|
Category Archive: News
What's going on at the Kerbal Space Agency
Sep 22 2017
Operations Summary – Week of 9/18/17
Sep 21 2017
Progeny Mk5 Flight 4 Analysis
With three recovered launches so far, the Mk5 was on track to becoming the most successful new rocket design on record until yesterday’s fourth launch, which unfortunately broke apart during the third stage boost 64 seconds after lift off. Progenitor engineers have been pouring over all various data collected, including telemetry data received from the rocket prior to its breakup as well as launch videos, to try to determine what went wrong, under pressure due to the fact that of they can’t figure it out we would be forced to delay the fifth launch set to take place tomorrow, on the anniversary of our first rocket launch. While they are still not 100% sure as to what happened, with the data available they have come to the best conclusion possible, which thankfully will not result in a postponement of tomorrow’s launch as the circumstances that led to this recent failure should be avoidable for future launches.
The conclusion reached is that upper-level wind shear literally tore the rocket apart, exacerbated by its high rate of speed at the time. Normally, the rocket would not be traveling as fast as it was but an error in the flight control software led to the third stage throttle being set to full thrust immediately after ignition rather than after dynamic pressure had begun to fall as the rocket climbed higher into the atmosphere. Engineers calculated that the wind shear alone could probably have still destroyed the rocket, but the excessive velocity made it all but impossible to survive.
Sep 19 2017
Progeny Mk5 Flight 3 Analysis
After numerous delays the third flight of the Progeny Mk5 was able to lift off into perfectly clear skies and light winds. While we had hoped for this flight to be the first fully-automated rocket flight in the initial planning for this launch series, we had to test one last little bit of code which meant although the majority of the actions on this flight were computer-controlled it was still not yet fully automated. The good news however is that review of the telemetry data has shown that the test code used to calculate the needed throttle for a specified TWR worked flawlessly and we can integrate it into our fourth launch for the first fully-automated flight. Not all the new code worked well however. For now, we have taken out the distance traveled measurements from the logger until we can determine a better means of devising this metric on the rocket itself. We will continue to use radar monitoring to track the rocket’s travel distance as it heads downrange.
The logging improvements worked out well, and the operations log is a lot easier to read with a well-defined time stamp column followed by the operations messages. We now have more accurate timestamps for additional mission events like entering/leaving the atmosphere and the point at which our apokee is higher than 70km to confirm that we will be making it into space (a very good chance, anyways). We also had a trigger to log MaxQ but it failed to fire because we forgot to update the variable keeping track of dynamic pressure to compare things to.
Sep 19 2017
Response to KerVoyant Launch Protest
Late yesterday as the KSA was entering the final stages of launch preparation for lift off of our third Progeny Mk5 rocket an unidentified vessel approached within our launch corridor. Refusing to answer all hails or turn about when confronted by our range monitoring vessel, it proceeded to anchor itself just 2km offshore directly downrange and blanket all comm channels with a recorded speech that prevented us from contacting our range monitoring or payload recovery vessels. Nevermind that the ship was full of kerbs, our Flight Director Lanalye Kerman made the right call under violation of our range safety measures and stood down from launch operations, scrubbing the launch for the day. The ship was a merchant vessel owned by KerVoyant and it had a message for us all here at KSC:
This ship stands in protest of the activities carried out by the Kerbal Space Agency as well as the denial of our religious rights to access the Monolith for proper ceremonies and worship. The followers aboard will use this time & proximity to pray in the hopes that They are listening, so that They might answer once again and strike down all in proximity, and cleanse the caverns of non-believers. To those ashore, know that you are misaligned, that your actions will bring nothing but death and destruction down upon our world. We are meant to serve, we are meant to be guided. THEY will show us the way. To find it on our own, we sully the wonderful gift given to us, this world reborn, remade from disaster and meant for all to cherish until They return. TURN BACK NOW, and your deeds may yet not anger Them and They may yet return to us, to bring us forth into the stars, as their children. STAY THIS COURSE, and see the End Times brought upon us, for refusal of Their gifts can only be met with fire and death.
Our Operations Director Drew Kerman says he has no direct response to the message and is only concerned with the actions of the vessel interfering with our launch. Regulations have been pending in the government these past several months that would legally prohibit ships from entering our launch range while it is active for a rocket flight, but given the light to non-existent marine traffic within the KSC area officials have not moved quickly in getting it passed while more pressing matters existed. KerVoyant, which is owned by a deeply Monolithic family of merchants and controls over half of the merchant fleet, used this loophole to legally park their vessel offshore of KSC. Thankfully, the government saw fit to take quick action via an emergency meeting of the Assembly in order to ratify the new regulations and allow us to remove the KerVoyant ship from our waters.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely KerVoyant will receive much in the way of punishment for its little stunt given its position & power – if we were to try to bring suit against them they would likely litigate us into oblivion. We doubt they will attempt it again though now that the government has once again made it clear which side they are on, much to our relief. More troubling is the response to the act, which while not unanimously supported by the various Monolithic groups out there it has been decried by absolutely none. It has been made just as clear that those who follow the Monolithic beliefs are opposed to our purpose here. We hope that they can soon come to realize that we are pursuing the same goal.
Sep 17 2017
Progeny Mk5 Flight 2 Analysis
The second flight of the Progeny Mk5 was another success and very similar to that of the first flight in terms of trajectory and timing, which is a good sign because both flights were flown nearly the same way. As mentioned in our analysis of the first flight there were errors made in pitch calculation and TWR during the ascent which were corrected in this ascent. The changes were minor and did not affect the flight all that much – both rockets reached a 94km apokee and did so within one second of each other, both landed within 2 seconds of each other and both traveled the same amount of distance within 1km. During this flight the Automated Flight Control System took greater control over the rocket, decoupling the spent boosters, shredding the 3rd stage fins and actively monitoring the pitch. Flight controllers only had to activate the engines and throttle the 3rd stage to maintain a TWR of 2. The extra instructions running during the initial ascent up to MECO led to a greater power draw, but we also optimized the code that was checking for the parachute to be deployed and actually landed with more battery power available. There are several things we plan to do for this third flight based on the telemetry data that we have reviewed and also given that this flight will be the first to carry instruments in the payload section.
Sep 13 2017
Progeny Mk5 Flight 1 Analysis
Overall, yesterday’s flight was a success in that we managed to launch the Mk5 into space without any major issues. The fact that the rocket was built almost exactly the same as the previously-successful Mk4 gave us a lot of confidence that there wouldn’t be any problems with stability during the flight, but there was a little bit of worry with regard to the extra girth of the inline probe core. It was placed just above the fins to maintain stability by keeping the wider portions of the rocket closer together. While we did notice a larger precession to the rocket’s spin once the 3rd stage was flying on its own, the spin rate was high enough to keep it pointed prograde during both its coast and its boost phases. Launching at 3° from vertical was another relative unknown, although again we had previous Mk4 data to help ease concerns. The Mk4 launch with a TWR of 4 raised its nose only 1° starting from 5° so we felt safe having only 3° of pitch to play with. Turns out we cut things a bit close as even with calm winds the nose of the Mk5 lifted to 89.4° during its initial ascent from the launch base. This will severely limit launch commit criteria when it comes to wind blowing from the east. Other than these two considerations the flight performance was very similar to that of the Mk4. While there were no major issues, minor ones were uncovered during review of the flight data collected both on the ground and from the recovered payload’s telemetry data unit.
Aug 15 2017
Progeny Mk5 Set for September Debut
With the retirement of the Mk4 today, all focus is now being directed at its successor, the Mk5, which has been developed in parallel with the Mk4 over the last few months. Structurally similar to the Mk4, the Mk5’s main difference will be in how it is operated thanks to a new control unit that will be integrated more with the rocket to allow monitoring of and commands to be sent to internal systems. This unit is “inline”, meaning it will be a component of the rocket body rather than attached to one of the payload trusses, freeing up space which has been used to add additional battery power as this control unit requires more electric charge to run its operations (the amount of charge needed depends on the size of the instructions loaded). Slightly larger than the 0.35m width of the rocket, it has been placed below the payload near the fins to help with trans-sonic stability. The initial launch series will see five rockets head for space within 2 weeks on these dates:
Flight 1: 9/12 @ 23:23 UTC Flight 4: 9/20 @ 17:49 UTC
Flight 2: 9/14 @ 17:29 UTC Flight 5: 9/22 @ 17:56 UTC
Flight 3: 9/18 @ 23:43 UTC Future launches on demand from clients within 2 weeks
These dates and times are subject to change of course in the event of any delays but they represent the best-case scenario for launching all five rockets.
KSA Main Image Gallery
