Shuttle Adventures: An Album of Kerbalized Space Shuttle Missions

[TheKrakenHerder]

15 hours ago, Austin_Kerman said:

the battery runs down

Aren't the solar panels providing enough power? You probably just need bigger batteries and/or consistent power generation (RTGs)

[Kuiper_Belt]

On 2/5/2022 at 11:59 AM, Austin_Kerman said:

Alright, I have another problem. The Hydrogen in the ET is boiling off too rapidly to stop, which I expected, so I turned on the boiloff prevention option using electricity. However, the battery runs down and the hydrogen starts to boil off after the battery dies, so I am basically back to where I started before every Centaur R refueling mission. Do any of you know how to refuel the ET without all of the hydrogen boiling off with Centaur R's or another vehicle?

Edit: This could potentially work, but it might take 25 Centaur R's or more, which would way too long for every Space Shuttle Moon mission (I'm almost starting to think the Shuttle was not meant for this ).

 

13 hours ago, TheKrakenHerder said:

Aren't the solar panels providing enough power? You probably just need bigger batteries and/or consistent power generation (RTGs)

I’d suggest Nuclear reactors. We know they work in space so I don’t see why you couldn’t use them.  The Space Shuttle had a concept of a little package at the bottom of an external tank that could store large and cumbersome payloads you could slide a reactor into that little compartment and berth it to the ET.  It would make a lot of sense that this sort of thing has orbital infrastructure.

[Autochrome]

ET Refueling Missions 2-4 - More of Them Bite the Crust - February 1985

Nothing much in this small update, just a progress report on the status of the missions to the ET Refueler.

The Aquarius Program: Part 3

After the first launch of the Centaur R, the rest of them and their Titan IIIE counterparts are prepared to head to space and visit the modified External Tank.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ETRM-2

Spoiler

February 5, 1985, ETRM-2

Launch of ETRM-2

Payload Deploy

Docked

Disposal of Centaur R through Reentry.

ETRM-3

Spoiler

February 11, 1985, ETRM-3

Launch of ETRM-3

Payload Deploy

Docked

Disposal of another Centaur Refueler through reentry.

ETRM-4

Spoiler

February 18, 1985, ETRM-4

Launch of ETRM-4

Payload Deploy

Docked; refueling process begins.

Death of the fourth Centaur R to Earth's atmosphere.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

That's it for this update, and I hope that you have a great day!

Edited February 8 by Austin_Kerman

[pTrevTrevs]

22 hours ago, Austin_Kerman said:

ET Refueling Missions 2-4 - More of Them Bite the Crust - February 1985

Nothing much in this small update, just a progress report on the status of the missions to the ET Refueler.

The Aquarius Program: Part 3

After the first launch of the Centaur R, the rest of them and their Titan IIIE counterparts are prepared to head to space and visit the modified External Tank.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

ETRM-2

  Hide contents

February 5, 1985, ETRM-2

Launch of ETRM-2

Payload Deploy

Docked

Disposal of Centaur R through Reentry.

ETRM-3

  Hide contents

February 11, 1985, ETRM-3

Launch of ETRM-3

Payload Deploy

Docked

Disposal of another Centaur Refueler through reentry.

ETRM-4

  Hide contents

February 18, 1985, ETRM-4

Launch of ETRM-4

Payload Deploy

Docked; refueling process begins.

Death of the fourth Centaur R to Earth's atmosphere.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

That's it for this update, and I hope that you have a great day!

Those use LH2 for propellant, no? Is the insulation just good enough to prevent boiloff long enough to refuel the entire ET?

[Autochrome]

13 hours ago, pTrevTrevs said:

Those use LH2 for propellant, no? Is the insulation just good enough to prevent boiloff long enough to refuel the entire ET?

The insulation is similar to the one used on the S-IVB, which was better at preventing boil-off than the normal Shuttle insulation. In addition, I'm using power to stop the boil-off. Lastly, I don't need to fill the entire ET, just to around half.

Edited February 9 by Austin_Kerman

[Autochrome]

Now that we are three posts into this little sub-mini series I’m doing, what are everyone’s thoughts on it? This is my first time doing anything like this, so I want to make sure I’m doing it right.

[Kuiper_Belt]

20 hours ago, Austin_Kerman said:

Now that we are three posts into this little sub-mini series I’m doing, what are everyone’s thoughts on it? This is my first time doing anything like this, so I want to make sure I’m doing it right.

I personally love the series and watching it come together! I'd say you're doing a great job and I can't wait to see the next installments!

[Autochrome]

The next post is going to be delayed, due to schoolwork and other KSP projects I'm working on. Expect it to come out sometime next week, if anyone wanted to know.

[Kuiper_Belt]

MOAR BOOSTERS! Space Shuttle Booster Upgrades Coming Soon!

[pTrevTrevs]

On 2/27/2022 at 4:04 PM, Kuiper_Belt said:

MOAR BOOSTERS! Space Shuttle Booster Upgrades Coming Soon!

That's not the Modular Launch Pads MLP! Where'd you get it?

[Autochrome]

Here's a Sneak Peek of the Next Aquarius Program Post...
 

(Sorry this post is a bit late, I have been busy with other things outside and inside KSP, but I hope this post will make up for it in the next few days.)

[Autochrome]

ET Refueling Mission 5 - Under Nuclear Power - March 1985

Spoiler

The Aquarius Program: Part 4

After realizing the current method of using solar power was not enough to prevent boiloff of the Hydrogen Fuel, NASA prepares a small nuclear reactor to tag along for the next refueling mission, ETRM-5, to provide power, as a Plan B in case of this situation. The nuclear reactor and the Centaur R combined is going to use the upper limit of the Titan IIIE's payload capacity.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

March 2, 1985, Launch Day of ETRM-5

The Titan IIIE sits on the pad at Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, waiting for launch.

ETRM-5 lifts off from the pad to space!

The Titan executes a 90 degree roll program.

Pitching over to achieve orbit of the Earth.

Booster Separation

The first stage of the rocket continues the climb to orbit.

Fairing Separation, revealing the Centaur R and nuclear reactor payloads.

Stage Separation

The second stage finishes the journey to orbit.

Orbital Insertion completed with 11m/s left in the second stage.

Payloads Deploy

Correction Burn of the Centaur R and the nuclear reactor to arrive at the ET Refueler.

The Centaur R reaches the ET Refueler with the reactor in tow.

The Centaur aligns with the secondary docking port on the External Tank.

Docked

Undocking from the Nuclear Reactor to dock to the primary docking port.

Docked to the refueling port.

The Centaur R begins to refuel the ET.

After the refueling is finished, the Centaur is discarded via destructive reentry through the atmosphere.

After the deorbit of the the Centaur, the nuclear reactor is powered up to provide power to the Refueler during the dark portions of its Earth orbit.

I'm going to start putting the updates of this timeline of this thread in spoilers, because it already has a thread of its own, and I don't want this to take up a lot of space on its "secondary" thread.

Edited March 6 by Austin_Kerman

[Kuiper_Belt]

Space Shuttle Advanced Boosters - A Series of Investigated Upgrades to STS

The Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters accounted for 85% of the lift off thrust, and 69% of the lift off mass on any given mission. The SSSRMs were the largest solid rocket boosters ever flown and helped push the Space Shuttle to contribute all of its missions, except for their only failure during STS-51-L more commonly known as the Challenger disaster. Before and after Challenger, studies were conducted on the replacement or modification of the boosters to provide more payload to orbit or cheaper flight costs. Detailed, are the Recoverable Liquid Booster and Filament Wound Booster Casings. Eventually I will cover the modification of existing booster casings such as the 5 segment booster, SRB-X, and other varieties.

Recoverable Liquid Boosters

When the Shuttle had just left the ground on the Approach and Landing Tests, NASA already had plans to replace them with the Space Shuttle Recoverable Liquid Boosters. These unlike the solid counterparts could be shut down midflight in the event of a failure providing a Shuttle better abort modes to save the crew on ascent. The Liquid Boosters would be powered by a special variant of an RS-25, a model with an expansion ratio of 35 instead of the standard 69. This is due to the fact that the boosters would be only flying in the dense atmosphere thus the over expanded nature of the Standard SSME was not necessary.

After the Boost Phase and Booster Jettison, they would fly much the same path as the standard solids. With an eventual destination in the ocean the engines would be covered with an inflating hemisphere to shield the engines from the corrosive sea water.

It was hoped that with he new liquid boosters, flight safety and cost per kilogram of payload could be improved allowing for more flights for the Shuttle program, permitting for novel new payloads.

Filament Wound Casings 

The USAF was a major component of the design of the Space Shuttle contributing heavily to the shape of the orbiter and the addition of a second launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base. But the Air Force could not beat the physics involved with there plans. Launching satellites to polar orbits necessitates you loosing all horizontal velocity east to west, including that provided by Earth. Since you are spending precious fuel to cancel out Earths rotation, you lose payload mass to compensate. So the only way to gain back more payload it to lower the dry mass of your rocket. The Space Shuttle Solids, were made from steel casings allowing for some margin to be made by remaking them with Carbon Composites, allowing for heavier [REDACTED] to be deployed into high inclination orbits.

At the locations of the mounting points to the ET, steel is kept for addition structural support, in addition to the normal Avionics, Aft Skirt Section, and Parachute cone. 

FOIA request of such a mission provided by the USAF - Totally 10000% real

This was a fun one to make! Special thanks to @lemon cup for their awesome work on the Solid Rocket Plumes! I plan to show them off more with the segmented boosters installment. Life's been rough schedule wise so I hope to be more frequent here in the future, life permitting . More missions coming soon !

On 2/28/2022 at 4:16 PM, pTrevTrevs said:

That's not the Modular Launch Pads MLP! Where'd you get it?

I had been cowering the web for the mod for a while but then some KSP YouTube video had it in the description! You can find it here!

Edited March 5 by Kuiper_Belt

[AstroMods]

11 hours ago, Kuiper_Belt said:

Space Shuttle Advanced Boosters - A Series of Investigated Upgrades to STS

The Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters accounted for 85% of the lift off thrust, and 69% of the lift off mass on any given mission. The SSSRMs were the largest solid rocket boosters ever flown and helped push the Space Shuttle to contribute all of its missions, except for their only failure during STS-51-L more commonly known as the Challenger disaster. Before and after Challenger, studies were conducted on the replacement or modification of the boosters to provide more payload to orbit or cheaper flight costs. Detailed, are the Recoverable Liquid Booster and Filament Wound Booster Casings. Eventually I will cover the modification of existing booster casings such as the 5 segment booster, SRB-X, and other varieties.

Recoverable Liquid Boosters

When the Shuttle had just left the ground on the Approach and Landing Tests, NASA already had plans to replace them with the Space Shuttle Recoverable Liquid Boosters. These unlike the solid counterparts could be shut down midflight in the event of a failure providing a Shuttle better abort modes to save the crew on ascent. The Liquid Boosters would be powered by a special variant of an RS-25, a model with an expansion ratio of 35 instead of the standard 69. This is due to the fact that the boosters would be only flying in the dense atmosphere thus the over expanded nature of the Standard SSME was not necessary.

After the Boost Phase and Booster Jettison, they would fly much the same path as the standard solids. With an eventual destination in the ocean the engines would be covered with an inflating hemisphere to shield the engines from the corrosive sea water.

It was hoped that with he new liquid boosters, flight safety and cost per kilogram of payload could be improved allowing for more flights for the Shuttle program, permitting for novel new payloads.

Filament Wound Casings 

The USAF was a major component of the design of the Space Shuttle contributing heavily to the shape of the orbiter and the addition of a second launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base. But the Air Force could not beat the physics involved with there plans. Launching satellites to polar orbits necessitates you loosing all horizontal velocity east to west, including that provided by Earth. Since you are spending precious fuel to cancel out Earths rotation, you lose payload mass to compensate. So the only way to gain back more payload it to lower the dry mass of your rocket. The Space Shuttle Solids, were made from steel casings allowing for some margin to be made by remaking them with Carbon Composites, allowing for heavier [REDACTED] to be deployed into high inclination orbits.

At the locations of the mounting points to the ET, steel is kept for addition structural support, in addition to the normal Avionics, Aft Skirt Section, and Parachute cone. 

FOIA request of such a mission provided by the USAF - Totally 10000% real

This was a fun one to make! Special thanks to @lemon cup for their awesome work on the Solid Rocket Plumes! I plan to show them off more with the segmented boosters installment. Life's been rough schedule wise so I hope to be more frequent here in the future, life permitting . More missions coming soon !

I had been cowering the web for the mod for a while but then some KSP YouTube video had it in the description! You can find it here!

Do you thnk you can share link/config for those amazing SRB plumes? I've been trying to look for a way to get mine that beautiful.

[GuessingEveryDay]

13 hours ago, AstroMods said:

Do you thnk you can share link/config for those amazing SRB plumes? I've been trying to look for a way to get mine that beautiful.

They seem to be a mix of RealPlume and Waterfall, color me interested.

[lemon cup]

16 hours ago, AstroMods said:

Do you thnk you can share link/config for those amazing SRB plumes? I've been trying to look for a way to get mine that beautiful.

 

3 hours ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

They seem to be a mix of RealPlume and Waterfall, color me interested.

That is correct, the SRB Waterfall plume relies on RealPlume to run alongside it. The SRBs will absolutely not look right without the huge billowing, lingering smoke trails.  

I have no problem sharing these Waterfall configs... eventually. But unfortunately, I recently discovered that I have been using an outdated version of Waterfall, and after updating to the latest version I have found that the plumes are not working properly. I would like to get around to fixing them soon, hopefully.

So, for now I have to say that the plumes are still classified as experimental!

[lemon cup]

Well I've had time to get up to speed on the latest version of Waterfall, which has led me to evolve my custom SRB plumes. I'm nearly finished, but I'd still like to reprogram the end-of-burn "trickle-out" effect to be based on the engine's natural burn-out event. Currently I have it jerry rigged to only function with my modified boosters, which won't work for the public lol.

 

 

[Jacktical]

12 hours ago, lemon cup said:

Well I've had time to get up to speed on the latest version of Waterfall, which has led me to evolve my custom SRB plumes. I'm nearly finished, but I'd still like to reprogram the end-of-burn "trickle-out" effect to be based on the engine's natural burn-out event. Currently I have it jerry rigged to only function with my modified boosters, which won't work for the public lol.

 

 

Best. Plumes. Ever

[Kuiper_Belt]

Engine Swap! - An Update of My Activities!

Hello! I wish I could say I've been making progress on upcoming missions but I regret to say I haven't . But I can explain myself. First, some exposition. I had conducted all of my missions in KSRSS at 2.5x Kerbal Scale and used KSRSSVE for most of that time. Well, while snooping on the forums, I discovered a mod called KVE, which modifies the textures of Earths Surface and Clouds and makes them look absolutely stunning. When I tested it I was hooked. But all good things come at a cost. For some inexplicable reason, to not only me but the mod author as well, Venus and Titans atmospheres were altered. Some examples are included after their respective correct counterparts.

Spoiler

and here are some sweet sweet ground pics:

leaving this behind is not an option.

Venus is my favorite non Earth planet and Titan is my second favorite moon (after good ol Luna) and I was not about to give them up. I was also not going to give up that fantastic terrain. After snooping in the KVE thread and noting that the Mod author had not solved the issue and had not been on the forums for a while I elected to try and fix it myself. Nothing seemed to work including me deleting Venus and Titan, copying their assets into a separate mod I structured in such a way to isolate them from KSRSS and KVE. Granted I'm no mod expert so I probably did something wrong or stupid . So after a bit of time defeated I came up with one final plan. Swap out KSRSS with RSS! (While finishing up I thought of the RS25 swap on SLS so that's the title explained!) Of course downscaled to 2.5x Kerbal Scale. After installing RSS, having issues with KK not playing nicely and repositioning the Katniss Cape ground, I am fairly confident I have won the battle between me and modding! It isnt exactly the same and I am working to continually refine it but I hope that this will be the last modding complication for a while. Here are some results!

I think it was worth the time!

Some very exciting things are about to happen! SLS roll out, wet dress, and hopefully a subsequent launch! I plan on covering the SLS launch vehicle in the thread here but I am considering making a dedicated thread for the Artemis Missions! Covering launches such as CAPSTONE, Gateway and subsequent assembly and resupply missions, obviously the landings, and other things! Tell me what you think of this and where I should start? All they way back to OFT-1 and Launch abort tests? Start with CAPSTONE? I am all ears.

Lastly, the missions I currently have planned in no particular order, Solid Rocket Booster Segment Derived SDLVs, X-38 and STS-136, Shuttle Salyut Program, The First Hubble Servicing Mission STS-61, and last but certainly not least, STS-51A. Sorry for the delay in reports, more missions coming soon!

Edited March 16 by Kuiper_Belt
Missing Incorrect Titan Image and it’s actually KVE instead of KVO

[KeaKaka]

5 hours ago, Kuiper_Belt said:

 

[TheKrakenHerder]

7 hours ago, Kuiper_Belt said:

All they way back to OFT-1 and Launch abort tests? Start with CAPSTONE? I am all ears.

I would suggest going from OFT-1 to the first few Deep Space Transport crewed Mars landings. Would be time consuming, but very cool.

[lemon cup]

Well for anyone that visits this thread, I have decided to share my plume configs for the Photon Boosters!

Please treat this as an experimental pre-release, though I have no intentions of making a full licensed mod at this time, but I am considering contacting Adiri and seeing if they would like to take these plumes for their mod "SRB Waterfall Effects". Until then, the select few of you to find this are welcome to use and enjoy these as you see fit. 

Google Drive link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17YmED5oRkdb8UsjX-_2dKJP6rmyAK9NT?usp=sharing

Check out the included READ ME for details on what this does, and install instructions. 

PS: Mirroring what the read me says but it is important enough to note here too: I recommend NOT using EngineLightingRelit here 
 

Edited March 21 by lemon cup

[Autochrome]

1 minute ago, lemon cup said:

Well for anyone that visits this thread, I have decided to share my plume configs for the Photon Boosters!

Please treat this as an experimental pre-release, though I have no intentions of making a full licensed mod at this time, but I am considering contacting Adiri and seeing if they would like to take these plumes for their mod "SRB Waterfall Effects". Until then, the select few of you to find this are welcome to use and enjoy these as you see fit. 

Google Drive link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17YmED5oRkdb8UsjX-_2dKJP6rmyAK9NT?usp=sharing

Check out the included READ ME for details on what this does, and install instructions. 

PS: Mirroring what the read me says but it is important enough to note here too: I recommend NOT using EngineLightingRelit here 
 

Let’s gooooo! 

[Kuiper_Belt]

Now We're Cooking With PBAN!

Many Thanks to Lemon_Cup for their fantastic work with the SRB Waterfall Configs! Boost phase has never looked so great!

[Kuiper_Belt]

A Trip Home On Demand!

The Cancelled Crew Return Vehicle & STS-136 Coming Soon...