Go For Launch: Mission 6: Orbit! Sunday 19 June 5pm EDT/9pm UTC Part A, 8pm EDT/midnight UTC Part B

[Maxsimal]

@NathanKell I'd still like to help out as well.  

[NathanKell]

@WellItExplodedAgain ah, gotcha! It'd be best if you played a campaign yourself first to get more familiar.

@Maxsimal same question?

 

In other news, we are Go For Launch this evening! We are going to do an offline sim first at 6, then streaming at 7.

 

[Maxsimal]

@NathanKell On my second RP0 start, playing it hard mode this time, w/all the difficulty mods enabled.  Lauching things to orbit on A-4 engines, without mechjeb.  So I'd say pretty experienced now.

[NathanKell]

Guess what? It's a surprise (not surprise) hold! We had another scheduling issue, so again this time I'll be flying, hopefully with better results than last time!

Instead of another Spark mission (of which we finally had a good public copy thereof during the last hour) I'll be flying the Flicker.

[DuoDex]

We moved to YouTube because @NathanKell cannot into Twitch.

[NathanKell]

Yep, despite my Squadcasting last night just fine, and despite OBS claiming to be streaming correctly, Twitch never put me live. Same on both my personal stream and GFL's.

 

That said, despite some issues the Spark-Clydesdale sim that tetryds flew ended very successfully, and the Flicker mission I flew later blew past our required altitude (75km) to pass the Kármán line! Woohoo!

 

Our next scheduled mission is Sunday 8:30pm EDT (12:30am UTC Monday), June 12/13. If tetryds is available it will be another suborbital Flicker flight; if not we will be launching some rockets again!

 

Lastly since we are now rolling in dough I am taking the opportunity to increase our research rate, sinking a goodly amount of that cash into R&D upgrades.

[NathanKell]

Trimmed videos are still processing, but for now you can watch a combined sim + flight of Mission 4 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5A9XhbsQ-k

 

[NathanKell]

Ok, the two trimmed copies are up, and the OP is updated.

[Zucal]

Any more graphics required?

[NathanKell]

@Zucal Mission patches would be good ( @soundnfury has made a couple so far IIRC? ) as would a "be right back" graphic for the stream. Beyond that, I would say sig banners for those who want them. Anybody else have ideas there?

[Fenisse]

A bit late, but it's here (I have complete responsibility for this, I parked my Shagohod but forgot to pay the parking and the police took it away )

Mission Report for 3A/B/C and 4 (3A/B 03/06/2016-04/06/2016 23-01 UTC 3C/4 10/06/2016-11/06/2016 21:30-02 UTC)

Crafts launched: 3xSpark-Clydesdale, 1x Flicker

Successes: 1(2)

Failures: 1(2)

-Mission 3A: First Spark-Clydesdale mission to reach Mach 4 (~1200 m/s) and 50km altitude. While the mission was technically a success, a ramp strike during landing destroyed the craft and left pilot Erica Winkler hospitalized, so it is considered a failure.

-Mission 3B |WARNING! This mission hit a bug and is not considered canon!|: Second Spark-Clydesdale flight, second failure during landing. A not well defined error in the continuity of space and time made the central tank of the Spark hit the ground before the landing gear, and the craft was destroyed.

-Mission 3C |WARNING! This mission was just a simulation and is not considered canon!|: Final Spark-Clydesdale flight, it was higly successful and more importantly it proved the Spark's capability to land. Still, after a lengthy summit, we find no point in flying the Spark for real again.

-Mission 4: A suborbital Flicker flight to exceed 75km apogee as required by the contract. Mission was highly successful and the plane exceeded our expectations by reaching an incredible 106km apogee!

[NathanKell]

You will never guess what happened. More scheduling issues. We're flying the sim now, so a hold of ~30min.

[NathanKell]

and we're going live with the mission!

[Fenisse]

Mission Report for Mission 5 (13/06/2016 01-02:15 UTC)

Crafts launched: 1x Flicker B (Flicker but with RCS ports)

Successes: 1 (I guess?)

Detailed report:

This will be interesting. First we had a test: reached 144km apogee, and the splash down was smooth. Then we had the actual flight. All seems perfect, although we get a little more vertical speed than before and end up with an apogee of 149km. Re-entry is nominal, only we burn a little too much Nitrogen (RCS) and so decide to just burn it all at about 25km altitude. Everything is the same as the simulation, but! Something never witnessed before happens! We hit a bug on splash down (damn you and your buoyancy @NathanKell ) and all of the craft explodes except for the cockpit. Since we are stronger than bugs, we use cheats ahem tools to land the capsule safely. Now that we are checking the recordings, we hit the sea tail first, but we got a 800m/s kick, which isn't really possible.

Because it isn't one of our missions if it doesn't hit a bug.

 

Edited June 13, 2016 by Fenisse

[NathanKell]

I rewatched the tail end of the stream just to make sure, and there was a kick from ~97m/s to >500m/s, which I feel fairly safe in stating is a bug of some sort. It is possible that the drag cube of something towards the rear of the craft was off, or otherwise the buoyancy system misdetected its displacement and thus buoyant force. At any rate, I encourage everyone to replace the last ~5 minutes of the mission video with the last five of the (bugless) sim video.

[NathanKell]

Just a reminder for folks to vote in the strawpoll poll in discord regarding logos! You may have to scroll up slightly.

[NathanKell]

Another reminder to fill out the doodle and vote in the strawpoll.

[NathanKell]

We have a working script etc so we can now go ahead and schedule:

Sunday 19 June, 4pm EDT (8pm UTC): Booster development flights to flight-prove the new engines needed for our BlueSky 2A launch vehicle.

Sunday 19 June, 8pm EDT (midnight UTC): Orbital launch with the BlueSky 2A launch vehicle.

 

As usual, GFL team members should try to arrive online about a half hour early.

[NathanKell]

Part A pushed back because I cannot into calendars. We'll have an ETA shortly.

[NathanKell]

Ok, going live!

[Fenisse]

Mission Report for Mission 6A (19/06/2016 21-22 UTC) and Mission 6B (19/06/2016 00-01 UTC)

Crafts launched: 3x BlueSky 2AWG (BlueSky2A Sounding Rocket); 3x BlueSky2A

Successes: 5
"Successful Failures™"  : 1

Detailed report:

Mission 6A (Booster Development):
NOTE: These missions were designed to test the whole stack of the launcher, and of course its engines (since getting Agathorned has a big possibility of happening)
 - First BlueSky 2AWG launch, as the rocket hasn't got any attitude control it is nearly vertical. It was successful, reaching an Apogee of 4491km.
 - Second BlueSky 2AWG launch, again it was successful, and reached an Apogee of 4506km.
 - Third BlueSky 2AWG launch, successful as well, reaching an Apogee of 4453km.

Mission 6B (Orbit Attempts):
 - First actual BlueSky 2A launch to orbit, it was successful, putting Oboe I into an elliptical orbit of 3018x291km, with an inclination of 28.657°.
 - Second BlueSky 2A attempt at an orbit, this time with an higher inclination, again successful, putting Oboe II into an elliptical orbit of 2261x279km, with an inclination of 55.464°.
 - Third attempt to orbit with a BlueSky 2A, this time it didn't succeed. We tried to push the limits of the rocket, by trying to achieve a circular 600km orbit at ~28° inclination, but unfortunately the lifter isn't capable of such a feat, although it didn't reach a 600x150km orbit by ~300m/s. We consider it a "Successful Failure™" since, even if it failed, it made us aware of the launcher's limits.

 

Congratulations to the GoForLaunch team for achieving our first orbit!

Also, my 100th post

 

Edited June 20, 2016 by Fenisse

[Maxsimal]

Commentary was really good on 6B, much improved over earlier flights, shame I couldn't watch it live.  Btw, your youtube channel seems to be empty right now, is there a reason the videos got deleted?

[soundnfury]

1 minute ago, Maxsimal said:

Btw, your youtube channel seems to be empty right now, is there a reason the videos got deleted?

They're all there on the Videos tab, just for whatever reason the channel's front page is blank...

[NathanKell]

Now that the 1.1.3 rush (and various setup things on the next round) have passed, time to get this rolling again.

 

The next major things for us to try are desired-orbit satellite launches leading up to, eventually, a moon shot. This requires a fair amount of guidance work, since we will need closed-loop rather than open-loop guidance, and for the moon shot either heavy precalculation (the historic route) or on-the-fly maneuver determination for the injection burn.

[Maxsimal]

Glad to see you pushing things once more.  What's the state of the Space Center and the tech tree like now?  Asking here cause I think a lot of people might be curious - or at least, hopefully more than just me.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Maxsimal