sevenperforce

In much the same spirit of @Bottle Rocketeer 500's rather-popular "Doing It Orion Style" challenge, I decided to put together a similar challenge featuring sequential missions, building up from the launch of the Falcon 1 through the present and beyond. But, since Elon also owns Tesla, some steps in the challenge will include building all-electric vehicles to match the Model X, the Model S, and the Model 3. To add variety to the challenge, I'm also going to include planned-but-never-flown configurations like Falcon 1e and Falcon 5. For each mission, I'll do my best to provide a set of mission requirements which are specific enough to make it interesting and challenging but not so specific as to make it arbitrary or time-consuming. Missions are optional; you can choose a single one, skip around, or do them all one by one in sequence. Possible missions (I won't do all these but it's a sampling of possibilities based on demand): Falcon 1 Falcon 1e Tesla Roadster Falcon 5 Falcon 5R Falcon Air Tesla Model S Falcon 9v1.0 Dragon 1 Falcon 9v1.0 Dragon 1 + comsat, engine-out Falcon 9v1.1 Cargo (polar, soft splashdown) Falcon 9v1.1 Cargo to KTO Falcon 9R Dragon (soft splashdown) Falcon 9R Cargo to Kerbin Escape (soft splashdown) Tesla Model X Dragon 2 launch abort test Falcon 9R Dragon (ASDS attempt) Falcon 9 FT Cargo (RTLS landing) Falcon 9 FT Cargo GTO (ASDS attempt) Falcon 9 FT Dragon (ASDS landing) Falcon 9 FT expendable (fairing recovery) Falcon 9 FT with X-47B Tesla Model 3 Falcon Heavy Demo Falcon 9 Block 5 with Dragon 2 Dragon 2 max-Q abort Falcon Heavy Constellation Falcon 9 Crew Falcon Heavy: Grey Dragon Falcon Heavy: Red Dragon If there's some interest, I'll get started on the requirements for the first few missions! General rules: Tweakscale is allowed Readout mods are allowed Piloting mods are not allowed Unbreakable Joints and No Crash Damage are allowed for propulsive landing attempts Part mods which alter tankage ratios or engine performance are not allowed No reaction control wheels are allowed You must use the same engine for all first stages, so plan accordingly. The engine you choose will start with low thrust and be uprated over time. Scoring is based on lowest LV dry mass. EDIT: Missions below!

While you guys were infighting, here's Exploration Mission 4: Unfortunately there is precious little detail out on the Logistics Module so I had to make it up as I went along.

After a brief interlude, here's Exploration Mission 4. Made some improvements to the Orion SM -- it was lacking in beauty as well as dV before. Note the eight smaller engines ringing the central one. They are supposed to be for fine orbit adjustments. Compare: I embedded extra batteries, a fuel tank, and a monoprop tank inside. Hurrah for night launches! Early gravity turn. SRB burnout. The two boosters have a tendency to collide with each other at separation, resulting in some pretty badass screenshots. Fortunately, said booster impact doesn't hurt the LV. LES jettisoned, continuing to orbit. Even with the larger payload, Block 1B is really overpowered. Core separation and EUS ignition. Fairing separation -- nice and symmetric. Finishing circularization. All set in orbit! Doesn't look half bad. Doing the flip before TLI, for multiple reasons. Closing...I'm getting better at this. Docked, solar panels deployed! Even though the challenge only said one docking port for the Logistics Module, the real one will have two, so... Lining up for TLI. I'm aiming for the weird polar orbit of the DSG so I'm going to try and loop underneath. EUS ignition. Throttled up! EUS at full throttle. After some adjustments, I've got a nice tight intercept and a disposal escape orbit for the EUS. Jettisoning the still-mostly-full EUS. Now you can see the logistics module as well as the upgraded Orion Service Module! Prepping for injection burn. Nice glamour shot. Another nice shot. Closeup of the nine engines. Injection burn complete! I used a super-high apomun to make the inclination change as cheap as possible. Inclination matching with fine adjustment engines. Nice tight intercept set! Burning for the intercept. Can't beat that! Let's see how close we really got. Nice! Preparing to dock. Approach... Almost there.... Docked! Breaking free, flipping back around to the hab. We'll pretend the other port on the logistics module doesn't have a hatch. Complete! This should definitely go in our marketing material. Scientist taking a look at the logistics module. Gotta make sure we have good water flow...I guess? Science progresses well enough. Time to head home! Burning for escape. Unfortunately there is no good "homeward bound" trajectory from this awful polar orbit. Did a full swing-around to get back up to apoapsis. Aaaaand I burned through all my biprop so I'm bringing down my periapsis with monoprop. Will they have enough? They have enough! This should be a nice toasty ride in. Not much monoprop left, for sure! Jettisoned the Service Module. Will I make it around to the daylit side? Probably not. Trying to get some body lift but that's honestly unlikely. Very long re-entry. Drogues out! Mains popped. Splashdown! Success!

I'm just tweakscaling up the orange tank for my SLS.

This is why well-thought-out scoring is almost always an important part of challenges. A proper scoring system gives entrants something to optimize for. Otherwise you can just add MOAR BOOSTERS and be done with it.

Bingo. I had already built a lovely VTOL rocket SSTO with a gigantic cargo bay and a nuclear-powered transfer vehicle...made it to Jool and was toying around with Tylo capture assists for Laythe insertion.

Hah! If what you wanted was "Deliver a base to Laythe with a single-stage spaceplane's cargo bay" you should have just said so from the start instead of adding all the arbitrary details at the end.

Well this should be simple enough.

Photons do have relativistic mass. They just are never at rest, so they have no "rest" mass. Incidentally, all rest mass is, in fact, relativistic mass from the velocities of the subatomic particles; just wrapped up in particle-particle bonds.

NOX is easy, LOX isn't.

I'll get around to it. Just wasn't much to differentiate each mission.

I can't imagine that it would have nearly this range carrying a nuke of the size that NK can produce. Just because re-entry was visible doesn't mean the vehicle was anything more than a molten pile of slag by the time it reached detonation altitudes. But, still...scary.

NK launched another IRBM: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/28/politics/north-korea-missile-test/index.html 3700 km Ap and 1000 km range. Slightly greater range than before; significantly higher Ap. No knowledge yet as to whether they've improved their re-entry capabilities.

Hybrids use a vapor oxidizer burning against the surface of a solid fuel. (The reverse is possible, but rare.) Common fuels include paraffin wax, rubber, and a few others (I propose napalm); common oxidizers include LOX, GOX, HTP, and NOX. They can be throttled and sometimes even restarted by adjusting oxidizer flow, but they have high thrust and benign failure modes.

Noooooooo. Gamma engines are pump-fed. Just because they are monoprop pump-fed doesn't make them simple. Pressure-fed all the way for us.

Pressure altimeters are not nearly accurate for the kind of thing you need. Honestly, GPS might not be accurate enough either. A short-range infrared altimeter might work; I've used those before (though obviously not for this). One possibility I advanced in the other thread was that the legs could be spring-loaded and the landing engine burnout thrust could be just slightly less than the weight of the empty rocket. So the landing engine decreases the terminal velocity enough that the spring-loaded legs can catch it without breaking.

Well, it needs to be linear, but that's beside the point. Problem here is needing a laser altimeter to determine altitude. For popping the CO2 cartridge, you can cannibalize a broken airsoft/paintball gun, twist the cartridge into the receiver, and use a small servo to open the valve.

Carrying a CO2 cartridge that pops just before touchdown could slow it down without the issue of igniting an unguided retropropulsive rocket engine.

Though you usually need to scrape out the inside of the acrylic tube to give it more surface area. If you want a super-cheap demonstrator, you can purchase 3% hydrogen peroxide, put it in a bottle, place a spoonful of yeast in a balloon, stretch the balloon over the top of the bottle, and lift the balloon so the yeast falls in. Shake. The yeast will catalyze the decomposition of the peroxide, causing it to release gaseous oxygen and fill the balloon. Then you've got a balloon full of pressurized GOX you can use as your oxidizer for your hybrid rocket.

Indeed. But SSTO is not the way to go.

I assume all 27 engines will be at full throttle at launch, with the core throttling down shortly before Max-Q.

Ah, good point. N1's lunar lander was single-stage but was going to use the Blok D transfer stage as a crasher stage; that was the difference. I knew there was something funky about that.

We haven't even really established a mission profile. With the Moon, it was easy enough. There's no atmosphere, so that takes aerobraking out of the equation. The lander was either going to be direct ascent (NOVA/N1) or LOR, and LOR was rapidly shown to be the more readily achievable option. Earth orbit assembly was ruled out due to complexity. The transit time is short, so one vehicle (the CM) could work just fine for ascent, transfer hab, lunar orbit loiter, and EDL. A two-stage lander meant lower mass and excellent safety margin. With Mars, everything is on the table. You can capture anything you want by aerobraking, but then you have to lug it back up to orbit if it's important. Do you use a two-stage lander? A pre-sent lander? A pre-sent ascent vehicle? Earth orbit assembly is now almost definitely a requirement. What about the transfer hab? If you give it a heat shield you can aerocapture and leave it in orbit, but then you need a secondary heat shield for the actual lander. Vehicle requirements depend on mission profile, which depends on vehicle capability.

Kind of a tossup, I think. Getting to Mars requires most of what it takes to get to the Moon, but getting to the Moon doesn't really help you get to Mars. And Mars is a LOT harder.

Wrong thread, but yes. The very first "liquid-fueled" rocket ever designed and flown by the Soviet Union was napalm and LOX.