Apollo to other planets, or mother ships?

[kahlzun]

I was thinking the other day about doing some variant on an Apollo mission, and taking it to Duna.

I realised that, as the size of the transfer stage increases, you stop having a recognizable Apollo simulation, and you instead have a Mothership with the lander.

My question to you is: is Apollo firmly tied to the Mun, or can I do otherwise identical missions to other bodies? If so, what name should be given to these missions?

[Spartwo]

Apollo style is very easy but gettting it to look similar is the problem.The name would be different as it's another program.

[Moar Boosters]

THere were proposals during the apollo era to perform a manned flyby of venus, skimming it's atmpsphere and sending out probes. I guess you could reach eve for a flyby without supersizing your rocket.

[GusTurbo]

I've done Apollo-style missions to Duna and the Jool system that don't look too far off from the original, at least with the CSM looking similar.

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Edited August 18, 2013 by GusTurbo

[Wayfare]

Thing is, the Apollo mission profile is not the most efficient way to get to other bodies in KSP. Given the high fraction of mass that is in engines and dry tanks you're usually better off bringing less engines and more fuel than the other way around.

Consider that a three-man capsule with a half-sized Rockomax tank and a Poodle engine can land on the Mun and return to Kerbin. It can be launched from Kerbin and make TMI with, say, a Skipper-powered orange tank and some liquid boosters. You could probably build it under fifty parts. The "Lite" edition of my Munshine V comes in at 156 parts and that's pretty far on the light end of the scale. Mulbin's magnificent Munbug has something like 800.

All this is fine when we're going to the Mun or Minmus, but the higher delta-v requirements of interplanetary travel can quickly cause an Apollo profile to balloon out of control. A more basic mothership/lander combination (preferably assembled in orbit) or even a single-craft direct profile (possibly with drop tanks) remains much more manageable.

[mushroomman]

Didn't they have plans for an Apollo-based Mars landing and Venus fly-bye?

[kahlzun]

My understanding of an 'Apollo' style mission is one where the lander is disposable, and detaches from the transfer stage, lands and returns to dock. A crew member usually (always?) remains behind in the transfer ship (not being bitter at all) awaiting the redock.

Once redocked, the lander is discarded, and the transfer stage goes back to home world, landing the crew capsule via aerobraking and chutes.

I guess my question is: does the design of the ships matter that much, or can it be defined as a type of mission profile, with a disposable lander and a Mothership?

[tom1499]

There was actually a lot of concepts and designs for apollo. It's a very interesting read, all of the planned landers and design references.

astronautix.com has tons on the subject. Well worth a read.

[magnemoe]

First the Apollo pod is to small for realistic interplanetary missions. You need more room and an more advanced life support. Guess the Venus flyby would use something like an skylab module.

For KSP an Apollo style mission to Mun is a bit overkill, the dV requirements are far lower and the parts we have make it unpractical.

For an Duna expedition an Apollo style setup makes far more sense, as duna landing and retur dV is twice that on Mun.

[Paul Kingtiger]

You don't necessarily need a lot more room though. Mir was pretty small inside and people stayed up there for longer than would be needed to get to Mars, so it's quite reasonable for a slightly modified Apollo style mission to go to Duna. The tricky bit is getting back. You need a lot more DeltaV to get off Duna than the Mun and you've got to take it all with you.

An alternative is a Mars Direct style mission, as laid out in Robert Zubrin's book, Mars Direct. You'd need to install the Kethane mod but then you could recreate that mission profile, which isn't Apollo, but is far closer to it than the space cruiser idea and has a lot of advantages. I'm trying my own Duna Direct at the moment, some interesting challenges to be had.

[Skorpychan]

I tend to use the mothership/lander approach; my nuclear-powered transfer stages are ships in their own right, and I've recently redesigned them to be modular for outer-system trips that need moar fuel. The crew rides the lander the whole way currently, because I want to be able to decouple it should everything go nozzles-up on launch.

As for a RETURN flight? That's not anything I've tried from interplanetary missions.

[0x7be]

You don't necessarily need a lot more room though. Mir was pretty small inside and people stayed up there for longer than would be needed to get to Mars, so it's quite reasonable for a slightly modified Apollo style mission to go to Duna. The tricky bit is getting back. You need a lot more DeltaV to get off Duna than the Mun and you've got to take it all with you.

I disagree with you.

Well, Apoll CM had 6 cubic meters of habitable volume for three astronauts, while Mir had 90 cubic meters for six cosmonauts. So, Apollo had 2 cubic meters per person while Mir - 15. That's a big difference IMO.

[lazarus1024]

Didn't they have plans for an Apollo-based Mars landing and Venus fly-bye?

Yes, but the plan utilized NERVAs for both IIRC. I believe that the Mars and Venus plans for Apollo included a much modified LM and SM. I think the command module was the same though and I think that the Saturn V was still planned as the launch platform.

I think a lot of the modifications were based upon using NERVA instead of a peroxide based chemical rocket for the service module as well as extra stores, etc.

[lazarus1024]

I disagree with you.

Well, Apoll CM had 6 cubic meters of habitable volume for three astronauts, while Mir had 90 cubic meters for six cosmonauts. So, Apollo had 2 cubic meters per person while Mir - 15. That's a big difference IMO.

It is a huge difference. One thing to keep in mind though, for roughly 2/3rds of the duration of an Apollo mission, you can also count the habitable volume of the LM in there and during the surface mission you have one astronaut in the CSM and 2 in the LM. So it is mostly about dealing with the volume for just the 3 day return voyage from the Moon for most missions. That said, Apollo 8 had to of sucked since there was no LM to at least stretch your arms in from time to time.

[lazarus1024]

And apparently I was completely wrong about the plans http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/the-last-manned-mars-plan-1971/

[RoboRay]

An alternative is a Mars Direct style mission, as laid out in Robert Zubrin's book, Mars Direct.

The Case for Mars. "Mars Direct" is the name for the mission plan proposed to NASA.

Zubrin's books are excellent reading for people interested in detailed examinations of realistic, feasible, cost-effective and even productive space activities.

Edited August 19, 2013 by RoboRay

[Geschosskopf]

To my way of thinking, you have to have a purpose in going somewhere. In the case of Apollo, that purpose was nothing but a photo-op to prove we could, if we went to great trouble and expense, put a few people on the moon for a very short time. So to me, skipping the technicalities of what is and isn't an "Apollo-style" mission in real life, "Apollo-style" means "nothing but a photo-op". IOW, you get there, you land, you hop out, you plant a flag, you take a screenshot, then you hop back in and come home. Maybe you have an itty bitty rover, too, which you drive a short distance before you either wreck it or get bored with it, and take another screenshot or 2.

Now, such a mission is quite an accomplishment when you're 1st starting, At this point in your KSP life, your purpose is simply to prove to yourself that you can design, build, and fly a rocket capable of just getting there and back. IOW, the journey itself is the purpose, not what you do when you get there. But after you do this once or twice, you realize that if you treat the other planets the same way, KSP will soon become boring, because you're not doing anything new. Sure, you need a bigger rocket to go further away, you need different landers for different worlds, but that's the only real difference. You're still basically doing nothing but getting to LKO, making an ejection burn, getting captured at the destination, landing, taking off again, and burning for home. It's just like going to Mun or Minmus all over again, except it takes longer and you have to wait for launch windows.

And in the meantime, just dropping on 1 spot and planting a flag is a huge disservice to the destination. You've got an entire planet to explore, with its interesting scenery and perhaps anomalies to investigate. So, you need to develop methods of seeing beyond the horizon around your landing site. So if possible, you want to fly long distances. In not, you want to be able to drive long distances, set up multiple bases or at least make multiple landings in different places. Maybe even start exploiting Kethane, and building staging bases or even orbital shipyards and extraplanetary launchpads to make exploration of further planets easier. IOW, actually start living in space instead of just visiting.

So, now you have to start adding capabilities to your rockets. And they start getting big and heavy fast, so pretty soon there's nothing for it but assembling them in orbit. This inevitably leads to the creation of a "mothership", aka a mobile space station, and designing all sorts of ground, air, and space vehicles to do all sorts of different jobs. This is what keeps the game fresh and entertaining.

I see lots of people plunking simple, limited-capability landers on distant planets. That's Apollo in philosophy if not in all technicalities. I'm sure they're quite happy with the results but I can't help but feel they're missing out on a lot of the fun if that's all they're going there to do.