Post- Sunshooter Shuttle Challenge Submission: Cadance Ascension Project

[B-STRK]

This is a Mission Thread to contain my submission to the Shuttle Challenge v5 being caretaken, stewarded, custodian'd, and otherwise presently managed by @michal.don, to avoid going pic-heavy in the main Challenge thread, because way too many pictures to drop in the challenge forum. This is a snippet of what's been going on as I try to pick up back where I left off with the Sunshooter Program two years ago and finally finish some unfinished business... except in 1.3, from Year One Day One Minute One Second One Square One Mobius One Fox One Splash One, and disqualifying myself from the Apollo Challenge by using my own architecture. Here I'm revisiting one of the last things I did there, creating a Shuttle-derived heavy crew vehicle. Pics behind spoilers because be kind to smart phones. 

Oh, as per mandate of the challenge, the mod list for the craft involved lies behind the spoiler:

Spoiler

For the Cadance orbiter:

• Mk3 Hypersonic System
• Mk2 Expansion
• R&S Capsuledyne (Taurus HCV)
• SpaceY
• B9 Aerospace
• Kerbal Electric (lighting)
• RLA Stockalike
• B9 Aerospace (docking port)

For the Shining Armor-I Flyback booster

• SpaceY
• Modular Rocket Systems
• Lithobrake Exploration Technologies
• Mk3 Hypersonic System
• OPT Spaceplane (flight surfaces)
• R&S Capsuledyne (Taurus HCV)
• Kerbal Electric (lighting)

Other operational mods during the challenge flight:

• Kerbal Joint Reinforcement
• Mechjeb--only for informational and maneuvering guidance in atmospheric flight. Active control in vacuum orbital operations
• KER
• Trajectories
• Action Group Manager
• Vertical Velocity Autopilot--only for informational purposes, never activated
• Kerbal Flight Indicators
• Correct CoL
• Gravity Turn and Throttle Controlled Avionics were present, but never activated in the flight scene

Back in the wilderness of 1.0.2 when I was doing the Apollo 1.0 challenge (and before I hit pause on KSP due to school demands), I made a Dream Chaser-style Mk3 profile reusable crew shuttle for my Apollo program analogue called the Cadenza, capable of transporting up to 18-19 kerbals to a Munbase or station because launching multiples of 3-kerbal Apollo CSM equivalents would be quite the drag. It was a craft I was quite happy with, but I was not sure it would have qualified for the STS challenge at the time, as it had zero cargo capacity (and I think the crew-only rule was only very recently?). 

Come KSP 1.3 and a whole metric ton of modding thanks to 64 bit later, and in the sequel to Sunshooter, I wanted to revisit the Cadenza, but she needed a serious upgrade to provide crew support for a Deep Space Gateway and ship construction facility on Minmus, the Minmus Orbital/Surface Shiyard Complex (MOSS). 

Meet KSP-Project EVANNA's Cadance ADCAP (Advanced Capability) crew shuttle, its first model the OV/CDN-01 Astoria Greengrass pictured arriving at the Minmus DSG station Gabi Diamond. 

Yeah, she's already operational in my playthrough, having already delivered station crew to LKO and now to Minmus. And it wasn't until I recently paid a visit to the Challenge thread to see what's up before I realized she might qualify for STS-1a. (Might. I must defer to the judge @michal.donfor the authoritative answer.)

A closer look at the orbiter and launch system:

Spoiler

 

Pictured here is the Astoria's sister ship, OV/CDN-02 Lily Evans, in the SPH being refitted with Fengist's Kerbal Electric lights. Her specs are displayed courtesy of MJ and KER--the atmo performance is based off of the Panthers being in afterburner/Wet mode. With the amount of fuel in the atmospheric flight tanks, Dry mode flight will be upwards of an indecent 20-30 minutes. In Dry mode the pilot will ALSO be praying to Felipe that there are no mountains between him and his landing spot. Swapping out the Cadenza's Wheesleys for the Panthers allowed for higher-altiude cruising flight and climbing power if necessary, just one of the three primary changes made in the upgrade (the other being the Mk3 Hypersonic cockpit, and extra tankage to get to Minmus and feed the thirsty Wet Mode!Panthers).

Cadence has two variants of the Shining Armor launch system to get to orbit _{because nothing says "I love you and how you can save a kingdom from eternal slavery and ennui" by hurling your beloved into the atmosphere to catch a falling dragon trying to snatch a crystal heart from the maw of the smoke monster from Lost, be glad she wasn't pregnant at the time or your insurance company would ditch you in a heartbeat}, the higher-power variant designed to get to orbit at 165km x 165km before staging the Cadence off, and deorbiting back to KSC--yep, reusable booster (apart from two solid rocket boosters whose parachute staging and survivability I never did solve). But that's not our problem now. 

Pictured here is the LKO booster variant, Shining Armor I, used for the Cadance's certification and operational flights, whose weak excuse for reuesability are parachutes near the tail. Based on Gravity Turn autopilot launches, the SA-I has a 20% chance more or less of coming down over the peninsula east of KSC. More often than not, we're fishing soggy rocket engines from the ocean. I hate soggy rockets.

KSC program managers began wondering, though, if by adding the very large and very necessary OPT wings in order to counteract the very surprising amount of torque the Cadance could produce up there (compared to her predecessor which only needed the four tail fins to provide the necessary stabilizing CoP) they disqualified the CDN-STS system from the new Shuttle Challenge. Hell, they were still not done with debating over whether having nearly 3000m/s average delta-V in the booster was economic overkill (the Cadance was regularly making it to LKO with over 1500m/s in the orbital tanks) and a disqualification. A very bored Project ALY designer though saw all that wing, and all that extra delta-V not being used, and thought:

What if we made Shiny a flyback booster instead?

The Shining Armor I-Flyback Booster (SA-IF) adds two of the N5 Aerodynamics' LRJ-1 Wyvern turboramjets, four of the MRS Half-Jumbo tanks with a pair configured for LF-only, and the OPT wings are configured with LFO tanks, to bring back the SpaceY-based boost vehicle. The net result is a reduction in available launch delta-V compared to the "pure nylon letdown" version of Shining Armor-I. But that's okay: the Cadance has a lot of delta-V to spare if all she's doing is LKO ops. 

Today, Evans is being used for the certification flight of the SA-IF. As the Cadance STS is already operationally proven, however, this launch also doubles as a crew transport mission to the LKO station, adding Pilots to the roster there, as well as the STS pilot certification of shuttle pilots Wenby Kerman and Anvin Kerman. Okay, fine: it seems like such a waste of a 19-seat passenger spaceplane to take just three transfer crew. But that was just the bonus for the SA-IF tests, so it's a justifiable waste.

The mission was delayed up to sunrise when said crew discovered that they were flying a prototype test mission, and that their insurance premiums were about to go through the roof. They actually made it as far as the western desert across the ocean before their sorry asses were dragged back into the Evans.

Protip: make sure there are no flight-ready training craft on the flightline. We don't want to repeat THAT mission from Ace Combat 5 (how in God's name did Pops fly through the ground? And why the f[yay!] did I follow him INTO it?).

The Gravity Turn autopilot was used for prior operational launches, admittedly. But as Challenge rules require hands-on while in atmo, the GT settings instead (along with the old launch instructions for the Cadenza) provided the necessary cues to develop a manual ascent profile and checklist for pilots for this test flight. _{My god, I hadn't had to hand-launch anything since 1.0.2 two years ago. And even with those large OPT wings and control surfaces, keeping this stack on course and at the desired launch profile is a PAIN. And to think I made it stack-launched so it would be easier.}

 

Cadance + SA-IF Manual Launch Profile:

Spoiler

 

So, about that manual launch profile: TWR at SLT=1.50 at the start, full throttle. At >50m/s, roll to launch azimuth. At >80m/s, pitchover 10-15 degrees. I think 10, 15 is too agressive. (Bu a GT launch uses 15 degrees for the pitchover.) Oh, stop whining Wenby, my hand launches always usually make it to space. Sometimes even usually always. 

Yaw corrections as needed to correct for inclination throughout the ascent. Descend to +45 degrees pitch angle by 10 kilometers. Throttle remains at 100%. (This involves a mixture of careful control inputs while prograde follow and SAS-off to manage the descent to 45 degrees--otherwise, it goes down too fast, but past 45 degrees it's left at prograde-follow as the descent rate + TWR @ T when Alt = 10k from there is desireable. Obviously, it's not a pure gravity turn by this description, but no one can touch the throttle yet for pacing reasons.)

Before leaving the stratosphere (medium blue of the graph), rollover to heads-up. Begin watching TAp (Time to Apoapsis), target being 50s.

At TAp=50s, reduce throttle to 1.5 TWR. Allow TWR to climb to 1.6+ before throttling back to 1.5, keeping TAp within striking range of 50s, and lower the nose (and prograde) towards the horizon. (This is a stepped version of Gravity Turn's progressive throttle control to limit TAp through the turn. Less efficient than the autopilot, but it works better for booster recovery, as will be seen.)

When Shiny's Vac dV<200m/s, push throttle to 100%. This is the difference between the old SA-I and the SA-IF profiles. With reduced delta-V in the flyback booster, the Cadance will have a lower staging velocity than with the "hope it makes it to dry land this car has 360hp this booster has 3,000 dV" Shining Armor I. Lower than her single Poodle's capacity to maintain TAp=45-50 seconds for the rest of the ascent. So going to max speed (and the corresponding boost to TAp) is necessary to give her as much push as possible to minimize the off-prograde burn (and its associated angular delta-V losses) needed to keep the ascent up.

On staging, the Cadance punches full throttle and aggressively pitches up to 20-30 degrees--at this point, the TAp is falling, and Wenby needs to keep it above 50s for as long as it takes to complete the apoapsis push-out to the target transfer orbit (~75km circular, 77km actual here). She'll keep the nose up until the TAp stops falling. (If it's still falling below 50s, the pilot is instructed to maintain 30 degrees pitch up and hope it doesn't fall TOO far down. Otherwise, if the Cadance starts descending, the pilots abort-atmo to the nearest landable landmass). 

Once TAp starts climbing, she allows the Evans' nose to fall to stabilize it at around 50s, until she's following prograde, then SAS is locked there. At this point, the Cadance has the sufficient velocity for her Poodle OMS to perform the apoapsis push, and TAp starts to climb rapidly.

At 65km, solar panels are deployed and running lights enabled. 

And at apokerb, all it takes is a mere 24m/s to circularize. And even considering the inefficient non-tangential ascent burn after staging, the Evans still has around a thousand mees delta in her tanks. More than enough to get around LKO.

Now out of atmo and released from Challenge limitations, Wenby and Anvin boot up Mechjeb and program a rendezvous to the LKO station.

 

But wait, what about Shiny?

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: As I don't have the FMRS mod installed, I actually capped the flyback booster portion of the mission by flying the mission twice: first, to follow Shining Armor back to KSC and drop him there, before reverting back to zero and doing that ascent all over again to follow the Cadance to LKO.]

SA-IF Flyback Operations:

Spoiler

 

After staging, Project ALY engineers (who in my Apollo Challenge AAR universe specialize in autonomous vehicle design and operations) take over responsibility for SA-IF while Mission Control continues SYSOPing the orbiter. First, the booster pitches up aggressively to throw off the only disposable portion of the system, the highly worrisome R&S Capsuledyne 3.75m separator ring. (Highly worrisome because, as Snark found out with his Multiple Reentry Kerbal Tourists Recovery System And Totally Not A Kerbal BDArmory Nuclear Weapon Reentry Vehicle System Stop Looking At Me Hans Blix, air pressure on reentry can keep it pinned against its former parent craft, until flight dynamics rip it away, potentially ripping through a flight surface or air intake.)

Don't let atmo-delta>10,000 fool you. If using the Gravity Turn autopilot, Shining Armor's come-down point (based on the Trajectories mod) is just past the eastern peninsula, and from there, it's barely enough fuel to get back to KSC. If a control mistake sends the booster into a departure from controlled flight, the fuel it would take to regain control would mean Shiny's coming down into the drink just offshore from KSC. Fine, nearer to KSC than the waters around the eastern peninsula, but still, soggy rockets. And I hate soggy rockets.

The less efficient manual launch profile, however, brings the Armor down just offshore west of the peninsula--a shorter trip back to KSC overall.

Even if the Challenge rules allowed it and Pilot Assistant was working properly (it kept on dinging nullrefs throughout my game, and refusing to respond to any mouse inputs on its toolbar button after the first ding), SA-IF's blunt and broad design defied any autopilot's capability to stabilize and control him (well, maybe Atmosphere Autopilot, but I didn't have it here, so I couldn't test it). So all Shining Armor flybacks are remotely piloted by a kerbal from the Pilot corps, usually a trainee on the verge of graduating to his first orbital op. 

Also, the same blunt and broad profile meant that it is very easy to lose control with the Shining Armor. He has a tendency to sideslip , which sheds precious speed (and associated kinetic energy), altitude, and controlability. So not until he descends back into the stratosphere (below 18km) will the pilot attempt any course corrections. 

In the meanwhile, our trainee is screaming at his instructor pilot and half the gallery to stop with the f[yay!]ing backseat piloting. 

Below 16km altitude, the Wyverns are ignited, and approaching 14km the Shining Armor is wrenched into a hard climbing turn towards course 270. The remote pilot makes sure that the airspeed does not drop below Mach 2--okay, fine, Mach 1.75 at worst--and the waypoint for KSC's runway 090 is activated as well to provide an ETA. This is VERY IMPORTANT, with a capital VERY IMPORTANT. 

Because the Wyverns are so thirsty they should be memetic. Cruising altitudes below 14-16km will drain the tanks faster than the ETA to KSC. So the power of the Wyverns (originally designed to propel hypersonic craft) is used to send the Shining Armor to 16-17km, near the border between the stratosphere and mesosphere/thermosphere, and speeds above Mach 2.5, where (a) the Wyverns will find increased efficiency such that they will burn for up to 10 minutes, more than enough time to get back to KSC, and (b) even if they can't produce enough thrust to keep level flight up there and the booster starts to descend, there's enough altitude to cut the throttle and glide back down to a lower altitude, before reigniting the jets to send him back up, leading to even more fuel savings. At one point in this operational certification flight, Ap=20,000m, which was unintended and really unwise but nice to note."

Again, though, blunt and wide = maneuvers like a cow that broke into the distilled hydrazine or fermented space food paste. Any corrective maneuvers to get SA-IF pointed directly at KSC are made by dipping below 16km altitude to execute them very, very gently. A previous inert-payload (an NRAP weighted as heavy as a Cadance) test led to a flipover that used up too much gas to recover from. Once more, with feeling: I hate soggy rockets. _{But wait, you may ask, what about my other rockets, expendable by nature, which all fall into the drink after staging? I still hate soggy rockets, but for them, I just console myself by singing "Let It Go." It's very therapeutic.}

With KSC in sight, the throttle is brought back down to provide just a little push through the descent, as Trajectories' experimental in-flight descent-impact indicator is brought online to make sure the Shining Armor doesn't come down over the VAB or something. Especially not the Snacks! cart outside the admin building. F[squee!] anyone who wrecks that.

Given that Shiny's strongest engines, the M9 SpaceY Moa engine cluster, used up all the oxidizer, and this was intentional, a propulsive landing was never in the cards. Rather, once the booster makes it over KSC (and is not projected to hit anything important, ESPECIALLY THE SNACKS!), six Lithobrake Tech parachutes are let loose. They're enough to bring down the booster at a gentle fine, survivable ~4.8m/s. 

Go home, Trajectories experimental in-flight descent-impact indicator. You're drunk. (Hell, to be fair they did say it was experimental.)

Aaaaand Shining Armor's down (Vertical Velocity was used only to provide vertical velocity and ground altitude information in addition to the KER hud, and was never activated. In case descent rates are too fast for safety the Wyverns can be ignited to provide propulsive assistance).

 

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled LKO program.

Cadance LKO operations and Reentry:

Spoiler

 

Honestly, 1,000 mees of dV is still overkill. I mean, fine, (in-story wise) ALOY-SEEP (Aerospace, Lithospheric, Oceanic, and You Space Exploration Environmental Presevation) Treaty limitations may keep future high-performance NTR craft far away from Kerbin atmopshere, with parking orbits well higher than 200km, so yeah, a thousand meters per second, hooray. My economics professor is threatening to take back my credits, however--and I already graduated from that course long ago. 

But with 1,864m/s vacuum dV at full tanks, when delivered to a 165km parking orbit by the more powerful Shining Armor II, the Cadance has enough gas to align planes and transfer to Minmus orbital, which is her primary raison d'etre. One has to be very careful timing one's arrival, though--she can directly rendezvous with the Gabi if the station will be at the right location (it's essentially just a well-timed circularization burn, after making the rendezvous-establishing course correction), nearly using up her remaining fuel. To achieve such timing, as early as after the transminmunar injection burn the pilots program a maneuver node to alter their ETA to Minmus with minimal fuel expenditures. In a worst case scenario, the vehicle will just circularize to orbit and a rescue/refueling craft will be launched from the Gabi. Luckily this didn't need to be the case so far. 

Until Kerbal Electric, I was saddened by the available lights, especially when I needed a self-lighting solution. The best so far was using Aviation Lights' powerful white strobe, which while it did provide self-lighting could not be edited like a regular light, and tended to be glaring to boot. Both stock and B9 lights were directional. And the Surface Lights didn't light up much surface to begin with. But the power of Kerbal Electric's dome lights were enough so that even with just one light part, those accursed night beauty shots the KSP Reddit bemoans become feasible. So powerful in fact that I had to tone down the lighting. But I tossed in a few more extra lights for reasons^TM. 

Yeah, considering the Challenge rules allow it, Wenby just let MJ handle the rendezvous (target at 175km circular). Being lazy isn't a crime. Besides, per Apollo 1.0 Challenge Rules, back in the day, I had to hand-fly all rendezvous, young man. Uphill. Both ways. In the Martian sands. WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS! (Yeah, two years off KSP has made me bitter. That, and law school. That's why I know being lazy isn't a crime.)

Docking, however, could not be left to the autopilot, as the B9 shielded docking port is not aligned with the vertical axis of rotation, SAS-wise or RCS-wise, so that throws MJ off. Anvin takes over--and it's a good thing the N5 Mk3 hypersonic cockpit's window is so big as to provide the crew with a good view of the Truscott's spaceplane docking port. (And that cockpit is so beautiful, I hope it one day may finally receive an IVA art pass worthy of its external beauty. And now I realize I just made a "Bug the Mod Author" comment, I now need to hide somewhere lest some moderator come in to chop my head off. But really, I loved this cockpit the day it came out, and I do hope to see it for a long time to come. Oh, and while I'm at it, I hate soggy rockets.)

BoomDeYada.mp3

Apart from its transfer passengers, the Evans crew take the opportunity to top off the Truscott's Snacks! tanks. 3,200 units in the passenger compartment assures Cadance crews that they can remain on orbit for a long time, waiting for aerobrake passes to bring them down from Minmus to LKO, or to await rescue if it comes to that. Or, on occasion, for massive pizza deliveries to LKO. _{But we already have an autonomous Snacks! delivery drone for that, and it does the job cheaper. I told you: Automation will be the death of organized labor!}

Time to go home--there's a fast-moving delivery to the Minmus MOSS due for an SOI alarm in two hours, and Mission Control doesn't want to have to juggle between that and re-entering the Evans.

LKO VPA (vacuum perikerb altitude, or the spacecraft's closest approach to the target body if there was no atmosphere--which is just Pe as programmed by maneuver node) is usually programmed at around 30km for a gentle reentry profile. At transmunar or minmunar velocities it's raised to about 35-40km instead while coming in with fuel left in the tanks, for Another Very Important Reason which I'll get to shortly.

Once the deorbit burn is completed Wenby fires off a critical item on the descent checklist: PMP/VNT ORBTNK. "Pump and vent orbit tanks."

It's a checklist item that dates back all the way to the Cadenza. Anvin first transfers all the LFO from the Evans' rear orbital tank (R&S) to the central tank (Mk3 adapter), then opens up the Klockheed Martian (Smart Parts) fuel bleed valve to drain the central tank until only around 150 units of LF (and associated O) remained. This was to push the Center of Mass (CoM) as far forward as possible for reentry, while leaving a little fuel for RCS usage if needed. The reason behind this is also why the Shining Armor I (both base model and flyback) had to be powerful enough to stage the Cadance in the vacuum of the upper thermosphere, and no lower than that, and why the VPA for a Cadance coming home from Mun or Minmus had to be higher than 35km. 

That's because the Cadance (and the Cadenza before it) is a dangerously balanced compromise teetering on a controllability disaster. 

Fully fueled, the Cadance's CoM is behind the CoL. And all aircraft/spaceplane design manuals in this forum will tell you that this is generally, specifically, vaguely and otherwise completely a VERY BAD THING^TM. Especially that far forward and low, any attempt at atmospheric flight will directly lead to a flipout. The break-even point (where CoL ~ CoM) is where there's only around 112 units of LF and associated O in the central tank (and all atmospheric tanks are full). 

This is why excess fuel needs to be vented after committing to reentry. This is why a fully fueled Cadance can NEVER be staged in the lower mesosphere, let alone the stratosphere. This is why all abort procedures below abort-to-orbit (where descent to atmo is inevitable) involve locking the vents open at maximum drain while lighting the Poodle on full. And this is why a returning Cadance from Mun or Minmus (which will use aerobraking to bleed off lethal cismunar kinetic energy prior to committing to reentry), which will usually carry some fuel for orbital maneuvering prior to reentry, cannot have a VPA lower than 35km. As long as there's significant amounts of gas in the Cadance's orbital tanks, atmospheric flight will be ASKING FOR IT. 

Some designers argued that the Cadance's forward canard shouldn't be too far forward, and are pushing that a Block 2 version be launched pulling them (and the CoL) back. The main wings couldn't be pulled back any further: they'd strike the ground while flared for landing otherwise. That remains under consideration--the canards were placed forward in the first place to provide leverage for pitch maneuvers, even considering the large control surfaces of the main wing. But with the orbital tanks drained to 150 LF (and associated O), the Cadance as is is stable and gentle enough on reentry, so as long as the pilot doesn't pull any crazy maneuvers coming down.

At 60km altitude, the next important item on the checklist is ticked off: OPN ATMTNK. "Open atmospheric tanks."

The four chine tanks and two nacelle tanks are unlocked, ready to feed the less memetically thirsty but still THE THIRST IS REAL Panthers when they become necessary. And they become necessary in three scenarios:

• On final approach to the runway/landing strip, if necessary to control sink rate (in Dry mode);
• On a light KSC overshoot/undershoot, where in an overshoot the Cadance breaks into the KSC descending pattern to lose altitude (S-turns aren't generally used in reentry, due to the entire upper atmospheric stability issue earlier mentioned), allowing for a controlled descent if desired or needed, and in an undershoot the engines just carry her the rest of the way to KSC (both in Wet or Dry mode) and
• The worst-case scenario, coming down in the middle of some ocean. LKO returns (and the Trajectories mod) make it relatively easy to bring the Cadance down with reasonable precision, enough to deadstick it to the runway if desired. It's the Mun/Minmus return that was liquiding me off: with a minimum of one to two two aerobrake passes to bleed off speed, and a final reentry-commit with a cismunar AP sometimes still greater than 250km (so we're coming in hot), when returning with too little fuel to pull the Pe out of atmo so as to time the descent for KSC and still have enough gas to make the final deorbit maneuver, Trajectories predictions crap out like it's mild food poisoning, suddenly Cadance brakes faster than Takumi on the downhill, and it's "Land where it wants to, not where you want it." By the way, did I mention I hate soggy rockets spaceplanes not designed to operate from water?

So when a feet-wet high-energy impact is confirmed (usually when Trajectories radically retracts its prediction even while in the thermosphere), the crew puts the Cadance in Mode 3: prograde locked, high ballistic coefficient fly-in, fastest safe sink rate, and burning off the rest of the orbital fuel, to get to 12-15km with as high a Mach number as possible. In that regime, the Panthers in Wet mode are at their most effective (or so KER tells me), and the spaceplane preserves as much smash as possible to punch through the distance needed to get back to dry and flat land, before turning into a glider. Due to very unfavorable simulations of free Minmus return trajectories, all returns from there are now required to carry over 700m/s in the tanks after departing the Gabi for orbital maneuvers to avoid having to Mode 3, but sometimes one has to come home orbital tanks dry, and then there's no choice left. (Pictured above: NOT Mode 3. It was just a pretty picture of a regular reentry I wanted to take.)

Luckily, Trajectories behaves decently enough in LKO-return profiles that Mode 3 isn't necessary from that regime. Cadance will hold impact steady at around 25 degrees pitch; delicate maneuvers between 0 and 35 degrees pitch angle will adjust the predicted impact point. (At 40 degrees as seen here, the Cadance risks entering into a spin, but is still available at least in the upper thermosphere before aerodynamics becomes a worrisome issue. I was just being impatient.) 

 

Cadance initial approach, final approach, and landing:

Spoiler

 

Coming out of the mesosphere and into the stratosphere the Evans switches to initial approach navigation to descend into the KSC pattern (and MJ spaceplane guidance is activated for manual landing guidance). Yet even coming down into thicker air, the danger has not passed. With the CoM so close to the CoL even after draining the tanks, and with her uncoupled canards, the Cadance possesses the agility almost that of a fighter aircraft. And yet at the same time, she possesses the dimensions and mass of a school bus, even considering the upgrade from the snub nose of the standard Mk3 cockpit to the sleek lines of the hypersonic flight deck. Which means in the thin air of the stratosphere, the spaceplane will be fighting to maintain her course with every control input. Overcontrol will lead to spin departures, which can fatally compromise the approach to the runway. It was for this reason that her predecessor was equipped with jet engines to ensure safe recovery no matter how disastrous the initial approach. 

The lower atmosphere is no refuge either for a poor pilot. It is true that the same agility that was a disaster at higher altitude would only bleed speed without losing control in the thicker air, but novices can be caught off guard by porpoising, ruining final approaches and possibly leading to an unrecoverable stall. The jets again may provide a safety margin that has become so important lately in a risk-averse space program, but only a pilot attuned to the airflow over her wings, a gentle touch on the control stick, where spaceplane and pilot become one, can tame the Cadance in these dangerous regimes and unleash her true potential.

The Cadance is much like love. Treat her viciously, and she will viciously reply. But treat her with respect and gentleness, and you will go far beyond your limits.

Yeah. Light overshoot scenario. The usual procedure most pilots would follow is to just carry the overshoot, come around and take the KSC RWY 27 approach. But Wenby wanted a 09 MJ-ILS approach and she'll get a 09 MJ-ILS approach, f[yay!]dammit!

So the Panthers are ignited for the first time, and the Evans is brought around to the left-hand descent pattern. 

Readout is switched from orbital (m/s) to atmospheric (knots), because I'm more used to knots in atmo, blame years and years of FSX. Oh, and [EUROBEAT INTENSIFIES].

Coming onto the base leg, Wenby switches the Panthers to Dry mode. No need to worry about hillclimb power at this point. In fact, for power-off practice requirements, on the turn to final the throttle is cut.

On final approach, three down and locked, deadstick to landing. 

Nominal touchdown speed is around 85-100 knots. Closer to 50-60 knots is still surprisingly survivable, but you can kiss both the suspension and the tofu in the trunk goodbye _{you dishonor Bunta, you are not doriftoro master}. (No, there's no trunk, the Cadance is a pure crew craft.)

The other nice thing about the jets: instead of stopping in the middle of the runway and waiting for the tow trucks to arrive, the Evans can simply just taxi to the SPH, right through the doors, for immediate parking and servicing. 

 

And that's that. Two more pilots are certified to fly the Cadance, and a flyback booster's now been operationally proven and equally certified. And all that remains is michal's verdict, if this meets STS-1a.  But this is all the Cadance can get; being designed purely as a crew transport, she cannot qualify for missions above that. There is on the drawing board a Cadena-derived cargo bay-based transport design to carry assorted payloads (KIS containers, CxAerospace/Habtech modules, even a munar lander), which could be used for future STS attempts if CoM issues could be surmounted, but for now, this is where I leave the Challlenge. 

Bonus pic:

Spoiler

 

A file photograph of the Cadance OV/CDN-1 orbiter and her daughter lower-capacity counterpart, the Flurry Heart ATR* (Aerospace Transport, Reusable) OV/FLR-01 Katie Bell parked side-by-side outside the SPH one fine morning. 

_{* Yeah, actually it's a shoutout to alltherobots and his 1.0+ reusable crew shuttles on Reddit, which inspired the design for the Flurry Heart (and a desperate attempt to make this design unique so as not to violate any of alltherobot's authorial rights over his own craft).} 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2017 by B-STRK

[B-STRK]

Shuttle Challenge (v5) Mission STS-1b
Mission: Payload delivery to 80km circular orbit, Mullet Dyne (contractor).
First operational flight of Cadance-Regina annd Shining Armor-Conjunx variants.
Orbiter OV/CDN-03 Alehna
Boost Vehicle BV Shining Armor-Conjunx 

I guess I'm diving full on into the Shuttle Challenge v5.0 after all. This should be fun. I hope.

This post is rated T for Teen. And Speeding Mullet, I earnestly hope you may forgive me for having... uh... way too much fun playing around with the Mullet Dyne Fuel Pod deployment procedure. That was a very funny SNL skit to reference there.

@michal.don it's the same mod list as before, the only recent additions being DSEV for the orbiter's SAS ring and Universal Docking Port for the cargo mount.

Real-life mode: Funny how challenges have a way of motivating what was previously thought possible. People thought space was too big to be purely a private endeavor. Ansari X-Prize changed all that, and by way of a couple of lunch meetings now we have SpaceX _{(source: Julian Gurthrie (2016), How to Make a Spaceship: pp. 238-244, 318-319)}. Here I thought I'd be investing in spaceplanes only for crew and at most light KIS cargo, because it would be kinda cool to haul sixteen kerbals at a time to their inevitable doom, and because those were the suggested plans for reusable space craft to begin with: personnel taxis, save the cargo for expendables or a separate vehicle. How much had been spent on tearing the Space Shuttle a new one, for justifiable reasons, true, but also for the allegation that it was The Vehicle That Held Us Back From Deep Space^TM. _{Geez, Voyagers 1 and 2 feel rather neglected out here, guys...}

And now, look: however one may slice it, one has to admit that Elon Musk's BFR concept is the Space Shuttle concept writ large, new, and (hopefully) more reliable and affordable, and it has the potential of bringing to life (with only one vehicle family) almost the whole STS architecture that the Space Shuttle was meant to service in order to open up deep space. And there is no intention of it holding us back from deep space, either. And all it took was a challenge. _{And the passage of time and the maturity of required tech, and that SpaceX doesn't have to worry about Congress, yeah, fine, that too.}

Anyway, in-story mode: so did James Kerman, lead designer for Project EVANNA. He just wanted a cooler-looking Cadenza, so he reached out to N5, and the Program got Cadance. Then the Shuttle Challenge (V5) came along, and, well... 

Is this distracting the Program from finally getting its Duna aspirations going? Maybe... But the Minmus Orbital/Surface Shipyard is fully operational, already set to begin construction of its first interplanetary-class vessel, the window is still months away, and the Program's once again got a blank check (read: sandbox), so it's a welcome distraction. 

And at the end of it, we get a 40-ton to LKO capable cargo shuttle. And given the LKO and Minmus prop-depot and (thanks to Routine Mission Manager) Kerbin-based refuelling infrastructure already in place, cut that in half and it's 15-20 tons to anywhere in Kerbin space. Meet OV/CDN-3 Alehna, the first of the Regina variant of Cadance, pictured here just out of an atmo-flight certification run. 

A new variant of the shuttle (and at 40 tons) did require a new launcher. Or a Shining Armor variant, since both James and Wernher von-K were both stubborn about systems reusability. Try as they might, they could not get one boost stage to do it all. Tests like the pic above showed that five SpaceY Rattites (replacing the nine Moas from the baseline SA, and thus incorporating the core of the existing Sparkle and Shimmer cargo launch vehicles from Sunshooter) needed the extra outrigger tanks to give reasonable dV, but that and the two Wyverns would be so heavy that the entire shuttle-booster stack would have a TWR of 1.37, without cargo. Strap-on boosters would be needed if any cargo were to be loaded, and Flight Dynamics still hadn't figured out the parachute settings to get them to reliably and safely open before hitting the drink. 

Ultimately, the new Program Director (after two feckless successors following Sunshooter's Christina Kerman) put his foot down: F@*& 100% reusability. If the Program has to burn money in solid boosters, then it burns money. Solids are cheap anyway compared to the Rattites and Wyverns. So the Shining Armor-Conjunx (SA-C) "at least this part is reusable" _{passive-aggressive mode} booster variant was born. And who knows? Maybe Flight Dynamics can figure out how to reef the chutes. (Or maybe it has to crowdsource it, I dunno...).

Required pre-launch shot showing the loading of the 40t Mullet Dyne Fuel Pod, with its resource tanks locked, and a down-shirt shot of the stack and the SpaceY solid motors needed to give it sufficient TWR and dV budget boost. And speaking of that fuel pod and it's special on-orbit activation procedures:

James Kerman: "Here are those special on-orbit activation procedures Mullet Dyne sent over, Gene."

Gene Kerman: (reading over the list handed to him) "Really? These are the procedures?"

James: "Don't look at me. I got the phone call to pick them up over at the 2462 office. Then I called for confirmation, and they said, 'Look, it's all in the list, just follow it.' I'm not the reason why it's weird."

Gene: (sigh) "I'll send it over to Samene. Too bad Val's off commanding the Gabi; this mission's tailored for her... ahem, sole needs."

James: "Don't let Val hear you say that." 

Of the thee veterans of the Elcano Munar circumnavigation, lo these eleven version releases ago, two have gone back to space long-term: Marliana Kerman taking command of the Truscott in LKO-175, and Leevy Kerman commanding one of the build teams on the MOSS base at Minmus. The one still grounded was pilot _{and kerbal of sometimes questionable music choices} Samene Kerman, who still hadn't found her niche in the successor unnamed Space Program (considering Jeb got the experimental Deep Space Habitat, and Val got the MOSS orbital component). So taking command of the Cadance ascension project for the Shuttle Challenge was a relief for her, to get back into space doing what she loves (and occasionally gets scared of). 

40t launch procedures for the Cadance-Regina are the same as the base ADCAP variant: full-thrust, roll-launch-azimuth, pitch 10 @ 50mees, lock , monitor and manage pitchover to 45-by-10k. 

Unlike the regular SA-IF, though, the stronger Rattite engines at this stage (even more so considering the boosters) require a throttle-back to 2/3rds once TAp=40s (slowing down the climb rate). If it was the SA-C alone, in a no-cargo launch, the throttle would be left at 2/3rds until the TAp=50s checkpoint. With any sort of booster, the pilot has to pay attention to the TWR and pitchdown rate, throttling back even more if necessary to maintain pace.

Depending on how the initial ascent went (and how long they are tweaked to burn), either the solids have to be staged before the TAp=50s mark, or after. Otherwise, the rest of the ascent is the same as with Cadance ADCAP: At TAp=50s, TWR to hold TAp (around 1.4-1.6).

At BV SA-C stage dv=300, pass on the command to clench buttcheeks. @ dV=200, smoothly (not press Z) max throt to StECO. (TWR--and max G-force--at StECO will be a fricking 4.0 on the meter. Hence the buttcheeks.)

The Regina variant's stronger Vectors, though, mean that the pilot doesn't have to pitch up upon staging to arrest TAp drop unless the ascent was really screwed up. (TAp will still go down, especially if the Vectors haven't been retuned for the heavier weight, but it won't go down past 55s with a good ascent.) Pilots can even take a cue from Gravity Turn, and progressively throttle back to 20% power as TAp starts climbing past 50s again, for efficiency.

With the extra dV budget from the solids, the SA-C has further to fly than his base model predecessor. (A launch with a booster-less Shining Armor-Conjunx will end up on the peninsula, which means that any cargo flight requiring boosters (practically all of them for any significant tonnage) will be passing the peninsula.) _{AUTHOR'S NOTE: same deal as with STS-1a, michal, Shiny flights were capped before reverting to launch for the Cadance follow. Maybe I should get FMRS... does it hit performance significantly?}

Darn good thing there's a lot more gas to play with. The remote pilot can even afford a couple of Felipe-Take-The-Wheel departures from controlled flight while still being able to make it back to KSC.

Without pumping the remaining fuel from the periphery to the center tanks and balancing between the two, this Shiny variant tends to be more finicky in atmo than a startled kitten. (As damn maneuverable as one, too, thus increasing the risk of spinouts.) Having transferred and balanced, he's as stable as a rock. So stable, in fact that wrench-into-a-turn-back-to-KSC takes about a minute or two to complete, half of it flying the wrong direction. But still, more than enough gas to get home via a nylon letdown. (Shame about those solids, though, even if they're just metal tubes at the bottom of the ocean now. Need to work on those chutes.)

And here we are, at the end of circularization, 80x80 within the required tolerance limit (about 49 meters give or take). Except Alehna's AP had been mysteriously dropping a tenth of a meter every couple of seconds... Is there some phantom force haunting this shuttle's design? Was it the Near Future Airlock recessed into the Wild Blue instrument ring and the N5 cockpit? Is it in the Mk2 engine pods blended into the OPT wings? Or perhaps the autostrutting of the air intakes to the cockpit, providing root-to-tip triangular bracing for the engine pods? Is my game haunted by the spectre of lost kerbals past? To paraphrase from one Quasar's excellent Duna (mis)adventures, AM I BEING HUNTED FOR SPORT? Should I upgrade to 1.3.1 to cleanse myself of these horrors?

BSTRK: (Looks at list mods to be updated to 1.3.1, there are many) F@*& no, not yet anyway.

Orbiting to daylight (and a few RCS bursts to keep the Ap-Pe tolerances within requirements), opening the cargo doors reveals the precious Mullet Dyne fuel pod, its contents untouched. It's just a matter of undocking from the cargo mount at the rear bulkhead, and RCS down to peel away and take station a short distance. Okay, about those "special on-orbit activation procedures"...

Mission Specialist Newvin Kerman gets the short stick, and pops out of the airlock. Co-pilot Seanburry Kerman sysops him through the procedures.

Seanburry: "Okay New, peel out the solar panels port and starboard."

Newvin: "Panels one and two out and charging."

Seanburry: "Now bring radiators one, two, and three online."

Newvin: "Done, and done. What next?"

Seanburry: "Hmm... okay, now head on over to the front docking port... and kiss it."

Newvin: (after a moment of stunned silence) "You said what now?"

Seanburry: "Kiss the front docking port."

Newvin: "Should I take off my helmet or is glass-to-port contact acceptable--no, seriously Sean,  WHAT THE FREAKING HELL?!"

Seanburry: "It's what's written on the list! It says it's a very sensitive device requiring highly-precise orbital positioning and delicate activation procedures! I mean the next step is to caress the ore tank's skin, asking what dinner it would like--"

Flight Engineer Meglie Kerman: "What the heck did they send us up with, a blind date?"

Seanburry: "Tickle its left fore RCS port with your breath--"

Samene: "Beg pardon? And also, eww?"

Seanburry: "And compliment its rear docking port. Apparently, according to this list, it's only polite to do all this when YOU WAHNT TO DOO LAHV TO EEET!!!"

At his crewmates' stunned and a little horrified looks, Seanburry protested: "The list says to pronounce it that way!"

Samene: (, feeling like she's been taken for a loop with one of Leevy's looppy moments again) "Too bad Val's not here right now, she would have loved this attention to detail."

Mission Specialist Fredwell Kerman: "Don't let Val hear you say that."

Samene: () "Anyway. Crystal Palace, Alehna, can you read stats on the pod? Before things get any weirder?"

At Mission Control (callsign Crystal Palace)

CAPCOM: "Alehna, we have good read on the pod, Alpha at eighty, five-thirty-two-point five, Papa at eighty, five-nineteen point seven, well within the 100m required tolerance limit, and all systems nominal. Wait one." (to Gene, off-mic) "Complimenting the rear docking port?"

Gene: (long-suffering sigh) "Look, it's what the list says."

CAPCOM: "And James said it was coursed through the the 2462 office, right?"

Gene: "Yes, and--oh. Oh." (facepalms)

CAPCOM: "Yep. Been f@*&$% by Danny all over again."

Gene: (shaking head) "We'll confirm later with Mullet Dyne if those were the procedures, and if we need to take the 2462 office out of the mail circuit. _{By the kods, are we just playthings for some supreme being's silly amusement?} Otherwise, if the pod's nominal, let's get them home."

CAPCOM: "Roger that. Alehna, Crystal, come on home."

Gene: "Really, too bad Val isn't commanding this mission. If this was a classic Danny prank, she might have have appreciated the joke."

CAPCOM: "Or not, knowing her. Don't let Val hear you say that."

Same reentry procedures as the base Cadance model, although this time what is drained is primarily the oxidizer: only a little (about 600 units) is left for Vector burns in upper atmo and RCS. LF is drained only to lighten the load, but generally not necessary unless very little LF had been burned since staging. Given a potential 40t downmass mission, or a screaming reentry from Minmus, every margin of safety (in both landing weight and available fuel) is necessary. Speed is life. The good news is that, with a longer fuselage and fore-and-aft-mounted fuel tanks for weight shifting, the Cadance-Regina does not share the fuel-laden CoM-CoL weakness of the base variant. 

Surprisingly, post-burn Trajectories predictions were way off the mark: early reentry saw the impact marker pull back away from its setup point, the west coast of the KSC subcontinent, like ten degrees longitude back or something. Then it started pushing forward so much that, by the time Alehna left the mesophere, it was hovering north of Airport Island. What gives?

Replaying the mission tapes (read: loading the reentry save point and doing it all over again) revealed the answer: the OPT wings were generating lift. At upper atmo. Remember the definition of the Kerman line? "Above which, an aircraft with lift-generating wings must travel faster than orbital velocity to generate enough lift for level flight." Methinks these wings could defeat even that, given the chance. 

Okay, maybe that was exaggerating, but then again, should Project EVANNA be surprised? They took the wings off of a parts list for SSTO aircraft. Of course they'd be optimized to maintain lift qualities at the high-alt hypersonic regime. So to hypothesize, high up, there's enough lift that an up-angle hits the brakes due to vector drag, and at the mesosphere, even before the engines light up, there's enough lift to almost glide at reentry velocity (at times, the vertical speed was noticeably pulling up from negative towards zero), hence the dramatic push-forward of the projected ground-interface point, no matter how up-pitched she was.

Geez, first, the phantom forces sapping Ap, then superwings. THIS is why a jet engine was included in the design, fuel and engine weight penalties notwithstanding. The things you don't expect... Speaking of which.

An unexpected catastrophe, averted with quick, if desperate thinking. Coming over KSC at >8,000m and >600 m/s Samene pulled Alehna into a supposedly gentle left-hand turn for a 270-fly-out towards the initial approach fix for KSC-09. Supposedly, though, because the Alehna skidded butt-into-turn, and then entered into a 9+g spin. Had GLOC been enabled, this would have knocked the crew out for a few moments _{(real-life: and so was I anyway, trying to get a handle on the situation, so that's three seconds out before reacting)}. While the crew flipped their tray tables to the panic  position, upon regaining her senses Samene (who was no stranger to flipouts and spinouts, having encountered a gamut of them nursing a heavy rover circumnavigating the Mun) immediately punched full throttle on the Wyvern to power out of the recovery (thank goodness stock KSC doesn't model engine inlet turbulence! Does it?). This pic was taken after stable flight resumed, one thousand meters and almost five hundred m/s down. 

At least that's one way to hit the brakes over KSC. Fredwell, bring Seanburry his brown pants.

Well, a kerbal will not look a gift pony in the mouth. If we're gonna be this high and this slow over KSC, might as well do a deadstick. Coming out of the spin, Samene cut the throttles back to zero, and entered into a spiraling descent to the final approach fix, the standard circle-to-land KSC approach profile for flying bricks. At no point after this was the throttle touched, showing that under reasonable circumstances (40t downmass might fall under "unreasonable") the Cadance-Regina can also do deadsticks as well as any other shuttle out there. Except for the entire spin-out in upper atmo, of course. 

At this point, jets on a shuttle aren't a load, they're a safety feature. Phantom ghosts stealing orbital altitude, wings on fire, and upper-atmo wipeouts, yeah, safety feature. Throttle still wasn't touched since the spinout, though. Enough velocity to land. _{DISCLAIMER: Admittedly the dV-current readout of KER changes between this screenshot, the last two and the next; the only way I can account for it is that the Wyvern's performance and endurance predictions change with altitude, with KER adjusting accordingly.}

Control Tower: "Alehna, you're good on final, set her down, and remember, landing's always the most worrisome part of the flight."

Crew: ""

Samene: "Tower, DID YOU HAVE TO BRING THAT UP YOU S#!*?!"

Okay, maybe a little too much velocity on landing; Alehna bounced once on her gears before Samene settled her three on the floor. (I really need to find the right suspension settings to absorb high-load impacts--again, 40t downmass. Crap, I also really need to find the right suspension settings for the Mun, things are getting too bouncy up there. Not to mention Minmus. HOW DO DAMPERS WORK ANYWAY?)

And that's all Samene wrote for now. Where once the Program thought "Eh, doing a cargo shuttle with its necessity to account for CoM shifts with different payloads, larger vessel to account for, have to tie payload to cargo bay size, I haven't even gotten the hang of parallel staging yet and oh my god I am not angling shuttle engines to parallel stack CoM leaving them useless in post-staging level flight unless they had alternate gimbal-snap settings just like KSO and I think there was a mod for that for stock engines, I can't do any of this at all?", now all they're thinking is "Okay, now to build a cargo rack for satellite launches for STS-2a, and what's the optimum transfer orbit to launch them into KEO?"

Oh, and also "Don't let Val hear you say that." Ever since the CAPCOM on her Minmus mission during Sunshooter brought up the fact that all her exes thought she was impossible, she'd been rather... testy about social activities lately. _{Then again, whatever race, creed, gender, or relationship preference, or even in this case species, one must treat one's beloved right if YOU WAHNT TO DOO LAHV TO EEET!!! just like flying a shuttle in upper atmo, hypersonic regimes.}

Edited October 8, 2017 by B-STRK

[B-STRK]

Shuttle Challenge (v5) Mission STS-2a
Mission: Payload delivery (x3) to keostationary orbit, strict spacing, spin-stabilization on launch
Orbiter OV/CDN-03 Alehna
Boost Vehicle BV Shining Armor-Conjunx Alpha Unit

Real-life mode: It's always the little things. Rubber sealants and cold weather. Fragile structures and foam at velocity. Electrical parts rated for the wrong voltage operating in a high-pressure gas environment, built to make it impossible to inspect. Hatches. Valves. Shorts. Computer programming. A fleck of paint. Imperial measurements vs. metric measurements. If you catch it in time... well, but if you can't... 

Ambition, resource constraint, the pressure of politics and the profession, sometimes you go (sometimes sadly, sometimes unwillingly, sometimes fatalistically) with what you've got. Prudence dictates one does what one can under the circumstances to mitigate all known possible risks. Pride dictates one takes the ride, despite the risks. Still, it's the little things...

Image courtesy of Resonant Orbit Calculator by meyerweb
(and yes I am aware that there's an input error of .10m/s, actual mission below is run with the correct figures)

In-story mode: And as it was for the Regina variant, it was caught on time. Its Delta instrument ring, originally sized for Size 3 fuselages but also possessing a Mk3 variant, did not have the same Mk3 thermal capacity rating. Simulations of reentries from a keostationary altitude showed that the thermal shock would take the ring to its limits. Which meant a good chance that a Minmus aerobrake would melt the part clean off--and as it was a structural linkage, it would take the rest of the vehicle with it. 

This meant a rebuild of the Alehna to uninstall the ring (done as well with the next Cadance-Regina orbiter under construction), with the effect of delaying STS-2a. Of course, the downtime didn't mean a slacking in activities:

Engineers tested the fit of various payloads and modules for use in orbit:

Spoiler

Additional live-fire surface and in-orbit tests of the launch cradle to be used in STS-2a were conducted;

Spoiler

The payload for STS-3 was being assembled;

Spoiler

A new variant of the Celestia-NARGL roundabout was launched towards the MOSS complex at Minmus to address her predecessor's shortcomings, most notably not having enough Snacks! to feed throughout a journey (Leevy Kerman's crew's transit took longer than the standard 9 days due to a direct orbital rendezvous adjustment, leaving them practically starving to death fainting by the time they docked at Gabi);

Spoiler

And B-STRK spent a few days posting Bane NO I DID NOT. I MAKE PRODUCTIVE USE OF MY TIME. _{(Then what do you call your KSP playing time?)} Er, legal research?

Obligatory on-the-pad image for Challenge requirements

Eventually, Alehna's rebuild was completed, and she was pressed into service once more for STS-2a.

Back in Sunshooter, the automated spacecraft team Project ALY didn't have much to do. Most of the fleet was kerballed to begin with, only the rare automated resupply modules and tending to parked (orbital or landed) spacecraft being their duties (most of the unkerballed landings on the Mun were remote-dropped by pilots in situ). 

Nowadays however they occupied much of Mission Control's time: the Kerbin relay and mapping system, a similar network now on fast-launch interplanetary cargo transports heading to Duna in preparation for the upcoming Duna expedition, remote surveyor probes, the automated supply craft, the automated station tugs and tenders, expendable Swing-Role Vehicle tug missions, as well as alternative automation integration for all kerballed crafts in the fleet. This made its Project Director Courtney Kerman a very busy kerbal, with opportunities like leaning over the rail of the VAB rooftop watching Alehna's ascent with Josh Kerman (Project EMILY) and James Kerman being very rare indeed. 

Josh: It's your first, isn't it?

Courtney: Mm-hmm. 

James: And you want it to go perfectly, don't you?

Courtney: Yep.

Josh: And you want everything to be safe, right?

Courtney: Undoubtedly. 

James: So do you know your partner?

Courtney and Josh gave him confused looks.

James: Wait, we're not talking about--Oh.  My bad. Sorry. We're talking about the mission, right?

Courtney: (wryly) Yes, and thanks for not butting into my private life. My first geostationary constellation. Setting up the timing for the polar relays are child's play by comparison--and that's why they were the recommended option when all the ground stations became available.

James: Agreed, especially since your original mission profile was projected to melt Cadance into pieces. 

Josh: Which hopefully has been resolved.

James: Yes, all hot surfaces are Mk3-rated thermally now. But that won't be an issue with your new launch profile, right Court?

Courtney: Five hundred clicks is a lot closer to Kerbin than two million six hundred, and it's well within Alehna's dV budget even without the extended duration tank. And hopefully we'll get the same degree of precision as if we used the Cadance as the KTO bus. 

James: That's a lot of maths involved.

Courtney: (shrugs) Not too much, resonant KTO to KStO are pretty much settled maneuvers, it was only just a question of how to get there from five hundred, and the longer timing without the bus. We are cutting it too close to the SALT's launch with this mission, and Mission Control hardware doesn't do time-shares.

James: Yeah, but still, maths. And the funny thing is, of the five Project directors in the Program, there's only one who can't do the calculus in their head.

Courtney: (with an edge in her voice) Ahem. 

James: (oblivious to what he's walking into) I mean, even you admitted it in your admission interview, in college you were more likely to be found shopping at Kodeo Drive than shopping for graphing paper. What was it, a C in trigonometry, a D in advanced algebra, C-minus in Kartesian geometry, successive F's in advanced calculus exams before you squeaked a C in the finals-- AYIEEEE!

James looked down and right to see a technical pen jammed straight through his side. 

Courtney: I did get an A in creative writing.

James: (painfully) Yah, I see your point. (groans) I think I'll go visit the infirmary now.

Courtney: (smiling) Yeah, you do that. See you later for sat-launch.

As James hobbled over to the VAB roof deck elevator, Courtney turned to a horrified Josh, who raised his hands and blurted, "Hey, hey, you were brought in by Christina because of your mission architecture and project management skills, doing the calculus in one's head wasn't the employment qualification _{please don't hurt me}..."

Courtney: (happily turning back to watch Alehna going downrange, as the solid boosters are staged) Well, at least you know what the score is.

One nice thing the enforced downtime allowed for was tweaking the chutes for booster recovery. So now the Cadance-Shining Armor stack was back to 100% reusabilty/recoverability. At least for this launch. (If any future launches required larger and longer-burning boosters, it's back to square one.)

Upon Shining Armor-Conjunx's StECO, this was his projected trajectory, which was similar to (actually shorter than) that for STS-1b. Which meant that the SA-C could do the flyback to launch site for STS-2a as well, and not have to press to transoceanic recovery. (Again, a higher energy launch, higher staging velocity would take SA-C past flyback range, meaning he would fly on to the alternate recovery site at the shoreline nearest north west of the KSC Harvester Massif facility.) Appeal to Caesar: Which is why, @michal.don, hopefully I didn't have to do the flyback on the assumption that it could and therefore did?

Alehna's target altitude this time was a 500km prking orbit. This time, TCA was brought online for orbital maneuvering, as MechJeb proved to be... too heavy-handed for precise maneuvering (it kept on bobbing the Cadance left and right in increasing frequency and intensity as it corrected for errors). The price however was that TCA works by modulating differential thrust, thus requiring the Vector to be unlocked to their full power. 3g maneuvers were the order of the day. 

And on orbit to daylight, the crew opened the payload bay doors to reveal the newly-developed satellite launch cradles, the Kontainer (2.5m) cluster-derived extended duration tanks, and the embarked Cupcake micro-relay satellites, designed as an emergency, quick-deployable Kerbin-wide relay constellation should the SPIKE high-eccentric polar relays break down.

Each microsat (as per Challenge requirements) is capable of spin-stabilzed launch--which led to the decision to have them LFO-driven rather than ion-driven as is the case with existing Peewee munar relay sats already in use. Since the only thing keeping the launch straight was gyroscopic forces which would degrade over time from changing center-of-mass from the burn and from existing micro-imbalances with the original spin burn and satellite construction (again, it's always the little things...) ALY designers wanted to keep the burn under spin-stab as short as possible. Of course, it only had to be for one burn. After that, the probe core's own attitude control system could be brought online for course correction burns.

At Mission Control, with Courtney, James, the other Project Directors, and the Program Director in the overhead VIP gallery):

Courtney: (briefing on what was about to go down; the following takes place continuously independent of actions taking place as depicted in screenshots) Since James didn't want to put the Block 2 Cadance-R orbiter through anything strenuous for her first flight, that ruled out taking the Alehna to resonant KTO (keostationary transfer orbit, with the Pe set for a nearly four hour orbital period) as the delivery bus. So instead, we designed the Cupcakes to do most of the delivery work for us, hence its fifteen-hundred dV budget. The satellite becomes its own transfer bus. 

Rabert Kerman: Crystal Palace, Alehna, satellite cradle's at launch orientation, T-minus-thirty. 

Courtney: Upon launch the spin motors kick in. Stage interlocks prevent us from starting the main engine until two or three seconds later, which actually is a good thing as earlier tests blew up the staging mounts even from those tiny Sparks, which have a habit of screwing up the launch if not the launch cradle. And we'd rather not ignite the motors until at least most of the spin rockets' burned out and the decoupler's momentum has carried the satellite off the blast pad.

Courtney: Anyway, once the drive kicks in, the Cupcake has sufficient gyroscopic stability to carry it through the burn, about ten to fifteen seconds worth. Any more than that, and burning under deteriorating precession could ruin the transfer. Once the burn to KStO's spitting range is complete, the reaction wheels are brought online for despin and fine adjustment. 

Relay #1 in place

GUIDO: FLIGHT, GUIDO, final course correction burn complete, Relay-01 is as close to KStO as it'll get. 

FIDO: (sotto voce) _{And Kraken's [urine], that was a [reproductive act] to pull off, even with the motors dialed back to 0.5.} 

Courtney: The first one's taken straight to KStO (keostationary orbit, abbreviation to distinguish from the KSO, the earlier-proposed "Kerbin Shuttle Orbiter"). Once it's there, that's where the real magic begins.

Programming Relay #2's launch burn

Courtney: To achieve the launch timing needed for a three-sat KStO constellation, the Alehna's navigation systems are programmed to rendezvous with the first Cupcake, and her engines are ratcheted up to the satellite's TWR, about 2.61. This tells us when to launch the second satellite.

Rabert: Burn countdown T minus five, launch Two.

Payload Specialist Richmon Kerman: Spin motors good burn, fifty percent remaining.

Rabert: Stand by for KStOAB (KStO altitude burn)... mark.

Launching Relay #2 (kinda hard to see the Separatrons firing, being set to such low thrust)

Same procedure as #1. Burn under spin-stab to KStOA, bring react wheels online and despin, then altitude and inclination correction burns either manually conducted from Mission Control or programmed by on-board MechJeb, and then...

Programming Relay #2's circularization/orbital timing burn

Courtney: To achieve the orbital timing, an apoapsis burn is programmed around the time of rendezvous to bring the Cupcake to resonant KTO. 

Josh: Thus making the satellite its own transfer bus. I see. 

FIDO: KStO burn on #2 terminated.

Gene (FLIGHT): Understood, CAPCOM, set Alehna for #3.

Courtney: The same procedures happen for the third Cupcake, except this time the rendezvous target is Relay #2.

Programming a minute and a half of hasty panic (aka Relay #3 launch timing burn)

CAPCOM: Roger that. Alehna, Crystal Palace, program #3 for the burn.

Rabert: Understood, Crystal Palace. Bringing Mechjeb online, setting rendezvous, mark for burn at T-minus one and a half minutes... one and a half minutes?!

And thereupon did the crew of the Alehna, in attempting to achieve launch readiness in record-breaking time, unwittingly reenact almost verbatim or at the very least capturing its spirit _{(read: I paraprhased the exact conversation, changing the words as necessary to fit the present circumstances)}one of the chapters of the Quasar Duna Reference Mission (which I am citing here with the proper link for reference as a matter of academic rigor, professional courtesy, mandatory proper attribution, and honestly that was a riot of a mission for Quasar to conduct and for me to read and I highly recommend for the comedy value _{poor, poor Asicca Kerman}), as follows:

Flight Engineer Hilrey Kerman:  Oh no, what do we do, what do we do?

Richmon: Run the checklist, hurry!

(SFX: keyboard clacking, beeps, computer printouts, cows mooing, helium disks bursting, muffled "for science!", muffled "Idiot! We're doing orbital profiles, not science!")

Rabert: Thirty seconds to burn point! Warm up spin igniters! Pressurize the turbopumps! Point launch-prograde! Hurry, or we'll have to wait another synodic period to launch!

Hilrey: 

Catden Kerman: Wait,  aren't we low enough that it's only a few hours away, more or less? Why hurry?

Rabert: And KERONIMOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Courtney: Same thing: rendezvous to launch timing under spin-stab, burn to KTO period timing under reaction wheels. Triple-constellation KTO-dive orbits take a satellite two hours ahead of a prior satellite launched by the same bus, which is why Relay #2 is targeted for #3. 

Relays #1 and #3 in KStO; Relay #2 not quite there

FIDO: Final burn on Three complete, KStO.

GUIDO: FLIGHT, orbital readouts on the full constellation read--_{oh poopie}, Relay Two is off by a tenth of a mees.  I can program a retro off-tangent correction burn to nudge it into place, but that will take place about an hour from now, and we are scheduled to sysop the SALT launch on Minmus about fifteen minutes before that time.

Gene: Understood, GUIDO, let's put the Cupcakes to sleep until--hold up. Are those transmission lines on the readout?! I thought this launch was supposed to be dummy test units?

Courtney:  Oh, crap. We delivered operational units. Operational, funds-costing units, when we already have a relay constellation in place, with the intent to deorbit the dummies after the conclusion of the challenge mission.

Josh: I thought we got a blank check again.

Courtney: I know, but we're not supposed to be encouraging any bad habits.

Gene: (shouting up to the gallery) Courtney, what gives?

Courtney: (shouting back) We're not the ones that loaded the Cupcakes into Alehna.  JAMES?

James: Don't look at us, the launch cradles were delivered to us by the contractor already loaded! 

The Program Director: (epic facepalm) Apparently, I have another contractor to kill. Or, more likely, shove a grenade up his bumhole. Are you guys sure you were able to confirm the payload before launch?

Courtney: (another long suffering sigh) That's the problem with designing the dummy test units. It's the same avionics, it's just the relay satellite that's supposed to be the dummy. But the telemetry signal from both the satellite avionics and relay net are on the same frequency, so one can't tell from signals analysis alone. And the units were delivered to us sealed in the launch cradle, so we can't take them apart for confirmation. _{Read: If there were dummy/inert parts like NRAP I'd gladly have used them as though I didn't have the funds to burn  on reentry. I don't like encouraging bad habits either. Except for excessive dV on interplanetary, that is NEVER a bad habit as far as I'm concerned.}

The Program Director: Kodsdammit.  And to think we're having a contractor grind the mirror for STS-3 as well, which means I have to check that out before it's too late Okay. I'm off to rip heads apart. Always the little things... You guys can manage the SALT, the correction burn, and Alehna's landing, right? (Project directors nod) Good. Time for me to give Mort a heart attack.

All relays in KStO (I think?)

After taking off some minutes to launch a planetary system mobile refinery and ore/LFO tanker from the MOSS base, and then doing the correction burn for Cupcake #2, this is the final result. Good enough for government work. Wonder if it's good enough for the Shuttle Challenge? Oh wait, there's the matter of landing either at the KSC runway, the Island Airfield just off of KSC, or at any Kerbal Konstructs airport. _{Verbatim quote}

One nice thing about having all extra gas is that the Alehna can be brought down to park at 170km, near Truscott's 175km orbit, before committing her to reentry from there to Pe=30km. Not only are the reentry stresses reduced, but as the Cadance-Regina is being purposed for station logistics, and since 175km was long determined by this Program to be the optimum altitude for an LKO Home Station, this meant that the Cadance-Regina had to prove herself capable of at least this reentry profile.

Same deal as before: Aim Trajectories for the western shore, balance fuel tanks (thankfully, no need to drain, as enough fuel had been burned by all the orbital changes), pull in solar panels and turn on the monoprop fuel cell, and keep things steady until the troposphere.

And Crystal Palace, boy do we have a PROBLEM.

Upon reaching around 35km altitude, Alehna started sideslipping from even at low angles of attack (<20 degrees pitch up).  It got more pronounced the lower she got, and of course, attempting rudder corrections led to adverse rolling which also needed correction. The crew tried deploying the rear control surfaces to induce a forced pitch-up while managing the rudder manually, but by 25km all the forces acting on the shuttle caused it to porpoise... phugoid... look, it started becoming REALLY bumpy. So much so that the crew was fighting to maintain stability as Alehna rolled one way, then the other, too busy to retract the tail control surfaces while bouncing about like (x-1) little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell down and broke his head THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BE SINGING THAT SONG!

Pictured: three perversely happy crew members. Not pictured: barf bags.

And I honestly don't know what you guys are happy about! I mean, Richmon, you were frowning on landing, what part of a high-g supersonic flipout DO YOU NOT FREAKING UNDERSTAND?! And I think Hilrey was screaming "Pull the tail flaps back! Oh my kod pull the tail flaps back you [mulch]-headed [kerbal anatomical part being the structural mount for the Snacks! nutrient process byproduct solid waste disposal orifice] holes!" throughout this--you guys are not supposed to be happy when other passengers start screaming on the intercom! OR ME, FOR THAT MATTER!

One adverse consequence of that 10,000-meter high rollercoaster ride was that instead of a happy glide to around 5,000-6,000m @ KSC for a circle-to-land _{in order to meet Challenge requirements, come on, I was aiming for Commander here!}, enough speed was bled so that Alehna came down in the hills between what was alternatively called by other Program Directors in the Kerbal Multiverse^{(patent pending)} the Krash Mountains/Whoopstoolow Mountains/the OhMyKodWeAreGoingToKIA! Mountains, and the Kerbal Space Center. Which was honestly irritating enough that Catden was supposed to have been shaken from the experience as she punched the throttle to get some additional airborne time out of the Wyvern, if she wasn't smiling like a deranged masochist throughout said rollercoaster ride. So instead, it was I who was shaken throughout that rollercoaster ride as I punched the throttle to get some additional airborne time out of the Wyvern, about a nine second long burn.

Okay, maybe a couple more seconds of burn. Three tops.

Made it back to the runway safely (flight performance characteristics were uncharacteristically stable in the troposphere), but was still too shaken to bring Alehna to parking and just let her coast and brake down runway (mental note: must increase brake strength on landing gear), and finally Catden, you show SOME concern after an eventful reentry. To Flight Medical with you for psychological examination! And maybe for a dissection as well _{what's wrong with you?}. In the meanwhile, Project EVANNA engineers and the Pilot Corps scrambled all over the orbiter to find out what went wrong with what, considering STS-1b, was supposed to have been a run-of-the-mill reentry.

&&&

INVESTIGATION REPORT, PROJECT EVANNA, STS-2a REENTRY ANOMALY
First distribution: Program Directorate
For public dissemination after 24-hour hold

Spoiler

 

There were really inconclusive answers dug up from the research literature. Taking out the Delta Instrument Ring did shorten the Cadance-Regina Block 2 model slightly, but the change to the CoM would not have led to any flight stability issues allegedly. Though, the dihedral removal being considered post-STS-1b did not push through, so some investigators pointed to this as a culprit. But the same dihedral was in STS-1b, and while Alehna was twitchy then, she displayed neither the stubbornness towards pitching up at 40km, nor the dutch rolling from 35km back then as she did now. And the only three differences between STS-1b and STS-2a are (1) the higher altitude reentering from (170km vs. 75km), (b) the Block 2 model's shorter length due to the removal of the Delta ring, and (cuatro) the launch cradles and extended duration tank in the payload bay--and pumping the remaining fuel in that tank to the orbiter's main tanks was supposed to take care of that weight shift problem. 

Further investigation, however, pointed to the payload bay as a potential problem. A BIG potential problem. For some weird reason that even the most agnostic (let alone atheistic) of kerbals attribute to the Kraken, there are some instances when the cargo bay is not doing the job it's supposed to do. And that makes a world of difference with the Cadance-Regina. When the bay's shut, aerodynamic analysis shows predictions for stable flight across all pitch regimes. With the bay open, naturally the craft becomes unstable due to drag, as seen in the photo above. Obviously all atmo operations have the payload bay closed. But to reiterate, something is happening behind the scenes that is causing a closed bay to behave as though it were open, which would obviously ruin Cadance's day. None of the flight data from STS-2a however conclusively indicated if this was the case then, but it could be another likely culprit. An empty launch cradle does have high drag characteristics owing to all its exposed connection nodes, as noted by researchers elsewhere. And something had to be generating those extra drag vectors from the fuselage captured by the flight recorder at the 25km altitude mark, which hadn't been present (or had it been all this time?) during STS-1b.

More disastrously, research also suggests that the bay can have the effect of crippling the aerodynamic characteristics of any flight surface using it as its backbone. Which the wings and the engine pods are. And not even the most advanced of kerbal sciences can peer into that quantum level of observation known as The Game Engine to tell when or whether this would happen. But all the sciences can tell you that lift suddenly disappearing when it's supposed to be there is A Very Bad Thing Indeed. Heck, even popular literature explored the same thing, as evident by the same malady befalling the intrepid crew of Kuzzter Kerman's first magnus opus. The Pilot Corps is already rioting over the prospect of said malady happening to them.

Before STS-3 is launched, it may be necessary for a new Block number for the Cadance-Regina, which while it won't depart from the previous Blocks' form and part count, might have to remount all lift-rating surfaces off the cargo bay, pull back the Center of Lift even further to account for a Kraken attack on the cargo bay, find a way to control the high-altitude sideslip, and finally reduce or eliminate the dihedral, lest one day the combination of drag, asymmetrical lift, adverse yaw and rolling, and bad luck cause the unwanted. And then test her through a 175km reentry. Good thing there's that second orbiter on the build line to play with. 

Again, it's always the little things. 

 

James P. Kerman
Project EVANNA Director

 

 

[B-STRK]

Interlude #1
Mission: Tame the Cadance-Regina's reentry instability
Orbiter OV/CDN-04 Bridget Riordan (orbital); OV/CDN-03 Alehna (Blk. 2 investigatory flight tests)

It wasn't the CoM-CoL relationship, it wasn't the drag issue, it wasn't the dihedral, it wasn't any of it. All the simulations still showed uncontrollable roll exactly at the mesosphere-to-stratosphere transition range, 25km-12km and the 2,000 or 1,500m/s-to-900m/s drops. That meant diving into further literature. A lot of further  literature, all with varying experiences, analyses, and solutions. All of which could probably be debated to Hell Kraken and back and still leave me with questions about Cadance-Regina's vulnerability. Which ironically enough is shared by many of shuttles in the cited research literature. 

 

In-story mode: So Team EVANNA decided to step out of the simulator and into the atmospheric soup. Alehna was modified to carry a probe core (the old unkerballed control system in Block 1 was taken out along with the co-located instrument ring), loaded with only liquid fuel, and the governor on the jet was taken off. The only risk being to the orbiter now, she was taken remotely to the upper atmosphere for test runs.

One had to admit, the OPT wings are maybe too OP in terms of lift generation--not that I regret it. No, really, it does make the Cadance-Regina less of a flying brick, especially on approach and final. Also, engineers spotted one problem: the canted rudders were generating asymmetrical forces on what ostensibly was a steady course.

Some of the literature did suggest locking all rudder surfaces to yaw-only. It was not known how applicable this was to V-rudders intended to serve for additional pitch authority, hence why pitch was left on with them. NOT ANYMORE. (At least, not anymore under ordinary circumstances; the lock can be released for additional authority where warranted.)

To simulate--as best as possible--reentry conditions the Wyvern at max power was blasted during the climb to push the apoapsis to the thermosphere, about 25km up, and coming up the stratosphere a slow pitch down in order to maximize horizontal velocity while keeping the Ap up. It didn't do much for simulating LKO reentry at the mesosphere, given the suborbital trajectory (and once the Wyvern cuts out at 20km), but at the meso-strato transition, full thrust can push Alehna into the Mach 3+ regime therein. And that's where an answer was found. 

The lifting body.

The flank engine/fuel pods were angled so as to smooth out the body-wing transition, and because they could provide additional lift at lower altitudes, improving Cadance's glide characteristics. (And they look [oh dear, the young impressionable kerbals] cool, to boot.) But their anhedral lift, as well as that from the ventral tail strakes, conflicted with forces from all the other control surfaces. Every time Alehna was thrown through the transition phase, the slightest roll played merry havoc with the pods' generated lift, deepening yaw and roll forces, and eventually overcoming the little dihedral the otherwise OP wing could offer. 

It made sense, in fact. The observation was that anhedral lift under these atmopsheric characteristics tends to improve craft roll responsiveness compared to level or dihedral lift, at the obvious expense of stability. At the transition phase, Cadance-Regina became naturally vulnerable to spin departures. (Ironically, those pods gave her the annoying rock-hard stability all the way to landing, but perhaps this is because the other lift forces could now constructively contribute to it). 

This was probably something a compensatory fly-by-wire system _{Atmosphere Autopilot} could handle. However, and this despite the otherwise blank check available to the Program, FBW integration was adjudged beyond the administrative capacity of the Program to integrate _{I'm not sure if my processor can handle the calculation load AA requires for active stabilization, on top of all the demands made on it already. Fine, it's an i7, but it's a 4th gen laptop i7, 2 cores only, natural speed 1.4 and jumps to 2 only on boost, and as it's also my work and study laptop I did not want to risk frying it}. 

You know, the body pods does give Cadance the frontal profile of the F-117, and it did require FBW to fly as it did. Maybe I should have seen it coming. Maybe it's Maybeline. Either way, it's time to eliminate the angle on the engine pods. Pure vertical, no more uneven-lift worries.

Wernher von Kerman: And you do not like it, James, young man.

James: Yah. I'd be losing body lift on approach, streamlining...

Wernher: All outweighed by the costs. But these, they do not bother you as much, ja?

James: She just doesn't look the same.

Wernher: Ah. I see. Let me tell a story. My dreams of space exploration upon first coming into your country, remember?

James: Yeah. Highly inspirational, by the way, it's why I signed up for the Program. 

Wernher: I thought winged rockets, shuttles, carrying kerbal to space, to the Mun and to Duna. It was what any reasonably imaginative kerb of my time would imagine, as it was only the early days of flight. It was beautiful to me. And when Sunshooter finally came, to take us to the Mun, what did I propose? What was my dream which you carried into reality? Very much something like my first ever rocket for the local rocket club: a metal tube with a cone on top.

James: But it got the job done.

Wernher: And it was beautiful to me. James, form follows function and function follows form, but in both cases they are beautiful in their own right. Some will say that a winged shuttle is more beautiful than a capsule, and some will say the capsule is more beautiful. But form and function, function and form: you lose nothing either way. 

James: (sigh) That's true.

Wernher: (clapping James' shoulder sympathetically) And when she returns from space, as you and I have designed, you will find her beautiful nonetheless.

James: No objections there, old man.

Wernher: Good. Now, I shall be in the commissary, I do desire a donut or two, if you would join me?

James: Go ahead, I'll follow.

(After Wernher's departure)

James: (wistfully) Yeah, it's still a change. But she'll still be beautiful to me, nonetheless.

Public Announcement Speaker: THIS IS A CODE ORANGE, REPEAT CODE ORANGE, VON KERMAN HAS BROKEN INTO THE DONUT SUPPLY AND IS STRIP-TEASING ON THE CAFETERIA TABLES!

James: Ah, not again, I should have gone... dangit. (Picks up cellphone and dials a number) James to the contingency team. Load up tranquilizer guns. We have a Code Orange... No, it's not like the last time he went on a sugar rampage where he thought he could fly like a bird, this time impressionable young kerbs may be at risk. 

Public Announcement Speaker: MY EYES, THEY BURN!!!!!!

James: See what I mean?

Apart from rotating the engine pods to 90 degrees to eliminate all angular, dual-axis lift forces (now they are purely axial, along one axis), the Block 3 model also rotated the ventral strakes similarly for the same reason, added ventral rudders after those strakes to reduce adverse roll on yaw and pull the Center of Pressure (CoP) back even further, actually increased the dihedral a bit more (rather than taking it off), and gave the front canard small positive incidence to improve stall behavior. Also, all lift surfaces were mounted off of the cargo bay, as a just in case. This time, it's the second, newly-built Regina's turn to be flung through the atmosphere, the Bridget Riordan, while her sister ship underwent the Block 3 modifications.

The CoM/CoL coupling was adjusted only so that a dry Block 3 with the cargo bay open would be borderline stable (in case the cargo bay drag glitch occurs again), so as to retain relative stability across a wide range of cargo loads. As to the debate of coupling them close to maintain maneuverability or pulling the CoM far forward to fight what some have identified as transverse body lift/drag, at least TAC Fuel Balancer and Cadance-Regina's forward fuel tanks could be used to adjust the balance on the fly.

And Bridget was thankfully stable, at least in the high supersonic regime. There was still a bit of dutch rolling as her nose was pulled up, but she remained more or less controllable. (What's pictured is a test of whether the Bridget's roll would escalate in a banked attitude, as a test of stability.)

The additional ventral control surfaces complimented the V-tail rudders well, smoothing out yaw forces. Leveling out the engine pods also stabilized their flight characteristics. 

She could even fly like a hypersonic aircraft now--and that was something to consider later on, in the real acid test. 

And--since this was also Bridget's certification flight--Program engineers decided to see if she could safely ditch dead-stick in the ocean.

And by the Great Murphy, she could, touching the water at a relatively gentle 40m/s, the wings helping much in controlling descent rates. And the loss of the pod's body lift not even hurting the glide characteristics much either. _{I think.}

The acid test, however, remained: the full brunt of LKO reentry. 

For this one, it was decided that Bridget's (and Block 3's) test flight would also be a resupply mission, in order to maintain fidelity with operational conditions. Samene being the most veteran pilot still based on Kerbin (Jeb and Val out on assignment), she'd be the one to nurse Block 3 through her paces.

The cargo in this case is 45 tons of fuel and oxidizer to top off Station Truscott's tanks. 5 tons heavier than the Mullet Dyne pod, and to a higher orbit, but the booster was smaller than in STS-1b, so that the orbiter would burn off more fuel for the ascent, again simulating a high-performance mission like the earlier keosat launch.

Jumping ahead to rendezvous here. Samene happily brings the Bridget alongside the Truscott, ready to dock and transfer her fuel loads to the station. And here I realize just how big the Cadance-Regina is, we're talking Shuttle Orbiter-ISS proportions here. I mean, the cargo resupply port for the station's at the middle of the complex, the Cargo Kontainer Payload Module for the orbiter's got an extendable docking port for that purpose, and even then it looks like it'll be a tight fit. Might have to retract the station's solar panels to prevent any unfortunate accidents. 

(Don't worry, she docked without clipping anything. Damned close thing, though.)

This is what happens when you design your vessels to complement each other, join a challenge that compels you to design a new variant of one vessel, see the promise offered by that variant, then try to see if that variant will be compatible with all the other existing vessels, which were NOT designed with your new variant in mind. Sigh. At least resupplying Gabi at Minmus might not be too much of a problem, her docking ports are mostly out of harm's way.

Anyway, on to reentry. One characteristic of the Regina variant, as observed in STS-1b, is that in a 25-30 deg. AoA profile, she actually manages to climb during the first part of reentry. It's not too dissimilar to the Apollo CM's reentry profile, where towards the end of the first phase it executes a shallow climb.

Research also suggests that reentry angles throughout be limited to that 25-30 degress AoA. Makes sense, wouldn't want a control surface stall to interfere with control recovery. Mechjeb's CoM/CoL tracker is also brought online to keep track of their changes as Bridget is maneuvered and fuel is pumped to and from the forward tank.

Funny story. At this point Bridget started rolling a bit--nothing too violent, but it did catch the crew's attention--after which Clauwig pumped gas to the forward tank to pull the CoM forward. At 30,000m, Bridget's nose then started pushing down hard, resisting Samene's attempts to keep her up. Clauwig then rebalanced the tanks to push the CoM back, improving pitch authority, but that's when Bridget started rolling left as Samene tried to bring her nose up.

Disaster city? Not quite. It was a surprisingly lazy (though still uncounterable) roll that put Bridget on her back. More importantly, no adverse yaw effects, very little sideslip, and the nose simply returned to prograde instead of flipping towards retrograde, or otherwise dancing all over the place like Alehna a mission back--and this was after rebalancing the tanks to push the CoM back. Again no stranger to letting spacecraft settle on their backs instead of fighting it, Samene happily--and I do mean happily, did Leevy's unrepentant badS joy rub off on you while you were on the Mun with her Sam?--rolled Bridget right way up. 

And that's when it hit the EVANNA designers _{and me, actually hit me}. The Cadance-Regina was already acting as though it were already in the post-reentry, flight control phase. In fact, that was the entire point of the Mode 3 Deep Dive Contingency Reentry developed for Cadance ADCAP: to switch immediately from reentry profile to hypersonic glide profile if needed to extend range. Research also found that a lot of shuttles did have the tendency to nose down towards the latter phase of reentry. (And so did the actual Shuttle Orbiter). It's just that the Cadance-Regina did this EARLIER, at a HIGHER altitude, and FASTER than those other shuttles.

Why (and more importantly, why in stock atmo)? One hypothesis: maybe it was the fact that even as other flight surfaces were not yet able to bite hard in the thin atmo and thus give their full control authority, the OPT wings (and thus majority of the lift force reflected by MechJeb's CoL marker) were already generating so much lift aft of the CoM. It's not likely that the forward canard stalled; Samene wasn't pulling up when the nose started coming down. It also should be notable that, unlike Cadance-ADCAP (and stock Shuttle clones capturing the wing planform with the strakes and Big-S parts), apart from the canards the Regina variant has no additional forward lift surfaces generating lift in front of the CoM to balance against the OPT wings. The result's a lot of leverage aft of the CoM. And pulling the CoM forward only exacerbates the tendency, because that leverage is increased.

Maybe that's the reason. Maybe there's something else in the research literature that I'm missing out on, and that there are other factors that better explain what's going on, having to be already nose in even before leaving the mesosphere. Maybe we should consider the Cadance-Regina as in-flight already early on, thus bringing the full consequences of her pitch stability predictions into play even while it was too high to breathe. Maybe it's Maybeline. What's really heartening is that, from the start of the entire dutch rolling-nose down-roll-over-recover events described above, Trajectories' impact prediction never changed much, just coming down over the mountains and into the rolling hills before KSC. And this was after the pre-reentry impact point being set to the middle of the Western Ocean to account for the expected glide forward due to Bridget flying (not just reentering) in upper atmo, as observed before. She's become predictable. 

At the point Bridget noses into prograde, she's already flying a Mode 3 profile. And by the time she comes into the stratosphere, while she's not out of the woods yet, she feels more stable and controllable. It worked. All the research worked. Leveling out transverse body lift feeding into sideslip-induced form drag asymmetries. Improving yaw stability with ventral control surfaces. Freely moving fuel to the forward tank and back on the fly to modify the relationship of all the spacecraft's physical Centers. Additional limits to control authority to prevent them from stalling. And finally, just letting the nose ease down (at 25km to 15km) instead of trying to maintain a reentry profile all the way through (and causing an adverse roll). Like Flakbadger on Reddit said (and I quote): I've got my shuttle back. (Now you do too.)

Fine, the debates about stock aerodynamics and how to make shuttles work will continue, can't avoid that. There are a lot of good people with good experiences here, and it's bound to draw a ton of competing hypotheses. But what's important is that Regina's back, baby! _{I think.}

Okay, coming down short, let's burn the engines a little, Sam, get us onto the runway. 

I said a LITTLE, Sam. 

KSC Tower: Bridget, Tower, two-and-thirty on the ball, you're coming in too hot!

Samene: I know, Tower, I just burned the engines a little! 

KSC Tower: THAT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A LITTLE, SAM! Float her down!

Samene: Wait, I got this! Deploying brakes and gear. I think I can set her down on the glideslope nominal. 

By the time the Bridget Riordan crossed the RWY 09 threshold, she was still at 180 knots, well above her 100-knot programmed landing speed. Still tracking the glideslope to landing, Sam yanked back as hard as possible to kill the orbiter's downward momentum, but it was still enough that she bounced hard on her gears, jumping up about 40 meters and she was still above landing speed. Thankfully, nothing shattered on the bounce, but yeah, this was very awkward.

Muneny Kerman: OW! I think you jammed my butt into the bucket seat, Sam--if you didn't jam my spine into my pelvic bone instead. 

Samene: Yeah, yeah, I know. 

Clauwig Kerman: Nominal approach, my crushed ["posterior"; alternatively, "unpleasant person"]. 

Samene: Alright, fine, I should have floated her. You know what? That's one thing I miss from the earlier Block models: with the engine pods angled, there was a hell of a lot more float to go around. But look on the bright side: at least the landing gear didn't give way. 

Muneny: I wish they did. I actually felt soil push itself out of my soilhole on the bounce. 

Clauwig: IS THAT WHAT I'M [in the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight/a-weema-weh a-weema-weh a-weema-weh a-weema-weh] SMELLING?!

Mental note: reset dampeners higher on landing gear. And take bleach to Muneny's seat.

[B-STRK]

Shuttle Challenge (v5) Mission STS-3
Mission: Payload delivery and orbital construction of Dreamwalker Space Telescope to ~575km ~26-deg incl. orbit
This mission is also rated PG-13 for language and boyish attitude
Orbiter OV/CDN-04 Bridget Riordan
Boost Vehicle BV Shining Armor-Conjunx Alpha Unit--you think it's time to commission a new SA-C?

So the mission now is the orbital deployment and assembly of a space telescope. Hmmm, no biggie, the old SKYBARY from Sunshooter involved many of the same components as STS-3, so it should be old hat for the old hats at Mission Control: inclined deployment, orbital assembly... and reenter and land at KSC, the Island Airport, or any Kerbal Constructs runway from that inclined orbit? Maybe I should have installed Kerbal Constructs--oh, no the laptop can't take it. It can barely take launching this more than 200-part stack with decent frame rates as it is. Okay, there is that, considering Sunshooter used capsules. And everyone in real life lately has been in love with capsules _{well, except for Sierra Nevada, GO SNC!}. I wonder if I can revisit the virtues of orbital and reentry capsules... let's see, ah here it is. The Book of Armaments, Chapter '81 Verse 4/12:

Spess shutls rul, spess kapsuls dro0l

WHO THE FREAKING HELL WROTE THIS PUERILE--gah, alright, fine, [rude word] this, let's figure out how to get this done the hard way:

&   &   &

Vertical Assembly Building 
Carlisle Kerman (Project KRISTEN) and Courtney Kerman (Project ALY)
supervising loading of Dreamwalker Space Telescope into payload bay of OV/CDN-04

 

Courtney: You know, C, your CV does stick out like a sore thumb. Philosopher, pastor, physician, pedant, aeronautical engineering... meat packing?

Carlisle: (calling out to crew) Pull that rebar in closer! They're the only things in between the telescope and the solar panels. (conversationally to Courtney) Well, when the economy enters a downturn, one tries to get by as one best can, under the circumstances. 

Courtney: Talk about being overqualified for a position.

Carlisle: Desperate times, after all, and all that. (once more to crew) That's it! Right there, you can weld it there. (back to Courtney) There were many whose education and upbringing destined them for the office desk, but instead the times landed them with a plow or pickaxe in their hands--if not the panhandler's cup. It was the ugly truth that the economic chaos left us then, along with the Roaring Twenties--

Courtney:  The Roaring Twenties?

Carlisle: (evasively) Or something like that. Après nous, le déluge: it is sadly a historical trend throughout the ages that the gluttony and gorging among the gilded in the years of plenty often presage the years of great want and greater turmoil--especially when those gilded built the foundations of their wealth on the sands of speculation, or worse, lies. But at least from times of want I learned how to take advantage of every nook and cranny in a tight space, whether it be the insides of a procedural fairing, or the hollows of a USI Kontainer.

Courtney: Or a Mk3 CRG-100 payload bay, with a space telescope whose dimensions max out said payload bay. Especially since we need room up front for kerbals to exit with a US wedge on their backs... do we really have to do an orbital assembly for the telescope? 

Carlisle: Challenge requirements. I had Elcano; James wanted Shuttle V5. And the Dreamwalker's sensitive enough to need orbital assembly. It's the price of admission.

Courtney: Well, lucky for him you happen to have a talent for stuffing meat into meat sacks--_{Kod, that sounds wrong...} But yeah, you know what I mean. 

Carlisle: Well, it does take time. Years... decades... _centuries--

Courtney: You said what now?

Carlisle: (evasively) Oh, look, the VAB staff have accomplished their tasks. I'm off to report to the Director then. (heads towards Administration Building)

Courtney: (running after Carlisle) Whoa, hold up, C! This is an open-source agency, we're not supposed to be hiding secrets from each other here!

Conference Room, Mission Control
T-minus two hours

Again, the obligatory pad shot

Gus Kerman, Operations Department: (in a very accusatory voice) Whoa, whoa, whoa!,  you guys NEVER cleared a higher-energy launch with me before you put the Cadance stack on the pad!

James Kerman: (in a very defensive voice) Hey, the only thing we agreed to clear by your desk was the stack weight, not its delta-V capability!

Gus: You forgot the deal included booster return profiles. Those are my teams out there handling the recovery, and I'm supposed to be the one to give them the heads up!

Samene Kerman, Chief Test Pilot, Cadance Ascension Program _{newly-appointed, now that it's a full-on program and all}: Yes, and that's why we took the opportunity and alerted both the KSC and downrange teams for you for a potential recovery.

Gus: P-potential? You guys never figured if you're doing a flyback or flydown profile for the Shining Armor, did you?  Good kod freaking--in all my years in the Progr... Do you guys even do your homework before launching? 

Samene: (slams hand on table) YES!!! (slams other hand on table) Okay, maybe not perfectly, and maybe not thoroughly, and maybe I'm willing to admit that half of the time _{or maybe even more than that} I was supposed to be studying in college, I was playing Kommand and Konquer instead--BUT IT GOT ME THROUGH CHEMISTRY 311 SO DON'T KNOCK HOW I STUDY! _{(Author's Note: #TrueStory, though change Chemistry 311 to Physics 201, and "half the time" to "for two hours before every freaking exam." I have very bad habits.)}

James: Besides, we're the masters of winging it. Sunshooter, remember? Half the time we were just making up the flight manuals as the spacecraft flew. 

Gus: _{I swear to kod, you guys are going to be the...} Okay, James, how are you winging this?

James: Okay, last time we did something this high-energy was STS-1b, and the comedown was about five hundred fifty clicks off KSC--and we still have plenty of gas left. And we have ETA timers on both range-to and delta-V remaining. So, if we're downrange by more than six hundred clicks once the Shining Armor is out of reentry, we check the ETA vs. delta-V. And if that looks like we're not going to make it, we abort the flyback, we flydown to the Southern Launch Alternate Recovery Site and recover with the downrange team. Also, if flight altitude drops below ten-kay meters, we flydown. Speed drops below Mach 1.5, we flydown--little chance of flyback making it in either of those regimes. 

Samene: But we WILL make flyback, Gus. The math checks out.

James: _{Oh sh--, don't do this, Sam.}

Gus: Oh really, the math you DIDN'T check out, as you just admitted, more like? Fine. Make flyback and I'm paying for the Pilot Corps' Snacks! daily pigout for one month. You DON'T make flyback, the Pilot Corps'll be keeping the SPH and VAP immaculately spick and span for an entire TWO months. And oh boy, are the Ops crew going to be SO busy those two months.(hock-a-loogie into palm) Spit-shake?

Samene: (hock-a-loogie into palm) Oh, you are SO on. (spit-shakes)

James: _{Oh sh--maybe it's not too late to draft my resignation letter?}

Mission Control Room (The Pit)
T-plus 31 seconds

CAPCOM: Roll complete, on launch azimuth, pitchover to downrange run. Bridget, how you?

Mitner Kerman, Mission Commander: Crystal Palace, Bridget-Actual, systems nominal, me not so much. 

CAPCOM: You got this, Mit. First time for everything, even the command seat. (looks up to the gallery) Oh look--well, Mit, I guess you guys can't see from there, but anyway--all five Project Directors are here to watch us today.

Source: I don't know about you guys, but I think it's IN THE [wow this got past the FCC] SHIP!

GUIDO: (to FIDO) Well, that isn't an ominous sight at all. 

(among the Project Directors lined up at the gallery)

Josh: (looking at his fellow directors) We're not creeping them out, are we?

Mitner: Entering mesosphere, heads-up roll executing--

Marsha Kerman, Mission Engineer: Mit, hold roll. Crystal, solids cutting out.

CAPCOM: We copy, Bridget. 

FIDO: Solid motor cut-off. Staging... solids clear of stack. Good chutes. 

CAPCOM: (looks behind him) Alright people, heads up, Program Head Director, arriving, with us in the Pit. (back to Bridget) Bridget, clear to proceed downrange, continue gravity turn.

The Program Director: Eh, don't mind me, just here to watch. (saunters by Gene) All good down here?

Gene Kerman: (looking up at the Project Directors in the gallery) Nominal so far. What brings you over?

Director: Oh, nothing much, just thought I'd see how the Dreamwalker assembly goes off.

Gene: You're just here for the bet and you know it, Nathan.

Director Nathan: You, me, and everyone upstairs, and you know it, Gene. Five funds they don't make flyback?

Gene: You know I don't gamble with kerbal lives, Director.

Nathan: The booster's unkerballed, Gene. 

Gene: That's why I say the bet's on, Nathan. 

BOOSTER: Flight, stack entering 200-max throttle. 

Gene: Back to work, boss. Understood, BOOSTER. Prepare to stage. Booster flyback, stand by.

Samene: Roger that, Flight. (pats remote recovery pilot Manand Kerman on the shoulder) You got this, Manny. Remember: that's one month free Snacks! for all of us, or two months cleaning up after Ops' crap. All on your shoulders. But you can do this!

Manand: (dryly) Yah. No pressure at all. 

BOOSTER: 3, 2, 1... StECO. Sierra's out. Staging... Cadance OMS active and on full, separating.

CAPCOM: Bridget, Crystal Palace, booster's cut loose, you're in the clear.

Mitner: Acknowledged, Crystal Palace. Bridget's released, commander's aircraft. 

NETWORK: Flight, NETWORK, FMRS telemetry on Shining Armor active. 

FIDO: Handing off Sierra responsibility to FMRS controller and the recovery pilot; Samane, she's all yours. 

Samene: Thank you, FIDO, NETWORK. Manand, you're on!

FMRS _{(pronounced "femurs")}: Flight, FMRS, main chutes on the solid rocket boosters read full deploy at 1,000 meters, no anomalies. We've got them, Gene.

Gene: Alright, inform the ocean recovery crews. 

FIDO: Flight, the Cadance is norminal, straight and level, lowering throttle for economic push to apoapsis. 

FMRS: Shining Armor reentering atmosphere. Ground track is good.

Manand: Uh-oh.

Samene: What up, girl?

Manand: This was a higher-energy launch, right? 

Samene: Yes, higher staging altitude, higher staging velocity. Why ask that now?

Manand: Because I'm getting really elevated skin temps on the booster probe core right now. 

Samene: How elevated?

Manand: It might pop, and we lose him. 

Samene:  And the heat shield?!

Manand: (confused) Er, it's not there?

Samene: (to gallery)  JAMES POOPHEAD KERMAN!!!

Gus: (rubbing his hands in glee) Oh, this gonna be good!

James: Oh... I'm so screwed.

Josh: Oh boy, the pilots are going to hate you forever, Jimmy. 

James: (to Samene) Pop the brakes, pop the brakes!

FMRS: Flight, FMRS, tracking Shining Armor, predicted impact in the Southern Continent Mountains region.

James: (worriedly) Whoa, that's really far.

Samene: I don't know if we can make it back from that far...

Gus: (hopping about in place) Oh, THIS gonna be good!!!

FMRS: Whoa, Flight, Master Alarm on the Shining Armor, starboard ventral airbrake just vaporized from reentry heat!

Manand: He's still steady on reentry, but losing deceleration rate!

FMRS: Second airbrake just popped, port ventral unit!

Courtney: Well, there goes 100% recovery.

James: (all but leaning over the gallery railing, while Carlisle and Josh are hanging on to him to keep him from falling over) PULL THE BRAKES IN! FOR THE LOVE OF THE GREAT MURPHY COOPER WHO GUIDES US TO ALL SORTS OF CONSEQUENCES PULL THE FREAKING BRAKES IN!!!

Gus: (dancing all over the Mission Control Pit now) OH, THIS GONNA BE REEEAAAAL GOOOOOOOOD!!!!

FMRS: Shining Armor entering stratosphere, cooling down, 640 kilometers from KSC. Readying procedures for flyback, altitude turn thirteen thousand--

Samene: Belay that order. Manny, hard right and punch it, NOW!

Manand: Executing powered turn--holey Koledo, he's changing course like a beached whale on molasses. I need more atmo for this maneuver!

Samene: No time! Unless you want to be Ops' Cleaning B[would you like some calamine lotion for that skin irritation?] for two straight months?

CAPCOM: Language, Sam, this mission's going live on KerTube!

Gus: (dialing a number on his cellphone) Ralph? Gus here. Tell the girls and boys they don't have to worry about making a mess--no, really, I won't rip them a new one for mucking up the place this time. We're gonna have the flyboys in little Krench Maid uniforms for us all the next two months!

(audible cheer heard going up from the direction of the VAB)

FMRS: Shining Armor at eleven thousand meters, still falling, course 180, ETA KSC is eighteen minutes, ETA to dV burnout sixteen and a half. 

Samene: FORGET THE TURN MANAND, EASE OFF THE BANK AND PULL UP!

Manand: We're still heading south, Sam, away from KSC!

Samene: AND THIS WILL ALL GO SOUTH FOR THE PILOT CORPS IF WE FALL BELOW TEN! PUUUULLLLL UUUUP!!!!

Gus: (going all around Mission Control, handing bewildered or bemused controllers celebratory cigars)

James: (banging head on VIP gallery railing)

Courtney: (sympathetically patting James on the shoulder) Nice knowing you, friend. I promise I'll try and recover what's left of you for a proper burial after the Pilot Corps' through with you. 

James:  Not helping, Court.

Mitner: Crystal Palace, Bridget, MECO and coasting to circularization, how are things down there?

Samene: (grabbing CAPCOM's headset) YOU SHUT THAT PIEHOLE OF YOURS UP MIT IF YOU WANT WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU WE'RE BUSY SAVING EVERY PILOT'S BUTT FROM BECOMING OPS' B[still like that calamine lotion?] DOWN HERE!!!

CAPCOM: LANGUAGE, SAM!!!

Mitner: 

FMRS: Altitude now 12-kay, speed holding stable at 1.7 Mach; no wait, speed starting to climb. ETA to burnout climbing.

Manand: Phew! Understood, resuming turn.

Gus: (audible brakes screech as he suddenly retracts a celebratory cigar from INCO's waiting grasp) Wait, what?

Samene: Oh, okay, Mit, we're still busy here and things are starting to look up sorryaboutscreamingintoyourearokaygottagonowbye! (shoves headset back to CAPCOM's hands) Okay, get back to the turn and punch it, Man!

Courtney: (patting an increasingly hopeful James on the shoulder) Welcome back to the land of the living, James!

FMRS: Shining Armor now on course for flyback recovery. Speed Mach 2.4, altitude fifteen thousand. ETA to KSC 12 minutes, ETA to burnout... nineteen and climbing!

Manand: Okay, cool, I can dip down to gain some speed, will pull up at angels twelve, and we'll still be in the flyback regime. We're in the clear, Sam!

Samene: Damn straight! Way to go Shiny!

Gus:  (source: midichlorian conception and Natalie Portman-related wangst)

Gus: (dials number on cellphone) Screw my last order, Ralph. Get the KSC recovery team ready... and get the cleaning shift working on the VAB NOW!

(audible wailing heard arising from the direction of the VAB)

James:  (source: press Y/Triangle)

James: Nice going, Sam! Almost thought we lost it there.

Manand: (sotto voce) _{Yah, especially since it took all of seven minutes to complete the turnback. No more bets next time, Sam, please no more bets.}

And this little piggy went oui, oui, all the way home. (Not pictured: The Lamentations of the Operations Department, Chapter 3, Verse 26/18. Which is primarily composed of a couple of sad Taylor Swift songs, and ruminations thereof. Please, don't ask.)

Bridget circularizing to orbital sunrise at 575km altitude, 35 minutes after liftoff.

With an inclination of 26.5 degrees. Yeah, that should do it. Oh and nice timing coming off the burn, we're now in daylight. Time to get to work.

The Bridget crew opes up the payload bay to reveal the Dreamwalker components, and the PONE-KMS units.

Mitner: Alright, bay's open. Edrigh, Gemman, time to PONE up.

Edrigh: What the... are you saying you're going to kick my [posterior], Mit?

Mitner: What? No, Edrigh, I--oh. USI-PONE-KMU, Edrigh, PAPA-OSCAR-NOVEMBER-ECHO, KILO-MIKE-UNIFORM, Umbra Space Industries-Derived Puttering about in an Orbital, Non-atmospheric Environment, Kerbal Maneuvering Unit, you dillhead, not PAPA-WHISKEY-NOVEMBER! 

Edrigh: Alright, alright, I got it, no need to pwn my [posterior] about it.

Edrigh: Getting into these things is a bit of a tight fit... (SFX: squeeeeeeeeze... POP!) Ow! Barely got my helmet through that gap.

Gemman: (settling into her KMU, after a tight squeeze of her own) I really like these PONEs. With this roll cage they got, they have an industrial feel to them, like in that movie with the mean scary alien, what was it called again? "Get away from her, you b[again, would you like calamine lotion?]"

CAPCOM: GEMMAN WE ARE ON VOX! (sigh) Bridget, Crystal Palace. PONE-1 and PONE-2 good on air-to-ground _{especially PONE-2 and Gemma's potty mouth}, begin the operation.

Mitner: Got it. PONEs stand by for payload release. Marsha?

Marsha: Unlocking payload clamps on Dreamwalker core unit. Universal Docking Port in the green, all latches released.

Mitner: RCS, pushing down. 

(SFX: material scratching noises)

Gemman: Mit, hit the brakes. I think the telescope's stuck.

Mitner: (KILLROT/KILLRELV) What? Crystal Palace, Bridget, halting release procedures, the payload might be stuck. 

CAPCOM: Yeah, yeah, we heard Gemman on the air-to-ground. Wait one. (to gallery) Carlisle?

Carlise: Can you get a telemetry link on the Dreamwalker? Maybe if you can shake her a little, she'll come loose.

Courtney: Wow, you really packed that telescope in tight. 

James: That's what she--(withers under withering glare from half of Mission Control)--sorry. Completely uncalled for. 

PAO (Public Affairs Officer): (shaking her head) The Prograde Ethics Majority kerbals are going to hate us by the end of this mission, I know it.

NETWORK: Flight, yeah, I think we can do it from here, chief; the Bridget's not equipped for remote control without a relay anyway. Linking up now and... got it. Beginning pitch and roll oscillations. 

Gemman: I can see it, Crystal, she's coming loose, keep it up... she's out!

Mitner: Alright! I can see the core module off our canopy edge... okay. Executing pullback and pitch down, preparing to capture the core module with our docking port.

Lemfal Kerman, Mission Pilot: And we have capture. Good thing Courtney included a service docking port so we could latch on while working on this.

Mitner: Definitely. Makes it easier to work when your workplace doesn't float away. Wait a minute... Oh crap, Court screwed up the port installation.

Lemfal: How so... (looks out the canopy) oh. Crystal Palace, Bridget, tell Courtney she installed the service port ninety degrees out of phase. The solar wing construction port's hanging over the payload bay!

Courtney: Oops.  My bad, my bad. 

(Gene gives Courtney a baleful look as Director Nathan facepalms)

Edrigh: Crystal, PONE-1. I think it'll be okay, we can maneuver clear of the wings when they're installed, and a change of procedures: we don't weld and deploy the solar panels until after we cut the telescope loose from Bridget. That way the panels don't hit anything coming out. Or we don't hit the panels coming out, either way. 

Mitner: I agree. Alright, moving on. Instrument installation. Marsha, you're up.

Stepping outside the airlock, Flight Engineer Marsha Kerman retrieves the DMagic + Universal Storage optical telescope wedge from the equipment locker...

... and mounts it in the Dreamwalker's instrument bay. She repeats the process for the Multi-Spectral Imaging wedge, before returning to the airlock to await the next step.

Mitner: Okay, PONE-1 and -2, you're up. One by one now.

Edrigh unlatches from the PONE saddle...

... pulls out one of the Dreamwalker Space Telescope's Solar Array Wings...

... and brings it over to dock with one of the USI Weldable Construction Ports on the telescope body. 

This clears the way for Gemman to unlatch...

... and grab the second Solar Array Wing, and bring it to the remaining Construction Port.

The job finished, Edrigh then unlatches from the Solar Array Wing...

... and slides into the payload bay to park his PONE at its saddle. Also, gotta love the docking port's magnetism, all the PONE pilot's gotta do is close in and be at the right attitude, and the system just pulls the PONE in and takes care of the rest. Same goes for Gemman with PONE-2.

But before they could leave, as mentioned, Bridget has to cut loose from the telescope first, else any moving traffic slam into the fragile photovoltaics. Marsha once more steps out into EVA, to clean up loose bobs and bits from the telescope, such as the grip end effector/Jr. Docking Port, and the mini-RCS ports that stabilized PONE maneuvers with the Wing latched. Parts count conservation, you see.

And finally, the Dreamwalker Space Telescope is let loose into the wild, as the Bridget backs away from it. 

NETWORK: Flight, NETWORK, DSN reports uplink with the Dreamwalker. Control software has initiated automated orbital checkout, remote welding pyrotechnics are warmed up and awaiting go command. 

Gene: Okay. The command is given. And you are clear to extend solar panels afterwards. (to CAPCOM) Their job's done, time to wrap up.

Mitner: Okay, crew, the DST's off, PONE-1 and PONE-2, you are clear to dismount and return to orbiter.

Edrigh: Understood. Exiting PONE... Er... Okay, gimme a bit, it's a tight squeeze... (pushes his helmet through the roll cage) (SFX: squeeeeeze) Nearly got it, just gotta suck it up a little, gosh it's too tight coming out...

(Mission Control is all ablush )

PAO: (face buried in her hands) Okay, now the Prograde Ethics Majority will have my hide on their HQ door.

Edrigh: Agh, still stuck in here... (SFX: squeeeeeeeeeze) No, maybe twist a bit to the right... a bit more, just let me slide out... and...

(SFX: POP!!!)

(Edrigh shoots away from the PONE--and the Bridget--at 4m/s)

I'm not kidding. This really happened. 

Edrigh: YOUR MOTHER IS A [bleep] [bleep] [bleep]-ING [bleep] LOREM IPSUM [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] ADMITUMVENIUM [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] TREGUNA [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] HIPPOPOTAMUS [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep]-ING DANIEL RADCLIFFE [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] WITH A BUCKET OF [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] IN A CASTLE FAR AWAY WHERE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] SOUP [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] WITH A BUCKET OF [bleep] [bleep] MICKEY MOUSE [bleep] [bleep] WITH A STICK OF DYNAMITE [bleep] MAGICAL [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] ALAKAZAM!!! _{(source: linked, but anyone who knows the fandom of Aunt Jo would probably have come across this. Also, one uncensored word was omitted from this transcript to observe KSP forum rules regarding Cautious Editing Judgment)}

Mission Control was all aghast. The flight controllers, Gene, Nathan the Program Director, all five Project Directors, hell, even Gus' desolation at having to pay off the Snacks! bill of an entire Pilot Corps was checked for once. 

Courtney: We're streaming this live on our KerTube channel, aren't we?

Walt Kerman, Public Relations Department: (peering into the Mission Control room from just outside the door) Do my ears detect foul-mouthedness?

PAO, who by her job title reports to Walt: (from her console) Don't worry, Walt! I managed to censor at least 20% of it. 

(Reputation counter goes down by 20%)

PAO: Okay, now we're getting it from Prograde Ethics. 

Carlisle: Was that Kaelic I heard last?

Josh: No, I think that sounded a little more Kermanic.

CAPCOM: PONE-1, watch your language, we are on a live transmission! What the heck just happened?

Edrigh: (gasping for breath) Yeah, CAPCOM, I'm about forty meters away from Bridget, stabilizing my attitude with RCS, and I think I found the PONE's fatal flaw. Getting out of it pops you out like a blackhead shooting out of a ripe zit!

Marsha: Eww, I did not need that image in my head.

BOOSTER: (throwing up a little in his mouth) Neither did I.

Mitner: We're so going to need our insurance for this... Roger that, Edrigh, get back inside. (thinks for a moment) Might as well risk it.  PONE-2, you're up.

Gemman: (coyly) Uh... I think not, Mit.

Mitner: Pardon?

Gemman: It's kinda nice being a blackhead in a ripe zit, please and thank you.

Edrigh: Geez, I thought you liked the PONE's aesthetics, Gemma.

Gemman: Oh, shut up, 'Righ!

Mitner: Oh, I see... okay, I u-understand that, Gemman. It's alright. You can stay there if you like.

Gemman:  Oh, thanks much Mit!

Mitner: No problem. Crew, prepare to close payload bay doors. Hope you like reentering in there, Gemma.

Gemman:  WHAT?!

Mitner: Gemma, and I am asking this nicely, since we are on VOX after all, please GET YOUR BUTT OUT OF THAT PONE AND INTO THE CADANCE UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE BROILED ALIVE IN THAT FELIPEFORSAKEN PAYLOAD BAY ON REENTRY!

Gemman: (after weighing the prospects of extermination by being popped like a ripe zit versus extermination by being broiled like a plump chicken) Okaaaay... Lemme turn on my jetpack for a moment, just to get it out of the way, and... Here goes nothing... (squeezes her helmet through the roll cage)

(SFX: squuuueeeeeeeeeezzeeeeeee)

Gemman: Ow ow ow ow too tight too tight too tight--

(SFX: POP!!!)

(Gemman shoots away from the PONE--and the Bridget--at 4m/s)

I'm not kidding either. I actually had to F5-F9 this; a previous attempt left Gemman a green smear on the payload bay floor.

Gemman: F[light] F[un] F[lopping] STUPID LITTLE FR[ied chiken dinner]ING DIPS[un] WHY IS MY G[arden]ED JETPACK NOT FIGHTING THIS F[ollicles] TRAJECTORY F[actorio] G[ardening] ROLL CAGE SQUISHING MY [personal flotation devices] INTO MY F[antasy] RIB CAGE USI CAN KISS MY [waste chute] GIVING A FE[don't Google this, no seriously, just don't] SUCK MY [oh look a moose!] AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR [anatomical] D[ramamine] G[ardening blobs] F[ingers] F[arming] F[un]!!!11one!one1!!

(Reputation counter drops by 20%)

Again, all of Mission Control stood aghast.

Carlisle: (almost admiringly) That is... some of the most creative profanity I have heard since the Kelizabethan age.

Josh: (dryly) Must explain why so many kerbals then were thrown in jail then for offering Newton's Figs.

PAO: Oh kod (groans), Prograde Ethics are going to be down my throat and up my [posterior] after this.

BOOSTER: So you mean both ends?

Gene: That language would be enough to make a sailor blush.

Nathan: Or make them fall in love with her.

Gene: Okay, knowing your background in Naval Intel, I can give you that.

Courtney: (innocently inquiringly, or inquiringly innocently) What's a Fe[what did I say, DON'T GOOGLE IT!]?

Now all of Mission Control and its denizens turned to look aghast at Courtney. 

Gene: You suppose your background in Navy Intel can answer that question? 

Nathan:  I am not answering that question, and up yours too, Chair Force.

Courtney: What? I really don't know what it means!

(Tess Kerman (Director, Project DEMI) whispers in her ear)

Courtney: (comprehension dawning... and disgust spreading across her face) Oh... and EEEEWW! And... how would you know?

Tess: ... I read. 

Mitner: Crystal Palace, Bridget, all souls aboard, and setting inclination correction burn to... oh sh--I mean, oh dear.

CAPCOM: What is it?

Mitner: The Inc-Correct burn will use up almost all our remaining fuel, about 80% worth. This mission's really hit the limits of the Cadance-Regina's delta-V performance; I don't think there's enough to recircularize at 175 clicks before reentering. 

James: CAPCOM, can you put it on speaker? I got this. (after the appropriate switches are toggled) Bridget? EVANNA-Actual. You still have your maneuver node set?

Mitner: Affirmative, what do you want us to do?

James: Power up Trajectories and the NaviComp. On the latter, punch in the command line, and I'm spelling it: Romeo, Dash, Sierra, Lima, Mike. 

Mitner: Roger, inputting command and... Whoa! Crystal Palace, please confirm: my programmed flight profile is a one-burn to reentry, and the VPA is freaking UNDERGROUND! I have a twenty-degree reentry angle here!

James: Yep! The Slam-Down Contingency Reentry Profile. _{(Author's Note: Look, it was only twenty degrees. Past forty-five, I'd have to call it the Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam! Gaiden Reentry Profile)} It was something we came up after drafting the flight plan for STS-3, in the event something like this would happen. And like the name says, instead of a gentle easing into the lower atmosphere, we're dropping you guys straight in, and let the aerodynamics take care of the rest. 

Lemfal: Dear Felipe... this is something a capsule would do, not a spaceplane...

James: Don't worry about it, the parts can take it, and there are no other special procedures, just take her in like in a regular reentry: no more than 25 degrees up and ease her down as you come down. The wings and your resulting glide will take most of the brunt. Only difference is that you'll feel about three gees extra coming in, we checked it out this time, GUS. (pointed look at Gus, who was still busy rechecking his financial capability to pay for an entire Pilot Corps' Snacks! parties for a month)

Mitner: Acknowledged, Crystal Palace. Programming the burn now.

Yeah, this profile was designed to take you down fast and deep (okay, it was designed so that it only needed one burn and about 800+ delta-V from 575km and 26 degrees up, fast and deep was a side effect). 

But it was also designed to take advantage of the Regina's upper-atmospheric flight capabilities to ease the reentry the lower she got to the ground, trading descent rate for forward glide as the orbit (and impact point) was pushed forward towards KSC.

See what I mean?

Mitner: Crystal Palace, Bridget, we have the Center in sight, projected slight overshoot. And I think I have an idea.

Marsha: Uh-oh. I hate it when someone has an idea.

Mitner: I'm gonna stall us coming through the stratosphere, kill off our speed and altitude, and take Runway 09 straight in instead of a circle to land. It doesn't look like we'll have the altitude even for a turnback to Runway 27. 

CAPCOM: Well... okay, it's not like our paychecks will be paying for anything that gets broken. Cleared for the approach. Contact Tower on 107.2. 

At a low enough speed, even while twenty-five clicks up the Cadance can begin maneuvering as Mitner wanted it, slowly pulling the orbiter into a steep pitch that would cause the wings to stall. And she stalls rather... "gentle" really isn't the word, but it wasn't the eyeball-busting spinout in STS-2a; the G meter stayed below the red zone. And it did bleed off speed and altitude as desired, such that coming out through 10,000 meters and 200+m/s, Lemfal thought he could dead-stick the Bridget to the runway.

And he did. He freaking did. In fact, while the landing flare wasn't perfect (the Bridget landed flat on all gear, a perfect three-point landing except with a tricycle gear meaning NO FLARE WHATSOEVER OUCH), it managed to kill off enough vertical velocity that instead of bouncing, Bridget planted herself down on the runway. 

You know, a lot of Cadance landings of late have been more carrier-like, "controlled crashes" rather than conventional runway landings. More so now that the Block 3 took off the body lift from the engine pods. I mean, at low speeds she's less responsive to pitch input (and this despite unlocking the tail fins' pitch authority), but it was an acceptable compromise that meant landing flares had to begin higher than before to get to the right glideslope prior to touchdown... just like the real Shuttle Orbiter, okay now I get it, fine, I can live with this compromise.

Or I can add a couple of wing surfaces to the underside, smooth out the transition from fuselage to wing... god, I hate part count creep.

One hour later

CAPCOM: Flight, Bridget reports parked at the SPH doors and powering down. 

NETWORK: Gene, KPL reports orbital checkout of the Dreamwalker complete, we can start her up now.

Gene: Understood, good work guys. Now let's make this mission pay off. NETWORK, bring the telescope online.

NETWORK: Roger that. Opening aperture shield. 

NETWORK: Slaving reaction wheels to mission computers. Initiating its first photographic capture of the Horsehead Nebula.

(SFX: hum of hard drives driving, printers printing, keyboards keboarding as the Dreamwalker aims towards its photographic target)

Director Nathan: Well, that is most curious. (stands up to stand in front of the big screen in front of the Pit, as a deathly silence descends upon the darkened room) Can anyone explain to me, and I'm just wondering here, same as you guys, I bet...

Nathan: ... why a multimillion-funds space telescope, so delicate it had to be launched and assembled by hand by a picked shuttle crew, designed to look up to the skies, is instead pointing down at Kerbin? 

Mission Control crew, Project Directors, and Guests: 

Nathan: And, looking at this workstation screen currently showing the slaved-to-target attitude commands to the Dreamwalker, why is it--you know, I'm actually interested in the answer this time, since this is a space telescope--focusing in particular on a certain beach in Kerbin instead of the Horsehead Nebula?

Oh, heck no, I'm not showing those pictures either,
this Mission is rated PG-13 for language and boyish attitude.

Nathan: Oh, and now that I'm looking at the imagery data on the DST console here--and again, I'm just curious, mind you guys, I really have no interest on the matter besides the professional--but given that the image we are looking at on screen now is certainly not of the Horsehead Nebula, I would like to know for all that is good in kreation WHY A MULTI-MILLION FUNDS SPACE TELESCOPE HAS INSTEAD BEEN GIVEN THE COMMAND TO TAKE SUCCESSIVE PICTURES OF A CERTAIN admittedly admirable ARTICLE ON SAID BEACH IT IS FOCUSED ON, WHICH I SHALL NOT ELABORATE FOR THE RECORD BECAUSE WE ARE AN OPEN-SOURCE AGENCY AND I'M NOT GOING TO BE GIVING IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG KERBALS ANY FUNNY IDEAS?!

(Reputation counter shoots up through the roof, as do KerTube comments of "Pics or it didn't happpen" "Pics for Clicks", "Pics for UpRep", "FOIA request for release of STS-3 mission data and DST mission imagery ESPECIALLY THE LATTER", and "PICS OR RIOT")

PAO:

James:  Well, so much for the Prograde Ethics Majority.

Edited October 27, 2017 by B-STRK