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Rocket Air Launch Testing Commences
At long last the Deuce took to the skies twice this week under the command of Flight Officers Tedman and Aldeny with a Progeny Mk1-B mounted to its rear to begin testing the concept of air launching a rocket. The idea was first conceived over a year ago and stems from the simple fact that a rocket engine can become more efficient the higher up in the atmosphere it goes. The Mk1-B was chosen simply because it was surplus and thus cheap, also it was one of the most simple of Progeny rockets so not much could go wrong with igniting it while airborne. As it happens, it fits quite snugly on the back of the Deuce, so much so that initially there was some trouble mounting it flush.
The first mission was mainly to see how the Deuce reacted to having a rocket strapped to its back. After seeing absolutely no control issues during flight, the go-ahead was given to perform a release of the rocket while the aircraft flew level (as in, not climbing or descending, not perfectly horizontal). The decoupler is positioned at the top of the booster, just below the payload fairings, for a secure attachment that is also slightly ahead of the center of mass, which meant that upon release the rocket was kicked up and back. Once free of the aircraft, it flew stable on its own for a few seconds before drifting off heading and falling back towards the ground. The parachute was deployed to land it safely, taking into account the extra mass of the booster, which would normally have been detached after being used in ascent.
After data analysis confirmed a stable flight, a second mission was authorized to release the rocket at an increased pitch angle closer to where it would be during a normal ascent. The rocket itself cannot pitch upwards so the aircraft must instead. This release also went well, unfortunately weather today prevented a third flight that was to release the rocket to the angle it would use to ascend – around 85°. If the third release test goes as planned we could see the following flight actually launching the rocket after release!
Launch Calendar Fills Up
Speaking of launches, we have a couple exciting weeks ahead of us with the additional signing of two new contracts for the Progenitor Program. You can learn all the details of the missions by visiting the Ops Tracker and looking at the individual vessel pages for each craft but here is the current list of launch dates and times:
Ascension Mk1 – 7/17/2018 @ 16:36:00 UTC
Progeny Mk6 Block I – 7/20/2018 @ 20:51:00 UTC
Progeny Mk6 Block I – 7/25/2018 @ 17:02:00 UTC
Progeny Mk6 Block I – 8/2/2018 @ 17:30:00 UTC
The Mk6 launches spread out further moving into August since we need to keep space open in the VAB to handle additional Ascension Mk1 builds, which could see several rockets coming together at once depending on how well the rocket does on its second attempt at making orbit. Remember the Ascension Mk1 is a lifter vehicle, which means we can assemble several to be ready even if we don’t have anything to put on top of them yet, as that would be designed separately.
Looking further ahead we are still unsure when we will see the next Block II launch of the Progeny Mk6.
ATN Database
The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 2,217 asteroids and 8 updated with new observation data.
Celestial Snapshot of the Week
Here is a still from the video of the first release test for the Progeny Mk1-B off the rear of the Deuce, with a late-phase Mun in the sky
From the Desk of Drew Kerman
Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuffWritten on 7/11/18
So, coming back from my 4th of July fireworks show with only like 3 days lead time wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and I managed to maintain that lead and push it out a bit further before I became a bit burnt out and also it was hot as hell here earlier in the week as well so the PC was shut down for some of it. I’m going away again for a 3-day weekend to do a road trip with friends. You can see the route plan on Google Maps here. Yea it’s going to be a fun time, I’m taking my Nissan 370Z while two other friends with Dodge Chargers will be tagging along. I have today and tomorrow to do the weekend into Monday and I will have to hit the ground running hard again when I get back since I have two rocket launches next week.
Deuce carry mission 1
So, first of all I had to figure out how to attach the rocket to the aircraft so that when I released the rocket they were two properly separate functioning vessels. First I tried attaching the decoupler to the aircraft then merging the rocket and attaching it to the decoupler. The truss is the root part of the rocket so I had to attach that to the decoupler then translate/rotate the rocket into proper position. This however ended up leaving the larger piece of the decoupler on the rocket after it was detached. I couldn’t flip the decoupler over for its initial attachment so I had to attach it to the rocket, but then when I tried to merge it to the plane it wouldn’t attach via the decoupler. So finally I had to merge the aircraft with the rocket and attach that to the decoupler, then re-root to the aircraft cabin.
Second challenge was that I wanted to video the release but I also wanted the release I captured to be a genuine first try, not a recreation – this meant I had to fly with visual effects enabled, such as Scatterer and EVE. To make things workable I disabled the Scatterer water shaders and EVE volumetric clouds. While things were still running only about 60-70% normal speed it was doable. Unfortunately I still had to fly and capture the release twice because the first time I made the mistake of switching over to the rocket after release to see how it was doing, which I know screws up the VOID data logging – it starts logging data for the new active vessel. I need that log holding the plane data to recreate the flight path for aircraft in the Ops Tracker.
After the flight I was able to use a save file taken shortly before the release and manually set the pitch trim value in the file after some experimenting to hold the aircraft level after the save was loaded, which let me re-create the release very well. I wrote up a small kOS script to show me the rocket pitch after it was let go, which is where the values that were reported came from.
Also worth noting that this image had Scatterer water shaders disabled, but the atmospheric effects still made it look good from a distance.
Deuce carry mission 2
I tried flying this one again with VFX active and with volumetric clouds but unfortunately when I went to release I encountered this bug in Scatterer (fixed in a more recent version) and the lag was so bad also that doing the dive and climb maneuver and holding pitch with any accuracy was pretty much impossible. So again, this mission was flown twice, which always sucks for aircraft missions because they are flown in real time so that’s a good chunk of wasted time. I also forgot to save the game prior to release the first time as well.
The mission was flown twice but it was also the real deal that the release took two tries. I did not have a good first attempt at diving and climbing back up to a proper angle and altitude. Second attempt was better. I removed all graphic effects for the second flight so I would have a smooth gameplay experience and just re-positioned the aircraft using VesselMover after reloading the game with all the VFX for the release photo.
