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Progenitor Successfully Completes First Week of Launches
Despite a few weather issues this week both the first and second Progeny Mk5 rockets made it off the pad and into space. We have an exhaustive review of the first launch and the second launch is still undergoing flight analysis in addition to being compared to the first one. We have found so far though that although there were minor variations, on a whole the second launch was almost identical to the first, both hitting apokee within a second of each other while also traveling the same total distance (with resolution down to a kilometer). We are pleased by the similar performance given no major ascent changes were planned for the second flight, so it should have been similar to the first. The third flight will see a larger deviation when we up the throttle to maintain a TWR of 3 during the 3rd stage engine burn. It will also be nearly fully automated – controllers will still handle the throttle manually while we test code that will take on this job for the 4th flight. The 4th launch could be our first hands-off rocket flight! You can see the telemetry data for the second flight online and more details on the second flight will be released on Sunday, as the majority of Progenitor team members will be in for a working day prior to launching on Monday. Flight Director Lanalye doesn’t like the idea of launching on the first day back from a weekend.
Happy Birthday, Kerbal Space Agency!
This past week we celebrated our first birthday as an operational agency, our founder and Operations Director Drew Kerman wrote a letter about it. Of course, we didn’t spend much time celebrating as we are in the midst of an extremely aggressive launch schedule but rest assured the after-party will be epic! Also, if everything continues to go according to plan we will be launching the final initial series of Mk5 rockets on the same day we launched our very first rocket, the Progeny Mk1-A! This is a very exciting time for us and we are glad we have so many fans to share it with. Thanks again to everyone who has interacted with us on twitter, here on the site, the forums, reddit and our other social platforms. Drew didn’t feel it was appropriate to include in his letter but we are still working on ways for our fans to help support us financially as we increase our operational capacity when moving more into regular space operations.
Genesis & KerBalloon Squeeze in Missions
Both of our atmospheric programs were able to squeeze in missions between our two rocket launches this week. Genesis ran a Civvie science mission that sent Captain Jebediah to the southern tip of our local landmass upon which rests an extinct volcano. Scientists have been noting some strange seismic activity going on there recently over the past few years, and since the Monolith incident things have become a bit more active. They are wondering if perhaps the asteroid impact that nearly wiped out kerbal civilization may have sent tremors far enough through the planet to unplug a cap over the magma chamber they know is still in the area. They plan to setup a small research station on the slopes of the volcano & will be using our aerial photographs to select the location.
KerBalloon was able to launch two balloons, both a high-altitude and low-altitude variant. The high-altitude launch was a near thing as a storm currently moving in on KSC & the surrounding area made recovery of the payload in rough seas almost beyond the capabilities of the team run by Specialist Bob. Both missions turned out to be a success and we have padded our coffers with additional funds to help stave off the inevitable losses once the Deuce returns to flight testing. Oh yes, by the way the Deuce has completed its design rebuild and will hopefully take to the skies once again next week between rocket launches.
ATN Database & New Alerts
The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 952 asteroids, 8 updates and 3 alerts issued:
- SPR-176(C) will impact Kerbin’s atmosphere on 10/12 over water in a remote location, no danger to surface operations
- WFY-338(E) will impact Kerbin’s atmosphere on 10/6 over water in a remote location, no danger to surface operations
- SYE-954(E) is being watched closely as its 2039 Mun pass shows a decreasing Kerbin periapsis, already at just 672km, with latest observations
Celestial Snapshot of the Week
Still not a whole lot of exciting stuff happening in the sky these days, but Val did manage to catch Mun occulting Sarnus before sunrise one day cycle.
From the Desk of Drew Kerman
Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuffWritten on 9/8/17
It’s technically the 9th now but I started this post before midnight sooo…
I’ve been keeping up with things awesomely, which is a good sign given that aggressive launch schedules like this will not be the norm (sorry) especially as operations grow more complex. Doing these 5 launches in two weeks is not only to pick up the pacing a little bit for those who hate all the time between launches but also as a test of whether I can handle the intense workload (33 images were posted this week, my average is 14. Images take a good deal of time for me to setup, capture & edit so are a good metric for my workload). So far so good, we’ll see how the three launches next week turn out. Given that I went into this whole thing with only 1 week of lead time it’s definitely a good thing I’ve been able to keep up…
Civvie accident
I decided beforehand Jeb was going to crash, but it turned out I also ended up flying a much poorer glide approach than I did with Val anyways. He was actually going to glide in too steeply and when pulling up before the runway not do so in time and strike his main gear, pitch forward and bury the prop. So I had to write it a bit differently with a stall instead thanks to my low glide approach, but the end result was still the same. I’ve been making Val out to be the better pilot, but I will say that Jeb fans have nothing to worry about. He’ll have his moments too. I see him as more of a clutch performer.
Mk5 launch sims
It doesn’t really make sense for me to truly try out code for the first time during an actual rocket launch, because besides the fact that kOS doesn’t have a true IDE which can tell me if I have errors when I run the code, there are things I can’t test unless the program is running in a situation where it has to handle things. Of course I do still want the actual flight to be “iffy” so I’ve built a Mk5 replica that can do all the real Mk5 can do but the fins spin it up faster, I don’t use FAR and I launch it straight up off the pad. So the entire flight is different but the various states such as boosting, coasting, re-entry, etc are all still happening. Even though they let me test the code under simple scenarios, there’s still always the possibility of problems during the actual flight that imposes different constraints and flies a different trajectory.
Mk5 flight 1
I knew I would maybe run out of disk space but I decided to let it happen if it did, however I was planning on using a bigger hard drive and my first attempt at the launch I forgot that although I edited the MM file to increase the disk space the part I had already included in the rocket still had the old values, so I ran out of space during ascent. I had to revert to VAB and replace that part so it would have the larger disk space. This was good because I also decided to hook up my X55 throttle for the second try so I could have a much smoother throttle response when pulling back on thrust to maintain 2 TWR. Which brings me to the fact that the TWR readout error (I did remove that KER readout) and pitch error were both actual mistakes I made – d’oh! But they made for some interesting flight analysis. Also, I discovered that kOS can’t read my throttle inputs at all, even when I tried both variables it has for throttle settings. However the VOID logger does read throttle input so in the logging code I just changed over to the second variable for the “fix” but am actually just copying over data from the VOID logger into the kOS log sheet.
Mk5 flight 2
Again, almost nailed it in one until I remembered after it was all said and done (just the launch in the game thankfully, not all the after-action stuff) that I had planned to write in a launch delay and had just flown the launch from the original time. RRRGGHHH!!! But also, I forgot to change the code from testing to shred the fins at 60km instead of 30km. So when I redid the launch I decided it would be a few minutes from the end of the window since that would be suspenseful, but when I actually wrote out the tweets later on I realized it made more sense to just say well ahead of time we’re shooting for the very end of the window, so I had to adjust the log times ahead two minutes. This is a similar thing to the one Civvie mission I had to re-write logs for and drives the point home that I should always write the tweets first leading up to the launch, then fly the mission.
Github update considerations
So I want to use the AFCS github repository properly to store various versions of the code but the problem is I can’t schedule updates, so I’m storing versions locally and pushing them to the repository manually at the proper times, which is why all the tweets about github updates have been ambiguous as to when the updates will happen. I also have to remember to keep the code clean of any changes that would be made after an update. For example if you look at the latest code for initialize.ks from the last launch, it still has the original launch time (tho that’d be hard for anyone to tell given its in UT seconds, but still – I would know :P)
High-Altitude balloon payout adjustments
Dammit I’ve been forgetting for the last few missions that if I write high-altitude balloons not making it to max altitude (not many do) then KSA doesn’t get the full contract payout. If you want to know, here is the formula: ((failAlt – contractMinAlt) / (maxAlt – contractMinAlt)) * payout, with the altitude in meters. So I had to go back and redo a few payments – again this is why there’s only one financial worksheet available at any time.
Random fun facts
I gave up using the named waypoints that contracts generate (Pilot’s Wonder, Danzon’s Breach, Eumon’s Tears, etc) and they are all Zone, Sector, Area or Site now. I may at some point assign those terms to specific kinds of missions, but for now it’s just random. But one of the latest mission waypoints was originally Jeb’s Rift and I renamed it to Zone J-7438, with the “J” for Jeb and “7438” spells “RIFT” when you enter it into a phone keypad.
In the caption for this image I originally was going to call Jeb “brown-faced” instead of “embarrassed”. Why? Well we blush red when embarrassed and red + green = brown. Buuuut then I was like, well do kerbals have red blood? I really haven’t decided yet. Then too there’s the whole race thing, which is hilarious because how that would apply to kerbals I have no idea but I can easily imagine someone being offended somehow seeing the term “brown-face” (I’m African/European/Japanese so racial terms don’t mean much to me). Also I wonder if anyone would interpret that as him shitting himself all over.
Okay. *deep breath* One more week. Three launches. Let’s do this.
