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Progenitor and Ascension Finalize Launch Preps
The week started with the A/C unit recently installed in the Monolith temple breaking down shortly after it was switched on for the first time. Repairs were expected to take all week and they did, just finishing up early today. The temple will now be opened over the weekend for worshipers to attend services so the earliest we can do a full test on the system is next Monday, although it is operating nominally right now under normal climate control conditions. Assuming all goes well with the system test as part of launch readiness reviews things will proceed as planned for a launch attempt on Tuesday. NOTE: for anyone planning to watch the launch, we have scheduled L-0 for the earliest possible window in order to have more time to adjust the Monolith A/C temperature if storms form when the rocket is switched on. If no storms form or we get them to abate soon enough, we will aim to hold at L-1h30m and instead launch at 19:00 UTC. This delay will allow us to rotate under the region of the inner radiation belt that is the most-compressed by the kerbolar wind and closer to the surface of the planet, which means the payload will spend more time within the belt.
Also in the VAB is the next Ascension Mk1 rocket, which will be the first flight carrying a capsule capable of one day transporting a kerbal into space. You can see it being lifted up to integrate with the stack in the gallery above. Originally planned to have a Launch Escape System pad abort test this week, that was also pushed back when the Progeny launch was delayed. Being that the Ascension rocket is taller than the umbilical towers, it would be more susceptible to lightning strikes should a storm develop after it is switched on. The delay allowed the VAB team some much-earned downtime prior to integrating the capsule onto the lifter. If the Progeny launch goes off on schedule, the Ascension pad test will occur two days later with a launch the following week if the test succeeds.
Government Keeps Tight Lid on C7 Aerospace Investigation
Operations Director Drew Kerman returned home from the government seat in Sheltered Rock with more questions than answers unfortunately. All our contacts within the government are unwilling to reveal any details or even admit they are involved in any way and still no official word has been released by investigators or C7 itself. While we hate to speculate, that’s all we can do right now and in our opinion this all stinks of underhanded dealings by the airship barons, who have deep ties to various government positions. Recent moves to threaten their business by the aircraft industry may have led them to take drastic measures. While it’s true the Dhumla would have occupied a small share of the market space for cargo delivery, we hardly think it would have had a huge effect on the airship industry’s bottom line. If the barons feared though that this was just the beginning they may have figured it was best to nip things in the bud. We hope things aren’t going to go that far.
KerBalloon Expeditions Update
Early this week the high-altitude KerBalloon crew finally returned from their long sea voyage that took them over 4,000km round trip. The overdue arrival back in port at Umbarg was due to storms encountered along their route, which wasn’t unexpected. The good news is that the ships weathered them alright and no one aboard was lost or injured – although plenty were sick! Storms also dogged them during their research days and the team did lose one balloon to severe weather. Thankfully this also was not unexpected and spare instruments were on hand to allow the second balloon to still be released. It was recovered successfully so at least some profit was made.
The low-altitude crew is still in the middle of their own long-term expedition, basing out of the Kongo River Research Station and releasing 4 balloons at locations all around the river basin. See the gallery above for a photo from one of their release sites. We expect to get another photo tomorrow as they should have just released their third balloon on Thursday. They are due to return to KSC sometime in the middle of this month.
February Financial Report
Head of Finances Mortimer went through this past month’s financial report with extra care to ensure we have all our C7-related expenses properly itemized and calculated. We managed a nice profit last month, although our yearly net income remains slightly in the red. This month’s Progeny launch will be done at our own expense and the Ascension program won’t see any profit still for another year at least so March doesn’t have a great outlook but hopefully KerBalloon can help to offset things.
ATN Database
The latest update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 3,236 asteroids and 2 updated with new observation data. Here are the 25 asteroids that were discovered this past week:
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From the Desk of Drew Kerman
Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuffWritten on 3/8/19
Hello there. It’s today. I actually wrote this post yesterday, but I wanted to wait until today to do the Desk Note to see whether I managed to work up the will to launch next week’s rocket. Good news: I did! Hurray for 5 days of lead time.
I’m going to keep this brief – been dealing with depression the past month related to IRL work. It would be more of a worry if it weren’t for the fact that I’m quite familiar with the trials and tribulations of most people in life. One good thing about the internet and popular media in general these days is that you can always find someone who has it worse than you, and you’ll hear over and over again how people, even celebrities, were “in a dark place” at some point in their careers. The perspective helps. I’ve accepted that I’m depressed, I know why I’m depressed and I know that it’ll pass eventually and life will go on. It just takes time.
So I definitely feel like things have suffered a bit at the KSA for it – C7 being one (temporary?) casualty. But today was a good sign, actually performing a mission. Yesterday I didn’t even have any tweets or anything written out for today, let alone next week and I manged to pump out 4 days worth of content. This will probably continue in spurts until I really get my groove back over the next few months.
Ok that’s enough of that. Normally I use this space to talk about things I did in the week prior and how I did them but I need to get back to working forward. If anyone has questions about stuff these past two weeks (since I was too forlorn to bother with a Desk Note last week) leave a comment below or ask me on twitter.
