SpaceShuttle Shorpa : STS Duna Bis, 2 Shuttles mission + Outpost (lots of pics !)

[KerballingSmasher]

1 hour ago, Kerbolitto said:

Too bad someone forgot to install a robotic arm.. Had to ask Valentina to climb on it instead !

Lol!

[Kerbolitto]

STS Laythe / Jool 5 (part 2) : Bop and Tylo adventures !

 

After a successfull campaign on Vall, the crew was ready to explore the rest of the Jovians moons !

 

1_ From Vall to Bop !

 

Shiny Vectors

''Thank you Tylo !''

''Looks we're landing near some kind of fleshy outpost"

''Bob you mind waiting a bit before sciencing that monstrosity ?''

"Welp, 92% dead fish and 8% ore !''

"Lets quickly probe that strange thing !"

"Guys drop that science for a minute, you're not even on the picture !"

"Can't hear you behind the sound of decaying Blutonium !"

"Anyway its time to leave, we have an almost perfect window to Tylo"
"Perfect ? Thought we'd just burn prograde and see what's up, as usual !"

"Ready ... Steady ... Remember we only have 1.03TWR on Bop so let's avoid those hills !"

"This drawing reminds me of something ..."

"Okay so that's the target ? I don't get why all the engineers were scared back then"

 

Spoiler

Bop take off stats : TWR was at 1.03 only

 

1bis_ M700 is living its best life :

 

Meanwhile

 

2_ Approaching Tylo at reasonnable speed

 

"Val come back here ! You'll see it's gonna be just fiiiine !"

No time for caution !

"Deploy everything ! Unpack the life boat and your parachutes !"

Looks like the ship lost some stuff on the back, nobody needs that much yaw control anyway !

"Bob you okay ?"

"Jeb they said not to climb on the wings !"

"You know what Bob, let's do science and forget that landing"

"Keep jumping Jeb !"

"Did you hear something ?"

"Sounds like green to me."

"We're leaving already ?"

"You sure it's very safe to do that below 5000m ?"

 

Spoiler

Tylo flyby to circularize the orbit relative to Jool, followed by a second flyby to capture :

Capture burn :

Orbit after 5x 3minutes retroburn at Pe on nukes only :

Lights on ! Deorbit burn :

Landing on fumes .. At the very last second !

Take off stats :

Full power : Not much mountains on that direction but we needed everything droplets of thrust

Still burning, the Ap is rising quickly by now :

 

Edited September 23, 2019 by Kerbolitto

[Kerbolitto]

STS Laythe / Jool 5 (part 3) : Laythe outpost and end of the mission !

 

Once they finished exploring a bit of landscape on Tylo and mourning the two crushed elevons, the crew decided to complete their mission by -softly- landing on Laythe.

In the aft cargobay was installed a tiny outpost with some science parts glued on it, and a little airplane to visit a few islands.

 

 

3_ Laythe, a breathing experience !

 

"But it's all water !"

"I think I saw a tree !"

"Really ? Let's investigate !"

'You are right those pixels looks very suspicious ..!"

"Yeah touchdown !"

"Ready to unpack ?"

"Slowly, slowly .."

"Nice, let's deploy this and that !"

"Everyone stand stiiiiill"

"Okay now let's have a look at your tree .."

"Strange, this thing has no leafs, still fine to wash the windshield tho !"

"It tastes like water !"

"Well we don't need that stuff anymore."

"Nice ! Looks very efficient !"

"Meh, close enough."

"Stabo you mind testing this winged contraption ?"

Do not push over Mach 2.

"Fantastic !"

 

Spoiler

Laythe maneuver, nothing special here since the shuttle still has tons of dV !

Aerocapture : very hot, since the atmoshpere is quite soupy ! The engineers learnt from their lessions and put heatshields behind the nose cones... Just in case !

Slow approach :

Easy flare, the ship is now very light and has lots of control surfaces !

Landing the plane is easier this way, wheels keeps bumping at any speed !

 

2_ Time to leave this planet !

 

"Well see you around, don't forget us this time !"

"Yeah let's spray a bit of radioactive materials here too"

"A bit more here, we never know, maybe some life will pop out of it !"

"Jeb, full thrust if you please, I want to see some sick 6 minutes nuclear burns !"

"Cool place, you think we'll come back ?"

"Oh hey there, next time we don't break anything !"

 

Spoiler

Ascent profile : Lots of thrust but this is very soupy at sea level

Final orbit : had to throw Ap quite far and burn a ton on nukes due to extremly poor TWR

Kerbin maneuver, using a maneuver (forgot to show it here, something like 400m/s) and flyby around Tylo :

 

3_ Kerbin, maybe

 

"Oh hey ! I remember this one !"

"Val you mind to stop doing that when we're maneuvring ?"

"See ? It's safe from there !"

"Do I smeel something burning ?"

"This is the moment we do fly it ?"

"Look those small white dots ! It's KSC !"

"Oh yeah that was fantastic stuff !"

"Can't wait to fly with you again, but hey, where is Bob ?"

"WOOOOOOoooooooooooooosssSSSSHHHHhhhhhh this place is the best !"

 

Spoiler

Kerbin first flyby and retrograde maneuver to catch it 2 years later :

Reworked maneuver, burning almost everything left to capture only one year after this first pass ! (could have actually captured on this first pass since the speed dropped to a little more than 3k m/s at Pe ...!)

Aerobraking with direct landing (almost no deviation from equator) :

KSC perfectly aligned :

Shuttle on final :

Flare :

 

END

 

I'm quite happy with how this mission developped ! The ship was easy to fly, I've add lots of things to this design to facilitate its use, only forgot to put some landing gear for Tylo.

Hope you guys enjoyed the readings, it was great fun reporting those screenshots ! If you have any questions don't hesitate

Edited September 27, 2019 by Kerbolitto

[fulgur]

Cool! I love the mini aircraft, did you have trouble landing at all in Laythe's thin atmosphere?

[Kerbolitto]

8 minutes ago, fulgur said:

Cool! I love the mini aircraft, did you have trouble landing at all in Laythe's thin atmosphere?

Not at all, in fact it is getting quickly soupy once you fly below 40k, and hot too .. That's why I put (empty) heatshields behind the nose cones of the Shuttle, I had troubles to capture on my first Jool5 because the heat rises very quickly !

Edited September 27, 2019 by Kerbolitto

[KerballingSmasher]

Did you really "accidentally" leave Bob on Laythe?

[Kerbolitto]

2 minutes ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Did you really "accidentally" leave Bob on Laythe?

He does his own choices !

[Kerbolitto]

What should we do next ? =)

I was thinking of a multi stage shuttle to take off from Eve but the game won't let me, so sad.

Edited September 29, 2019 by Kerbolitto

[GRS]

WDYM The game won't let you ?

[Kerbolitto]

11 minutes ago, GRS said:

WDYM The game won't let you ?

The way nodes are working prevents me to detach a cargo bay while keeping the payload attached to the main ship :x

[GRS]

1 minute ago, Kerbolitto said:

The way nodes are working prevents me to detach a cargo bay while keeping the payload attached to the main ship :x

Well...OOF...

[Kerbolitto]

It's getting close .... !

[fulgur]

So are you building some sort of shuttle which SSTOs Kerbin, flies all the way to Eve and land/returns? Or is something else happening I am unaware of from that (definitely not whole) ship? Bearing in mind that the official definition of a shuttle, in the thread, is something which explicitly does not SSTO Kerbin?

[Kerbolitto]

On 10/6/2019 at 9:10 PM, fulgur said:

So are you building some sort of shuttle which SSTOs Kerbin, flies all the way to Eve and land/returns? Or is something else happening I am unaware of from that (definitely not whole) ship? Bearing in mind that the official definition of a shuttle, in the thread, is something which explicitly does not SSTO Kerbin?

That's almost correct ! It is not an SSTO as it will require strap-on boosters to take of from Kerbin, the torque unbalance is too great to run all engines during the whole ascent without staging. I'm also planning a service shuttle because the dV might be too short after circularizing.
This should work, in theory ... Still have a lot of testing to do

[Kerbolitto]

Ok so the Shuttles are back in action !

I flew a mission to deploy a large outpost on Duna using 2 shuttles, the biggest is a new twin bay design, while the other is the well-known Shorpa with a body-lift new wing design !

 

A few numbers :

I'll refer to this one as DB (Double Bay) : this beast weights 259t. and has 2x 1.5 Mk3 bays, 1600dV 0.3 TWR with 2 Bobcats, then 3140dV 0.24TWR on 6 nukes. 2 small docks, no RCS, the center craft is an "abort" shuttle designed to save the crew. It has 800m/s on a Terrier + 2 Panthers. This version is still fragile during re-entry.

This is the BL (Body Lift) Shorpa, 139t. 1.5 Mk3 bay + a ramp, 1340dV 0.56TWR on 2 Bobcats, then 3100dV 0.28TWR on 4 nukes, RCS but no docks. The wings are shorter and I tried to mimic a body-lift fuselage. So far it works quite well, but the cargo tonnage is reducting faster than on the larger shuttle.

 

Part 1 : Launch and Burn to Duna !

 

DB Orbiter is a 1500t. 3 stage design, 2 SRBs + a massive 12 Vectors central core, then 8 Vectors to finish the circularization.

Spoiler

8m/s margin on the circu -humpf-

Duna maneuver :

 

Shorpa BL Orbiter is the same as usual, I kept the old SRB design because they look cool :p

 

Part 2 : Duna approach

 

At first I tried to land on the poles or somewhere cool but the DB was quite fragile (probably due to a glitch savegame or autostrut breaking the fuselage :/).

Spoiler

BL orbit and polar maneuver after aerobraking :

DB :

 

Part 3 : Landing (cough)

 

Spoiler

DB deorbit maneuver :

Flare : the wing design is far better than expected ! Was able to stall at very low speed (also the 2 Cubs in front helped a bit)

 

Spoiler

Deorbit maneuver :

High speed approach :

BL on finale :

 

Part 4 : Deployement (why 2 shuttles?)

 

Smolcar is detached first :

Assembly rovers are deployed on their carts :

 

DB detaches its cargo :

 

And the assembly begins

Its mine !

 

Outpost is now complete !

 

Part 5 : Take-off

 

Spoiler

DB maneuver to orbit :

 

Spoiler

BL launch :

 

Part 6 : Return maneuver

 

Spoiler

DB maneuver :

 

Spoiler

BL maneuver : will require a 20+ms correction

 

Part 7 : Approach and landing

 

implied message ?

Spoiler

Quite hot indeed ! The small nosecones (they are expendables, I put heatshields behind them) and Cubs exploded, Bobcats were ok but are not well protected

Orbit after 1st aerobraking :

Final retroburn after a few orbits :

 

End of the mission

Spoiler

Approach :

Final flare :

 

Spoiler

Capture : Still hot, nosecones also exploded !

Orbit :

Deorbit burn after waiting a bit :

High speed approach :

And flare :

 

Hope you enjoyed Sorry for the (tons) of pictures !

Also there's still some videos of this mission on Twitch !

Spoiler

 

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Kerbolitto