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Apr 05 2019

Operations Summary – Week of 4/1/19

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Ascension Vacuum Engine Arrives, LES Test Successful

After some shipping delays due to the C7/Airship industry toss-up we finally received our 1.25m Viklun vacuum engine for use with the Ascension orbital stage, which we will be revealing full details of next week. The Viklun was originally designed as a 0.625m engine to be attached to payloads within a 1.25m fairing atop the Ascension Mk1 lifter. However the early Mk1 flights showed it was under-powered and would require a separate 1.25m second stage to finish pushing the payload into a transfer orbit. So the design of the engine was scaled up, however it still served as a basis for the eventual 0.35m Ospray engine that will be used for the Progeny Mk7. The Viklun can now produce a thrust of 68kN with an ISP of 360.

Earlier today we held the third Launch Escape System pad abort test for the Mk1 capsule, which went off successfully – you can review the video in this tweet. The test simulated a failed kick motor, the one at the top of the tower, and compensated by lighting off one of the push motors just 2 milliseconds before the rest, enough to tip over the capsule and still send it away from the rocket. It flew just over 300m high and landed around 800m from the launch pad. The ability to control each motor of the LES has led to some interesting ideas we are going to be trying out during the upcoming sub-orbital capsule flights. We’ll have more details as the mission approaches and our plans are more solid.

Progeny Mk7 Nears Final Design

The latest iteration of the Progeny rocket nears its planned design completion this month as engineers take the final prototype and plug it into the Launch Vehicle Designer to ensure that it is capable of making it to orbit as planned. If not, things will have to roll back to the design stage and tweaks will need to be made to the rocket but it’s already been through several of these cycles and hopefully this one will be the last. One of the reasons development took so long was because we wanted the rocket to be able to use the existing pad infrastructure built for the Ascension Mk1 (and soon to be upgraded to accommodate the Viklun orbital stage). The current design allows for one of the launch towers to hook up for fueling/power while an insert to the 1.25m engine collar lets the lower booster rest within it. Because the Mk7 is steerable, it will launch vertically like the Ascension Mk1. We hope to have a blueprint published later this month!

Airship Barons Included in C7 Aerospace Investigation

Social and political shock waves rippled through Umbarg this past weekend when it was revealed that a number of airship Barons from wealthy families had been rounded up and “detained” in a similar manner to the C7 executive branch back at the end of February. Several protests erupted into violence over the weekend. While the government did not try to hide the arrests they still haven’t released any explanation and closed-door sessions continue in the Judiciary at Sheltered Rock. Our speculation continues – right now the popular theory is that the airship industry tried to frame C7 for some financial crime and it has backfired on them, although why this is all being kept under wraps is a big unknown. Regardless, things remain in limbo for the Genesis program until all this clears up.

March Financial Report

We’ve managed to pull off another profitable month, as shown by the latest financial report released this week. As usual the KerBalloon program has been our big earner and managed to offset all the testing done for the Ascension program. If Genesis were still active it’s likely the Dhumla testing would have put us back in the red, so there’s a minor plus to the whole C7 fiasco. Still, our profit margin would have been slim indeed if not for our Patrons, so many thanks to them! Please consider donating $1 or more to help support us and allow us to continue to explore! We also have a Ko-Fi for single one-time donations.

KerBalloon Re-Sciences the Science

The low-altitude crew had a mission this week to an area that was previously visited back in 2017 to gather some updated readings. Science isn’t always just about what’s happening now but also an examination of how things change over time. This new data should help scientists get a better idea why that region of the continent is so arid.

ATN Database

The latest update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 3,378 asteroids and 2 updated with new observation data. Here are the 28 asteroids that were discovered this past week, including the 1st long-period comet discovery in nearly 5 months:

From the Desk of Drew Kerman

Out of Character Behind the Scenes stuff

Written on 3/29/19

week in 3 days. Now we’re rolling.

Viklun

oops, I somehow completely failed to realize back when I chose the Viklun engine for the Ascension orbital stage that it was a 0.625m part. Bluedog Design Bureau parts come with their own tweakscale patch however so it wasn’t a big deal to scale it up to 1.25m and allow the scaling to give me a new thrust. I did have to adjust the ISP up a bit however because it didn’t make sense that my vacuum engine wouldn’t be more efficient than the engine I’m using for the Mk1 lifter. Anyways, I like the story I came up with for why it is now a 1.25m engine

Sarnus cloud changes

The real story here is that Poodmund’s OPM visual overhaul is actually supposed to look the way it does in the most recent Sarnus photo. In all the previous photos the white cloud layers was a Scatterer/EVE compatibility issue and Pood had expressed he didn’t like the way it looked. I however thought different and liked the white cloud layers so I kept them. Knowing it was going to be fixed eventually, I’ve known for a while now that as Sarnus approaches perikelion I would let the clouds revert to the way it was supposed to look. I still have the EVE config for the white clouds so I can go back when Sarnus eventually moves back away from the sun.

LES test

So, anyone notice the RCS blocks were no longer on the capsule? That wasn’t a mistake. Where are they? Let’s see if anyone can tell me. If not (like the Sarnus photo – disappointing!) there will be a tweet on Monday with the answer.