The Martian - Ares I Mission Replica by APlayer

[APlayer]

With the Kerbalism rebalance update I am standing before some tweaking of all crewed parts that were already made. It is not much, though, but I have had little time recently. Fortunately, I will have more time soon.

[APlayer]

I have had trouble with having the crewed pods reach the Hermes' parking orbit at 7000 km. Any kind of Ares or SLS replica just doesn't have enough power...

So I've decided to cancel this. No Ares (Heh, NASA wasn't the only one to do this, in the end) and no SLS, I'll make my own launchers that are better suited for the job.

 

Edit: I guess nevermind that. I have just looked at NASA images and saw that they are larger by "one form factor", i.e. the rocket is thicker than the crew capsule. Now I know why they were too weak. :-)

Edited February 18, 2017 by APlayer

[APlayer]

Well, I somewhat got the launcher thing to "work". I have a good concept and parts of the implementation.

Plan:

• There will be a completely modular system. Any parts are compatible (as long as they have the same diameter), which is ensured either by part design or necessary adapters.
• Two launcher "kits": A heavy launcher and a light launcher, of two stages each. Now comes the real beauty: The stages are interchangeable!
• Heavy first stage: 5 m bottom diameter, 3.75 m top diameter, recoverable
• Heavy second stage: 3.75 m bottom diameter, 3.75 m top diameter, recoverable
• Light first stage: 3.75 m bottom diameter, 3.75 m top diameter
• Light second stage: 3.75 m bottom diameter, 2.5 m top diameter
• Additional boosters standard for either type, 1.25 m in diameter, recoverable, up to 8 per launcher
• An additional, incompatible ultralight probe launcher, boosters for it

This gives us five combinations of stages for different payload sizes, with precise tweaking done by boosters. The new launcher type is to be called "Neptune" with a short code for the configuration, totally not inspired by SLS.

Payload mass ranges, to Duna intercept or high Kerbin orbit:

• Heavy 1., heavy 2., "Neptune 2B": 26 - 30 t
• Heavy 1., light 2., "Neptune 2A": 22 - 26 t
• Light 1., heavy 2., "Neptune 1B": 18 - 22 t
• Light 1., light 2., "Neptune 1A": 14 - 18 t
• Ultralight launcher: 5 - 8 t

In the mean time, I constructed the light stages, the spacecraft to bring our Kerbonauts to the Hermes (Payload size: 14.5t, launch with "Neptune 1A0" to a Hohmann transfer orbit for HKO. It is somewhat a blend of Orion, Dragon V2 and Soyuz, but I went with "Orion" as name anyway.), tested and approved those for flight. Also I noticed I totally forgot about the rovers to investigate the landing area, so there's that too.

The first stage recovery is "performed" by StageRecovery, although extremely precise flying could yield me enough time to do it by hand. It is pretty SpaceX style, powered touchdown, airbrakes for steering and stuff. The boosters are meant to be recovered by parachutes.

So yeah, here we have a rocket which basically stole real life concepts from everything that was at any time considered for Mars missions and some that was not, combined those into one and is supposed to fly after that.

As for pictures, that turned out to be the most time consuming part (Heh, publicity comes at a price! NASA, I feel you!). I'll make some during development, and post them all at once once the launchers are done.