Historical Space Race

[Scarecrow71]

While I am waiting on the next patch, and for answers to some questions I've put forth in other threads/challenges, I decided to resurrect a challenge I created for KSP1 - the Historical Space Race.  The original thread can be found here:

Although we have limited parts, major bugs, few mods, and the kraken to deal with, I am going to see just how far I can actually get with this.  It may be that I get nowhere...or I could get somewhere...or I could get to the end.  I have no clue how this will go until I try, so here goes nothing.

 

DATE:  21 August 1957
FLIGHT:  ICBM Test
ROCKET:  R7 Semyorka
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Recreated the R7 Semyorka to the best of my ability using the limited parts available.  The rocket consists of 3 distinct stages.

• Stage 1 is a 4x X200-64 Methalox, each topped with an RS-AD-SL 800 slanted adapter and powered by 4 Swivel engines.  2x Vernier engines on each tank helped with control/steering.
• Stage 2 is an X200-64 Methalox, powered by 4 swivel engines.  4x Vernier engines on the center tank helped with control/steering.
• Stage 3 is a Medium probe core with a medium battery, topped with an aerodynamic adapter and a Mk16 parachute.

It's short and squat, looking almost nothing like the real thing.  And vastly overpowered; I could have easily gotten this thing into LKO with the amount of dV and TWR it had at launch.  I could have probably gotten away with using much smaller parts, but it is what it is.  Part of the reason for this challenge was to get people to learn how to build rockets, and I really need help doing that myself.

The flight was a decent length as you'll see by the images...but I had 2 problems.  First, somewhere around 900 meters traveled, it was like the rocket hit a brick wall, the center tank and engines vaporizing due to the kraken.  Which is fine; I was at a 0 degree ascent and the Ap was climbing rapidly, so I had to kill thrust at some point anyhow.  The second issue I ran into was at landing.  Or, rather, splashdown.  The craft settled into the water...and then sank.  Not sure how deep the water is, but at almost 1,000 meters below sea level I decided to simply recover the craft.  In real life, the warhead on the R7 was lost in the Pacific Ocean (or so we are told), so this kind of makes sense with this flight.

Spoiler

 

[Scarecrow71]

DATE:  4 October 1957
FLIGHT:  Sputnik I
ROCKET:  Modified R7 Semyorka
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Modified the R7 Semyorka to use smaller tanks and engines in an effort to more accurately recreate the amount of fuel - or lack thereof, as it were - that the earliest flights had.  To this end, the center and outer tanks were reduced in size from Medium to Small, and the engines were reduced from 4 on each tank down to 1 Dart each.  This still gave enough TWR that I had to reduce throttle on launch to 70% or risk going to fast and flipping over.  The Vernier engines that were used for control were both overpowered and not enough; I had 4 on the center tank and 2 each on the outer tanks, but while the rocket moved under RCS power, it wasn't fast enough.  And they weren't in the right spots; I'm not sure how the early Soviet and American scientists determined where to put them, but they certainly weren't taking COM into account.

The probe was a simple Stayputnik with 4 Communotron 16's and a small battery.  I didn't get the inclination right; the real flight was at something like 65 degrees, and according to Micro-Engineer I'm at about 26 degrees.  So I'm juuuuust a bit outside that.  But I'm pretty darned close on Ap and Pe, and considering I ran out of fuel as I was adjusting the Pe, I'll take this as a win.

Spoiler

 

[Scarecrow71]

2 entries for today.  Just moving along now!

DATE:  3 November 1957
FLIGHT:  Sputnik II
ROCKET:  Modified R7 Semyorka
FLIGHT DETAILS:  This flight was very similar to the Sputnik I launch, except I modified where the Vernier thrusters were to get more control over direction.  I also removed the Stayputnik probe, instead opting for a Mk1 Command Pod.  Sputnik II was the first flight with a mammalian occupant on board, so to try and stay true to the spirit of the flight I launched Bill into LKO with this one.  In real life, very unfortunately, Laika (the canine cosmonaut) died after a few hours, so I get to leave Bill in space indefinitely.  Interestingly enough, there was really no plan to get Laika back to the ground; the capsule was not designed to separate from the central column, and there were no parachutes attached to the capsule.

Spoiler

DATE:  17 March 1958
FLIGHT:  Vanguard I
ROCKET:  Vanguard TV-4
FLIGHT DETAILS:  This flight is significant in that it was the first man-made satellite to rely upon solar power.  The circular object had 6 antenna and 6 solar cells, and was in operation and sending signals back to Earth for...6 years.  Lot of 6's in there, which is kind of spooky.

I tried to stay true to the shape and power of the TV-4, but the construction IRL was rather odd.  Stages 1 and 2 (liftoff and transfer) were both LOX...but the third stage, the stage that put the satellite into its final resting orbit, was an SRB.  Odd.  Anyhow, upon construction and launch, I realized that I had far more fuel than I needed (although I had to over-engineer this thing to be able to put it into the correct inclination of 34.25 degrees).  So I didn't even use the SRB stage.  Also, I had to get creative with how I crafted the satellite and get it into the rocket itself.  I had to use a pair of nosecones to get the rounded shape, but you can't attach stuff to the top of the nosecones other than struts.  This forced me to get a bit creative with getting the fairing on/around it.  You'll see in the first image what I had to do.

Spoiler

 

[Scarecrow71]

DATE:  2 January 1959 - 4 January 1959
FLIGHT:  Luna I
ROCKET:  Modified R7 Semyorka
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Luna I was the first flight to leave Earth's SOI and enter the Moon's SOI.  The satellite was designed to impact the surface of the Moon, but an error during the final stage burn placed the craft into a heliocentric orbit.  This makes Luna I the first man-made object to enter Sol's SOI.  The rocket I used for this had more than enough fuel to get out of Kerbin's SOI, but I didn't get into a heliocentric orbit immediately after entering Kerbol's SOI.  I had plenty of fuel leftover after the ejection burn, so I time-warped to a good spot and then burned the remaining portion of the second stage and all of the third stage to get a really nice heliocentric orbit around Kerbol.

Spoiler

I will say that my MapView Focus and Targeting mod (shameless plug; link in my signature) made targeting the Mun way easy.

[Scarecrow71]

DATE:  12 September 1959
FLIGHT:  Luna II
ROCKET:  Modified R7 Semyorka
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Luna II was the first man-made object to strike or impact the surface of another celestial body.  In this case, Luna II impacted the surface of the Moon 5 full days after launch, on 14 September 1959.  The satellite was traveling with an initial velocity of 11.2 km/s, and impacted the Moon at 3.3 km/s.  3.3 KILOMETERS PER SECOND.  That is not a typo.  For this recreation, the satellite I created ended up striking the surface of the Mun at ~3.6 m/s, which was more than enough for it to actually continue to stand straight up on end...until I turned off RCS and it toppled over.  I actually had 571 m/s of dV in the tank when I landed, and I still had a pair of Separatrons that I was originally going to use to slow descent quickly and strike a bit hard, but I didn't need them.  I have images, as well as a video to show the landing.  It's a bit grainy, which is odd considering it processed up to HD on YT.

Spoiler

 

It needs to be stated that yes, I did an impact burn to hit the surface, which did not happen in real life.  In real life, the satellite left Earth's SOI and directly impacted without the need for an additional burn.  Here, in KSP2, I had to do the additional burn as my original burn was just a bit off.

[Scarecrow71]

And I made a mistake in the above flights.  There are 2 flights that I completely skipped between Luna I and Luna II, both of which are American flights.  I am going to have to do a bit of a ret-con here and get those flights in.

DATE:  28 February 1959
FLIGHT:  Discoverer I
ROCKET:  Thor Agena-A
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Discoverer I was the first satellite to be placed into a polar orbit, with an inclination of ~89 degrees (heading towards the south pole from the launch site).  A lot of information regarding the early flights is, for some unknown reason, a bit convoluted and confusing, so in KSP2 I went with what I could find.  It is believed that during the firing of the upper stage, the rocket/satellite actually slammed into the nose cone that had been ejected, damaging and/or destroying the 2 antenna that had been seated under it.  This caused the status of the flight to be unknown, and it is believed that the satellite crashed into the south pole at some point.  A lot of the information about Ap and Pe are guesswork due to the lack of early tracking equipment.  Once again, I built the rocket based upon what was given, and it ends up having far more dV than I needed for this flight.  I am going to have to start scaling back the rockets, probably doing away with entire stages lest I end up with a bunch of satellites that don't need all that stuff on them.

Spoiler

I have 1 more flight to ret-con here - Explorer VI.

[Scarecrow71]

DATE:  7 August  1959
FLIGHT:  Explorer VI
ROCKET:  Thor DM-18 Able III
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Explorer VI was the first satellite to take pictures of Earth from orbit and send them back.  Technically, it was designed to perform a series of experiments in space, one of which was to photograph the Earth's cloud cover.  The other really significant thing with this launch, apart from now being able to capture images from space, was it was used as an ASAT test (anti-satellite), with a Bold Orion rocket fired at the satellite.  It was deemed a success as the rocket came within a distance of 6.4 km, which was used to help with later rendezvous operations (as well as guidance systems).  By this point in KSP2, I've taken a whole bunch of shots of Kerbin from space, so that's not really needed.  However, I tried to stay accurate and got this thing to within 2 degrees of its original 47 degree inclination, while getting pretty darned close to the actual Ap/Pe of the historical flight.

Spoiler

And that completes the retcon.  I'm hoping I don't have skip stuff later...but I probably will. 

[Scarecrow71]

DATE:  7 October 1959
FLIGHT:  Luna III
ROCKET:  Modified R7 Semyorka
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Luna III was the first satellite to fly to the far side of the Moon and take pictures.  The flight was coordinated so that the far side of the moon was in the sunlight, allowing pictures to be taken and sent back to Earth.  29 total pictures were taken, but only 17 of these were successfully sent back to Earth.  This flight also marked the first time a gravity assist was pulled off, with the Moon's gravity altering the course of the satellite on its way around the far side and back to Earth.  The satellite is believed to have burned up in the upper atmosphere during its return trip.  I had to make 1 small correction burn, after hitting the far side of the Moon, to put the satellite into a trajectory to get it under 70km on the return trip.  This will, in time, help decay its orbit and have it crash into the ground.  Not exactly burning up in the upper atmosphere, but close enough.

It needs to be noted that I altered the design of the rocket, allowing for far less fuel than I have been taking on these flights.  Still way more than I needed, but less than I would have used had I stuck with the medium tanks/engines.

Spoiler

I took 2 images of the Mun, one at Pe and another just before leaving its SOI. Just because.

This completes the 1950s for the historical space race.

[Scarecrow71]

DATE:  11 August 1960
FLIGHT:  Explorer XIII
ROCKET:  Thor DM-21 Agena-A
FLIGHT DETAILS:  Explorer XIII was the first man-made satellite to reach orbit and then be recovered after landing back on Earth.  This was a major accomplishment as all previous attempts saw the satellites either burn up in the atmosphere or be entirely wrecked upon impact.  Explorer XIII was recovered in whole, or rather, the interior of the bus - the probe core, radio beacon, and some telemetry equipment - was recovered in whole and intact.  The interesting thing about the recovery is that the bus was supposed to be recovered mid-air, but the plane that was supposed to pick it up flew the wrong direction, causing the capsule to land in the Pacific Ocean.  For this flight, I was able to nearly nail down the correct amount of dV; I was over by about 300 m/s, which is really good for not having to freehand the satellite, bus, and the rocket.  I also did not splash down in the water, instead coming to rest in the forest somewhere.

Spoiler