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Replicate the Jupiter aerobreak from 2010: the year we made contact!

Hubba!

By Hubba!
in KSP1 Challenges & Mission ideas

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Hubba!

Hubba!

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One of the most intense memories of my childhood was watching the brutal aerobreak-scene in 2010: a ship on the way to Io saves fuel by bleeding off speed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, streaking like a meteor across it's sky! I couldn't find the specific scene on youtube, but

had a similar scenario. I can seriously recommend checking out 2010 though.

Your mission, then, is as follows: use the friction of Jool's upper atmosphere to slow yourself down to into Jool orbit! I've aerobreaked at Duna, but Jools enormous gravity well should make this a different ballgame altogether. Good luck!

Hard mode: Aerobreak and swing around Jool into orbit around one of it's moon!

Nightmare mode: Perfect the procedure so that you can CHOOSE which moon you'll end up around!

Hyper-Nightmare-BLARGGHA-engineer-mode: Post the required formula to calculate the outcome of this maneuver!

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martscht

martscht

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I know, I know double post, but I had to post this: Mission Accomplished.

It took a total of 274 days, 9 hours and 56 minutes, but I've managed to do it.

Here's me after establishing the transfer orbit:

screenshot11.png

At the halfway point of the transfer I corrected for the inclination of Jool's orbit and ended up with a periapsis of 65km. A bit low, but since periapses are recalculated or something after the SOI switch I left it at that, knowing I'd have to correct after the switch anyway. After entering Jool's SOI the estimated periapsis jumped to somewhere above 200 km - which I guessed was gonna be way too high after seeing here (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21251-17-Planet-information) that the atmosphere of Jool is supposed to begin at 130 km. So I corrected and went for a periapsis of 120 km.

screenshot16%20%282%29.png

When I entered Jool's atmosphere (which was more like 138 km than 130 km) everything turned a beautiful green. I actually packed four 'chutes which I tried to deploy upon entering atmo. Didn't work. But I was actually lucky it didn't because after exiting Jool's atmosphere my orbit looked like this:

screenshot39.png

Not exactly beautiful. But I can live with inclination and eccentricity because the atmo-breaking maneuver actually worked! This felt more awesome than my first Mun landing! At the beginning of the mission I had actually set out to land on Laythe after this maneuver, but I thought the fuel I had left wasn't going to be enough for a landing on a moon with pretty much Kerbin's gravity. So I settled for Vall. And after some (I admit, a lot) orbital corrections I managed Vall encounter.

screenshot43.png

Knowing full and well I didn't pack enough fuel for a return Dunbert, Gernand, and Maldan Kermin will have to settle into their new home on Vall.

screenshot52.png

By the way: my vehicle (Chollima 2) was all stock. I didn't use mechjeb. But I did use Kerbal Engineer Redux Version .4.1.1 during construction of the ship.

Edited by martscht
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Hubba!

Hubba!

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)
I know, I know double post, but I had to post this: Mission Accomplished.

It took a total of 274 days, 9 hours and 56 minutes, but I've managed to do it.

Here's me after establishing the transfer orbit:

screenshot11.png

At the halfway point of the transfer I corrected for the inclination of Jool's orbit and ended up with a periapsis of 65km. A bit low, but since periapses are recalculated or something after the SOI switch I left it at that, knowing I'd have to correct after the switch anyway. After entering Jool's SOI the estimated periapsis jumped to somewhere above 200 km - which I guessed was gonna be way too high after seeing here (http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/21251-17-Planet-information) that the atmosphere of Jool is supposed to begin at 130 km. So I corrected and went for a periapsis of 120 km.

screenshot16%20%282%29.png

When I entered Jool's atmosphere (which was more like 138 km than 130 km) everything turned a beautiful green. I actually packed four 'chutes which I tried to deploy upon entering atmo. Didn't work. But I was actually lucky it didn't because after exiting Jool's atmosphere my orbit looked like this:

screenshot39.png

Not exactly beautiful. But I can live with inclination and eccentricity because the atmo-breaking maneuver actually worked! This felt more awesome than my first Mun landing! At the beginning of the mission I had actually set out to land on Laythe after this maneuver, but I thought the fuel I had left wasn't going to be enough for a landing on a moon with pretty much Kerbin's gravity. So I settled for Vall. And after some (I admit, a lot) orbital corrections I managed Vall encounter.

screenshot43.png

Knowing full and well I didn't pack enough fuel for a return Dunbert, Gernand, and Maldan Kermin will have to settle into their new home on Vall.

screenshot52.png

By the way: my vehicle (Chollima 2) was all stock. I didn't use mechjeb. But I did use Kerbal Engineer Redux Version .4.1.1 during construction of the ship.

Man, that is awesome work! I imagine your three guys felt somewhat agitated during the maneuver?:cool: I managed to make a controlled aerobreak-to-insertion around Duna using my Cherenkov II. I put my periapsis at 15k for my entry on my way in and control my new apoapsis with burns inside Duna's atmosphere:

screenshot15kn.png

Like you, I had planned to used chutes for this maneuver. They never deployed and were quite redundant anyway since moving my periapsis up and down just a few thousand meters yielded widely different results. When/if we have to take atmospheric friction and heat into account we'll hopefully get the baluts (have no idea how it's actually spelled) from 2010! I also found out that what we are doing is technically called aerocapture, aerobreaking seems to refer to the same technique but applied to several consecutive passes.

Anyway, great work! This will likely be my new standard maneuver for planetary insertions!

Edited by Hubba!
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Jesrad

Jesrad

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One of the most intense memories of my childhood was watching the brutal aerobreak-scene in 2010: a ship on the way to Io saves fuel by bleeding off speed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, streaking like a meteor across it's sky!

That particular scene I must have watched a dozen times at least, it's still a vivid memory. There's also the famous scene in 2001 where Bowman EVA's without a helmet... And another of my favorite movie as a kid was "The right stuff". It's really no wonder I'm playing KSP now :D

There are good examples already in this thread, it seems the sweet spot for replicating the Leonov's aerobrake is right at 120 km periapsis from interplanetary transit speed.

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martscht

martscht

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And a quick update:

Using a periapsis slightly lower and a less inclined approach to Jool than last time. This time I went with 119.5 km.

screenshot53.png

And... got a (somewhat) direct transfer to Laythe!

screenshot55.png

After a bit of correcting to lower the periapsis into Laythe's atmo the approach looked kind of weird. But I'll take it.

screenshot58.png

And did someone say "double-aerocapture"? Yep. That's what happened.

screenshot59.png

And it's time for a beach-party!

screenshot65.png

Edit: Somehow I'm experiencing some heavy lag on Laythe. I don't know why... even when just Evaing around...

Edited by martscht
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ssTALONps

ssTALONps

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So I was en-route to Laythe yesterday...

I successfully pulled out Jool aerocapture maneuver, setting course for direct Laythe transfer...

Then I realized I accidentally put myself on retrograde rendezvous orbit, relative velocity peaked around 5900m/s!

Running out of delta v budget, I had no choice but to try aerocapture again...

But plunging deep into Laythe's atmosphere turned out to be bad idea as my Proteus IPV disintegrated over Laythe...

No screenies but trust me, rendezvousing with retrograde orbit is not recommended!

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