Project Alexandria: a history of spaceflight done in Real Solar System

[Felbourn]

 

[Dman979]

Posted at 03:00 EST? You have dedication, my good man.

[Brainpop14]

Awesome Bob! And as usual I have recommendations for 1970 Here's a list, with the first that they had.

Venera 7 - First probe to land successfully on the surface of Venus.

Soyuz 9 - Set a new endurance record of 18 days in space.

Apollo 13 - For obvious reasons. Too iconic to not do.

Luna 16 - First probe to land on the Moon, scoop up soil and return it to Earth automatically.

 I realize that some of these are obvious, but I couldn't find very many interesting missions, anyway good luck to you. And this series is amazing! Keep up the good work!

 

[Felbourn]

I like that you put reasons. Some people message me "do Foogoo 3" and that's it, when I know the mission had no spaceflight firsts. So it leaves me thinking "why did they suggest Foogoo 3? did I miss something? was there actually a first?" Usually their answer is "because it's cool" or something.

[davidy12]

VERY NICE!!! 1969... BIG YEAR.  

 

EDIT: Also, in 1970 are you going to do THIS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_379

Edited February 9, 2016 by davidy12

[Felbourn]

There isn't much I know for sure before the episodes are being made. I know some obvious stuff, like 1969 will have a moon landing and 1970 will have Apollo 13 and 1986 will launch Mir. Those are just three examples that are so obvious that I'd be an idiot for not including them. Stuff that is less obvious depends on what else will be in that year. I have a time constraint of 25-35 minutes; at most 40 minutes in most cases. The best time to discuss upcoming missions is right around the time I am finishing the previous episode. The 3-4 days before I release something, and then 1-2 days at most after it, I am planning the next episode. So for example 1969 design started 2-3 days ago and will not last longer than 1 more day. Right NOW is the best time to mention 1969 desires, while 1970 is best done when 1969 is almost done, so maybe in 7-10 days.

[Brainpop14]

I also want to remind you of Mariner 6 and 7.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_6_and_7

For 3 reasons. First, you haven't shown a Mars Mission in a while. Second, they looked at parts of Mars never observed before. Third, they were the first interplanetary probes launched in the same launch window.

[davidy12]

@Felbourn: There is One error I picked up on Apollo 8. They had only 4 ullage rockets on the interstage (up until 13) and you had 8. Also, their were 4 ullage motors inside the skirt as well (all missions).

[Felbourn]

They are built into the model.

[davidy12]

11 hours ago, Felbourn said:

They are built into the model.

Oh. Still, I'm just pointing out the inaccuracy. LOVED the episode.

Can't wait till 1969.

[Felbourn]

Yep, no problem. I don't point at my own issues sometimes, like, "hey everyone this has 8 ullage instead of 4 but the model has 8 and I don't know how to use blender to change it." I commented on the 3rd stage because someone had tried to tell me it was 3 ullage and not 2 so I was explaining the difference. I usually can get good details like from PDFs such as this: http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/pdf/sa503-flightmanual.pdf 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Question: with all this chatter about number of ullage motors and the "famous" footage @Felbourn mentioned of the third stage separating with 3 motors from an earlier launch, um...

how did they actually GET that film? Doesn't look like TV and they certainly didn't recover the spent SI/SII stages....

Same goes for the interstage dropping away from Apollo 6, etc...

[Ten Key]

The film was stored in recoverable canisters that separated from the rocket. 

 

Quote

A surprising recovery of films from the seventh Saturn I flight took place in November. Almost two months after the flight, two barnacle-encrusted capsules, each containing 100 feet of color motion-picture film in good condition, were found, one on a beach of an island in the Bahamas, the other in San Salvador in Central America. Hurricane weather had thwarted recovery efforts after the flight.

http://history.nasa.gov/MHR-5/part-5.htm

 

[Felbourn]

I think this is the video that confuses people because it's called "Saturn V Staging" but it's showing a Saturn IB separation.

[Felbourn]

I spent a lot of time today on planning for 1969, mostly in my head. I have many ideas, and they are coalescing into a script. I downloaded some NASA film and audio. I'd say I'm 80% done with non-KSP pre-production. I have not flown the mission itself yet. I have five things on a checklist to still fix before I can even think of flying:

• need an action group to toggle LM RCS
• need action group for LM antenna
• need to attach camera to LM
• need to load the LM with ground gear, which still needs to be downloaded
• need to fix the ascent engine throttle

I figured since many of yo are excited for this mission, I'd give a better look at my progress as I go along.

[Brainpop14]

Good luck Bob! I hope you can get this done. 1969 is a huge milestone! Good luck with it! I hope Mariner 6 and 7 will be easier.

[Felbourn]

I have about 7 minutes of 1969 complete. I switched modes to get a short Ares interlude done but ran into technical difficulties that required a LOT of testing and debugging. I have still not resolved the problem. You can see the support thread HERE that I created for the issue. My Ares teaser is done because I hacked around the problem at roughly 3x the time cost versus usual, but at least it's done. I figure at this point I might as well wait and release it next Monday since 1969 won't be done by then anyway.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Felbourn

[Felbourn]

Weekend update: up to 19 minutes 41 seconds

Probably one more week to finish it off. It feels pretty close now.

[KerbonautInTraining]

I know it's way too late to change the current episode, but contrary to popular belief it would appear the Apollo missions didn't perform a skip re-entry. I could be wrong, but that's what it looks like as discussed in this thread.

Apollo 11 did perform a climb during the reentry to reach an alternate landing site but the G-forces only went down to 0.85. (I'm pretty sure a skip would go down to less than 0.1)

No idea how something like this could have gone unnoticed, I hear everywhere that they skipped but according to the transcripts they didn't.

[Felbourn]

My Apollo 11 mission has not left the surface yet. I still have time to do this however it was done, if we can figure it out.

By the way... a little spoiler for you dedicated folks who follow Alexandria on this thread (which is probably less than 1% of the people who watch it on YouTube)... my 1969 episode is entirely Apollo 11.

It seemed like a mistake to include anything else since Apollo 11 was the most significant Spaceflight First in the history of spaceflight.

I'll do other 1969 events in some followup episode of some kind.

[davidy12]

So might as well make this 1969 pt1. 

[Felbourn]

Right now I'm thinking the 1969 episode would come after this, and this episode will just be called Apollo 11.

[Brainpop14]

Sounds like a plan to me. I totally get it as well. With Apollo 11 being so iconic you'd have to do all sorts of cinematics to give it the proper look and feel. And personally I'm really excited for this! I hope the rest of 1969 will be just as awesome.

[Felbourn]

39 minutes complete, and I have the end in sight, but at this point I am (a) surprised at how much info I had ready to put in this video (b) pretty sure I won't finish today

can't skimp on the greatest human accomplishment

[Brainpop14]

You got that right Bob.