Recreating Stephen Baxter's Voyage/Titan novels in KSP

[SiriusRocketry]

If you're a fan of science fiction, you've probably heard of or even read a Stephen Baxter novel at some point. He's a very popular (well, relatively speaking) sci-fi author with an awesome catalogue of novels that I'd highly recommend. 

Two of these books in particular interest me because of their suitability to KSP. The first is Voyage, which he wrote in 1996. In the novel, Richard Nixon's speech on the moon is wildly different, leading NASA to adopt the Apollo Applications Program and attempt a crewed landing on Mars in the 1980s.

Without giving too much of the novel away, I think that it is certainly possible to recreate the fictional Ares mission to Mars - indeed, @winged(hopefully that's the right person) made a fantastic cinematic recreating the mission in RSS/RP0, no less. Given that the novel's storyline relies on Saturn-era hardware and easily constructed mission concepts from that era, which are markedly easier to use and build in KSP, I'd say this is the easier mission of the two. 

 

That brings us to Titan, my personal favourite of Baxter's novels. Definitely more pessimistic in tone, Titan takes place in the late 2000s to mid-2010s, which was roughly 10-15 years in the future when the book was published. Facing increased militarization of space, the winding down of NASA operations and the destruction of humanity's exploratory spirit, a desperate attempt is made to retrofit Shuttle-era hardware into a manned mission to Saturn's moon Titan. This book is definitely lesser known than Voyage, which is a shame as I really enjoyed this one.

I think the Shuttle era hardware, especially the unscrewed Shuttle-Can concepts, make for interesting builds, and of course we can substitute Laythe or even OPM's Tekto for Titan. I have never seen this mission recreated in KSP, and personally I'm really keen to try it and make a cinematic out of the whole thing. The only issues are a few difficult situations to set up with KSP's limitations and of course, the Earth-Venus-Earth-Jupiter-Saturn (I think that was the gravity assist route) would be difficult to make (assuming Kerbin-Eve-Kerbin-Kerbin-Jool) , as I am very inexperienced with gravity assists. Not to mention I've never made a KSP cinematic before... 

Anyway, if anyone is interested in recreating the mission(s) mentioned here, look up Voyage and/or Titan, even read them through fully if you can, and let me know what you think! I'm curious to see if anyone else has any thoughts on this or has tried to replicate the missions themselves.

[Gargamel]

I'll have to give these books a read... thanks!

[Entropian]

Ayyyy, Baxter gang!  I read the Voyage trilogy a while ago; Titan was by far my favorite.  It was what got me really interested in exploration of Titan.  I actually did a sorta-Baxter version of Titan in RSS about a year ago with some parts mods.  The main problem was figuring out what the pressurized section of the ship would look like.  I'll probably have a go at this again once I've done my current Shuttle Challenge mission.

EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about this, I really want to recreate Titan in RSS again.  I'm definitely doing this.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Entropian

[Entropian]

3 hours ago, SiriusRocketry said:

Earth-Venus-Earth-Jupiter-Saturn

I've been doing some tests in KSPTOT and it seems that E-V-J-S may be quicker and cheaper.  The book definitely has Venus and Jupiter as flyby bodies.

[SiriusRocketry]

6 hours ago, Entropian said:

Ayyyy, Baxter gang!  I read the Voyage trilogy a while ago; Titan was by far my favorite.  It was what got me really interested in exploration of Titan.  I actually did a sorta-Baxter version of Titan in RSS about a year ago with some parts mods.  The main problem was figuring out what the pressurized section of the ship would look like.  I'll probably have a go at this again once I've done my current Shuttle Challenge mission.

EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about this, I really want to recreate Titan in RSS again.  I'm definitely doing this.

That's interesting to hear; I'd guessed that the mission would be far harder to fly in RSS. I think the shuttle's design is probably the hardest part as well to replicate. It looks a lot more hodgepodge than you'd probably have expected and some parts would have to be redesigned completely to fit with Mk3 cargo bay limits (the improvised Apollo capsule landers, for example, would have to fit in a separate cargo bay, or squeezed in-line behind the CELSS greenhouse/TOPAZ reactor). Most of the fuel comes from "massive blunt-nosed cylinders" fixed onto the side of the cargo bay, in front of the wings. The centrifuge could probably be recreated with a hinged Breaking Ground arm of some kind; the craft itself, aside from the aforementioned OMS fuel tanks, altered wings for Titan's atmosphere and the removal of the tailplane, looks otherwise identical to the Discovery orbiter that it was built from.

[Entropian]

1 hour ago, SiriusRocketry said:

the improvised Apollo capsule landers, for example, would have to fit in a separate cargo bay, or squeezed in-line behind the CELSS greenhouse/TOPAZ reactor

I think that they were supposed to be mounted on the outside of the cargo bay.  The CELSS farm and TOPAZ were mounted in the cargobay.  Stockalike Station Parts probably will be able to do the centrifuge.  A problem I'm running into is where to put the fuel and whatever engines (if there are any extras) for the flyby injection.  Any ideas?

Edited September 24, 2021 by Entropian

[SiriusRocketry]

9 minutes ago, Entropian said:

I think that they were supposed to be mounted on the outside of the cargo bay.  The CELSS farm and TOPAZ were mounted in the cargobay.  Stockalike Station Parts probably will be able to do the centrifuge.  A problem I'm running into is where to put the fuel and whatever engines (if there are any extras) for the flyby injection.  Any ideas?

I had a quick tinkering around in the SPH and built a basic mockup (minus centrifuge).

The four Thud engines represent OMS. I know the real OMS had monopropellant thrusters, but I'm not insane enough to deal with a >0.05 TWR all the way to Jool.

The habitation module is 'mounted' to the control cockpit, as is mentioned in the book. I put gold structural panels there to act as 'radiation shielding' as gold aluminium foil was mentioned as an anti-radiation measure. I'll put some on the cupola at the back (representing the greenhouse) too.  The two Apollo 'landers' are mounted in the cargo bay; a docking adapter was mentioned in the novel between the greenhouse and the hab, although it wasn't mentioned as extending outside the bay in any way. Obviously this is far too small to fit two Apollo modules, so I just crammed them inline.

The cupola, as aforementioned, is meant to be a 'greenhouse' of sorts. The novel says that the greenhouse itself is mounted behind the Apollo docking adapters and in front of the nuclear reactor, but as the docking adapter's crew transfer tunnel doesn't exist, I might swap positions around. The last thing there (where the radiators are sticking out from the girders) is meant to be the cooling tower for the TOPAZ reactor. The reactor itself, like in the book, is fairly small. I've just clipped two RTGs into the cone adapter on a structural plate.

[Entropian]

Looks nice!  Now the real problem is how to fit the surface equipment in there.

[Entropian]

Here's my current (possibly subject to massive change) design:

I've got a trajectory mapped in KSPTOT and as far as I can tell the things I have left to do before flight are:

Make more tweakscale configs for mod parts

Reconfig some mod parts

Somehow make sleds for the landing gear

Edited September 25, 2021 by Entropian

[Entropian]

Update: I'm currently having some trouble with reconfiging BDB parts but I'm definitely still doing this...

[Entropian]

@SiriusRocketry I got it sorta-done.  I didn't manage to include everything but the basic mission architecture is still there.

 

[SiriusRocketry]

On 10/28/2021 at 5:12 PM, Entropian said:

@SiriusRocketry I got it sorta-done.  I didn't manage to include everything but the basic mission architecture is still there.

 

Wow, well done - and in RSS too! That is beyond impressive, congratulations!