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Ariane 5 + ATV - celebrating flight VA219, last ATV flight to the ISS.

Sky_walker
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Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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As you probably know - on July 29th, just in 4 days, we'll see the last flight of ATV to the International Space Station. Georges Lemaître, or simply: ATV-5 will take off 23:44:03 UTC / 01:44:03 CET / 20:44:03 local time (weather permitted) from French Guiana - live transmission on Arianespace TV. It will set two new records: For ATV series it will be the heaviest supply flight ever bringing over 10 tons of supplies and fuel to the ISS. For Ariane 5 launchers, weighting 20 tons in total it'll be the heaviest cargo ever lifted by the Ariane-series. You can read more about the flight.

As far as the future of ATV will belong to it's role as a service module for NASA Orion capsule flights - for now it's the end of ATV as we know it, but it's yet to perform 2 major experiments - first one being a test of the new automated rendezvous system allowing spacecraft to dock without an aid of specially designed reflectors or nav markers on the ISS like all of the other spacecrafts do (so future ESA crafts will be able to automatically dock with everything as long as it has a proper docking bay ;) ), and the second one will be recording deadly reentry of the ATV into atmosphere and transmitting data back behind the vessel to the Iridium satellite while still surrounded by the plasma.

 

180px-ATV-GeorgesLemaitre.jpg

 

 

So here is my take on it :)

Download Ariane 5 + ATV game version = 1.0.2

Mirror: MEGA

Mirror: KerbalX (no subassembly)

ATV

L-sized, utility vessel build to resupply space stations. Carries FL-R1 RCS Fuel Tank and a Rockomax X200-32 Fuel Tank. Powered by four LV-1R Liquid Fuel Engine it can reach Delta-V of 3531 m/s though you probably want to leave that fuel for refueling ;). Fun fact: My version of the ATV has got an RCS thrusters setup replicating the one on a real ATV.

Action groups:

0 - Toggle solar panels - highly recommended to deploy them as soon as you get out of the atmosphere, as ATV doesn't have any batteries aside of these in command module. This also means you won't have enough power on a very low orbit - at 70km there's enough power for roughly half of the orbital night. But there's enough fuel in 2nd stage to reach relatively high orbit with ease.

Data of the ATV with Ariane 5:

Total Delta-V: 9 462 m/s

Launch Vehicle Delta-V: 5 931 m/s

ATV Delta-V: 3 531 m/s

Total Mass: 426 175kg

ATV Mass: 22 500

Total Price: 102 750,8

Total part count: 64

ATV Part count: 21

 

 

image.jpg

atv_space.jpg

atv_ani1.gif

 

 

Ariane 5

Launch vehicle itself comes included as a sub-assembly.

Sadly currently stock KSP is fairly limiting, so here are the problems with a design:

- There are no Size 2 gimbaled solid rocket boosters. So I had to reproduce them with four regular boosters stacked. No gimballing though.

- There is no Size 3 equivalent of Poodle, so rocket is using Skipper instead with interstage fairing that fragments into multiple parts

- Ariane 5 fairing splits into 2 parts, KSP fairing splits into 30(!) fragments

- In a real Ariane 5 Solid Rocket Boosters could be retrieved from the Atlantic ocean after descending on a parachutes for review. In KSP however boosters are deployed so early that they have no chances of being retrieved. But in case you'd want to keep it more realistic - replace Advanced Nose Cone - Type B with a parachute as it was in real boosters.

- KSP parts in general are much heavier than components of real rocket, and got vastly different thrust to weight ratios. As a consequence this design is capped by Thrust to Weight rato after separating solid rocket boosters - use Kerbal Engineer to debug your design. Currently with ATV onboard TWR will be around 1.0 after separating boosters what with reserve of fuel avaible allows you to safely reach an orbit. During the takeoff Ariane 5 ECA TWR is around 1.82, KSP design has a TWR of around 1.10 with decent cargo.

I hope you'll enjoy it :)

Action groups:

none

Data of the Ariane 5 alone:

Delta-V: 9 092 m/s

Max TWR: 1.16

Mass: 403 715

Price: 902 00,8

Total part count: 44

 

 

image.jpg

image.jpg

ariane5_ani.gif

 

 

Real Ariane 5 + ATV

 

 

3700695259_bea777a675_z_d.jpg?zz=1

14371665837_4348e83218_z_d.jpg

9075018123_80dc504f8f_z_d.jpg

 

 

Edited by Sky_walker
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Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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You mean these made of structural panels? Nah, they look ugly as hell and are rather poor work-around for something that should be stock. So I'll wait for a stock fairings :) But as said - that's not the only problem, so I didn't wanted to create mess that doesn't appeal to me... feel free though to do whatever you want with the model :) I seen it with the procedural fairings - and it looks lovely.

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Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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Awesome :)

Here is how it looks like with procedural fairings (by mistake I used egg-shaped fairing instead of a conic fairing - real Ariane 5 fairings are closer to the conic fairings from a procedural fairing mod) :

atv_fairings.gif

atv_fairings2.jpg

atv_fairings3.jpg

UPDATE: I added link to my original post with a transmission live of the launch event. Here is a news about that with dates in additional time zones.

Edited by Sky_walker
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Hydrazine_Soup

Hydrazine_Soup

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Got the thing finished, altho, there's one thing I need to check first, do any of the parts of the Ariane 5 reenter earth atmosphere?

The ship itselft has a load of fuel and I could add some hidden probe cores to deorbit the stages

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Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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Got the thing finished, altho, there's one thing I need to check first, do any of the parts of the Ariane 5 reenter earth atmosphere?

The ship itselft has a load of fuel and I could add some hidden probe cores to deorbit the stages

Solid Rocket Boosters descend on parachutes and are recovered.

Then fairings are separated - they're not recovered and drop into ocean.

Main stage isn't recovered either and it also does reenter atmosphere.

Upper stage remains on an orbit after separating cargo and naturally decays down (that's not simulated in KSP) burning in the atmosphere.

Edit: Actually - I looked it up again, and the Ariane 5 ES, unlike all of the other variants, DOES perform final boost after separating ATV and reenters the atmosphere on it's own.

Edited by Sky_walker
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Sky_walker

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Cool, I'll see if I can add a probe core somewhere in there and will link you the craft file.

Sure - I'll put the link to the post with your version into the first post in a thread if you don't mind :)

Do you have any issues handling a ≈350 parts ship?

o_O wow... that's a part count!

The largest ship I tried is 480 parts - and it worked OK. Not buttery smooth, but was perfectly playable. So I shouldn't have any problems with 350.

Edited by Sky_walker
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Hydrazine_Soup

Hydrazine_Soup

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Well, here are the pics as promised:

Control group 1 to remove fairings after exiting atmosphere.

Control group 9 and 0 to togle solar panels

Edit: Pictures and link are gone

Edited by Hydrazine_Soup
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Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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Now that's enormous :D

The explosion of fairings - looks truly epic. ;)

And a very clever work with the upper stage - well done :) Much better than my simple strap-on-mega-engine ;)

It's always nice to see an alternative approach :)

add me on Steam, my username there is the same as here.

Sorry, I don't use Steam these days, sorry.

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Hydrazine_Soup

Hydrazine_Soup

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Now that's enormous :D

Well not much more than the original vehicle :P

The explosion of fairings - looks truly epic. ;)

Once you get used to it, and have subassemblies of the fairings ready to use them, its just as easy as using procedural fairings

And a very clever work with the upper stage - well done :) Much better than my simple strap-on-mega-engine ;)

The engine is still there, I use its cover as a place to have the ESA decal

Sorry, I don't use Steam these days, sorry.

How come? :0

EDIT: Forgot to add the ESA flag, its a must have to if you want to launch an Ariane rocket!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1STuGqyo0wzT1B1YnZMTFl1OWM/edit?usp=sharing

Edited by danilon62
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Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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How come? :0

I'm just not really a big fan of supporting services that go on a clear way towards monopoly. So whenever I can I buy titles away from Steam and I use direct shortcuts to every single game that allows it on a steam itself. So I'm pretty much never on Steam (sadly these days it's impossible to uninstall it completely :/)

EDIT: Forgot to add the ESA flag, its a must have to if you want to launch an Ariane rocket!

Nice, thanks :)

The one I'm using comes from this pack: https://imgur.com/a/rRUZp - reminds me more of an existing KSP flags, and looks lovely on "plant the flag" missions:

uGyfBlj.png

Guy also made a parody version:

kS2a90K.png

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  • 9 months later...
Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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It's been a while, but finally I got around updating my Ariane 5. So here it is:

  • Updated all files to game version 1.0.2
  • Added new in-game fairings:
    fairings.jpg
  • Modified several portions of the design to make use of a new parts, including asymmetrical nose cones.
  • Numerous tweaks to make rocket work nicely with new stats for used components
  • Swapped upper stage engine to Skipper and made use of new fairings to enclose it nicely:
    new_engine.jpg
  • Removed dead links, updated descriptions, added new images in an initial post.

Hope you'll enjoy it.

default_VAB_ATV.png

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Sky_walker

Sky_walker

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One suggestion, though.. Maybe you could make the fairings pointier? But otherwise, I like it!

Good idea! Thank you. But I think I'll get back to it when also updating fairings to make them split in half instead of a confetti... hopefully next patch (pretty please, Squad)?

On a side note - I added links to the mirrors, including an upload for KerbalX.

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  • 3 years later...
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