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seyMonsters

By seyMonsters
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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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Fun fact- adding a power module is as easy as docking a crewed spacecraft, the fuel cells plus the station’s own power systems will be more than enough to tick all the contract boxes. Swapping crew, adding more capacity and adding a power module can all be done in one flight with pretty much any crewed spacecraft for a tidy profit.

The upper tank on the DOG3 look totally wrong, it has UDMH/NTO for the booster engines not NTO/Helium/(Aerozine50 or MMH) for the RCS and the SPS engine. RCS always needs a pressurant like helium or nitrogen as they’re pressure-fed, so if you don’t have that then you’re clearly not configured right.

Once an engine fails in TestFlight, it’s gone for good. TestLite lets you restart them if they fail but TestFlight does not. You just got unlucky and rolled a 99.9% for the failure chance.

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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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You used up all the helium firing the RCS on the top because that tank is misconfigured, hence the capsule’s RCS was unusable. It would be a lot more sensible to set that RCS to use the same propellant as the capsule’s own RCS so they both use the same propellants, or set it the same as the SM’s RCS instead (but with the proper tank setup).

Station contracts are easy money, send a crew up and you can complete three or four contracts at once: new crew, expanded capacity, power module and (if there’s a crew there already) rotate crew. You could also leave the mission modules behind each time you visit to give subsequent crews more room- I haven’t looked at the D-2 but the Apollo Block 4 module has a lab in it.

The CBM port on the end of Dawn 2 isn’t very useful, it got scaled up like the other SSPX parts but now it’s too big and heavy so normal vessels can’t use them; send up an adapter with another hub to dock to that so you have multiple ports (and different types?) on both ends of the station.

Edited by jimmymcgoochie
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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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Io is extremely volcanic because of tidal heating, hence the yellow colour (sulphur from volcanic eruptions). It’s also constantly bombarded by Jupiter’s Van Allen belts and really not somewhere you want to hang around.

To get a free return with a close flyby of the Moon, add about 50m/s to the optimal transfer and tweak the timing to put the periapsis in the right place.

Re. the launch, a slower pitch rate might help prevent the backflips, but not physics warping during staging would help a lot more. Drag at the front from the fairing and weight at the back from the second stage would make it unstable, which combined with the high angle of attach was a recipe for a spin.

And what is with the different RCS configuration on the top of the pod? Why would you use a different fuel mix than the pod’s own RCS and need two different tank setups? The tank is still set up for rocket fuel for the boosters and not RCS, there’s no helium pressurant.

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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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“Why didn’t you tell me?” - @seyMonstersafter realising the top tank on the DOG3 is wrong.

On 9/8/2022 at 7:10 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

The upper tank on the DOG3 look totally wrong, it has UDMH/NTO for the booster engines not NTO/Helium/(Aerozine50 or MMH) for the RCS and the SPS engine. RCS always needs a pressurant like helium or nitrogen as they’re pressure-fed, so if you don’t have that then you’re clearly not configured right.

On 9/15/2022 at 8:55 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

You used up all the helium firing the RCS on the top because that tank is misconfigured, hence the capsule’s RCS was unusable. It would be a lot more sensible to set that RCS to use the same propellant as the capsule’s own RCS so they both use the same propellants, or set it the same as the SM’s RCS instead (but with the proper tank setup).

On 9/22/2022 at 6:31 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

And what is with the different RCS configuration on the top of the pod? Why would you use a different fuel mix than the pod’s own RCS and need two different tank setups? The tank is still set up for rocket fuel for the boosters and not RCS, there’s no helium pressurant.

If only someone had said mentioned it… :rolleyes:

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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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Aerozine/NTO on the service module’s RCS, MMH/NTO for the capsule and you still went for UDMH/NTO on top? Three different sets of RCS propellants mean none of them can use the other’s fuel in case one runs out.

 

What you should take away from the Mars landing and the new design:

  • Don’t drop your periapsis so low
  • Don’t look at the science data when you’re plummeting towards the surface
  • Don’t give it so much fuel when it only needs a little for the final descent
  • Don’t use the fragile transmitter dish as landing gear (because smashing your ONLY transmitter on landing is a great idea!?)
  • Don’t put duplicate science experiments on it (3 barometers and 3 thermometers)
  • Do put enough avionics on it to control the mass
  • Do deploy a drogue chute to help it slow down, a Kevlar chute can take a lot of heating and slow you subsonic before the main chutes open
  • Do add landing gear- not legs, landing gear scaled down to fit the craft- they have much better impact tolerance than legs and are dirt cheap and reasonably light, plus they have lights on them which can help you judge how hard you’re going to hit the ground
  • Do add ALL THE SCIENCE- RPWS, magnetometer, surface sampler(!)
  • Do remove the heatshield ablator, it isn’t necessary and adds excess weight
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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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Don’t use those extending docking ports at all, they’re too big to be used with other ports and are excessively heavy too. You could try sticking a D-2 or Apollo Block 4 mission module on the front instead with a docking port on the end of that, the Block 4 module comes with a built-in lab and capacity for several crew experiments (plus, fun fact, synoptic terrain and weather photography experiments actually regenerate their samples in a lab faster than the experiment uses them so you can do the whole experiment in 1 flight not 3).

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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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I have A LOT of concerns about that rocket- it’s far too tall and skinny, the first stage burns for hardly any time at all, it needs fuel from the capsule to reach orbit, you’re still using LiOH scrubbers for some reason, the second stage is too long and has an overpowered engine, there’s no launch escape system, the Astris’ reliability could be a problem, the 150 ton pad has a height limit and you might well be over it, balloon tanks are expensive…

The original rocket could have been significantly improved with a few small tweaks: upgraded engines on both stages- yes, the RD-119 despite the burn time decrease, it’s reliable enough that it won’t matter- and using a modular tank mount instead of a boattail so that there aren’t any booster separation mishaps as with so many launches before, and also a launch escape system made out of a nosecone and some solid motors on top of the docking port.

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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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Apparently the Kraken didn’t like the new rocket any more than I did.

Dial down the pitch rate to 0.3/s, you’re pitching too quickly for a rocket with such a low initial TWR. You could also consider hotstaging the second stage engines (and interstate fairings) to get them spooled up before first stage separation as many Soviet rockets did/do.

Fun fact: Michael Collins did take a picture with Armstrong and Aldrin in the LEM and the Earth in the background, containing every living person except himself- so the exact opposite of a selfie (an everyone-elsie?).

edit:

FcS1EvG.png

Edited by jimmymcgoochie
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jimmymcgoochie

jimmymcgoochie

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Generic thrusters are the answer- zero chance of failure, reasonably cheap and configurable to a variety of propellants to suit whatever else is on the vessel. Lack of gimbal is one downside, but some properly configured RCS thrusters on the underside of the craft will balance that out without needing to waste propellant firing sideways.

It seems that something on the station was depressurised and so everything was trying to fix that by using up the oxygen (and nitrogen when you turned that on) to do so. Leave it for a while and it should fix the problem and use drastically less O2/N2. Nitrogen doesn’t matter in RO/RP-1 as far as I know, the ‘EVAs available’ thing is a throwback to “stock” Kerbalism which uses only nitrogen for pressurisation.

And surprise surprise, the engine with a 50% ignition chance was really unreliable…

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