[RSS] To The Moon And Back - RSS Manned Lunar Program Challenge

[Nicholander]

Bumped, again! Anyway, nice probe, von Ziegendorf! And good luck with your mission to the Moon with FAR, Overfloater!

[immelman]

Using the excellent FASA Saturn 5/ Apollo replica I did my best to imitate a classic Apollo mission, pretending it was not cancelled and Apollo 18 still flew.

For fun I selected the Moon's dark side for my landing (Crater number 131 on this map):

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/luna/moon_farsidemap03.htm

Launch was a bit harder than it should have been due to the lift of the rocket, but hats off to RedAV8R, the Realism Overhaul Apollo setup works really well:

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[Overfloater]

Here's my new entry - on a more proper installation of RSS...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rheCOIzsvuw

Plugins used:

- RSS

- Ferram Aerospace Research

- Deadly re-entry

- Kerbquake

- Engineer redux (so no funky jumping between map & normal view on the footage xD)

I didn't use TAC life support because I didn't like the hex canisters =(

maybe I'll check out that "Snacks!" stuff sometime... >.>

[von Ziegendorf]

"Rover, what are you doing? Rover, stahp" Overfloater, now you're definately the best Moon driver And also probably addicted to adrenaline - mountain flyby 0_o. The whole mission was great

And I have something to share too! The thing that caused my laptop to overheat xD

[Overfloater]

Thanks von Ziegendorf. The mountain fly by was totally accidental x-]

That's a serious looking rocket, what does it do?? o.O

I like how round it is compared to your early rockets!

The thing that caused my laptop to overheat xD

http://i.imgur.com/I9C3W4m.png

You shouldn't let it, do what i do - set an air conditioner to always blow at it!

[von Ziegendorf]

It just lifts >400tons to LEO. And what about its shape? It is all about the amount of "column of thrust" - how I call a tank(s) and an engine under it - that can be fitted in a single layer while keeping minimal part count - which means using only the biggest available tanks for a given engine. After extensive study done during my RSS play I have some conclusions:

It appears that for low payloads and stock components you can easily use the round pattern - 7 columns in core, and 7+12 columns in the lower layer. And here comes the problem, because the next layer would need 7+12+18 columns. TWR of such stage would be unnecesarly high but not high enough to add the wole big tank to each column.

The square pattern with SLS parts is just the best to minimize part count for payloads around 200t. But it's still not the perfect one because it does not scale well for bigger payloads.

And the KW Rocketry 5m parts when used in a square manner tends to be underpowered at the top of the rocket and overpowered at the bottom. So the round is here better. But I'm using them just to allow for single launching the next mission. For the trip to Triton I will be using my old Square Launcher Technology, but just bigger...

PS those 30 SRB were added only to exceed 20.000 tons of liftoff mass

And I removed a lot of dust from my laptop's fan so no more overheating

[von Ziegendorf]

Once again, there is no achievement for this (I suggest "my cold friend") but I put here my flight to Triton.

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And because I like this thread you can watch here my previous mission - Jupiter Moons Grant Tour

[celem]

Just managed to make my first Lunar visit in RSS. Find the mission report here.

Was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Went Direct Ascent due to tech limitations, it was a career game and I didnt have docking. Thanks to RO I also lacked throttling landing engines amongst other things. What was intended as a comfy fuel buffer became the only thing getting me home, despite saving some here and there making fine-tune burns with RCS.

Didnt get any of your sub-challenges really, first visit and very early tech.

[Nicholander]

I'm not really maintaining this thread any more, but good job! You did that in career mode, awesome! By the way, were you using Realistic Progression Zero?

[celem]

Yes, I had RP-0 for the career rebalance. TestFlight was a fun element too, though a lot of the more advanced engines are not subject to failures. The engine I landed with is probably the major non-RP-0 part. (Though they should all be RO balanced apart from the legs which were scaled stock). Getting this mission off the deck was a struggle in RP-0 career, that Saturn-V style F-1A lifter engine cluster cost me a lot of cash to develop and then 110k for each unit. So you have to recover them everytime or face bankruptcy as they represent 1/3 of the wet cost in themselves. (Stage Recovery mod helps, lots of chutes and drop them early)

A few things I didn't have that I may add into my game in the future are Engine Ignitor and a LSS mod.

Edited March 12, 2015 by celem

[Tevir]

Greetings! This is still an early WIP but many updates are sure to come! Have been working on this for several months now. Specifically I am going to re launch everything and film it for a video inspired by the artistic works of Chris P Bacon and Von Ziegendorf. Currently every time i try to land on the moon the infamous kracken gobbles my ship up as it falls through the surface and explodes. Still trying to figure that out but the station core, super heavy lift vehicle, crew transfer/module transfer vehicle, and lander are functioning. Hundreds of test flights and many incarnations of this project have flown, and I'm sure there will be plenty more!

Everything is designed to be 100% flyable using ALCOR/RasterPropMonitor. I really want the IVA capsule form near future spacecraft but their release page only has it for .25 and 1.0. Will probably try to get that working anyway.

RSS/RO for .90 and all it's pre-req mods, remote tech, IVA with RasterPropMonitor, Hullcam VDS, ALCOR, Scan Stat, Vessel View, Karbonite

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AthenaSLHV (SuperHeavyLaunchVehicle) An RP-1 fueled saturn 5 main stage with 8 five segment SRB's. (I know asparagus liquid fueled boosters would be much more efficient I have done that in the past. I really wanted this rocket to have a full ring of SRB's inspired by the 5 booster variant Atlas V. Stage 1 sep happens with 50 seconds left on the F-1 engine stage. 3rd stage is a massive hydrogen/lox cryo tank with 9 RD-0120 Energia/Buran engines. 4th stage used for last bit of orbit burn and trans lunar injection has 3 RD-0120's. Both the 3rd and 4th stages starting TWR is around .88 depending on payload and each has 4.5kishDV with heavy payloads.

The station core consists of an Alcor command module, NTO/MMH tank, Aerozine50/MMH tank, Life Support tank/systems, Observation module, solar/battery/probecore/antennas, 2 centrifuges spinning in opposite directions to cancel each other, and a docking hub with 4 ports as well as one of each end of the station. It is launched into a 200kmish LEO with just under half fuel in it's 4th stage. It is then met by a Apollo+Centrifuge1 which because the lighter payload has more fuel in it's 4th stage, and is refueled. From there the 4th stage does the trans-lunar injection burn and most of the capture/orbital positioning, saving the apollo for final burns and station OMS. Further additions to the station are launched directly to the moon and rendezvous in lunar orbit.

The crew transfer vehicle Apollo also serves as a tug for payloads headed to the moon. By it self it has over 5kdv and the service module is remote controllable and capable of undocking/redocking with the bottom of the command module so it may be interchanged or left in orbit after capsule de orbit. Currently has 8 external tanks that are planned to be asparagus drop tanks.

The lander is the AlcorSoyuz. Holds 5 designed to be crewed by 2-3. Long term life support systems, RTG's and solar panels, 16 karbonite drills to refuel the 5kdv lower stage with an optional MMH/NTO upper stage with 2.5kdv.

[winged]

Tevir this is awesome!

[Ianwubby]

Wow. The best I've done so far is put one satellite into orbit! It happily passed over Hawaii, though, so all is good.