United Nations Space Administration - reaching out to the real solar system

[Combatsmithen]

1 hour ago, TrooperCooper said:

 

Thanks!

There are larger ones. Biggest one I built myself ever in RSS/RO thus far was a lifter with 31,000 tons for a manned fly by on Mars. Mass in orbit was about 1,300 tons. But that thing was a nightmare to fly. I learned so much during this UNSA-career... the current ALV 500 is a joy to fly, part-count induced lagginess aside.

 

 

 

My goal is to land a manned lander on mars before the turn of the millennia. Its going to require building a giant orbital craft unmanned, then giving it loads and loads of fuel and life support. And then just before the launch, transporting the crew up to the ship and setting sail for mars

Edited June 3, 2016 by Combatsmithen

[TrooperCooper]

4 minutes ago, Combatsmithen said:

My goal is to land a manned lander on mars before the turn of the millennia. Its going to require building a giant orbital craft unmanned, then giving it loads and loads of fuel and life support. And then just before the launch, transporting the crew up to the ship and setting sail for mars

 

Yeah, manned Mars landing is a major goal for me as well. Then Pluto next.

 

[Combatsmithen]

1 hour ago, TrooperCooper said:

 

Yeah, manned Mars landing is a major goal for me as well. Then Pluto next.

 

 

LOL! Manned lander to the sun! And Venus! Crushed, suffocated, corroded, broiled all at the same time! 

[TrooperCooper]

1 minute ago, Combatsmithen said:

LOL! Manned lander to the sun! And Venus! Crushed, suffocated, corroded, broiled all at the same time! 

People have been landing on Venus.

[Combatsmithen]

3 hours ago, TrooperCooper said:

 

Thanks!

There are larger ones. Biggest one I built myself ever in RSS/RO thus far was a lifter with 31,000 tons for a manned fly by on Mars. Mass in orbit was about 1,300 tons. But that thing was a nightmare to fly. I learned so much during this UNSA-career... the current ALV 500 is a joy to fly, part-count induced lagginess aside.

 

Yes, those are Agena engines. As said in the OP, I play with unlimited relights. IMO we are lacking the tools they have in RL to make limitted engine ignitions appropriate. But if you decide to play with that limit, hats off to you.

Though you can get more ignitions for that engine through test-flight I believe.

 

 

 

The mod is called engine ignitor. It comes default with RO. Also the most relights I see for the agena is 15. Engine ignitor is a fun mod to play with. It makes it harder by making you use lower thrust unlimited ignite engines for upper stages. I put 4 Aj-10s behind 2 meter payloads and it works pretty well. only 1 for really light payloads or 1 meter payloads

Edited June 3, 2016 by Combatsmithen

[Combatsmithen]

@TrooperCooper awww. I just had my first satellite come down after almost 7 years in orbit. It was in orbit for 6 years, 364 days and 1 hour and 18 minutes just 1 day shy of its 7th year anniversary, when it was struck with the orbit bug and caused it to go on a sub-orbital trajectory and re-enter the atmosphere. I launched it in March 1956 and it came down in March 1963

[TrooperCooper]

 

Heh, if you like that, maybe the orbital decay mod is something for you.

 

[Combatsmithen]

On 6/3/2016 at 5:45 PM, TrooperCooper said:

 

Heh, if you like that, maybe the orbital decay mod is something for you.

 

 

No I don't really like that lol. Its a random bug right now that causes stuff to veer off course. I wanted to keep the satellite up there for a long time so I could send kiddies on field trips to the satellite for a history lesson!

[Raptor831]

I really like this, thanks for putting this up!

I'm a little bummed that the Stockalike pack didn't work out.  But I can imagine RP-0 wasn't ever intended to be used with those parts.

[TrooperCooper]

22 hours ago, Raptor831 said:

I really like this, thanks for putting this up!

I'm a little bummed that the Stockalike pack didn't work out.  But I can imagine RP-0 wasn't ever intended to be used with those parts.

Thanks! Yeah, its quite sad. Some more varity in engine choices would be great heh. But yeah, its basicaly installing two mods that both try to change the behaviour of the same modules. Just doesnt work. But I am looking forward to fly with RF Stockalike engines when I get around to do a 6.4X career sometime.

============================================================

Episode 14: Space Tinkering

(click on the spoiler below the picture to open)

Spoiler

Three years had passed since the last attempt of the UNSA to send an unmanned probe to Jupiter had failed. In January 1971 they had another chance to go for it. But Jupiter is not playing nice. Upon disembarking from its lifter, the probe was severely damaged. The image below shows the unit with its control section ripped off, unable to steer and thus just another piece of space junk heading out of Earth orbit...

 

In February 1971 the Agency began with Project Taurus. With this series of missions and development efforts over the coming years, the UNSA intends to consolidate its past achievements in manned space operations. Furthermore, due to a still somewhat sceptical public opinion, the United Nations intended to use this program to conceal their efforts in shaping up and testing tools and equipment as well as operational procedures that maybe could depict ways to open up the possibility of stepping beyond the boundaries of the Earth vicinity.

As a first step, an ALV 50-5 launcher carried the first real space station into Earth orbit.

 

The ISS Alpha has room for six crewmembers and enough storage room for a year worth of supplies. It also was equipped with an early station science module for orbital experiments. A full-fledged laboratory was also planned to be included at the beginning, but unfortunately the engineers encountered massive technical problems trying to implement such a heavy module [labs still seem to be bugged when lifting them]. Since a space-lab was not essential for Project Taurus at this point, the station was launched without it and deployed into an equatorial orbit.

 

In March 1971 Sergei Datsishin and Martin Kelly had the opportunity to test a new manned spacecraft.

 

Launch tower pulling back from the capsule atop its ALV 20-4 lifter while the crew prepared for take off...

 

A few minutes later, thy were already in space...

 

The capsule was a russian made design, based on their discontinued plans for a  Soyuz ship. Combined with western gear elements, they called the ship Tovarishch.

 

When the public saw first images of the vessel, they quickly made references to living beings. "They created a space-fish" they said...

 

After arriving in a stable orbit, Datsishin and Kelly set course for the first international space station...

 

Alpha Stations starbord antennas and panels were retracted and the Tovarishch docked up. The two crewman woke up the internal systems of the ISS and prepared it for future operations.

 

After a month in space, the Tovarishch with Datsishin and Kelly returned back to Earth. The landing capsule sparked a new reference: space bell. The ship showed excellent capabilities during its first flight. Mission control especially considered its ability of autonomous / remote control a big plus, which could also enable it to be used in emergency return / evacuation situations. Just its limited space for a crew of only two was a drawback and so the engineers decided to combine it with their experiences in crew accomodation that they made with the design of the ISS Alpha to speed up the creation of a next generation manned spaceship.

 

In April 1971 the UNSA launched an unmanned long-term experiment on fuel boil off rates into orbit, trying to figure out whether or not hydrogen based deep space operations would be possible in the far future... The outcome: mixed results. Radiator technology might improve the chances at some point, but at the moment cryogenic stages would only be usefull as kickers from Earth orbit.

 

At the beginning of May 1971, the UNSA launched its first probe to orbit Mars. It had no real scientific equipment and was just inteded to be used as an interplanetary com uplink to help in upcoming probe missions. The launch went flawless and the Mars Uplink headed off to the red planet.

 

On the 30th of May 1971 the engineers in the VAB had already finnished the production of the new large space craft for manned missions. The Columbus was able to host 6 passengers/crew, allowing the UNSA to bring more humans into space than ever before. The first prototype was built off of scrapped pre-made parts from ISS Alpha- and Tovarishch. With a full crew inside the ship, strapped on top of an ALV 35-5 lifter, it felt like half the UNSA personel was heading into space...

 

Despite the custom-made launch escape system for safety, the people on board did not show much faith during the initial ascent.

 

Lifter top stage separation, going for orbit...

 

A few minutes later, the Columbus unfold in all its beauty. In the background: ALV 35-5 lifter top stage heading for de-orbit...

 

It was intended to bring the Columbus and its crew to the ISS Alpha, but shortly after entering a stable orbit, the prototype of the new ship class revealed an issue with the RCS system. Someone had loaded the wrong fuel type. Although theoretically possible in emergency situations, docking without RCS was not considered as feasible. And thus it was decided that the crew would just test the other ships systems for a few days [and complete a routine manned-mission contract] and then head back home.

 

Despite beeing big, heavy and bulky, the return section showed excellent re-entry behaviour, no instability like the Nexus pods from the past Moon flights. All six of the crew returned in good health.

 

In July 1971, the Agency tried again to send a long-range fly-by probe to one of the gas giants. This time it was Saturn Visitors turn. Since the prior attempts to kick out probes to Jupiter with oversized lifters had failed several times, this time the engineers decided to use a dedicated and efficient (and possibly more safe) travel stage (orange cryo tank) underneath the probe.

 

Eject burn on the dark side of the Earth initiated...

 

...almost as expected, it ended in a spontaneous rapid disassembly. Possibly there will be quite some debries raining on Saturn in a few years... After this new failure, the engineers identified the cause of the explosion in the 1 kn micro thrusters [jittering bug ].

 

A few days later, the 2nd flight of the Columbus was launched, this time with a crew entirely consisting of new astronauts and cosmonauts.

 

The engineers had fixed the RCS problems and thus this missions crew was able to dock up with the Alpha station.

 

They stayed at the station for more than a week and had a great time in space ran difficult experiments of the stations scientific module.

 

Then it was time for the space cadets to burn back home...

 

But them beeing comletly new to space navigation, they ended up coming back down in the central african outback. As you can see, they were not enjoying the outlook of having to fight off the lions untill rescue teams could arrive...

 

Almost half a year later, in January 1972 Mars Uplink arrived at its destination and successfully entered into a highly excentric orbit.

 

Two weeks later, the Agency launched their next attempt in a never-ending endevour to reach the gas giants. This time Jupitor Visitor the third was in line...

 

Almost like a miracle, this probe successfully completed its exit burns and it is now on its 3 years long journey to the largest planet in the Solar System.

 

With more and more missions ongoing, the UNSAs mission control computers reached the limits of its tracking abilities. In order to reduce data-load, the agency decided to re-new its complete orbital comsat network and decomission its slightly chaotic cluster of aged relays. In March 1972, the first of four new comsats was launched...

 

Adapting the commonly known "Moar Boosters-" approach to communication relay satellites, these vessels were designed with "Moar Antennas"...

 

Deployment into geostationary orbit...

 

The four com sats now provide complete coverage around the equator. Along with decomissioning the old com network, mission control also decided to stop tracking the remains of many past missions. And thus the tracked objects count went down from about 200 to thirteen (plus asteroids), which led to much relief in the mission control room [and my game running a lot smoother again ].

 

And in August 1972 the UNSA announced that the next attempt of a Saturn Visitor launch was a success. Using the same setup as the prior successful Jupiter Visitor, this finally confirmed that the issues with long range trajectories seem to have been fixed.

 

 

Edited June 8, 2016 by TrooperCooper

[TrooperCooper]

 

Episode 15: Meeting the Giant

(click on the spoiler below the picture to open)

 

Spoiler

The UNSA continued with Project Taurus and in August 1972 the next Columbus crew docked up with the ISS Alpha.

 

With crews staying in space at the station longer and longer, it was neccessary to develop unmanned re-supply operations. In November 1972 the first automated Mule transporter docked up with the ISS Alpha, delivering life support goods and some equipment for the crew.

 

Shortly after the Mule's arrival, the UNSA launched the next crew before returning the old one in an effort to keep the station manned without discontinuation. As the 2nd Columbus arrived at Alpha Station, some of the astronauts and cosmonauts reported to have seen a strange emission of green gases within the upper layers of the Earth atmosphere [really strange visual bug that made me freak out for a few moments]. Later investigations of the UNSA indicated that these reports could have been caused by the first ever drug-abuse in space...

 

Regardless of the observed phenomena, the new crew docked up with the station...

 

And the UNSA set another record with twelve people beeing in space simultaneously as well as beeing on the same vessel for a short time...

 

While Project Taurus kept going with manned space operations in Low Earth Orbit, the UNSA also continued with unmanned deep space missions.

 

After a long range uplink around Mars had been established already, it was time to send the first Mars Relay.

 

This quite agressive looking probe class is supposed to enable communication coverage all around the Mars equator...

 

The first Mars Relay was followed by the Mars Moon Visitor. With these probes, the UNSA launched two missions into the same transfer window for the first time ever, making good use of its newly installed second launch pad at Kourou. The relatively cheap and small Mars Moon Visitor, which was supposed to make scientific fly-bys on Deimos and Phobos, was sent on a high speed trajectory, as the UNSA tried to figure out ways of shortening the flight time to the red planet for future missions...

 

Just three Month later the exploration probe dived in on Mars at enormous speed... Much more than mission control had anticipated. Due to navigational errors, the probe was lost as it swung around the backside of the Earth' neighbor.

 

In February 1974 however, the UNSAs unmanned deep space exploration efforts reached a huge milestone when Jupiter Visitor performed its fly-by maneuver at the largest gas giant...

 

Looking back at a pale blue dot...

 

A few hours later, the probe had already passed the gas planet and was now on its trajectory out of the solar system, heavily accelerated by Jupiters gargantuan gravitational forces...

 

In the meantime, the sister probe Saturn Visitor had a much longer trip and was still on its way...

 

In July 1974 the first relay arrived at Mars.

 

Travelling much slower than the perished Mars Moon Visitor, the relay had no trouble in slowing down and moving into an areostationary orbit.

 

One year later, in July 1975 the UNSA sent another relay and the 2nd attempt of a Mars Moon Visitor on its way, this time both with regular efficient low-speed transfers.

 

And in December 1975 the Uranus Visitor was embarking on its mission...

 

By the end of 1975 Project Taurus had taught the UNSA all it could learn about long term manned space flights around Earth. The space programs next logical step would be to go to Mars. But the enormous investments that would have to be made in order to build and launch the equipment for such an endevour still seemed unbearable.

 

Frustrated with the ongoing stagnation, Connie Armstrong, one of the most experienced commanders of the UNSA sat down and began to experiment with the mathematics for a new way of interplanetary travel: gravity assisted slingshots. Utilizing state-of-the-art computer technology, she found a possible way to utilize the Venus' gravitational force to allow a relatively light and cheap spacecraft setup a manned fly-by around both of the Earth' neighbor planets and a return back home in under two years with a total dV requirement of just 4,000 dV from LEO, starting in late 1978.

She began pushing for such a mission and finally the higher ups within the UNSA at least began to consider it. After all, if such a mission would be flown successfully, it could spark strong public interest in manned interplanetary operations and thus easing up the budget restrictions for going to Mars.

The manned Venus-Mars-Earth flight was designated as Project Odysseus and the engineers began to work out a setup for a 3-man ship with an additional safety-buffer of 2,000 m/s of dV within the travel stage. As lifter, they choosed the standard ALV 200-7.5 rocket, slightly oversized for the payload, giving it a little more initial buffer.

 

However, since slingshot maneuvers would require a level of maneuvering and flight precision unheard of thus far [and that while I dont use an auto-pilot... uh oh... ], the UNSA decided not to risk human lives on such a mission untill the concept had been proven to work. In order to do so, the United Nations launched its most ambitous unmanned fly-by mission with the Pluto Visitor in July 1976.

 

The large probe, in the image below still holding on to its kicker-stage, is now on its way to Jupiter. Leadership of the UNSA has decided to only allow a launch of the manned Venus-Mars fly bye with Project Odysseus once Pluto Visitor has been pulled into a confirmed Pluto-intercept trajectory by the gravitational forces of the largest gas giant in February 1978.

 

In July 1976, the second communication relay probe arrived at Mars. One month later, Mars Moon Visitor II (image below) also reached the red planet.

 

It is now in the process of maneuvering into Phobos- and Deimos intercept orbits...

 

In the meantime, the UNSA has begun to actively work on the Odysseus setup. Its new launch abort system has been tested on the pad...

 

...and at Max Q.

 

After successful launch simulations and tests, the final version of the Odysseus craft is now beeing produced and everybody is keeping their fingers crossed for Pluto Visitor to succeed with its maneuver around Jupiter in about one and a half years...

 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2016 by TrooperCooper

[UnusualAttitude]

A very impressive series of probe missions.  What are the transfer times to Uranus and Pluto? Will your probes be able to capture there? 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Project Odysseus... hmm, a rather ominous name. He did eventually get home, but it took just a bit longer than planned...

[TrooperCooper]

5 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

A very impressive series of probe missions.  What are the transfer times to Uranus and Pluto? Will your probes be able to capture there? 

Thank you! All Visitor class probes are just ment to be lightweight fly by missions. Orbital insertions would cost a huge ammount of dV (Pluto Visitor for example would need 11,558 m/s of dV on its planned flight path for an additional capture burn) and so far I am playing "as if" the Agency would not have figured out remote techniques of aerobraking (something that was not used historically untill the Hiten probe in 1991 as far as I know) yet.

Transfer times to Uranus and Pluto I totally have forgotten to mention above, thanks for mentioning it.

The Uranus Visitor mission is a traditional direct transfer based on the good old Transfer Window Planner plugin with a travel time of four years and eight days.

Spoiler

Earth (@300km) -> Uranus (@0km)
Depart at:      Year 25, Day 356, 20:44:40
       UT:      787610680
   Travel:      4 Years, 8 Days, 00:00:00
       UT:      126835200
Arrive at:      Year 29, Day 364, 20:44:40
       UT:      914445880
Phase Angle:    119.09°
Ejection Angle: 129.94° to prograde
Ejection Inc.:  10.41°
Ejection ?v:    9664 m/s
Prograde ?v:    9152.5 m/s
Normal ?v:      3102.5 m/s
Heading:        71.27°
Insertion Inc.: 0.00°
Insertion ?v:   0 m/s
Total ?v:       9664 m/s

 

The Pluto Visitor is a Jupiter-slingshot flight based on the Flyby finder tool. It has a travel time of 12 years and 316 days if everything goes as planned. Considering this is mid 1970s and Pluto is still very far away, this is quite a fast transfer, especially for just 7,000 m/s of dV from LEO.

Spoiler

Start Planet: Earth
Orbit Departure Time:
   805942656 seconds UT
   9329,04 days UT
   16 Jul 1976
   Y26   D204   H0,9
Start Orbit Inclination: 13,7 degrees
Start Boost from that incl.: 7035 m/s
Start Equatorial Z velocity: 3498 m/s
Start Equat. Prograde velocity: 6614 m/s
Start Boost from Equat. Orbit: 7482 m/s
V Infinity Leaving Start Planet: 9968 m/s

1st Encounter Planet: Jupiter
Time from Start to 1st Encounter: 565 days 0 hours
Vinf in: 9969 m/s
1st Encounter Periapsis:
   9894,04 days UT
   01 Feb 1978
   Y28   D39   H0,9
   49566 km altitude
Vinf out: 9969 m/s

2nd Encounter Planet: Pluto
Time from 1st to 2nd Encounter: 3766 days 13,4 hours
Vinf in: 12311 m/s
2nd Encounter Periapsis:
   13660,6 days UT
   25 Mai 1988
   Y38   D155   H14,4

Total delta V expended: 7035 m/s
Total Travel Time: 4331,5 days

 

5 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Project Odysseus... hmm, a rather ominous name. He did eventually get home, but it took just a bit longer than planned...

Good spotting. Yep, I deliberately choosed that name. I am completly new to using slingshots and I have serious doubts about this mission. Considering I play without reverting / reloading (except for obvious bugs) and without MechJeb or any other sort of precision-enhancing autopilot, it will be extremly dangerous and a cancellation based on Pluto Visitors outcome is not unlikely...

 

Edited June 15, 2016 by TrooperCooper

[TrooperCooper]

 

 

Sneak preview:

Spoiler

=> Oh... my... god!

 

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

moar?

[Combatsmithen]

moar?

[TrooperCooper]

 

Hehe, sorry... but its gonna be a while untill I have played enough for another episode. But yeah, it seems like Odysseus is go for launch!

 

[Dman979]

moar?

[TrooperCooper]

Episode 16: Odysseus

(click on the spoiler below the picture to open)

 

Spoiler

 

 

10th September 1976. Mars Moon Visitor II making its fly-by on Deimos.

 

Four days later, the probe also payed Phobos a visit.

 

In September 1977 the UNSA launched no less than three unmanned missions to Mars. Two more com relays and Mars Observer, the first scientific orbiter with all sorts of scanning equipment (shown below).

 

12th December 1977. The Pluto Visitor (falsely named "Pluto Slingshooter" by some excited mission controller) finally left its kicker stage (that had been forgotten to be decoupled) behind and initated a small correction burn as it approached Jupiter for its gravity assist.

 

After the minor course adjustment, UNSAs computers re-calculated the probes trajectory and came to the conclusion that it had successfully set course for a Pluto intercept in ten and a half years. This confirmed the viability of gravity assisted slingshots and thus the green light for the Odyssus flight, a low-budget manned round-trip to visit both, Venus and Mars based on free trajectories (see Episode 15: Meeting the Giant) was given.

 

For the Odysseus eject burn from LEO Ricky Baker and some other engineers had come up with a revolutionary new engine type: the NERVA II.

 

9th August 1978. Mars Observer arriving at its destination.

 

Shortly before the orbiter, the two last Mars Relays had also arrived and together with the Mars Uplink, they formed a network that now ensures complete communication coverage around Mars.

 

30th September 1978. Mars Moon Visitor II had completed its primary tasks and it was now crashed into the red planet, providing the first scientific data about its atmosphere for the UNSA.

 

15th November 1978. The Odysseus spacecraft standing ready for take off on Launchpad A at the Kourou Space Center. Connie Armstrong had been assigned to the mission as commander, since this endeavour was mainly based on her theoretical work. Engineer Ricky Baker of course had to oversee the first use of his NERVA II, which gave him a good reason to become part of the first interplanetary crew. The two were joined by scientist and EVA specialist Elena Anisimova from the Soviet Union, with whom they had been working together before already.

 

Lift off, powered by six F-1 engines.

 

It did not take long to spot the first target already during ascent...

 

Ignition of the second lifter stage with eight J-2 hydrolox engines. The debries around the top are the remains of the (now jetted) launch escape system.

 

The precisely timed launch followed a 15.7 degrees inclination, remotely aided by the current crew aboard the ISS Alpha in Low Earth Orbit.

 

Seven minutes after lift off, the third lifter stage was igniting with four LR87-LH2 Vacuum engines and the Odysseus crew made the last push into a parking orbit at 300 km altitude.

 

Then it was time for Connie Armstrong and mission control to finalize the most complex flight plan.

 

When they were done, they had a buffer time of about seven hours, which the crew used for a nap. And of course Connie overslept, resulting in the Trans-Cytherean Injection burn igniting at approx. T+25 seconds [yeah, I need to be more careful with time-warp  ]. Trying to make up for it, they fired the RCS along with the lifters top stage main engines.

 

When the lifters top stage had burned out all its fuel, the Odysseus setup was released and Ricky Baker tried to activate the NERVA. However, he faced technical difficulties and was unable to get it to ignite at once.

 

It took another 25 seconds to spool up the new high tech engine, then finally it kicked in an began to accelerate the ship further...

 

With now two unforseen delays in the eject burn and a dangerously time critical flight plan ahead, mission control considered to abort the mission...

 

But stubborn Connie Armstrong brushed the idea of a last minute abort aside and instead used more RCS thrust to at least help a little bit with the acceleration. Odysseus was shooting out of LEO...

 

After the eject burn, the kicker stage was left behind. The crew unfolded solar panels and long range com equipment and Connie began to evaluate the outcome of the past maneuver.

 

As they climbed higher and higher, the single Agena vacuum thruster on the ship was fired for a 185 m/s burn in an attempt to correct the past mistakes.

 

Then mission control confirmed that they were on their way. The computers had calculated the intercepts of Venus and Mars based on the current trajectory. But data load was to much to look further into the future whether or not they had successfully hit the free Earth return path as well.

 

At this point however, simply turning back around was not possible anymore anyway. On the 18th November 1978, Odysseus entered interplanetary space. Elena Anisimova went outside to perform the first biological experiments within this medium.

 

Looking back at the distant Earth fascinated her so much that she messed up the controls of her RCS backpack, resulting in the young Cosmonaut smashing against the Odysseus capsule. While no harm was done to her or the ship, Connie was cursing about the impacts effect on their trajectory.

 

4th May 1979. After a long an boring flight inside the crammed ship, the crew closed in on Venus. The thruster was fired for a small correction burn to improve the timing of the fly-by according to the original flight plan.

 

While Venus was growing on the screens inside the capsule, the distant Mars was overseeing the scene of Odysseus approaching the hottest planet within the solar system.

 

Elena went outside again for more experiments, this time beeing extremly carefull as Connie threatened her to not let her back inside if she happens to bump the ship off course again...

 

A few minutes later she was back on board and the crew enjoyed the view through their windows...

 

Then they had passed the cooking pot of the solar system and Odysseus was now on its way to Mars, solely pulled into the intercept trajectory by Venus gravitational forces.

 

With one less waypoint to compute, mission control was now able to calculate the full remaining mission in advance and after another tiny correction burn, Connie and her team now were pretty optimistic that they would get back home, despite the complications when leaving the Earth. In fact, with the adjustment burns made, they might even get back a little sooner than anticipated.

 

In the meantime, while Odysseus was travelling to Mars, on 21st June 1979 Saturn Visitor performed its fly-by around the 2nd largest planet of the solar system.

 

Analyzing faint atmospheric particles just below the gas giants rings.

 

On its fly-by course the probe then went through these rings, proving that they might just be a visual phenomena... or just beeing extremly lucky...

 

Like all Visitor class probes, this one did not stay either and after sending back all scientific data to the Earth, Saturn Visitor was now on its way into interstellar space...

 

In the next Earth-Mars transfer window in October 1979, the UNSA launched two more missions to the red planet.

 

The two Mars Inspector probes were the first attempts to land something safely on another planet...

 

9th December 1979. Mission control tried to contact Odysseus again as it was nearing its 2nd waypoint Mars. But they did not get a response. The distant spacecraft had turned into a dark and seemingly lifeless object.

 

The engineers back home tried to figure out what had happened and came to the conclusion, that they had underestimated the decrease in energy supply from the faint sun at Mars. The crew must not have witnessed the upcoming danger untill the com systems shut off and then died silently in the deep dark depth of space...

 

But inside the cold Odysseus capsule, the crew was not dead yet. This specific team had faced such an energy shortage situation before already during Project Nexus (see Episode 11: Agressive Reconfigurations) and they had the experience to deal with it. As they noticed the com systems shutting off, they made sure to have all solar panels pointed at the sun and deactivated every on board system except the bare minimum life support. Engineer Ricky Baker was able to stabilize the energy situation at just a tiny ammount of charge left within the internal batteries.

 

Due to deactivated telemetry processors, from now on the ship was just a ballistic object and unable to maneuver at all without energy. The crew could only hope that Mars would pull them into the anticipated free Earth return trajectory, which they had set up more than half a year earlier when leaving Venus.

 

While Odysseus, unable to communicate, made its quiet fly-by around the red planet, the UNSA back on Earth under the assumption that the mission had resulted in a catastrophy, once again had to defend itself against the nay-sayers and disbelievers of human spaceflight.

 

It took several month untill the ship came close enough to the sun to have enough energy and get in touch with mission control again, which led to great relief on Earth. Everybody on board was having a cold and feeling miserably. But now that the batteries were charging and the on board systems were booted back up, the crews mood was improving. On 2nd July 1980 they executed another small adjustment burn to fine tune their Earth re-entry, upcoming in two month.

 

In the meantime, on the 17th of July 1980, Mars Inspector I arrived at its destination. The lander probe, still in its travel-configuration, performed a high alt braking maneuver to somewhat slow down the upcoming entry on the red planet. After completion of said burn, the perigee of this first attempt of a landing was set to 18 km.

 

At 300 km altitude the travel stage was jetted and the egg with attached heatshield was set free. Well in range of the established orbital com network, the internal antennas of the probe were now good enough to stay linked up to mission control.

 

The free-falling vessel dived into the atmosphere and was quickly heated up by compressed gases. The protective casing however kept the sensitive probe inside safe.

 

Through the heat and after slowing down considerably, the casing was removed...

 

And the heatshield was fired off to further reduce the weight...

 

At 6,000 meters the pre-set parachute deployed automaticly.

 

Unfortunately, the speed was still way to high and the chutes were quickly ripped off, turning the probe into a free-falling object again.

 

The result was as spectacular as depressing.

 

But the UNSA had forseen that the first landing attempt could face unexpected difficulties and had sent two identical lander probes through this transfer window. One week later, Mars Inspector II was due for Mars entry. Based on the experience with its precursor, the UNSA increased the entry-perigee to 28 km and remotely adjusted the parachute deployment settings.

 

But it was not enough. While beeing able to slow down much more, the speed was still to high and Mars Inspector II crashed just as well, indicating that heavy Kevlar drag chutes or powered descent are a must for landing on the red planet.

 

6th September 1980. Odysseus finally closed in on the Earth. With a life support buffer of just a little over two month, Connie and her team were looking forward to getting back home. This was the first ever interplanetary return though and UNSA had no real experience with it. The heat shield built into the capsule said "rated for Luna entries" on its casing when it was delivered by the supplier several years ago. And the Agency could not find anything better on the market. Connie made some calculations and it turned out that due to only a minimal ammount of fuel needed during the gravity-assists based mission while on the other hand they had lost weight due to life support goods consumption, Odysseus was the first ever flight that came back with more deltaV than it had after leaving low Earth orbit. And thus it was decided to plan a braking maneuver right before re-entry for improved safety.

 

Even though great danger was laying ahead, the team took some moments to enjoy the view on their home planet, growing bigger and bigger outside their windows.

 

Then the ship swung around and burned off its remaining fuel in order to slow down...

 

Afterwards, the flight computer calculated the speed at Periapsis in advance to be 12,700 meters per second, hopefully slow enough. Perigee was set to 50 km, ten kilometers less than the Nexus flights used when they came back from the Moon, since Odysseus had to quickly loose more speed. Millions of people worldwide watched the live TV coverage as the service module was seperated for re-entry.

 

Using RCS, the capsule was set into rotational motion for spin stabilization.

 

As the pod was raging through the atmosphere, the heatshield showed signs of overheating.

 

But it held together and at 21:49 on the 6th of September 1980 the first returning interplanetary crew safely splashed down in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, seven hours prior to the assumed return time based on a flight plan that had been calculated more than four years ago. How is that for a mission named Odysseus?

 

Completing both milestones, fly-by of Mars and Venus in a single low-cost mission, the UNSA now had large financial sums at its disposal for upcoming mega projects. Connie Armstrong, Ricky Baker and Elena Anisimova became instant celebrities with the press following their every move. And their grown experience will certainly help the Agency in its further endeavours to reach out into space.

 

Edited June 20, 2016 by TrooperCooper

[TrooperCooper]

 

Episode 17: Planetary Inspectors

(click on the spoiler below the picture to open)

 

Spoiler

The successful past Odysseus mission convinced the political leadership and scientific institutions around the globe, that mankind was on the brink of becoming an interplanetary species and numerous conferences were held on topics regarding the expansion into the solar system. Mars was the obvious direction to take. But theoretical progress was slow and while different ways to approach the task and various concept papers were discussed, the UNSA continued with their unmanned missions that had already been projected for quite some time...

On 11th February 1981 Uranus Visitor made the flyby on its target.

 

In November 1981 a new series of unmanned landers were launched. Two Venus Inspectors headed to the hot inward neighbor of the Earth.

 

Unlike Mars, there was no orbital relay network present at Venus. And so these probes essentially were designed as tandems of a lander unit and a temporary fly-by relay.

 

Two more Mars Inspectors were also launched. With these the UNSA hoped to benefit from the painful lessons learned during the past failed attempts to land on the red planet.

 

In April 1982 the Venus Inspectors were closing in on their target. The lander sections splitted off from the relay sections...

 

...and the tandems continued on seperate but time-converging approaches.

 

Venus Inspector I was the first to prepare for atmospheric entry.

 

Due to the extremly dense atmosphere, the heating was intense...

 

But the heatshield was able to withstand the extreme temperatures and as the probe slowed down, it was jetted along with the protective casing...

 

All that while the temporary relay of Venus Inspector I kept the unit linked up to the Earth (the converging star at the top of the image below - Venus Inspector II and its relay approaching from the right).

 

The further descent of the probe was quite confusing for mission control. The atmosphere was so dense, it felt more like the probe was sinking into liquid than anything else. And the heat was increasing further and further. Eventually, contact to the probe was lost, probably due to a vital component melting away.

 

Venus Inspector II however was more lucky. Mission control had adjusted the landing pattern based on the prior failure. The casing was kept for much longer and the parachute was not opened till shortly above ground to speed up the descent. It gave the probe enough time to achieve a touchdown and transmit the first scientific data from another planets surface before it got fried as well.

 

In August 1982 the two Mars Inspectors were also due to attempt their landings (nice detail in the image below: shadow of Phobos on Mars' surface just below the lower solar panel).

 

With the Mars Inspectors the UNSA also tested a new prediction software for atmospheric behaviour, which was able to calculate the landing area much more precisely than other utilities used in the past. The program was based on scientist Johnny Thomas' work and he named it "Trajectories".

 

Heatshield and casing seperation...

 

A much stronger combination of heavy Kevlar materials with drogue chutes was used this time.

 

And it worked flawlessly. Both Mars Inspectors were able to land intact on their airbags (with one of them landing in the cold northern hemisphere and the other one closer to the equator) and they are still transmitting data today.

 

In November 1983, during the next Earth-Mars transfer window, the UNSA sent another two probes out. These two were much bigger than any unmanned interplanetary vessel before. The first one was MOAR, standing for Mars Orbital Atmospheric Return. Since the Odysseus flight showed signs of overheating during re-entry on Earth, the Agency wants to test for upcoming regular transfers from Mars orbit to Earth surface. The test-dummy had to have an appropriate weight and dimensioning, so the scientists got a chance for free to fill up a whole cargo chamber with instruments and have it return from Mars orbit.

 

The other unit on the way to Mars now is MaRo, which probably everybody can imagine what it is...

 

 

[PLAD]

These are very interesting and entertaining reports. At your space agency's public presentation of the Mars landings, a reporter looking suspiciously like my space agency's lead designer wearing sunglasses and a fake nose asks "how fast were the Mars landers going when they popped the drogue chutes and the main chutes?".

[TrooperCooper]

22 minutes ago, PLAD said:

These are very interesting and entertaining reports. At your space agency's public presentation of the Mars landings, a reporter looking suspiciously like my space agency's lead designer wearing sunglasses and a fake nose asks "how fast were the Mars landers going when they popped the drogue chutes and the main chutes?".

Thanks PLAD!

I can not figure out the exact speeds at which parachute deployments began since I dont remember and can not accurately tell from the screenshots I made. My best guesstimate is, that the first drogues prolly kicked in at about 1,000 m/s surface speed. And the others followed subsequently by their settings as below.

The Mars landers had three chutes total. Two drogues and one main chute. All of them Kevlar material with standard Mars settings, altitude-deployment adjusted as below:

 

Drogue Chute One:
Wanted speed at target alt: 250 m/s
Target altitude: 4,000 m
Predeployment altitude: 6,000 m
Deployment altitude: 5,000 m
Parachutes used: 1

Drogue Chute Two:
Wanted speed at target alt: 80 m/s
Target altitude: 2,000 m
Predeployment altitude: 4,000 m
Deployment altitude: 3,000 m
Parachutes used: 1

Main Chute:
Wanted touchdown-speed: 18 m/s
Predeployment altitude: 2,000 m
Deployment altitude: 1,000 m
Parachutes used: 1 (four radially)

 

There was an element of luck involved though, as they all deployed in yellow risk-state. Airbags crash tolerance of 80 m/s could have helped with that if only one would have failed maybe. But I was lucky and they all held together anyway.

Good luck with your landings!
 

[Dman979]

Any more episodes coming?

[TrooperCooper]

22 hours ago, Dman979 said:

Any more episodes coming?

 

Yes, most definitely. I got a new RL job which is slowing my progress down somewhat and I am also in the process of migrating to 1.1.3, which is quite a hassle. But I have gone to far to end this now.

Expect more episodes soon^tm.