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Progeny Mk6-I Mission Ends with “Near Success”
The first launch of the new calendar year took to the skies earlier this week. It was a re-flight of the Mystery Goo containment units that took place last July, which ended with the rocket breaking up on re-entry. This time we know the rocket did succeed in making it down through the atmosphere to the point of parachute deployment, and the data we have is consistent with a good chute popping out to slow the rocket, but the rocket itself failed to be recovered. The splashdown point was ~80km away from where we thought it would come down and it took the recovery vessel over an hour to reach it. There’s no obvious reason why the rocket shouldn’t have still been floating on the surface and we will refrain from speculation and await the official report sometime next week. Although the mission is technically a failure because the Goo samples failed to be returned, everyone is happy at least to see the rocket survived past the point of the last flight. Unless any evidence turns up to blame the new payload instruments, this shouldn’t affect the next launch carrying the Science Jr. material study labs, which is currently planned for early February.
This was also the first flight to use our updated Automated Flight Control System software. The AFCS saw a significant refactor late last year to adhere to stricter communications and file management protocols. The software is now more capable of handling commands sent from Mission Control, manages its local storage space better and better handles more frequent comm dropouts between KSC – something that will be required when it starts happening more than just once as an orbital craft travels in and out of contact around Kerbin.
Ascension Mk1 Readies for Third Flight
Everything came together well this week to prep the Ascension Mk1 rocket for flight. Last week the engine was test fired on the stand to ensure it was ready before being integrated with the fuel tank it will push up into space. The test weight carrying batteries and flight systems arrived just today to begin its integration and cap off the rocket. It will be laid horizontal at the start of next week for final checks before being loaded up onto the carry vehicle and taken out to the launch pad. We can’t forecast weather out that far yet but everyone is hoping for good conditions and an on-time launch.
Capsule Sea Trials Conclude
With the delay of the Progeny Mk6-I due to weather, sea trials for the Mk1 capsule got off to an early start this week with a parachute drop test on Tuesday from 16km into the waters just offshore from KSC. The capsule was fitted with a float collar that automatically inflated after splashdown to allow the recovery boat to hook on and drag it aboard. Unlike previous tests, the capsule floated just fine. After the Mk6-I launch MSV Hoodall stuck around to perform more water exercises with the astronauts boarding the capsule on deck before being placed in the water and removed under various conditions: partial deflation, injuries, etc. This all took place out in the bay north of KSC for calmer conditions on the first day before moving farther out to sea for rougher waters the following day. Working out the best ways to extricate the crew from the capsule turned out to be more difficult than expected but trial and error prevailed over the course of the exercises. Some notes on the hatch design have been recorded and thankfully no one ever came close to drowning.
ATN Database
The latest update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 3,031 asteroids and 0 updated with new observation data.
From the Desk of Drew Kerman
Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuffWritten on 11/30/18
Still staying ahead, getting a week of ops done in less than a week of real days. I might finally have the pacing nailed down, and this month’s 3 launches are only so jammed up because of the backlog created by the operation suspension that closed out 2018. So after this month things will calm down even more. Ascension launches will take more time to prep than Progeny, which on average usually took about 2 weeks. Actually no, now that I think about it Ascension launches will take about the same time since there are 4 more boosters already practically built and just waiting for engines and payloads. Okay well if they had to be built from the beginning it would take 3-4 weeks between launches. So I guess things will remain about the same as January through March/April depending on how missions pan out.
Speaking of missions panning out, causing this last one to fail was mainly a plot decision that came after I realized the vertical ascent was caused by the rocket striking the launch base on lift off – something I had seen in earlier KSP versions when getting things setup but never during an actual launch. I will have to tweak some things to ensure this doesn’t continue to happen but I think one factor was I hadn’t installed the new KJR by Lisias correctly and it wasn’t working, so the rocket was a bit noodle-ey. Stiffer joints are back now and it should fly like it used to again. Other than that though the launch went off great under KSP v1.5.1
Since I switched back to using RemoteTech after Kerbalism cut out its signaling sub-system, the game now requires me to properly handle loss of communication with KSC. Before I could just pretend that after KSC contact was lost the data that was still being written to the KSC archive was really being written to local disk. Now it actually has to be that way or kOS will throw an error that will crash the program. Still, I’m glad I had to be forced to go back and finally code the boot system the way I actually wanted to in the very beginning, complete with a “command line” interface no less!
