Forgotten Space Program

[Cydonian Monk]

Sonic Sensei

Thomlock wasn't going to let the next flight go to anybody else, no matter what they thought about his "advanced" age. Sure, maybe he forgot where he left his teeth some mornings, but that had no bearing whatsoever on how well he could or could not fly. Besides, the new X-2 was his baby, and dangerous, and he wasn't going to force any of his pilots into the cockpit.

None of the air-breathing jet engines they had designed were deemed capable of propelling a craft beyond the speed of sound without the help of an outside force (such as gravity, large explosions, or mortal fear of the kraken). And having to strap an aircraft to a rocket was less than desirable, so instead they crammed a rocket into the tail of the X-1 and called it a day. Lessons learned from the Aluminium 4 also convinced them to pull the forward-swept wings back. 

On top of that, the three other pilots had complained about the lack of action groups in their jets (resorting to turning the navigation lights on by activating the reaction control system), prompting The Boss to order the upgrade of the spaceplane hanger. (Very strange that programming action groups requires a completely new structure, but kerbals aren't always known for making sense.)

And so a few days later Thomlock took his seat in his new X-2 rocket jet, taxied out to the runway, and gassed the two side-mounted jet engines. 

The plan was simple: Fly East and up, turn 90° left at every 1,000 meters. Once over the space center again activate the Taerobee rocket motor and keep flying up and South until the rocket fuel was exhausted. Return to a cruising altitude and fly back to the runway, if possible.

The two small jets cut out around 13km up, but the rocket engine was more than enough to propel the Aluminium 5 beyond Mach 2 and over 40km in altitude. The rocket fuel was spent around 30km, meaning the last 10km of the climb was just a gentle glide. Thomlock even managed to pull a few science results out of thin air.

The descent was a bit worrying. Even though the craft was reasonably maneuverable even when supersonic, the jets didn't cut back in until Thomlock was below 11km. He took the his time banking the plane to the North, and was almost pointing towards the 0 on his heading needle when the jets finally screeched back to life. 

From there it was just a straight shot to the space center, well within the range of the X-2's remaining fuel. He landed safely, taxied the X-2 back to the spaceplane hanger, and posed for the requisite after flight photo. 

--

The Mother of All Space Telescopes
or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Magnesium.

True to its nickname, the Magnesium 5 was the largest and most capable space telescope yet launched. And, since it included docking and short-term accommodations for two, it was also a functional space station. And by short-term, the designers meant "long enough to conduct repairs and leave, because we're not going to vibration-proof our space telescope against your bouncing around." So it really wasn't a space station. (Not that Mort cared - he still picked up a station building contract with the expectation Mg-5 would count.)

Regardless, its incredible mass was more than the LV-05 could handle, necessitating the creation of a new launch vehicle: The LV-06 Cadence. Lacking any large, single or even multi-chamber engines capable of lofting the required mass, Wernher and the interns decided instead to use eight smaller engines in a cluster. Something like eight pieces of pepperoni around the edge of a pizza. Mmm, pizza.

Once the mandatory pizza break was complete, the designer and his greasy-fingered interns returned to finish off the launch vehicle and the payload. All told the craft was well over 200 thousand Funds and pushing 134 tonnes on the pad. Far and away the heaviest thing they'd ever attempted to launch.

The original design for Mother featured four distinct styles of telescopes, all combined together to make the so named Mother Scope. One Scope to Rule Them All..., et cetera et cetera. And then Wernher was informed of the impossibility of such a design, as most of the required components were nowhere near ready for prime time.

So a compromise was made - two small spotting scopes were placed opposite each other on the main telescope's tube housing, acting as spotting scopes so the main scope could be aimed without needlessly opening the shutter. 

The first two stages of the LV-06 delivered the Mother Scope to its 260km apoapsis, while the scope's own engines were used to circularize in high orbit. Once on station the ground controllers gave the order to open the tube and to aim the scope at Minmus. (What better to calibrate the scope than to use the biggest ball of ice cream in the solar system? Mmmmm. Ice cream.)

Following the mandatory ice cream break, the science team came back to find some amazing shots of Minmus waiting for them. So nice, in fact, they wondered why anyone wanted to bother with sending astrokerbs to the small moon.

They then took some potshots at Eeloo and some asteroid out past Duna orbit that somebody claimed was Dres. (Couldn't have been Dres though as the kerbals who looked at it were still sane afterwards.)

With all the science having been milked out of the planets by the GrandMother scope, the Mother Scope was really a bit useless. (At least until it started into the deep sky scans, but that comes later.) Anticipating this, the scope was sent up with several replacement processors, including three Asteroid Survey scopes. Installing them would require sending up a crew.

--

Nitrogen X

Speaking of sending up a crew, Thomlock felt it was time his pilots got some stars on their uniforms. As the reconfiguration of the Mother Scope would require an engineer, he was only able to send one up on this trip, and decided to send up Tetris. (Macfred was the next engineer in the crew rotation, strange as it may seem.) The Nitrogen TC-10 was rolled out to the launch pad just as soon as the two of them were strapped in.

The launch was once again handled by the LaunchSonata script, with the final rendezvous managed by a quickly dialed in RT2 flight computer burn. As with all good things in KSP the actual docking of the two craft occurred at night. What else would you expect? At least this time the docking was handled by a professional pilot, Tetris, and went perfectly. In the dark.

Some good news was radioed up from Mortimer, as the two of them had successfully built a station for five kerbals... which the Nitrogen TC-10 plus the Magnesium 5 now counted as. Yay quick money?

Once they were settled in, Macfred and Tetris made a number of EVAs to buff their respective stats and records. Macfred then ventured out of the Nitrogen and made his way up the ladder to the Mother Scope's storage container. All six of the spare processors were in good shape, so he picked one of the asteroid processors at random, grabbed a wrench, and made his way up to the CactEye's service bay.

Actually working inside the service bay took a bit of getting used to, though most of the unfamiliarity on Macfred's part was in figuring out which end of the space wrench he needed to pry the old processor free without damaging it. He took his time and made sure the asteroid processor was in and facing the proper direction before he returned the wrench and the now spare camera processor to the telescope's storage compartment.

Shortly after the two of them backed away from the Mother Scope, burned for a lower orbit, and began the reentry process. It was a rather lon reentry, with the initial periapsis only 45km over the space center, but the ablator on the twin-seat Nitrogen capsules was made of hardier stuff than the paper-thin cork used on the Carbon craft. Macfred even took the time to smile for the camera.

Final splashdown was just a few kilometers offshore from the space center, and they were both home in time for the evening snacks.

Another successful mission in the books, another post-rescue party underway back at the ranch.

 

Navigation: Next Post

Edited December 4, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[kunok]

I can't see any of your images today, it's my internet or somebody else has the same problem?

Everything else seems fine

Edited February 2, 2016 by kunok

[CAKE99]

34 minutes ago, kunok said:

I can't see any of your images today, it's my internet or somebody else has the same problem?

Everything else seems fine

That was happening to me before, that was on my PC, it's working fine now that I am on mobile.

[kunok]

1 hour ago, CAKE99 said:

That was happening to me before, that was on my PC, it's working fine now that I am on mobile.

Now works, maybe was just an error

[Cydonian Monk]

2 hours ago, kunok said:

I can't see any of your images today, it's my internet or somebody else has the same problem?

Everything else seems fine

Hmm. I'd noticed that with somebody else's posts too. Though on my end it could be my webhost, so who knows. Might've been anything. 

[Sanic]

Why not the Sanic Sensei?

 

[Angelo Kerman]

Yay for the CactEye working. Pretty cool that you turned it into a space station too.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Angel-125

[Cydonian Monk]

4 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Yay for the CactEye working. Pretty cool that you turned it into a space station too.

Thanks for keeping that thing alive too. I was a bit bummed out when Rubber Ducky left the community, and happy to see at least some of what they made still afloat. 

[RA3236]

Great story! One of the interesting ones that explain the missions in words, not totally pics. 

[Cydonian Monk]

2 hours ago, RA3236 said:

Great story! One of the interesting ones that explain the missions in words, not totally pics. 

Thank you. I do try to keep it so this would make a bit of sense if all the pictures disappeared.

[Redhaze]

Awww crud, I'm at the latest installment now. Whelp, time to finally go to sleep.

[waterlubber]

On 2/3/2016 at 6:05 PM, Redhaze said:

*snip*

 

Late night forum viewing is dangerously addictive.

 

Edited February 6, 2016 by waterlubber
Forum software is high unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine

[Cydonian Monk]

7 minutes ago, waterlubber said:

Finally, I can type normally. that up there wasn't keyboard mashings, forums just went insane.

Just? No, they've been that way for a long, long time.

4 hours ago, Redhaze said:

Awww crud, I'm at the latest installment now. Whelp, time to finally go to sleep.

 I know the feeling. Just got caught up on a few other long mission reports the other night. 11PM was suddenly 2AM. Time flys!

More soon. 

[Cydonian Monk]

Aluminium Cans of Boom

The X-2 design was nice for high-speed, high-altitude research, but as a regular old grocery getter it was a pretty terrible aircraft. After some discussion as to what exactly was needed for a "Research and Exploration" jet, the eggheads and interns produced the X-3. And this Aluminium can had everything a kerbal could want in a mobile science lab. 

Mostly.

The best part of it? The X-3 was capable of nearly an hour of continuous flight time in low-altitude environments. Meaning a pilot could hop around all sorts of biomes, provided they were within a half hour or so of the space center. 

The really, really best part?

Twin engines. And not just twin engines, two of the newest and most efficient (and most powerful) engines yet made. With a combined thrust to weight ratio greater than 2, the pilots could point it upwards and keep going. Reaching Mach 1 was as simple as aiming the jet and slamming the throttle.

Gletrix didn't really need to taxi to the far end of the runway when she took off on Aluminium X-3 6, but rules are rules. She pulled up to 4km quickly, then circled around the space center before giving the science equipment a test.

The aircraft wasn't without its flaws. Attempting to run the science experiments strapped to the top of it was ok, but transmitting the data back? 

The craft was a little short on electric charge. And by a little short I mean it could've flown around for the next hour and not finished recharging the batteries, and it exhausted what little charge it had in only a couple seconds. 

Problem.

Another issue was the craft's behaviour in the transsonic region. For some strange reason it would pitch up stiffly as it passed through Mach 1. Over Mach 1? Fine. Under Mach 1? Silk. At Mach 1? Push down. 

Problem. Ish.

These two issues alone were enough for the engineering crews on the ground to cancel the rest of the tests for the flight. Gletrix brought the plane around again and came in for a nice landing. 

Another benefit of having the new engines was the ability to reverse the thrust, allowing the plane to land nearly on a dime. (A 600 meter long dime perhaps, but whatever.) Doing so at full throttle? 

Problem.

The power was dead, the contorls systems constantly resetting due to low voltage, and the steering on the lead wheel didn't work, so Gletrix just left the plane on the runway for the recovery crews to clean it up.

This bird needed some tweaks.

--

A short time later the X-3A was ready for flight. Some small adjustments were made - more batteries, a slightly tweak positioning of the wings, a new set of elevators on the tail, other amenities for crew comfort such as extra snack storage. Not a huge change, but enough to make the craft more airworthy. 

Tetris took the new bird out for its tests. Aluminium X-3A 7. Once again the craft had a deliciously short take off distance, and easily got up to speed. Tetris even managed to buzz the tower at liftoff, proving just how maneuverable the little bird was.

Even with the extra batteries strapped to the top of the jet, one block of data from the air sensor was enough to drain all the electric charge. Tetris just went along with it, and flew out to the island runway where she planned to do a touch and go. Except the World's Firsters had a... different idea.

Discovered? 

Really?

You can see it from the space center!

Oh well, free money is free money. With the touch and go aborted on account of the unexpected award, Tetris circled around and gained altitude. 

She was well over 8km once past the space center. She took the Aluminium X-3A 7 a bit further inland before executing the final test of the day: a Split-S. After a short period of inverted flight, she was to drop into a 4km dive, then pull up, aimed directly for the runway.

Except this craft does NOT want to fly inverted. Every attempt at keeping it turned 180 upside down resulted in the aerodynamic forces pushing it over one way or the other. (Somewhere in the back of my mind Kelly McGillis was droning on about 4G inverted dives and impossible maneuvers and such.... which I can confirm are quite impossible in my X-3A in KSP.)

Regardless, Tetris completed the Split-S, brought it down safely, and overshot the runway on the first past. More "unable to slow down from Mach 1.5 in time" than "overshot", but the result was the same. Once down, she taxied the X-3A and parked it next to the X-2 outside of the spaceplane hanger.

Mission accomplished. 

--

Housekeeping

There were a few housekeeping items the crews needed to get out of the way before they could move on to their next project. None of the kerbals were quite sure what the next project was, though the rumour mill was strongly suggesting a crewed mission to the Mün or Minmus or both. The Boss was being uncharacteristically silent on the matter too. 

First, Rozor and Agake were due to bring the Nitrogen T-7 and their first batch of science results home. Having spent almost 80 days in space, the two of them had second place for "most time away from Kerbin" pretty much locked up. So they packed up whatever they could, transmitted the last bit of science waiting in the Kelgee Station lab, and hightailed it out of there.

Reentry was a short wait, placing them down in the ocean all the way on the opposite side of the planet. No big deal for the magical mystery tour (ie, the recovery team), but it still cut into the recovery value a bit.

--

Next, some spring cleaning needed to be done with the satellites in orbit. Nobody was quite sure what springs had to do with cleaning, what with the bouncing and all, but they went along with it anyway.

The three low-orbit and equatorial Lithium satellites had served their purpose, but were incredibly redundant now that the Neon Network was up and running. Not to mention dangerous, as each of them had a periapsis near 70km and an apoapsis above 400km, meaning they intercepted the orbits of almost everything. More than a few missions had experienced near-misses with the three probes, so the time had come to bid them adieu. 

Each of the three executed a deorbit burn at apoapsis, resulting in a light show half an orbit later.

Farewell, tiny probes. You'll be missed.

--

Finally, the kerbals had yet to complete one of the first tasks assigned to them by The Boss: Capture an old satellite for study. Something they aimed to get to... in the morning. There was a plan, and even a ship ready to conduct the "extraordinary recovery", but all of the crews had missed their nap time and were plum tuckered out. 

Tomorrow! 

 

Navigation: Next Post

Edited December 4, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[Angelo Kerman]

Love how Bruce Springsteen is running your space program.

[Cydonian Monk]

12 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Love how Bruce Springsteen is running your space program.

The Boss, The E-Street Band, and a rogue Jimmy Cliff confirmed! Maybe. Time will tell.  

[Redhaze]

Nice flying. Getting supersonic on Wheesleys isn't easy.

Will we be getting claw shenanigans already!?

[Cydonian Monk]

2 hours ago, Redhaze said:

Will we be getting claw shenanigans already!?

Claw? No. Not sure where it is in the tech tree, but I know I don't have it unlocked. I'm going the KAS route instead. 

[Redhaze]

Ah, makes sense. I guess even in that techtree the claw would be fairly high up. How do you do it with KAS, though?

[Cydonian Monk]

52 minutes ago, Redhaze said:

Ah, makes sense. I guess even in that techtree the claw would be fairly high up. How do you do it with KAS, though?

Strut anchors. The plan is to shove the target satellite in a box (made out of Tantares FCBs), send a kerbal out on EVA to attach strut anchors, then strut it to the inside of the box. Alternatively I might use a winch to pull it in. 

[Redhaze]

Is it possible to strut to other crafts then!?

[Cydonian Monk]

1 minute ago, Redhaze said:

Is it possible to strut to other crafts then!?

Maybe, maybe not. It's an experiment. It's definitely possible to harpoon other crafts, which is why I'm sending the winch. Worst case I just reenter with it inside the Functional Cargo Block. Provided I don't timewarp it should be ok. 

[RocketSquid]

2 hours ago, Redhaze said:

Is it possible to strut to other crafts then!?

Not with the normal struts, but with the pipes, yes.

[Garibaldi2257]

its a 6g inverted dive

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I read the whole thing today, and I just want to say that it's AWESOME! Really well done! Can't wait to see what the kerbals discover next.\