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

[Combatsmithen]

1 hour ago, TrooperCooper said:

 

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.

 

 

I didnt even bother to migrate to 1.1.3 for my youtube series. Just doesn't seem worth all the trouble

 

[Kiwa]

On 7/8/2016 at 0:11 AM, Combatsmithen said:

I didnt even bother to migrate to 1.1.3 for my youtube series. Just doesn't seem worth all the trouble

You might be interested to know that, for me, 1.1.3 completely eliminated the orbit instabilities, and the upgrade wasn't any trouble at all.

[TotallyNotHuman]

@TrooperCooper Where did you get those docking ports and that crew access gantry? I need me some of them (probably ill-advised, due to the fact that I am running a hella load of mods right now ).

[Dman979]

2 hours ago, TotallyNotHuman_ said:

@TrooperCooper Where did you get those docking ports and that crew access gantry? I need me some of them (probably ill-advised, due to the fact that I am running a hella load of mods right now ).

FASA, i think.

you can download the entire pack, or just the crew towers and gantry.

[Combatsmithen]

On 7/12/2016 at 10:31 AM, Kiwa said:

You might be interested to know that, for me, 1.1.3 completely eliminated the orbit instabilities, and the upgrade wasn't any trouble at all.

Well. I kinda separated my install from my steam install. And CKAN installs to my steam install and I don't know if I can change it. And I'm afraid some mods I use wont work in 1.1.3.

Also an orbital instability brought down my first satellite 1 day before its 7th year anniversary D: It was up for 6 years and 364 days.

[TheEpicSquared]

Looking forward to reading more!  

[TrooperCooper]

So, after several attempts of re-vitalizing this career while my RL-job is keeping me pretty busy, it has finally died off due to a faulty HDD that caused me to loose an enormous load of data. And my mainboard died as well.

Time to buy a new computer in a couple weeks. On the plus side, I am making enough money now to buy me a real killer system with 4.7 GHZ and a GForce GTX 1080 or something like that.

Then I will start a fresh career. Probably a vanilla-scaled, heavily modded one in (hopefully) 1.2. Untill then, thanks to all followers during this UNSA campaign here. I learned a lot during this and while I have not reached my goal of landing humans on Mars yet, at least I did bring some back alive from within its SOI and got the hang of gravity-assisted flight OPs.

 

[ragusila]

On 5/22/2016 at 4:00 PM, TrooperCooper said:

Yep, I got a dedicated test-pilot now for launch escape tests. Poor guy, I'm sure we'll hear of him at some point.

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Episode 9: One step closer to the Moon
(click spoiler below pic to open)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

After a series of tests and preparations, the RX 9 with the now named "Pulsar"-Spaceship on top took off from the Kourou Space Center.

 

In the new 3-man capsule: space veteran Connie Armstrong, who had been the first Astronaut to perform a docking maneuver in LEO, as commander of the mission. Her engineer was Ricky Baker and they took the russian scientis Alisa Tarnovetskaya with them. Their mission: testing the new space ship in a long range mission and achieving a stable orbit around the Moon for the first time.

 

The RX 9 cleared the pad and rappidly accelerated, pushed by four of the new massive F-1 engines...

 

Despite the fact that it had almost three and a half times the mass of the next smaller UNSA-rocket, the RX 9 proved to have an incredibly good handling in manual flight - especially compared to the bulky RX 8. Thanks to improved strutting techniques and widened internal connections, there was no wobbling at all during the gravity turn.

 

Two and a half minutes after launch, the rocket had nearly burned out the fuel of its first stage.

 

After separation and ignition of the 2nd stage, the crew pushed for orbit...

 

...propelled by four of the new J-2 hydrolox engines.

 

After seven minutes at an altitude of 260 km the RX 9 had almost reached orbital speed and the third stage with a single hypergolic engine took over.

 

After one more push, the Pulsar established its com-uplink and began coasting for the apoapsis...

 

The crew was already preparing for their eject to the Moon. Ricky took a look at the life support systems...

 

On the dark side of the Earth: trans luna injection burn and separation from the last lifter stage.

 

Shooting up to altitude, following the path of the Voskhod-crew.

 

But in contrary to them, the Pulsar Astronauts would stick to the Moon for a while... Mission control was a little anxious whether or not the new ship would stand up to its expectations, considering that it was supposed to play a key role in the further upcoming Moon exploration efforts...

 

On the way to its target, the Agena-engines were lit up again to push the apoapsis near the Moon down to about 40 km.

 

Since the engines are unthrottleable, fine adjustments had to be made with the RCS thrusters...

 

Incoming to the target...

 

Luna Orbital Insertion burn, loosing 820 meters per second of speed...

 

Then they had achieved a stable orbit and fullfilled their primary mission objective... with plenty of fuel to spare. One hour later they got to see their first Earth rise with their own eyes...

 

Connie and her team stayed for twenty hours in a stable orbit and made sure the Pulsar would be able to operate as specified. Then it was time to fire the engines again and head home...

 

Course set with a planned life support buffer of three days...

 

We will be back...

 

Closing in on the good old Mother Earth. After ten days in space already, the three Astronauts were pleased of this sight...

 

Periapsis set to 60 km, preparing for re-entry...

 

Into the darkness again, huh?

 

Now in range of the orbital com relay network, the service module was separated while the CM stayed in touch with mission control through its own antennas...

 

Eleven days after launch, Connie's team returned back home by splashing into the Pacific just off the coast of Australia. Though, the aerodynamic performing during re-entry was not very pleasant. The capsule had to be set into rotational motion in order to keep its heatshield pointed...

 

With the Pulsars test in Luna space done, the UNSA kept going with their preparations to safely land a team on the moon surface. After many debates about competing concepts, the planning department had finally decided against the early ideas of establishing an orbital hub with a re-useable lander near the Moon. While such a base would allow for lighter regular transit-vessels from the Earth, it would require a serious ammount of resupply operations which just dont seem efficiently feasible. Instead, the higher ups settled for the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous concept, which was proposed and pushed through by a single american engineer.

The UNSAs development department designed the gear that was required for the so called "Nexus" system. After the experiences with the Pulsar in the prior mission, it saw some minor modifications and would serve as CSM for the Nexus.

 

The Americans also came up with a lightweight lander design, but the Russians voted against it. They were intrested in the ability to stay on the surface for an extended period of time and also wanted to bring all three crewman on the ground. So a much heavier two-stage landing vessel was designed, weighting more than 22 tons, with three seats and enough on-board supplies to keep the crew alive for three weeks. LuLa was the name of the vehicle, obviously standing for Luna Lander.

 

The CSM and LuLa would be strapped up within a fairing with the Pulsar and its launch escape system on top. Below the lander, the engineers intended to use a newly developed super-cooled HydroLox tank for the TLI kicker stage. The whole setup that would have to be carried into low Earth orbit by the Nexus lifter would weight 220 tons.

 

A full scale blueprint of the setup...

 

In order to bring this massive payload into orbit, the UNSA had been developing the pinnacle of its history in lifter design. The all-mighty RX 10 would weight more than 4,400 tons on the launchpad. For this super launcher, the engineers followed the lessons learned with the prior rocket design approaches, keeping her slim but powerfull. And stable connected on the inside. Mainly powered by five F-1 engines just like the historical Saturn V, the first stage would be supported by four huge liquid auxiliary launch boosters, based on the RD-270, the heaviest russian engine ever built. Upon ignition, this whole power package with nine engines would burn up more than twenty tons of fuel... per second. The second hydrolox stage is based on the heavy J-2 engine,... and features no less than ten of those.

 

With 104 meters height three meters shorter than the real Saturn V, the Nexus RX 10 is still a rocket of an entirely new dimension. Full scale blueprints with the Moon mission setup on top... with and without fairings...
...............

 

And the sheer scale of this monster becomes obvious with this updated UNSA Rocket Evolution chart and comparing it to the previous lifters...

 

Shown costs of the RX 10, like for all displayed vessels, are just for the lifter rocket itself. The Nexus setup itself costs another 70 million $. The UNSAs upgraded VAB has begun construction of the first two of these giants. If everything goes as planned, they will soon be flown and tested for the first time...

 

 

Hey wondering how did you make the cockpit transparent like that? in RSS/RO the internal views are all screwed up for me. the scale is from the normal KSP...

[TrooperCooper]

On 20.1.2017 at 10:21 AM, ragusila said:

Hey wondering how did you make the cockpit transparent like that? in RSS/RO the internal views are all screwed up for me. the scale is from the normal KSP...

 

To the left of your crew images in flight is a little button that makes pods etc. transparent like that.