Mission 9: Liberty bell 6We can't afford to lose another rocket, so after very careful checking of the telemetry from the last flight we have determined that the rocket was unstable, mostly that drag from the escape device and the support girders were causing unstable airflow. The redesigned rocket features a pointed escape device to direct airflow more smoothly, a dummy antenna opposite the real one to even out airflow, and careful repositioning of the support legs has allowed removal of the girders altogether. This alone saves us 500kg and provides an extra 93 dV.
And a brand spanking new paintjob.We take out a loan in order to build the rocket and we move the mission schedule down, Furbur must wait for his turn in the pilot seat. Albro's capsule is ready for launch and he has been briefed on his mission; to achieve a stable 70,000km+ orbit and report the conditions, then to test the reentry retro rockets in order to return to Kerbin. He will be keeping his periapsis inside the atmosphere just in case the reentry rockets have a problem, the air resistance will enable him to return.
This will leave us $17299 in debt. But if successful we will repay our loan and have enough for the next launch Albro handles the launch like a pro.
No, he's right to be worried, this is about the point where Freedom 6 lost control.
Gravity turn is a little hard, this rocket has so much drag that turning is slow at this speed.
The rocket finally responds and turns smoothly.
Too smoothly.
This is kinda bad, but you have 29 seconds untill you reach apoapsis.
Recovered like a boss. What's that, it's difficult to move the joystick, haven't we heard of hydraulics? No, I haven't..
Approaching orbital apoapsis, you have permission to use the rest of the fuel to raise that orbit as high as you can,
Jettison the capsule. 97 kilometers Apoapsis? Not bad
Unschedualled EVA, (Why do they keep doing this?) "It's very cold, and theres no air, I think up here we could orbit indefinitely" ,Hmm? Oh yes that's nice, But Get back in there!
Send the report later.
I'm in SPAAAAAACE!
... You were supposed to jettison the escape rockets, not fire them! But you gained an extra 6 kilometers and 70 seconds of flight time so that's ok.
Life support is good, the heaters are working far harder than we originally planned, it seems we can only get an hour of flight time, that should be enough for a whole orbit though, but longer missions will need more power.
"This is mission control we are getting the feed from your external cam, and Kerbin looks very small"
"It's very cramped in here, I wish the window was bigger, why did they block my view with that Antenna?
"
Theres the Mun!
You've reached the peak of your trip, congratulations.
Crew report, some dummy installed 2 dummy antennas.
I know you don't need them to get home, but fire the reentry rockets!
It's getting very hot out there.
Why is the heat shield getting colder when the drag is higher?
Deploy the chute, Don't stare directly at the sun!
There must have been some fuel left in those retro rockets, This still counts as a landing right? Reentry took 7 minutes which we should keep in mind for life support.
"I'm the first guy in space, yeah hah!, I'm not going to freeze to death out here am I?" "You can use the parachute as a blanket, you better get it before it rains or something.
Science!
What the hell, where is our payout? Either mission controller is broken or that violent landing counted as a crash rather than a landing, either way a little save game editing is in order.
Next time we should take up some goo pods, We could sample the upper atmosphere and space, Also Albro only managed an EVA report in the upper atmosphere, Roddrin can do one while in a proper orbit. The rocket is still fairly unstable, so we could research Flight control for reaction wheels which would allow safer and far more efficient ascents. Or we could research Science tech which would give us batteries and the science jr.
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Topic: Bills Rocket Program - Interlude 1: KSSR launches Kaputnik & Mission 12: Sigma 6 (Read 5665 times)