Doing it Constellation Style

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey all kerbalovers everywhere.

I am entering into the:

 

Doing It Constellation Style

Though act to play.

Imgur Album: http://imgur.com/a/3YW48

 

Doing it Stock with no automation. All manual.

 

As I write this I have had one failure. Ran out of go-Juice doing the TLI.

I blame the ever increasing weight mass of the lander .

Current exercise has me with 4 Kerbals on the Mun.

The Orion capsule is dormant almost full of MP and in my estimate as enough fuel to make the TKI (Trans-Kerbin-Injection)

The lander landed with a smidgen of fuel left in the descent stage.

The Ascent stage is full. I didn't borrow from it.

So all is well and confidence reign.

Here is my mission report.

 

I will start with the SRBs. Boring I know. But the good part will come right after.

The challenge want us to save them. Not give them away to Poseidon.

So I have parachutes on them. I cannot follow them and my Rocket both as the rocket will cease to exist when it get far enough away.

The following are file photos from the development of the said SRBs

Starting with the ones from the Ares V.

There my SRBs have survived.

 

Now the Single SRB for Ares I.

 

Next time I will show you my take on the Ares I, V with the Orion Capsule and the Altair Lander.

 

ME

 

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[Martian Emigrant]

Hello again.

Imgur: http://imgur.com/a/3YW48

It's mostly in order if you start from the bottom.

 

The first launch is for the Ares V with the Altair Lander. The Crew will follow on a separate launch.

This my version of the Altair:

It comes with a crew compartment, an airlock, a ladder, over 1000 units of EC, fuel cells and a rover.

It is inspired by this iteration:

The airlock will stay behing on takeoff. During my testing the airlock didn't have to be staged. It just separated cleanly. I presume the original from NASA would have some kind of "Frangible" connection.

The Ares V. Five engine on the first stage, 2 SRBs. One engine on the EDS (Earth-Kerbin Departure Stage) (Second stage for you and me).

The Altair and the EDS will stay dormant until a crew shows up.

 

Next time the Ares I and the Orion Capsule.

 

ME

Edited February 19, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[Martian Emigrant]

Hi once more.

Imgur Album: http://imgur.com/a/3YW48

Mostly in order if you start from the bottom.

This my take on the Ares I and the Orion Capsule:

Capsule is Apollo style with room for 4 kerbals. It comes with a LAS (Launch Abort System).

The Ares V has 5 engines the Second stage 1. The Orion a single engine.

 

Sorry bad exposure. Shedding the fairing on the Orion and jettisoning the LAS.

 

Ditching the Second stage, deploying solar panels and Antennas.

After the rendez-vous portion, matching speed with the Altair.

 

 

ME

[Martian Emigrant]

Good morning.

Back in the saddle.

Now that the ship is assembled let's go to the Mun.

 

Separation of the EDS (Earth-Kerbin Departure Stage).

 

 

Being so close to Kerbin the separation actually moved my Pe at the Mun.

Bof. I have the means. RCS quickly fixed it.

 

The challenge want's us to use the descent engine to do the Mun-Insertion-Burn.

 

My research shows that it was indeed the way it was planned.

I don't get it. Why descend on the Mun a huge half empty tank?

Engineering considerations, engine cycles, TWR, ready made tanks, what not....IDK.

 

Anyway my engineering solution was to have crossfeed enabled everywhere and set the fuel priority in the VAB.

(I also had to add an External Fuel Duct to bypass the heatshield)

The burn is from the descent stage engine but the fuel is from the Orion Service Module.

The priorities were set as OSM, descent, ascent.

 

 

Crew transfer. All 4 of them.

 

 

Undocking.

Quote

Wilfield: Make sure to leave the door unlocked. I don't have my key.

 

 

Planning suicidal burn. I am not too suicidal myself but it sure is efficient.

 

 

Quote

 

Me: Hey guys! You're there. Aren't you going to come out?

Bill: We're eating! The Mun will still be there later.

Bob: Yeah. We're here for a whole week. No hurry.

Jeb: the Mun is old news.

Wilfield: It's my first time personally. But if I go out now. They won't leave me any Sour-Twisted-Strawberry-Sticks.

 

 

 

Snack time over.

 

Jeb stays inside for now he has to command the rover release. Bill is doing the operation.

 

 

Bill!

Careful!

That thing cost a pretty root or two.

 

 

Mandatory flag and picture op.

 

 

Quote

 

Jeb: Who brought the flag?

Bob: What flag?

Wilfield: I got one. I got it from the KSC shop before we left.

 

 

This concludes yesterdays events.

Now I need to bring'em home.

 

ME

 

Edited February 19, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey Guys.

 

Final instalment.

A week as gone by for our Kerbal heroes.

Bill is the last one out there. The Sun is setting. Time to go home.

The connection with the Airlock is breached.

Waiting for the orbiting Orion to come overhead.

The orbit as moved away as the days passed. We will fix that.

 

Departure

The secularisation gives an encounter. Let's work on that. (As a coincidence the AP is almost on the ascending node)

After a few tweaks. 0.1 km

Out of LF. We work with RCS from now on.

Quote

Jeb: Remember the time we left Val behind.

All: Hi hi hi.

Wilfield: I was a cadet but we kept talking about that.

 

 

Reactivating the main engine.

 

Simulations show we will la landing on LAND.

We have plenty of fuel to fix that.

Goodbye Service Module.

Hello home.

 

Well that was fun.

Now to read-up on this asteroid thing.

 

ME

Edited February 21, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[Mikki]

Pure stock coolness! And not even KER!

[Martian Emigrant]

5 hours ago, Mikki said:

Pure stock coolness! And not even KER!

Hi Mikki.

You don't need KER. Not once the ship is designed for a specific job anyway.

I do say that I used MechJeb on the design phase to figure out the Delta-V and to accelerate things like going to orbit and TLI.

My manual game play is definitively influenced by watching it fly.

 

ME

Edited February 19, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey all.

 

I am now starting the next mission.

It involves meeting an asteroid inside the Kerbin SOI.

It also stipulate no more than 20 days.

So no deep space shenanigan.

I have chosen my rock.

 

Its called VBD-024. Provisional name. It will get another one.

For now let us call it.....Rock-24.

 

 

I like it because it crosses the orbit or Minmus. The tip of the orbit are past 180°. Making it a near capture.

Flight to Minmus barely use more fuel than the ones to the Mun.

There are 19 days between Ap and leaving the SOI. So call it 38 days to work with.

 

It will be here (The Ap anyway) in 139 days.

So I started by launching a Satellite. The Asteroid Investigator II (It's no.2 because it's predecessor ran out of go-go-juice).

 

I first matched the plane with the Mun.

 

 

So now I know for sure that the plane of Rock-24 is 18.1°. More precise that I can fly that's for sure.

 

 

Asteroid Investigator was repositioned to match the plane of Rock-24.

 

 

The PLAN!

The plan as it stands now. Standby for changes.

1. Is to wait for Rock-24 to enter the SOI (Well the Warp kind of waiting).
2. At that point the ARM mission will be launched. A modified Altair-Mun-Lander on an Ares V.
3. It will be launched to match the orbital plane of Asteroid Investigator (Easier than matching Rock-24 on a take-off).
4. When Rock-24 is about 6 days to AP the Orion mounted on the Ares 1 will be launched with crew.
5. They will meet with the Altair.
6. An intercept course will be computed (I will play with the nodes) to encounter Rock-24 aprox 3 days prior to Ap. That will give me some fudging room.
7. The stay will be 7 days or 3 days past AP. Which ever comes first That should keep me within the orbit of Minmus).
8. The crew will return with the Orion Spacecraft to Kerbin.......Hopefully.

 

Standby for more development.

 

ME

Edited February 21, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[Martian Emigrant]

Hi there.

 

Well a "Simulation" was conducted yesterday.

And a few problems showed up.

 

The first involved the Orion-Mark II.

A smaller more efficient Orion. Half the size, Still hold 4 crews as before. The cockpits aren't even clipped.

The docking port was replaced with the Junior......But not on the ARM version of the Altair......

 

The simulation sent the EDS-Altair to Rock-24.

And the flight needs to depart sooner.

The Orion as to wait for the orbit of the Altair to cross overhead.

The difficulty in making an encounter even for one degree makes matching the planes mandatory.

The travel time was 4 days.

Arrival was 1 day before periapsis. not the planned 3.

 

So a newer simulation will be conducted.

 

One where the Altair will be matched to Rock-24 before the crew shows up.

Where the Orion launch procedure will begin 8 days before Rock-24's apoapsis.

 

On another note the testing of the Impactors: Stick-1 and Stick-2 were successfully fired.

Giving a very satisfying set of explosions.

 

Stay tuned,

 

ME

Edited February 21, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[Martian Emigrant]

Hey there.

Frustrated, very frustrated.

I don't know if it' the way I built and then tweaked the ships or if my game got somehow corrupted (read confused) but it's barely playable. Actually , no it's unplayable.

Let me explain.

My ship have multiple pods and probe cores all pointing in different directions.

Every time I switch back from the map the nav ball turns to some random direction. Same when I load a Quicksave.

Pretty hard to go from a rocket, check it's path over Kerbin Then come back to fly and jettison stages.

I try to do a rendez-vous and am always off just to find out that the ship is being driven from a random pod and is 15° off from forward.

Currently running 1.2.0. I will upgrade and copy my save game and ships.

We'll see.

 

ME

Edited February 21, 2017 by Martian Emigrant

[septemberWaves]

Pods pointing in the wrong direction can be a pain. I'm in the middle of the Duna mission right now, and one of the cargo transports always points radial when I load it and the other points backwards (I don't even know why it does that since the only backwards-pointing thing on the vehicle is a docking port).

It tends to pick the probe core or command module that's closest to the root part. If you put a small probe core in your Orion capsule (perhaps below the docking port) and make it the root part, that should hopefully ensure that it's always controlled from the right point.

[Martian Emigrant]

Hi EJ.

 

That is how I build them.

Never seemed to be an issue. This feel sudden.

To add to the problem is that the Orion as an escape tower.

And if it decide to go from probe core (Or the docking port just below) to something else,

it is hard in flight (Once realised what just happened) to click it back.

For the Altair the top of the ship is in fairing. You can't get to it.

 

Really makes me wish for the day we will deselect "Control-from-here" in the VAB.

 

 

Anyhoo. I have upgraded to 1.2.2 and it has that new car feel.

Still messes up but I got both ship in orbit on the appropriate orbital planes.

 

ME

[Martian Emigrant]

Here is the rest.

 

Following the flight of Asteroid Investigator II.

A mofified Altair was sent up.

This Altair has no fuel. I decided it required none.

By removing fuel and engines the delta-V of the EDS is increased.

The reduction in the Orion weight also contribute to fuel not being required for this mission.

A modest amount of science was loaded in the Instrument bay.

Somewhere in the planning the drill and ore tank was forgotten.

2 Impacting probes were added to the payload. The "Scientific Tiebeam Impacting Collider" STIC for short.

Scientist have been wanting to know for a long time now.

Can you "Pop" an asteroid?

The vehicle at the launch pad waited for the orbit of AI2 to come overhead.

The rest is routine.

Orbital plane was immediately corrected to match Rock-24.

A request was put in to take pictures of the asteroid from the Kubble space telescope.

The request was denied and delayed.

The telescope was being used to take pictures of the 3legged race being conducted at the Annual Astronomer Picnic.

Eventually this picture was delivered.

Time passed and when the asteroid got to 8 days to Pe

The Orion was launched in the same orbital plane as the Altair.

 

Rendez-vous.

Planning

mid course corrections.

Matching speed using the EDS

The last of the EDS fuel was used to top up the Orion.....Just in case.

 

Quote

Val: Ennemi..I mean the "Death Star"....Target..No..Rock in sight..Ready launch tube...neither...Oh, just fire no.1 and STIC it to them

 

 

Followed by the capture.

One day before Pe

Science

Then someone intentioned that the Altair was supposed to dock on it's own.

So they did it again.

Undocking

More undocking

Docking

And another one

Val went on an EVA and had a regolith bath

Jeb told her that if you touch and asteroid, cross your fingers, toes, twist you tongue, close your eyes and make a wish it will come true.

He also told her if you put your head inside an asteroid you can see the diamond in the middle of it.

She could not get her head in there.

but just as she boarded she saw the diamond.

 

After another 6 days the Orion was undocked and headed for home.

 

A simulation showed that the ship could not survive re-entry if going for a direct shot.

Two pass through the upper atmosphere was planned.

Those extra orbits put our crew over the planned 20 days in space.

But fun was had by all Kerbals involved.

 

And val's wish did come true.

 

When she boarded the Altair after her EVA Sidgan had made hot chocolate milk with marshmallows for everyone.

 

ME

 

Edited February 22, 2017 by Martian Emigrant