Virgo 8 - RSS Moon mission

[Gaarst]

So I recently reached the point in my RSS save  (sandbox) where I could send Kerbals to the Moon (actually reached it 6 months ago but I endlessly postponed the launches), and finally decided to launch a Moon mission.

I did so a few weeks ago, with the mission Virgo 7: the first mission of my Virgo-Libra programs to send Kerbals on the Moon. Unfortunately, overwhelmed by the greatness of that achievement I forgot to take screenshots of the mission (my laziness also has a role to play in it...); and fixed this problem with this mission: Virgo 8, during which I took a lot of screenshots, over 130 actually. Even though I deleted a lot of them, there are enough of them left for me to make a nice (and way too long) picture album and to present the mission in (probably boring) details. (And no I won't stop with brackets )

There we go:

Mission Virgo 8:

The mission was launched from Kourou as a fictional joint program from most space powers. Hence the variety in the astronauts' origins and name:

• Brian Melvin - Pilot of the Command Module, remained on board of the CSM during the landing
• Ilya Stanislavovitch (great name generation BTW...) - Pilot of the lander
• Aurélie Leroux - Flight engineer, first woman to walk on the Moon

 

Virgo 8 was launched using the Alba Ice 3 launcher, which, even though it is labeled "3", is about the 15th Moon rocket design that I flew: the constant redesigns of my rockets is another reason of the postpones of my Moon missions...

The rocket weighs 2240t, is made of 166 parts, mostly from SpaceY for the launcher itself, and redesigned stock parts from VSR for the CSM and lander. It stands at 119m high, as it can be seen on the (large) picture below (with clear and precise labellings), making it taller than a Saturn V or N-1 despite it being a lot lighter:

The rocket is made of four stages in total (the fourth being the lunar insertion stage), plus the lander and Command and Service Module. The first two stages burn kerosene and liquid oxygen and the last two burn liquid hydrogen and oxygen; the propulsion for the lander and CSM is ensured by Aerozine50 and nitrogen tetroxide, and, finally, hydrazine is used for the CSM RCS.

The details of the rockets' components are shown in the following (even larger) picture, with not so clear but precise labellings, meant to look like a blueprint (click on it to see it in its full size, and zoom out):

Now that you probably skipped the boring part, lets continue with the somehow even more boring part: the mission itself; whose events are "summed up" in a 92 picture album (consider yourselves lucky as I removed a lot of them):

If you went through all of these, then well done; and I hope you enjoyed it, and don't feel like you wasted half an hour like I did 10 hours doing this thing!

If you didn't, then here is a (really) quick summary of this post:
TL;DR: I made a tall rocket, I went to the Moon, I broke a rover, I went back.

 

Thank you for reading ;

Gaarst

Edited December 29, 2015 by Gaarst

[Guest]

That is a perfect example of something that is over engineered, yet utterly amazing.

[Wallygator]

Not over engineered for an rss mission...

Well done!

I've not restarted my rss instance as of yet. Looking forward to 1.1 to make it do.

Nice mission!

[Sparker]

Nice lander! I see you too like to put those lander command modules in parallel.

[Gaarst]

1 hour ago, Sparker said:

Nice lander! I see you too like to put those lander command modules in parallel.

Yes, AFAIK, clipping two small lander cans is the best way to sit 2 Kerbals in 2.5m base lander: the Mk2 Lander Can is just too heavy. Only downside of this is the IVA view bottom right of the screen: IVA mode works fine, but the "boxes with the Kerbals' heads" (don't know how to call this) are a bit messed up.

[Pronoes]

On the "Deploying the Rover", what docking port is that? It looks far too small for anything I have or is it tweakscaled?

[Gaarst]

6 minutes ago, Pronoes said:

On the "Deploying the Rover", what docking port is that? It looks far too small for anything I have or is it tweakscaled?

No TweakScale, it is just the 0.625m "Docking Port Jr." retextured with VSR, but still at its original size. Though it does look small on the picture, keep in mind that the main lander tank is 2.5m, and the radial tanks next to it are 1.25m tanks.

I must also admit that I think this is one of the first times I've actually used the Jr. docking ports.

[Cydonian Monk]

Very nice. Only time I've landed Kerbals on the Moon in RSS was using the pre-built FASA Apollo 11.... So I skipped all the design work. Nice job.

[Geschosskopf]

Congrats!  I sa;lute all who play RSS.

Personally, I find RSS depressing because it brings home in no uncertain terms just how stuck we are on this rock.  Which is why, despie playing Orbier for decades, I kicked it to the curb (kerb?) upon discovering KSP.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[Gaarst]

8 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Congrats!  I sa;lute all who play RSS.

Personally, I find RSS depressing because it brings home in no uncertain terms just how stuck we are on this rock.  Which is why, despie playing Orbier for decades, I kicked it to the curb (kerb?) upon discovering KSP.

We're not stuck on this rock: see pictures above for a proof: we can go to the next rock !

And give me some time to organise it, but I'm sure we can get to the red rock just a bit further ! 

Seriously now: I see your point, but I like RSS especially for this reason: after messing around the Kerbol system for years (IRL) landing on Moho or going to Eeloo feels like your daily job, whereas in RSS just going to orbit first, landing on the Moon then, is so rewarding !

This, and the simiarities with real life: you can just imagine watching your rockets blast off the launchpad at Kourou/KSC/Baikonur as you would watch a real rocket launch on NASATV or whatever streaming channel you want.

[Geschosskopf]

3 hours ago, Gaarst said:

We're not stuck on this rock: see pictures above for a proof: we can go to the next rock !

Oh, we can send the equivalent of 1 family in a minivan to a lot of places and maybe even get them back.  But until we can move hundreds of people and all their stuff, it's rather pointless because there'd be no sustainable population.  And until we can move millions, it all will have zero effect on things back home, which means there's no practical value in doing it.  That's what I mean by being stuck here.

[jonrd463]

On 1/1/2016 at 6:31 AM, Geschosskopf said:

Oh, we can send the equivalent of 1 family in a minivan to a lot of places and maybe even get them back.  But until we can move hundreds of people and all their stuff, it's rather pointless because there'd be no sustainable population.  And until we can move millions, it all will have zero effect on things back home, which means there's no practical value in doing it.  That's what I mean by being stuck here.

While this isn't really the appropriate thread to belabour the point, I would argue that the practical value in sending this hypothetical equivalent to a family in a minivan out beyond cislunar space is the technological achievements needed to be made to do it, and their trickle-down effect into every day life. Nothing promotes unconventional solutions like an unconventional problem. Think about it. Most every technological breakthrough over the last 40 years that makes life easier to live probably had its genesis in solving a space program related problem. I can only imagine what the next 40 years would bring.