Random RSS Ramblings... 2017-04-13 - A Late Yuri's Night

[Cydonian Monk]

Random Real Solar System Ramblings of a Mad Monk

I've dabbled (somewhat quietly) in RSS pretty much since Nathan started posting it, though I've never been terribly serious about it. Now that things have settled down and I have a perfectly working install of RSS for KSP v1.0.4 on both my Mac and my PC it's starting to get more and more attention from me. Particularly when I'm bored and want to try something a bit different. Different, such as building a 100% solid launch vehicle. Or different as in flinging a probe out to Saturn. Y'know, different.

I won't bother to list the mods I'm using (gads, what a list), though if you're curious about anything specific please ask. Mostly I'm using procedural parts, Bobcat's old Soviet engines, and AIES bits for the miscellaneous other. As much as I'd like to use the really nice looking bits, such as RadierNick's probes, I'm trying to keep the main save playable on both OS-X and Win-32. Until we get 64-bit KSP for both the really nice stuff will have to wait.

Don't expect to find a space program with any set direction or sense of purpose here. This is for the crazy stuff in a crazy universe: Our own.

---

Launching the Brazilian VLS-1

For no particular reason what-so-ever I decided to recreate the VLS-1 rocket of the Brazilian Space Agency in Kerbal Space Program Real Solar System. This is a peculiar, all-solid satellite launch vehicle created by a little-known space agency down near our planet's bulging midsection. That Brazil hasn't had more success or seen more investment in space operations is honestly a bit confusing given their primary launch site, Alcântara, is only a couple degrees removed from the Equator. More details on that in the usual places, such as Wikipedia. The point of this post is the VLS and not ruminations on a country I know next to nothing about.

Anyway, the VLS-1. While I stumbled across a diagram at some point in working on this (located in this official document (large PDF warning)), my primary source of data was the (probably somewhat incorrect) Wikipedia page on the rocket. This rocket has been somewhat maligned for its all-solid approach following the explosion in 2003 that took 21 lives, but that is exactly what makes it an interesting bird form an engineering standpoint. So let's jump right in.

This is a simple 1-meter rocket that consists of three stages and four strap-on boosters. All solid. The rocket has 4 RCS thrusters at the top of the third stage, and is (allegedly) capable of placing 380kg into a 200km by 2000km Earth orbit. My early versions of the VLS-1 used winglets/fins, which were unnecessary. I ditched these in the final design. Details on the real thing here.

---

VLS-R0

My first test flight, VLS-R0, was tuned to exactly the burn durations listed on Wikipedia. Boosters for 59 seconds, first stage for 58, second stage for 56 and the third stage for 68 seconds. I tuned the ISP and thrust to as close to the real-world values as procedural SRBs would allow, and let it fly.

The result was predictable: The craft overheated and exploded before the boosters had burned out.

---

VLS-R1

My second flight of the VLS-1 was more successful. I tuned each of the stages to have a more sane level of thrust, resulting in a longer burn duration for each. This version also featured the RCS thrusters and fuel as present in the actual VLS-1, though I removed these in the third test.

Much happier result this time, with my relatively dumb payload almost making it into orbit. And by relatively dumb, I mean "I forgot the RCS, and, oh, by the way, this payload's balance is way off-center." Had I been within the mass limits of the rocket (300kg) this poor dumb satellite would now be plaguing mission controllers all over the planet. Thankfully the payload was already too heavy for the rocket so it burned up over the Congo.

---

VLS-R2

The third test was the most successful to date, and, thanks to my revised payload, was also the first to succeed in placing said payload into orbit. This was also the last flight which featured both winglets and lacked lifter-based RCS. My slightly less dumb but still imbalanced payload was still operational when it crossed the Andes on its first orbit. It was suffering from the solar power glitch that plagued RSS in recent versions, though that is now thankfully corrected.

---

VLS-R3

With the launcher and the launch profile mostly perfected, it was time to sit down and make it accurate. This included removing the fins, reducing the size of the radial decouplers (I opted for the AIES ones instead of the fat ones from stock), and the reinclusion of the RCS system on the launch vehicle. Unfortunately, my attempts at making the booster separation somewhat cleaner resulted in a far too close to reality case of the rocket exploding on the launchpad.

[You don't really need to see another picture of something blowing up, do you?]

---

VLS-R4

Review of the issue at hand revealed that using procedural SRBs as separation motors on a procedural SRB resulted in one of two things. First, the main SRBs now had zero thrust. Second, there was a random chance of the small separation motors exploding due to a random overheating bug. So for the final design I reverted back to the "hope the atmosphere pulls them away" method of forcing the strap-on boosters to clear the rocket and conducted one final test.

My final design is slightly shorter than the 19.5m of the actual rocket (though KSP thanks it's taller on account of the launch clamps), but that's all because of the fairing. The strap-on boosters and the first stage are tweaked to where their atmospheric TWR is 1.3, while the upper stages are closer to a TWR of 1.5. Still a bit on the insane side, but somewhat less so than the real thing. Without throttling the g-forces on payloads could very well reach the point where apples become applesauce.

---

Launching from Alcântara

To conduct the above tests I added Alcântara both to regex's launch sites config and to the RemoteTech ground station configuration. You're on your own for the RemoteTech config, but if you'd like to add Alcântara as a launch site to your RSS, plug the following in the various LaunchSites.cfg files in your RSS install.

Please note that I've done nothing to properly orient the launch site or the runway to 90º, nor have I added any sort of description to it (aside from "Brazil"). If you'd like to do either and want me to update this little config, or have any other tweaks or adjustments, please let me know.

Cheers.

 

		Site
		{
			name = br_alcantara
			displayName = BR - Alcantara
			description = Brazil.
			PQSCity
			{
				KEYname = KSC
				latitude = -2.373056
				longitude = -44.396389
				repositionRadiusOffset = 98
				repositionToSphereSurface = false
				lodvisibleRangeMult = 6
			}
			PQSMod_MapDecalTangent
			{
				radius = 20000
				heightMapDeformity = 80
				absoluteOffset = 45
				absolute = true
				latitude = -2.373056
				longitude = -44.396389
			}
		}

Edited April 13, 2017 by Cydonian Monk

[Sylandro]

I look forward to some more RSS ramblings!

[Cydonian Monk]

I look forward to some more RSS ramblings!

Soon! (I hope.) I've landed kerbals on the Moon recently and plan to do a short write-up about my RSS moonshots over the last several releases.

I've been spending most of my RSS time exploring various parts mods and fidgeting with the install so I can get it to work on both Windows and OS-X, which aside from the 8k textures I'm using on Windows has gone well enough. For now, here's a short (~45s) video I shot while building out the communications network in my current RSS save:

[Cydonian Monk]

Random RSS Ramblings of a Mad Monk

A Journey to the Moon

The Early Attempts

Most of my adventures in RSS have been more of the kind I posted previously - picking a random real-world craft and trying to replicate it using procedural parts and the available engines. I've dabbled here and there with building communication networks and sending "kerbals" to orbit, but generally have spent more time dabbling in rocket and spacecraft engineering than in exploration.

My few early attempts at sending a spacecraft to the Moon mostly met with failure before reaching Earth Orbit. My first success at reaching the Moon was last July in KSP v0.23.5. An unnamed craft, likely some variant of Alpha or Beta (my test names are far less original than I usually admit), was launched from the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the DelMarVa peninsula. The launch vehicle was a strange beast of a craft that from my screenshots appears to have been largely cryogenic. (The distinct lack of notes related to this project is rather out of character for me.)

Regardless, this monster that was little more than a giant tank of hydrogen became the first to enter Lunar orbit.

The second craft to successfully reach the Moon was a somewhat more conventional design. Launched later the same day from Cape Canaveral, the "Lunar Comms-A" was adapted from my then-standard geostationary communications satellite. Its Mk5 launch vehicle was likewise a slightly heavier variant of my usual geostationary launch vehicle. The plan was to place a couple of these in Lunar orbit in preparation for a surface landing.

That surface landing never came and the Lunar program was abandoned. In time the world forgot.

---

If You Believe....

Fast forward to July of this year and KSP v1.0.4. While I was playing around with the various parts packs to find what I want to use long-term, I decided to pull up the FASA Apollo and take it for a spin. My first launch was less than stellar and fell more than 600m/s short of the Lunar transfer burn. I completed the TLI using the command module's supply of fuel, thinking I might just be able to complete the capture at the Moon and land.

Not only was I wrong, but the poor kerbals riding along on the short Apollo died when their craft exploded due to an overheat bug or a part that hadn't been updated to the proper heat values. (I think it was the floats.)

The next attempt was far more successful. Caranna and Ermore Kerman became the first to land on the Moon following a launch form Earth. When asked by reporters whether the two brave kerbals and their friend in orbit, Dunbart, had been returned to Earth, the press secretary Pleaded the 5th.

---

... They Put a Bot on the Moon

Landing kerbals on the Moon is so easy that it's almost cheating. Landing an automated probe is another thing entirely, and that was to be the next goal of my resurrected Lunar program. First up: The Vandal Probes. Making use of the recently developed "Gargantua" 4 meter launch vehicle, these probes usually involved a combination of orbiter and lander.

The Gargantua, developed for placing large communications satellites into Geostationary Earth Orbit, consists of three principal stages. The first stage, fueled by KeroLox, uses a pair of RD-146 engines. All subsequent stages are HydroLox, making use of two cryogenic engines: the LR-87 and the NK-33. Further, four hard points are available for the use of strap-on solid boosters.

The majority of these launches occurred at night, as this game is starting at day 0 in year 1, and the most favorable inclinations for Lunar launches in the Winter of 1951 happen to be at night. All Vandal launches have taken place at Brownsville, TX.

Vandal 1, seen here launching at sunset, successfully reached both Lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon. Unfortunately its speed at contact with the surface was unfavorable for its survival. Or the survival of any of its constituent atoms for that matter. The orbiter it left behind, however, has been tremendously useful to subsequent missions.

Vandal 2 exploded shortly after reaching orbit due to the part-clipping overheat bug and was otherwise unremarkable.

The landing attempt by Vandal 1 made it rather clear that I needed a more sophisticated method for landing autonomous craft than maneuver nodes and RemoteTech's cranky flight computer. So I finally bit the bullet and installed kOS. To get my bearings with this strange new scripting language I launched a small toy satellite, once again returning to the Brazilian VLS.

The LEO-Comms A "VLS-kOS" was poked, prodded and spun around like a top as I felt my way around kOS and its internals. Its job complete, the small test sat was dropped back into the atmosphere and disposed of with fire.

Changes were made to the Vandal landers to correct the overheat bugs encountered on both the Vandal 2 and Vandal 3. Vandal 4 saw a change in the standard pattern with the orbiter having been replaced by a primary descent stage. Unfortunately, the fuel not burned off from the lander during what would have been the bulk of its descent left it too heavy to land at the end of its descent, and the Vandal 4 met its end at over 90m/s.

A few quick revisions to the lander and the Vandal 5 was ready for its attempt at Lunar glory. It merely added its matter to the ancient dust.

Vandal 6 decided to explode multiple times shortly after launch, so Vandal 7 became the next revision of the project. This time the lander had more than enough thrust to properly complete the descent, though it still lacked engines capable of being throttled. The Vandal 7 also saw a return to the orbiter-lander combination.

The Vandal 7 was to be the last of these probes, though it crashed more times than I care to think about. Unlike previous failures, each taking the better part of two hours to reach their failure point, this mission was not going to fail. Working from a quicksave in Lunar orbit, the landing software and process was iterated, updated and revised. Each revision and test from that savepoint taking 20 minutes to reach their final outcome. Yet eventually the goal was accomplished: Soft Lunar Touchdown.

The exact definitions of "soft" and "touchdown" being a bit open for interpretation. On what was to be the final attempt of the weekend, the lander exhausted its onboard fuel just a short distance above the surface. The bouncing and rolling that followed didn't break any major pieces of the craft off, so it's good enough for me. Sure, it's a bit dinged up with only one solar panel still working, but it's on the Moon.

---

With that milestone "completed", my RSS/RO exploration project can move into its next phase: Mars. Though I might spend a few more days perfecting my automated Moon landing script before I fling something off to good old Ares. It's a bit rough around the edges, but for the craft I was using it worked well enough. I've included it below for the curious. Probably a good bit of stuff I'm doing backwards or being wasteful about, but I'll rethink the algorithms over sometime when my air conditioner isn't a giant sheet of useless snow and ice.

declare Stationary to 0.

rcs on.
sas off.
lock steering to (-1) * ship:velocity:surface.
wait 5.
set ship:control:mainthrottle to 1.
set ship:control:fore to 1.

until 0 {
if Stationary > 0 {
if 1 > alt:radar {
print "Landing Detected".
break.
}
if -2 < ship:verticalspeed {
set ship:control:mainthrottle to 0.
set ship:control:fore to 0.
}
else if 2000 < alt:radar {
if -100 > ship:verticalspeed {
set ship:control:fore to 1.
set ship:control:mainthrottle to 1.
}
}
else if 500 < alt:radar {
if -50 > ship:verticalspeed {
set ship:control:fore to 1.
set ship:control:mainthrottle to 1.
}
}
else if 100 < alt:radar {
if -3 > ship:verticalspeed {
set ship:control:fore to 1.
}
if -5 > ship:verticalspeed {
set ship:control:mainthrottle to 1.
}
}
}
else {
if 2 > ship:surfacespeed {
set Stationary to 1.
}
if 100 > ship:surfacespeed {
set ship:control:fore to 0.
}
}
lock steering to (-1) * ship:velocity:surface.
}

set ship:control:mainthrottle to 0.
set ship:control:fore to 0.
unlock steering.
rcs off.

print "Landed. Lat: " + ship:latitude + " Lon: " + ship:longitude + " Alt: " + ship:altitude.

Cheers.

Edited August 10, 2015 by Cydonian Monk

[Mister Dilsby]

Very nice mission and pics, am intrigued! Would you say that with Earth hardware at Earth scale, the re-entry heating model approximates real world experience?

[Cydonian Monk]

Very nice mission and pics, am intrigued! Would you say that with Earth hardware at Earth scale, the re-entry heating model approximates real world experience?

Thanks!

As for the reentry heat at Earth scale - I think it's still a bit glitchy (with random things instantly exploding at ~90km, for example), but beyond that I don't really know enough fluid dynamics or thermodynamics to have a good feel for what's right and what might be wrong. It _seems_ to be a good model, and the craft that I've used to reenter behave as one would expect. Aerodynamically they feel right, but that has more to do with FAR than the heating system.

[Sylandro]

I love it! Keep up the good work.

[Cydonian Monk]

Project Vandal - The Final Update

Had to fix a bunch of RSS/RO glitches that have cropped up thanks to a variety of reasons (the usual); and then I found that all of my Lunar craft were orbiting Iapetus.... Weird. Fixed that, all seems well with the world, installed a couple other small mods and got back into RSS.

Today I returned to the final planned probe in Project Vandal - The Vandal 8. This was physically identical to the Vandal 7, but I've put in some work to clean up the landing software. It's still the ultimate hack job of a script, but for the most part it worked.... Unfortunately the craft didn't. The lander encountered a strange bug during the descent that prevented certain things from working - such as the lights. And the landing gear. A reload from the quicksave fixed the landing legs (thankfully), but not the lights. No big deal. Descent started from 82km for a "targeted" landing in the region of Mare Nectaris.

Fast forward 20 minutes to the touchdown. The script was working perfectly, and even brought the lander down nicely to a few m/s rate of descent. The plan was to "drop" the lander from a 5 meter height and have it land. Vertical speed at contact should not have been more than 3m/s, and wasn't, but unfortunately the legs were a bit too "springy", and the lander bounced. The craft might have stayed upright had the RCS not decided to freak out... I have no idea what was going through that lander's mind, but in the opinion of my kOS script it was "landed" and should have been holding itself locked upwards.

A third attempt at landing from a quicksave was considered, but I ultimately decided the end would be identical: Another Vandal sitting on its side.

---

Project Gothic

But enough about Vandal. Vandal is behind us, Project Gothic is ahead. Intended to be an evolved version of Vandal, Gothic will start with a somewhat heavier lander and orbiter combination, and will ultimately end with a lander that is heavy and capable enough to deliver a crew to the surface and return them to orbit. The orbiter for the first several Gothic missions will be a heavy communications satellite, used both for Lunar communications and to act as a relay into the deeper Solar System. Mars is on the horizon....

The first Gothic payload is almost ready, all that needs be done is to develop the control software and find a launch vehicle powerful enough to deliver it to the Moon. And maybe ditch those radiator panels... needs some testing (and some heat control system that actually works in RSS/RO).

I expect the first Project Gothic launch to be in two or three weeks.... It's the busy season again, and a couple of slightly unplanned trips are coming up in the next two weeks. So we'll see.... Still a bit of dev work to do on that, and as the Gothic landers will have throttle-able engines I'll need to write legit landing software. And being able to target specific landing sites would be extremely useful.

---

Project Cicero

Simultaneously, Project Cicero will develop the tools needed for delivering crews to orbit and keeping them there indefinitely. And maybe in letting them come home.... Maybe. I have yet to choose the crew delivery vehicle for Project Cicero, but I don't intend to use any of the capsules in FASA. Not that I dislike FASA, but most of that was 50 years ago. And, though I haven't updated the Solar System configuration to one that uses a more recent Epoch, I'm operating as though this RSS save is somewhat current. (Maybe in time I'll whip up an RSS config that doesn't start in 1951. Shouldn't be all that difficult... the numbers are easy enough to come by.)

Project Cicero will be the test bed for technology needed to land crews on the Moon and beyond, and will use much of what's developed for Gothic in doing so. Both projects will merge into a single, large project in the future.

That's all for now.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Cydonian Monk

[Bev7787]

Anything else? This thread is really good!

[Cydonian Monk]

Anything else? This thread is really good!

Nothing yet, but I've barely had time to play KSP over the last month and that doesn't look like it'll change (much) until after Thanksgiving here in the U.S. as I'm on the road (and away from my Windows PC) for almost the entire month of November. If time opens up in the next few weekends I might launch the first of the Gothic probes, or undertake some other small project. Projects Gothic and Cicero are still on the books, though whether they get run in KSP v1.0.4/1.0.5 or KSP v1.1 remains to be seen. At least my RSS/RO install on v1.0.4 is reasonably stable (as long as I don't look at Map View while around the Moon too much), so if it takes several months to get the RO suite updated for Unity 5 I will still be ok.

[MatterBeam]

Some heating glitches are due to extremely tiny procedural tanks. Watch out for those. Otherwise, great work.

[Curiosity7907]

What is this forum about?

[Cydonian Monk]

2 hours ago, Curiosity7907 said:

What is this forum about?

The Madness of King George. Or, more specifically, my rather random missions in Real Solar System with Realism Overhaul..... Which I've not yet updated for KSP 1.0.5, and likely won't touch again until everything needed for it is updated to support KSP 1.1. 

[Cydonian Monk]

Bweep bweep bweep bweep bweep.....

 

Only 4 days behind schedule, but I've finally got my 1.1.3 RSS/RO install up and mostly running. It's pulling in more than 62,000 module manager configs, takes 10-15 minutes or more to load up, and clocks in at 9 gigs of RAM, give or take. Still fighting with some graphical glitches, as evidenced by the reflection plugin weirdness seen above on ye-olde-Sputnik, but those don't bother me too much. Mostly have the RVE clouds working on Earth, and Scatterer is behaving nicely. 

It's been more than a year since I set up an RSS/RO install, and it's good to be back. Now to go update my kOS scripts (and write some new ones). Expect some more ramblings in the future. I'm going to take a stab at an RP-0 career. I won't document it in exceeding detail, but will pull out some of the high and low lights from time to time. I might even stream it randomly over on Twitch.... We'll see.

Edited October 9, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[Cydonian Monk]

October Sky

Spent several hours yesterday over on Twitch, mostly working on kOS scripts. (Really exciting TV there, boss.) I'm slowly refining my usual set of guidance scripts into something coherent, and finding out ways they just don't work. Debugging, basically, except I'm hurling hundreds of tons of metal and kerosene into the sky to do it. Sputnik was well represented, but poor old Luna 9 was constantly being burned up on reentry by my bad code. 

Also spent a good bit of time fiddling with EVE/RVE and scatterer settings. If anyone has a working EVE/RVE config for KSP v1.1.3 they'd be willing to share, let me know. At present I'm using a cubemap for a single layer of clouds (which doesn't look terrible, mind you), and trying to get a couple other layers working.... I'm just not convinced any of it is right. 

 

Random Aerospace (RP-0)

In RP-0 News, Random Aerospace was established at the far southern tip of Texas (at kinda-sorta Brazos Island / South Padre Island), in little old Port Isabel, TX, just on the Mexican border. The fine folk over at the Schlitterbahn (which didn't exist in 1950) will have front-row seats once rocket launches become routine, assuming they end up building a Schlitterbahn there in this now screwed-up timeline. And Mexico may end up with some rockets that took wrong turns, but hopefully we can avoid provoking a war. 

The first object to slip above 100km was the first sounding rocket we launched: The Rio Grande Sounder. This brass-trimmed beauty propelled its steampunk bullet high enough to win a very small contract reward, and even survived reentry. The science payload was recovered in the deserts to the north of Brownsville.

Next up were a long series of failures. Well, that's not entirely fair, as the launch of the Trinity sounding rocket did reach way up into space (apoapsis above 300km). Development of orbital rocketry is not proceeding well; and two variants have developed: Gulf (an R-7 clone) and Bayou (kinda-sorta-Atlas? using pieces from Gulf). The first launch of Gulf (Gulf Alpha: 1951 d302) failed milliseconds after launch when the onboard flight computer shut down. Apparently none of the engines were properly tagged for kOS. This caused minor damage to the launch pad and wounded the boss' pride a bit. 

The next Gulf launch, Gulf Beta, succeeded in reaching out into the Gulf of Mexico, before the flight computer shut down while attempting fairing deployment. The guidance script was expecting the fairings to use ModuleDecouple, when instead they're using something else that will need to be teased out of the system.

Photographers also noted the fairings were exhibiting some "shader issues", otherwise known as Glitch.

More debugging of hundred-ton kerosene-filed darts next time, whenever that is.

 

[DMSP]

This is a nice series! I'm looking forward to Texas rockets. Strap a cowboy hat onto one and we can all go home.

[Cydonian Monk]

25 minutes ago, DMSP said:

I'm looking forward to Texas rockets.

Well then this Texas Two-Step Sounder might just be up your alley:

If that ain't Texas enough for you, try on this here Texas Three-Step Sounder:

 

Fresh out of cowboy hats. Sorry.

Texas. It's like a whole 'nother place.

[DMSP]

1 hour ago, Cydonian Monk said:

-snip-

I don't know why, but that just made me laugh so much!

Now I'm imagining a Texan Space Program and what that would look like.

Thanks again, Cydonian Monk!

[Cydonian Monk]

Don't Adjust Your Radio Dial
February 2nd, 1953

Houston, TX: The Gulf Coast's resident rocket program has borne fruit of an annoying sort. A small machine launched yesterday morning from the shores of South Texas has become the first artificial object to enter Earth's orbit. Officially named Gulf Zeta and designated 1953-001A, the craft has been nicknamed Zinger by the many who have heard its zinging and beeping sound on the 740 kHz frequency, interrupting radio news programs from here to Canada. Officials at the Federal Communications Commission were unavailable for comment regarding the illegal use of this radio space.

The Texas-based Random Aerospace was believed defunct after facing heavy fines and penalties in the first quarter of 1952. The largest of their losses were due to the failure of the Gulf Delta spacecraft and the contract attached to it. Despite having won an astronomical lawsuit against the rocket firm, their primary benefactor instead offered yet another launch contract of the same rates and term. The advance of said contract offset the losses incurred by failing the previous, and allowed these pesky mad scientists to continue to annoy the hard-working citizenry of the world. Allegations of money laundering between the two firms has attracted the interest of the Texas Attorney General.

The previous four launches in this class have mercifully ended in failure, otherwise our skies would be polluted with who knows how many zinging objects of major annoyance. The most recent of these failures, Gulf Epsilon, was blamed on issues in the machine's control mechanisms. Gulf Delta, the subject of last year's legal dispute, tore itself free from its moorings, leaving a large portion of the spacecraft on the launch pad while continuing onwards to space, only to rain burning hot death down on unsuspecting retirees in the Florida Keys.

A lucky accident nearly saved us from this fate, as one of the engines on the Zinger's many rocket "stages" suffered what the mad scientists called a "burn-through" event. Said engine was unfortunately able to continue powering its way through its appointed task and onwards to its eternal rest in the black beyond the sky.

A rather nondescript metal barrel resembling a trash can or small oil drum, Zinger is expected to remain in orbit for the indefinite future. Its batteries will die out within the next several months, and our radios will hopefully return to their normal static. With luck one of the other great powers of the world will send a similar device with the means to silence this pest long before then.

[Cydonian Monk]

2017-04-13 - A Late Yuri's Night

It doesn't get much more random than this. Yesterday I said to myself: "Hey, it's April 12th, I should fly a Vostok 1 mission in RSS/RO. And maybe I should stream it on Twitch." And so I did. I fired up ye-olde KSP 1.1.3 with my RSS/RO install on it, pulled up @raidernick's always awesome Vostok, and dropped it into my mostly pre-prepared Voskhod with all of its script-friendly cameras and whatnot. I had to tweak a few things, nudge a few others, but in the end I had a working spacecraft.

Test flight? Bah. This was the test flight. What could go wrong?

I pulled up the ever-faithful wikipedia and read up on the Vostok 1's actual orbit. I then pulled up an orbital calculator to determine my launch azimuth, updated my Soyuz launch script to handle the Vostok (available here!), and then let the mission fly itself. Except by this point it was no longer April 12th. (Hey, it was a busy evening. What can I say?) 

The countdown went well enough.

The launch went swimmingly.

And the little bug made it into orbit even. So what could possibly be the problem?

Fast-forward 90 minutes or so and I was all ready for the deorbit burn. The various documents scattered across the intertubes tell me the reentry burn for Vostok 1 took place somewhere over Egypt (give or take). So I did the same. Except, well, my orbital parameters were a bit different. I _suspect_ the Vostok 1 climbed to its periapsis and then burned level until it hit its apoapsis somewhere on the opposite side of the planet from the Republics. Guess I could go check that, too, but by this point it was too late.

The little bit of gas in the space bug's tail wasn't enough to bring poor Yuri down inside the Soviet Union. Instead his reentry was delayed by 15 minutes or so, meaning he would land in the cold Northern oceans, likely freezing to death or more likely drowning.

Or that's what might have happened had the Vostok's drogue chute survived reentry. Or had Yuri's ejector chutes actually bitten into the air once he was free of his spacecraft. Unfortunately for Yuri neither of those happened, and he slammed into the ocean at speeds unbecoming a living person.

Oops.

I know what the problem is with the personal chutes (my older fork of Vanguard doesn't support Real Chutes.... Double oops). I'm not sure if changing the reentry orientation will help preserve the capsule drogue chute (facing up instead of down), but ultimately that wouldn't be enough to save poor Yuri anyway. Maybe the next "volunteer" will have more luck. And maybe I'll figure out the actual launch corridor.

 

A shout-out to any of you bored souls that joined in for the music and the scenic low-orbit views. And for those that didn't, there's a rather long video of it up on YouTube, and of course the Past Broadcast on Twitch for however long that survives.

Cheers.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Cydonian Monk

[NISSKEPCSIM]

Well, that's a story fit for a rather different version of Eyes Turned Skyward. You could call it: Eyes-turned-kerbal dust.

[Cydonian Monk]

19 hours ago, NISSKEPCSIM said:

Well, that's a story fit for a rather different version of Eyes Turned Skyward. You could call it: Eyes-turned-kerbal dust.

Or more along the lines of: What would have happened if the Lost Cosmonauts were real with Yuri being the first of them; his failed flight erased from existence; his death having delayed Titov's flight; and the United States managed to put Shepard into space "first"? Knowing what we know now I doubt the Soviets would have covered up such a loss (they would've still been first in space), but there is always that sci-fi hook of "what if...."

[NISSKEPCSIM]

Just now, Cydonian Monk said:

Or more along the lines of: What would have happened if the Lost Cosmonauts were real with Yuri being the first of them; his failed flight erased from existence; his death having delayed Titov's flight; and the United States managed to put Shepard into space "first"? Knowing what we know now I doubt the Soviets would have covered up such a loss (they would've still been first in space), but there is always that sci-fi hook of "what if...."

Okay. Now someone has to make a movie about this. 

[MedwedianPresident]

I installed RO and RSS. It turned KSP into a completely new game - designing a rocket takes an hour and succesfully launching it another one.

 

Experimenting with various odd ideas now. How about SRB's for second stages? Not ullage motors but real, vacuum-optimized, low-thrust SRB's that burn for a minute or two and are then detached. Would help raise the apogee when the upper stage engine TWR would be still low and increase DV. I'm not going to place them radially but into the interstage shroud, e.g. right next to the stage engines, to prevent aerothermodynamic exposure.