veteran, she claimed she had done all her work the first time she went, so now she is just tagging along for a nice holiday on the Moon.

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Grissom XVIII launched in the early hours. It was also jokingly called "Grissom light", because of the new modifications. Since it did not carry its own LEM, but just the fuel for the reusable LSTV that was waiting in low lunar orbit, the weight was significantly lower and just four engines were needed on both first and second stage. A few hours after TLI burn, at was time to launch the science module from Launch pad two.

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The science module was significantly heavier, so the standart Grissom launch vehicle had to be reinforced a bit. Four SRBs did the heavy lifting job for the first minute of the flight. After the TLI burn, it was time to switch attention back to Grissom XVIII, that was approaching lunar orbit.

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Donbree managed to rendezvous with the LSTV in three orbits, and succesfully docked. The small lander was refueled, batteries recharged and systems checked. The crew was go for landing in four orbits, when the position of the base relative to the orbit was the most favourable.

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The LSTV was a pretty cool ride. And one of the engineering marvels of the space program. Weighing just over four tons, it was capable of landing on the Moon with reasonable margins, be refueled, and take the crew to low orbit again. The unmanned tests went pretty well, so it was decided to start using the LSTV for crew transport to Struve base.

The landing maneuver commenced about 600 kilometres from the landing site. The tiny engines did not deliver much thrust, so the burn was scheduled to take about nine minutes.

Everything was good for the first half of the burn. But then....

 

"Pssst...."

 

"Mission control, LSTV pilot. we have lost an engine. I'm switching off the opposite one. Are we still go for landing?"

"Yes Donbree, we are still go. engage the landing engines at 40% thrust so you don't end up landing long."

"Roger, engaging the landing engines"

 

For a minute everything seemed to go well again.

 

"Pssst...."

 

"Mission control, LSTV pilot. We have lost anoter one. should we abort?"

"Flight, FIDO. They can't abort. They have slowed down too much, they don't have enough fuel to reach orbit again. But they should be able to land with two engines gone"

"LSTV, do NOT abort. I repeat, do NOT abort. you have spent too much fuel. Donbree, you have to bring her down."

"Roger. Let's hope nothing else goes wrong."

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"Flight, Guidance. They are going to land long. With two engines out, they can't land at Struve"

"OK. we can send the rover to pick them up. Let's see the landing through and worry about that later."

 

When the LSTV passed Struve, it was still going about 200m/s second horozintaly, but Donbree seemed to have the lander under control. At least until....

 

"Pssst...."

 

"Mission control, LSTV pilot. We lost another one. What's happening here?!! The thing is dying!!"

The few seconds of silence were all the answer Donbree needed. They did not know.

"...Roger...."

Panic started to take over the control room. Nobody was sure what to do. But there was nothing to do. Either Donbree lands the ship, or.... You know, it's over.

 

"Pssst...."

 

"All remaining engines on full power, I'll slow it down as much as I can. Brace for impact!!"

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Silence.

"LSTV, Mission control. Do you read?"

.....

.....

"LSTV, Mission control. Do you read?"

......

......

"Flight, FIDO. We are getting some telemetry. It's really weak, the antenna must have been damaged. But it seems they have crahed to the surface at about 20 m/s"

"And the crew?"

"We don't know yet. If the comms are damaged, perhaps they don't hear us."

.....

.....

"LSTV, Mission control. Do you read?"

......

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.....

"Flight, GNC. We are concerned about the fuel."

"GNC, flight. The fuel?"

"Yes flight. If the tanks did not survive the crash, if there is a leak, the thing is full of hypergolic fuel. And if these two mix, it's going to explode."

"Roger, GNC."

.....

"LSTV, Mission control. Do you read?"

......

"Flight, FIDO. We just lost all the systems on LSTV."

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Edited by michal.don
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27 minutes ago, cosimas said:

Good stuff, keep going kerbonaut !

Thanks, will do :)

15 minutes ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

I expect they will move farther and farther from their real-world analogues

Yeah, probably they will. The first mission will probably use the Apollo capsule, it's the largest one that RP-0 has, but there's no way I will fly Saturn V to Mars...... :) 

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Chapter five: "What the hell happened there?!"

Late 1971

Mission control was in complete shock. After a few moments, Gene Kerman regained his composure and started to organize the investigation of what happened in the last few minutes. Soon, everybody was given a job to do. Engineers started to analyze the signals coming from LSTV prior to loss of communications, the team that assembled the vehicle started to look at the possibilities of what went wrong, and the team responsible for Struve base sent the rover to take pictures of the crash site.

"Flight, we are approaching the site. We can see something on the surface there, possibly the remains of the lander."

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"Wait a minute.... That's not debris, we can see the crew!"

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In a few minutes, Donbree and Erissa boarded the vehicle and contacted mission control.

"Mission control, Struve rover here."

"Donbree, mission contol. We are really glad to hear you. What the hell happened there?"

"Well, I was hoping you would tell me. The thrusters were dying, one by one. I couldn't put it down softly, we hit the ground at quite nasty speed. Jess was thrown out of her seat and Erissa almost got crushed by the lander."

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"As soon as I managed to get up, I helped the girls up on their feet. Since I knew that there was still some bang left in the tanks, and it seemed that it was starting to leak, we decided not to stay too close to the lander, which was probably a good idea."

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"And then the taxi came. That's pretty much it. Luckily, at least the guys who make the space suits seem to know what they are doing, these things can take a beating and still work. Requesting permission to switch the rover to manual control and get out of here."

"Roger, permission granted. We suggest you take Erissa to Struve base, and then come back for Jess."

"No need mission control. I got it covered."

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"Donbree, you know you are violating at least ten different mission rules now, do you?!"

"How about a new rule sir? How about "If you can't design a lander that doesn't try its hardest to kill the crew, you don't get to make rules?"

"For gods sake Donbree..... Ok, just take it easy, we don't want anything else to happen there....."

 

After a short drive, the trio arrived at Struve base. The first order of business was to check the life support and power systems, power up the habitation module and check the state of consumables.

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"All right, mission control, Struve base here. We completed the checklist, and everything is A-OK here. Apart from my tongue, I bit that pretty hard during the landing. All the systems are running, and we have about four months worth of food, oxygen and water, plus a bit extra in the rover. If the lab manages to land here tomorrow, we should get another month or so of water and oxygen. Considering that we'll probably run out of food first, I suggest you put Jess on a diet, I noticed she started to look a bit chubby... Ouch, that hurt, Jess!!"

"Roger Struve, we think it won't be neccessary, we are investigating the possibilities of resuply missions just now, and we'll try to get a return vehicle to Struve as soon as possible. If you are ready, we'd also like to land the lab tomorrow. We don't see any reason to wait."

"Roger, we are ready. The girls are looking forward for their experiments, and surely, not sharing a roof with me."

The next morning, the lab completed the insertion burn and was waiting for the most favourable landing window.

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Everything went well, and the Mooncrane landed the lab right next to the fuel tanks at Struve. Erissa and Jesissa started to power up the thing while Donbree was sent to gather some scientific data with the rover.

In the next month, the life on the Moon has become as monotonous as life on another planet can get. The lab was working perfectly, and every day, a lot of interesting scientific data arrived to mission control. While the base was working perfectly, a team of engineers was working without a break to deliver a return vehicle to Struve as soon as they could, in case something went wrong there. They did a great job, and in four weeks, the lander was ready to launch.

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"Struve base, mission control. Good morning, we have some good news for you. The return vehicle should be landing at your location in a few hours. We are also sending you the checklists and procedures to get it ready for your trip back to Grissom XVIII. Your are still go to stay at Struve for a few weeks, but we want you to get the vehicle ready as soon as you can, just in case."

"Mission control, Struve base. That's good to hear. I'm quite curious what the guys in engineering came up with. Are the new procedures much different than the ones we had with LSTVs? We dont' have an engineer here."

"Erm, negative. We believe there will be no problems. The procedures are, ehm, very similar."

"Ok, we'll get back to you when the vehicle lands."

In a few hours, the new lander touched down at Struve with a cloud of dust. When the dust settled, the crew had their bit to say.

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"Mission control, Struve base. You've got to be kidding me."

 

 

Edited by michal.don
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4 hours ago, michal.don said:

"Mission control, Struve base. You've got to be kidding me."

Dammit, Mission Control. You could at least have made an effort and painted it a different colour, or something. 

At least Donbree got to try out rover ladder surfing on the Moon. Camwise is jealous.

I wish them good luck with their ascent. They're going to need it. :D 

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25 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

At least Donbree got to try out rover ladder surfing on the Moon. Camwise is jealous.

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Well, I think Camwise and Donbree would have a nice conversation about reusing not so successful lander designs :)

Edited by michal.don
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Chapter six: The small steps

late 1971 - early 1972

"With all due respect, sir, we firmly believe that this is the safest thing to do. Our investigation found the cause of the thruster failures, and we took the measures neccessary to ensure it will not happen again."

The chief engineer of the LSTV design team wasn't looking forward to the meeting with Gene Kerman. Their lander almost killed three kerbalnauts on its first crewed Moon landing. Luckily, the crew survived the crash landing, but that was about all the good news there was. The crew was now stranded on the Moon, and they had to think of a way to get them back as soon as they could.

"There is no way we could design, test and build a completely new vehicle in time. We could send them supplies to ensure they can stay at Struve longer, but it is risky. If any one launch goes wrong, it's a bad day for all of us. On the other hand, we built two of the LSTVs back then. So, the second one is already assembled and tested, so it's just a matter of putting it up on a rocket and sending it to the Moon. We could do it in less than a month. We finished a report and sent it to the board to review."

Gene still wasn't convinced.

"You claim that you identified and fixed the problem. What exactly caused the malfunction?"

"It was a mistake of one of our engineers who was responsible for the assembly and integration of the two engine systems. There were two independent clusters of engines on the vehicle - the throttlable landing engines, and the restartable main engines that did most of the lifting work. The main engines could be theoretically restarted as many times as you needed, that is why they were chosen for the job. But, the problem was that they were rated for thirty minutes of burn time, and our colleague, ehm, overlooked that. That is why the first unmanned landing and takeoff went perfectly, but as the engines reached the critical burn time on the second trip, they started to shut down. The LSTV as it is can not be reused multiple times, but is the safest bet for one trip to the Moon surface and back."

"I see... And the measures you were talking about?"

"We hired several more people for QA and tests and a new senior engineer that is responsible for checking the systems, engines and requirements of the missions. And the person responsible for the systems check on the first vehicle was reassigned to the RST team, sir."

"RST team?"

"Restroom Sanitation Technician, sir."

"Heh. very well then. We will send the second LSTV for the crew. But I imagine that they will not be very enthusiastic about that."

 

Two months later, Struve base 

 

"LSTV, mission control. You are go for liftoff in twenty seconds."

"Roger mission control. If the thing works this time."

"We talked about this Donbree. The engineers assured us it is just fine. Ten seconds."

"Ahh, the engineers. Are these the guys that nearly killed us the last time? Sure, they must be right. Three, two, one, liftoff!"

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"Mission control, LSTV. We have MECO and we are preparing for rendezvous with Grissom XVIII. I guess I owe the guys in engineering a cold one."

"Roger Donbree, I'm sure they will be glad to hear this."

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"We are going home, see you guys in a few days. Grissom XVIII out."

"See you in a few days, mission control out."

 

The Grissom XVIII's mission was the closest call of the space program so far. If it wasn't for the decisions of the mission control and great performance of the engineers, the crew would have probably lost their lives.

With the mission completed, the flight planners were confident they had most of the information and data needed to embark on the interplanetary journeys. The first, small step of many to follow was designing a new spacecraft. The Grissom capsule was great for the two week trips to the Moon, but wasn't suitable for the several months the journey to Mars will take. So this is where the new ship, Glenn, comes in.

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Glenn I launched in early February, 1972. The mission was to test all the systems in LEO and return home after ten days. Many components and procedures that were succesfully used in Grissom program were modified for Glenn missions. For example, the habitation module for the interplanetary part of the journey was stored and then extracted from the spacecraft in a similar way as the LEMs were on the lunar flights.

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The mission went without any problems and Glenn I landed in the ocean ten days after launch.

Kerbalkind was ready to take the first step on their journey to Mars.

 

 

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10 hours ago, Kosmonaut said:

what about wet workshops- that could make the trip much more survivable

I don't think this is possible in RP-0. There is a decent choice of habitation modules, ranging from 2 to I think 16 crew members. But in long, interplanetary flights, it's everything about weight. Unless I build a really massive ship, there is no way I can pack 20 tonne heavy module.

I think the hab I chose for the Glenn spacecraft is quite spacious for the crew of three, so I won't have any regrets packing them inside for a year or two :)

If there is a more occupied interplanetary mission later on, I will surely adjust the living quarters, but for now, they will have to endure the trip in the hab I chose.

Michal.don

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Just a little eyecandy for today :)

Chapter seven: Pictures of a distant world

1972

After spending almost seven years in deep space, the first probe sent to Saturn arrived at its destination. The goal of its mission was to explore the gas giant and its seven moons. The small tank contained enough fuel to fly by all of them and in the end, rush toward its fiery destiny in the atmosphere of Titan, which was the most intersting body for most of the scientists.

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Mimas

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Enceladus

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Tethys

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Titan

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Iapetus

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Also, Dr. Von Kerman finally started testing his most recent crazy invention. What could it possibly be good for?

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2 hours ago, MarkWatney said:

So are you going to end up flying an apollo like craft to mars?

Well, at least the capsule will be the same, so in some ways, it will at least resemble the Apollo spacecraft. But other than that, the delta-V budget for the martian mission will force me to construct something with much more bang than Apollo, and I still did not design the whole thing, so, we'll see :) 

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So, after seven chapters of flying around the Earth and the Moon, the time to send Kerbals into deep space has finally come. Although I did proper testing of the spacecraft, I was still pretty nervous - after you complete the ejection burn, there is very little you can do if you planned the mission wrong. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I was this nervous in KSP - possibly my first Moon landing. So today I'll tell you a story of the first interplanetary kerbals in history.

Chapter eight: "It doesn't look like a nice place to live"

1972-1973

In early 1972, the kongressional funding finally arrived. Because money wasn't an issue anymore, it was time to go big.

The first order of business was estabilishing another space center and facilities - the KSC at Cape Canaveral was great for the flights to the Moon, but it's location wasn't very favourable for launches to equatorial orbits or orbits with a low inclination. The board considered several places, and in the end, the decision was to bulid the center at Kourou. A small space center was already in operation there, so it would be easier to upgrade the existing facilities, than startng from scratch. It was a great choice for many reasons - it was sitting just a bit north from the equator, it was right next to the sea and a beautiful beach, it wasn't very far from Cape, and the locals were nice and friendly people, despite speaking a very weird language. The head of operations, Gus Kerman, was sent to Kourou to inspect the site and start organizing the reconstruction. A young member of the local kerbalnaut corps, Elii Kerman showed Gus around the facilities.

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"This is where les rockets launch"

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"And this is where we hide when les rockets launch, so we don't die."

"Gus Kerman to Cape Canaveral, the launch site will need serious upgrading, and the local team will need some serious work safety training. Their safety protocols are very, ehm, different from ours. I will start my work immediately, there is much to be done here if we want to make the next trasfer window to Mars."

Meanwhile, at KSC at Cape, one of the great moments in spaceflight history was approaching. After the LEO mission of Glenn I and a flight of Glenn II, where Zelne, Virie and Leke took the spacecraft to solar orbit for several weeks, the mission of Glenn III will fly much farther - to Venus. An upgraded Grissom launch vehicle would take the new spacecraft to Earth orbit and beyond. The crew selected consisted of the best kerbalnauts the agency had: Enton Kerman, one of the best pilots of the program, Fredul Kerman, a brilliant scientist and the first kerbal to fly by the Moon on Lovell V, and mission commander Catise Kerman, one of the original Sheppard seven and commander of Grissom XV. It was the most anticipated mission since the first lunar landing.

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"We have liftoff!"

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As Glenn III ascended through the atmosphere, everything looked great.

After reaching orbit, all the important systems were thoroughly checked, as the point of no return was approaching. If something, anything, goes wrong after the burn, there is no possibility of aborting the mission. The spacecraft has to reach Venus and get a gravity assist to reach Earth again. While theoretically possible, a rescue mission was not an option. Either the craft and flight profile work, or the crew is dead.

"Glenn III, mission control. All the systems seem to work fine, everything is within the limits. You are go for the ejection burn. You are go for Venus."

"Mission control, Glenn III. Roger, ejection burn starting in ninety seconds."

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"Three, two, one, engine shutdown. See you guys in about a year."

 

"GUIDO, flight. How do they look?"

"We're getting just what we want to see, flight. Their trajectory is on point."

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"Glenn III, mission control. No correction needed for the burn, you are go for hab extraction."

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The next five months were quite uneventful. But in this case, no news was good news - it meant that the spacecraft worked perfectly and the mission continued as planned. The next maneuvre would occur at Venus periapsis to adjust the trajectory to meet Earth in eight months.

As Glenn III was nearing Venus, interesting scientific data started to arrive, as well as the first crew impressions about our neighbour.

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"Mission control, Glen III. While beautiful, Venus does not look very inviting. You can see from here that it is a very rough place with conditions that are not hospitable at all. It doesn't look like a nice place to live."

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"But I have to admit, the view from our window is quite magnificient."

 

August 13th, 1973

"Glenn III, mission control. you are go for hab and service module jettison."

"Roger"

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"Your trajectory is looking fine, reentry starting in five minutes. LOS expected in five minutes and twenty seconds."

"Checklist completed, the crew is in their seats. Glenn III ready for reentry. See you in a few minutes."

 

The Glenn capsule was tested thorougly for reentry speeds up to 14 000 metres per second - about 3000 metres per second faster than coming back from the Moon. The theoretical limit was around 14 600. Any faster than that, and either the heatshield can't take the heat, the crew can not survive the G-load, or you end up in space again.

The speed of reentry of Glenn III was about 14 200 metres per second. Theoretically within the limits, but still, the suspense was great.

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"Glenn III, mission control. Do you read?"

....

....

[static]

.....

"Glenn III, mission control. Do you read?"

....

[static]

.....

"Glenn III, mission control. Do you read?"

....

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"Mission control, Glenn III. It was a rough one, but we are ok. Splashdown coming in about three minutes. Glenn III out."

 

The thirteenth of August, 1973 will forever be the day when kerbals succesfully embarked on an interplanetary journey and returned safely home. Kerbalkind has officially become an interplanetary kind, and was eagerly looking forward to the next steps they will take. Glenn III and its crew proved that travelling to other planets is possible, but it was only the first step.

The next one will finally take us to Mars.

 

 

 

Edited by michal.don
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Chapter nine: "We fly there. What next?"

1972-1974

"As president Kerman promised in 1971, kerbalkind was going to Mars in this decade. Sending a Kerbal to Mars was not the hard part - even our Grissom lunar missions had enough power and fuel to go to Mars. But if you want to come back, preferably alive, this is where it gets hard. The trip will last about three years. Just try to imagine how your fridge looks like, how much food is inside. That is probably food for a week. Now imagine fifty times that. That's for a year. Now imagine three times that. That's for the whole trip. And finally, three times that once again. Your buddies need to eat, too. You have to pack all this with you. The same with water and oxygen. That is already a few tonnes.

If we manage to pack all this into a spaceship that can go to Mars, there's one more thing. We're not flying through space for three years just to take nice pictures from orbit - even the dumbest probes we make can do that. If we're going all the way to Mars, we need to land there, and gather as much information about martian surface as possible. And how are we going to land there? This is where I come in."

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"My name is Tom Kerman. I am the senior engineer of the Krumman lander team that built the LEM, the machine that took us to the surface of the Moon. Considering we were the only company on Kerbin with experience of building crewed spaceships designed to land on another celestial body, it was not much of a surprise that we got the contract to buld the MLV - the Mars Landing Vehicle.

The Moon landings were not easy, but in comparison to Mars landings, it was a piece of cake. Much weaker gravity, much lower orbital speed. No atmosphere to slow you down during your ascent. So a lightweight vehicle could be designed, and our lander worked perfectly. In the recent years, we learnt a lot about martian surface and atmosphere. The surface was solid, so no problems there. But the atmosphere was tricky - while dense enough to slow you down during ascent and heat your craft up during entry, it was nowhere near thick enough to slow you down to land with parachutes - at least in a craft as heavy as a lander with life support systems and fuel to get you to orbit again."

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"Landing only on chutes was possible for light payloads only - such as the rover the Agency sent to Mars in 1973. But could the chutes be used to slow down a bit, so we needed less fuel for the powered landing? That was one of the many questions that needed an answer.

A vehicle that could land three crewmembers on the martian surface, allow them to stay for at least ten days, and then go back to low orbit to rendezvous and dock with the Glenn spacecraft. And, please, don't make it too heavy. That was all we got from the agency.

There are many different approaches to a mission with these specs, and our engineers came up with a lot of different designs of the lander. After a year of reviewing and preliminary testing, we had three different concepts to show the Agency officials."

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"Concept one uses drogue chutes to slow down in the upper part of atmosphere, while a retro burn is performed at 80 kilometres to prevent the chutes from burning up. Four engines then perform the landing. On the other hand, Concept two uses its greater surface area to aerobrake, and chutes and a short burn to land. Concept three is much heavier, but is similar to the LEM design - one stage to land, one to go to orbit again. Nothing too fancy, but if you decide to stick with what we know, this is the way to go.

After several meetings with the engineers and kerbalnauts, the Agency has decided to go with Concept one. The oficial reason was that Concept three was too heavy and Concept two too ugly, but I think they were just afraid they could not handle the aerobraking descent with enough precision (To be honest, they were not, but I was, Michal.don). So, that was it. It was no longer Concept one, it was the official MLV, the machine that will one day land a kerbalnaut on Mars. And I have to agree with their pick - it was not excessively heavy, it did great in testing, it used reliable engines and technologies, and it was a beautiful vehicle we were all proud of."

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"In theory, the lander worked fine. We did countless simulations for entries from various orbits and landings in various altitudes, and the MLV did well in all the scenarios we tried. But before the Agency could send it to Mars, it had to be tested in space, for real. And that was the mission of Glenn IV. In July 1974, Melbin, Carta and Matfrod took the MLV to low Earth obrit to try all the systems in the spacecraft."

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"After extraction, Melbin and Carta transfered to the MLV, undocked from Glenn IV and went for a twenty minute trip that took them some thirty kilometres away. Then they jettisoned their descent stage and fired the ascent engines to rendezvous and dock with Glenn IV again."

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"The engineers in the Agency were content with the way the MLV performed, as were we in the Krumman team. Another of our designes will go on an epic adventure, and help kerbalkind explore worlds unknown to us. We wish it good luck"

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