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Eyes Turned Skywards - The Missions

Drakenex

By Drakenex
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Drakenex

Drakenex

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t6wBM6y.png?1

I'll be recreating some of the most interesting missions from the alternate history series "Eyes Turned Skywards" , I know I'm not the first, but I'll try to be the best! I'll try to be faithful to the source material, but sometimes I'll be taking some artistic and technical liberties. All constructive criticism will be more than welcome!

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1 - Freedom

  • November 12, 1988
  • Cape Kennedy

The birth of Freedom

Space station Freedom Challenger HSM (Habitat and Service Module) launch atop Saturn H03

 

 

 

Dedicated to @e of pi , @nixonshead and @Workable Goblin, thanks for empowering imagination.

Parts provided by the one and only @CobaltWolf and the talented @benjee10.

Edited by Dman979
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Drakenex

Drakenex

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  • November 30, 1988
  • January 18, 1989
  • Cape Kennedy

Unity and the one winged angel

 

 

“It was the longest twenty-five minutes of my life”

                              Gerald Mitchell - Astronaut

 

 

 

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e of pi

e of pi

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8 hours ago, Drakenex said:
  • November 30, 1988
  • January 18, 1989
  • Cape Kennedy

Unity and the one winged angel

“It was the longest twenty-five minutes of my life”

                              Gerald Mitchell - Astronaut

That array deploy was awesome! Really fun video, and I'm pleased to see that looks as bonkers in execution as it looked in my head. Doable, sure, but still I'd be nervous. Did you have forward thrusters near the radiator end of the truss, or were you flying wholly on the AARDV thrusters?

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Drakenex

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25 minutes ago, e of pi said:

That array deploy was awesome! Really fun video, and I'm pleased to see that looks as bonkers in execution as it looked in my head. Doable, sure, but still I'd be nervous. Did you have forward thrusters near the radiator end of the truss, or were you flying wholly on the AARDV thrusters?

yeah! that was a little unorthodox but it worked, I guess that in real life may be the truss could be folded in two and carried by a wide fairing Saturn Heavy.

Yup, I've tried without RCS on the docking end but it was impossible to control, so I've added 4 rcs provided by @akron

W6cZCSY.png

 

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e of pi

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23 hours ago, Drakenex said:

yeah! that was a little unorthodox but it worked, I guess that in real life may be the truss could be folded in two and carried by a wide fairing Saturn Heavy.

Yup, I've tried without RCS on the docking end but it was impossible to control, so I've added 4 rcs provided by @akron

 

No, that was pretty much the mission plan as we envisioned it. It's why Gerry Mitchell is so nervous during that mission. I'm pretty sure we mentioned the use of using thruster packages tied into the AARDV avionics for fine manuevering someplace. You can certainly see the truss ones hiding on the outboardmost of the two "X" sections just beside the center truss module in this @nixonshead render. (Note similar thruster modules leftover on most of the lab modules, too.)

fetch.php?cache=&media=timelines:foc-c.j

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51 minutes ago, e of pi said:

No, that was pretty much the mission plan as we envisioned it. It's why Gerry Mitchell is so nervous during that mission. I'm pretty sure we mentioned the use of using thruster packages tied into the AARDV avionics for fine manuevering someplace. You can certainly see the truss ones hiding on the outboardmost of the two "X" sections just beside the center truss module in this @nixonshead render. (Note similar thruster modules leftover on most of the lab modules, too.)

 

yup! I can see them, on smaller modules they are not necessary, I was going to add them anyway but I want to keep part count low.

Because the rest of the assembly is pretty much the same I've already made, I want to skip a little forward (completing them first off course) to the first flight of the Minotaur; so far all I've found was some pencil sketches for the Europa 42u,is that all that exists? I'm going to make a prototype from Tantares parts.

In the meantime time to travel 2 years back in time and watch some Vulkan action ......

 

Edit: nevermind! that sketch is enough :wink:

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31 minutes ago, e of pi said:

Where'd you get the MOK module model?

Tantares 2.0 + Tantares 1.0 + elbow grease and lots of tweaking, I'll give you more details soon.

 

For now:

Two years before ......

Interlude 1

  • Baikonur, Kazakhstan
  • February 24, 1987

Vulkan Peace

 

 

 

Notes:

No RD-150s, I'm not happy with my attempts to recreate them, so 4 chamber zenith engines for now.

Yeah those are humongous solar wings, but they are proportional like in Nixonhead's orthogonal. 

No red on booster cones or fairing, I don't know, they look better for me this way :P

No radiators beneath solar wings, there aren't any and if I add them they couldn't rotate with the wings.

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2 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Better? :P The one you're trying to build is on the far right, the core is all 2.5m in KSP. The 1st stage and boosters should be the exact same height.

 

not in this one, the core clearly goes from one dimension to another, like 2.5 to 1.875 (perfectly reproduced with scaled Tantares parts):

IHSHRen.jpg

There's no way to have both the core and the boosters at the same height maintaining proportions (2.5 core with 1.875 boosters), with existing parts.

EDIT:

My best shot with existing Tantares @Beale parts, I'll try with a repaint but while I can make the boosters align with the core, engine bases won't match.

Spoiler

UFcfDEC.png

 

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Interlude 2

  • Matagorda, Texas (no! isn't KSC, I'm pretty sure)
  • December 12, 1994

Carrack heavy sails away

 

 

 

Notes:

 

Central core throttle is at 80%

No idea if that is correct or all 5 core were meant to stage at the same time

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15 hours ago, Drakenex said:

Interlude 2

  • Matagorda, Texas (no! isn't KSC, I'm pretty sure)
  • December 12, 1994

Carrack heavy sails away

Notes:

Central core throttle is at 80%

No idea if that is correct or all 5 core were meant to stage at the same time

Answering the SRB thrust for Carrack requires a bit of definitions. Solids can't really be throttled in-flight, but they can be throttled in the grain design, the pattern cut into the center. Since the wall tends to burn in a constant rate away from the center where the flame is, the wall's circumference at a point in the burn tends to approximate thrust. See here for a bit more. The idea was that the upper stage uses a regressive burn grain design, meaning it tapers as the burn proceeds instead of increasing, thus controlling runaway acceleration. The idea was that the grain geometry selected for the center cores and strapons for the "heavy" Carracks was intended to leave the center first stage solid burning after the strapons had burnt out and separated, at least for a little. Don't ask about the particular grain, I didn't have any really great sources at the time so that's just hidden under the "I know this is possible with enough engineering" hood. Star for the strapons or the first stage on the lighter Carracks, a moon burner or something for the second stage, and a simple circle or a moon burner for the center on Heavies, something like that?

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On 3/20/2017 at 2:58 AM, e of pi said:

Answering the SRB thrust for Carrack requires a bit of definitions. Solids can't really be throttled in-flight, but they can be throttled in the grain design, the pattern cut into the center. Since the wall tends to burn in a constant rate away from the center where the flame is, the wall's circumference at a point in the burn tends to approximate thrust. See here for a bit more. The idea was that the upper stage uses a regressive burn grain design, meaning it tapers as the burn proceeds instead of increasing, thus controlling runaway acceleration. The idea was that the grain geometry selected for the center cores and strapons for the "heavy" Carracks was intended to leave the center first stage solid burning after the strapons had burnt out and separated, at least for a little. Don't ask about the particular grain, I didn't have any really great sources at the time so that's just hidden under the "I know this is possible with enough engineering" hood. Star for the strapons or the first stage on the lighter Carracks, a moon burner or something for the second stage, and a simple circle or a moon burner for the center on Heavies, something like that?

Yup, I once attended an interesting tech conference at ATK some years ago (constellation Ares I, yes I'm old), and among other things, they gave a lecture about how they shape solids internals and grain density to alter thrust curves.

Kerbalwise, you can either alter fuel amounts or regulate thrust, I'm sure@Jso knows a lot more.

Anyway, the Athena/Carrack performed amazingly well! 4 T to Geo (or Keo)

 

 

*** I'll be back soon! Lots of work, vacations and now I'm moving to a new house! ***

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