Operations Summary – Week of 9/25/17

Genesis & KerBalloon Return to Full Operations

After deferring much of their missions so that Progenitor could launch these past two weeks, Genesis & KerBalloon got back into action in full force this past week with two 1hr+ Civvie flights and 4 balloon releases.

Specialists Bill & Bob worked hard to ensure that all balloon missions were a success, although Bob had most of the work considering three of the four were launched and recovered at sea. Of the four balloons released two were high-altitude and two were low-altitude variants. The high-altitude missions as usual were subject to weather conditions, and the land mission had the added constraint of having to launch at sunset, which is the main reason why it took longer to complete than the sea mission that could release anytime the weather was good. Since Bob’s mission was done first, while Bill was still waiting for good weather Bob was able to help crews assemble the two low-altitude balloons for launch from the Kerblantic the following day. Winds were out of the west, which meant that Bill was not needed with his Utility Task Vehicle crews on land to recover the balloons, which drifted out to sea. Both the first and second launches were carried out in the same day cycle thanks to their release locations being so close together. Now that their backlog is cleared out, KerBalloon will spend the first half of next week negotiating new contracts.

Commander Valentina took on both of this week’s Civvie missions as Captain Jebediah continued to recover from his accident last week, although we are happy to report that starting on Monday he will be cleared to return to active duty. The first mission at the start of this week for the Civvie was ordered up by the field science division in order to see how the Negative Gravioli instrument would perform close to the surface of Kerbin. As expected, results showed that the instrument is not sensitive enough to detect changes in gravity so deep in the field of a large planet and will continue to only be deployed in space or upper-atmospheric missions. The second mission today at the end of this week was also ordered in part by the field research division given the rise in pollen to levels near that of the health incident that occurred earlier this year. Scientists wanted to see just how widespread the pollen was around the Grasslands and also how high it was being borne into the atmosphere. This was originally scheduled to take place yesterday but C7 delayed the mission to negotiate a second contract, without informing the researchers, who were understandably furious given that their mission was considered time-sensitive – who knew if pollen levels would remain high the following day? Thankfully (well, maybe not so much for everyone who had to work outdoors at KSC while wearing filtration masks) the air quality remained poor early today for the mission to be carried out with the additional contract as well.

Deuce Status Update

Investigation into the Deuce accident proceeds apace, with the engines brought up from almost a kilometer of water and the air frame continuing to be inspected to determine how much of the aircraft has to be scrapped. More telemetry analysis was completed and its safe to say the pitch problems have been solved with the latest redesign, as this image proves when comparing the choppy flight paths of the two most recent flights before & after the redesign. Despite the development troubles, C7 has confirmed it is committed to seeing the Deuce fly properly & is confident the roll issue will be the last major hurdle.

Extremis Trajectories Behind Schedule

The astrodynamics team has fallen behind schedule in computing the possible new trajectories for our Extremis probes, the first of which could be launching as early as the end of next year. Although we had missions roughly plotted as early as late 2016, several advances in our understanding of orbital mechanics have been applied to our planning software and the team decided to re-run possibilities two months ago. The major hurdle being cited since then is processing time in looking for good flyby routes being much longer than anticipated. The team is now spending this upcoming month focusing solely on our 2018-2019 launch window for the first mission, as we would like an idea of the deltaV requirements needed to get the probe on its way so our orbital program has a rocket that is powerful enough. This means that although we hoped to announce our orbital program in October, it will now have to wait until early November. We don’t currently see this delay as having a major impact on the first launch yet.

Airports Announced for Sheltered Rock & Ockr

Two more of the three remaining caverns will receive surface airports to accommodate fixed-wing aircraft such as the Civvie and Deuce. C7 Aerospace has been working closely with both governments to raise funds and lay out suitable locations. Similar to Kravass General Airport these will be single-runway affairs. What about Umbarg? Well it’s always been a city heavily dependent on airship manufacturing and is headquarters to the largest airship companies so it is by nature not very eager to hop onto the fixed-wing bandwagon. It also doesn’t have much available land in the area. Due to its flat location compared to the mountains of the other cities, it has numerous cavern exits straight up to the surface from its multitude of airship hangars (one of which we plan to rent for our own airship). C7 have approached KSC to possibly use the facilities here to handle any traffic to Umbarg but this is still under discussion. C7’s Kravass manufacturing plant has so far shipped 19 Civvies since May and plans to finally begin stepping up production, going from 4 to 6 per month starting in October and then as many as 10-12 per month in 2018. They don’t expect to meet initial demand until sometime in 2019 and by then kerbs will definitely need more than one airport to go to!

Both Sheltered Rock & Ockr airfields are set to break ground next month and open at the start of 2018.

ATN Database Update

The weekly update for the Asteroid Tracking Network database is available here, containing 1,004 asteroids, 14 updates and 1 alert issued for JJP-868(C), which will impact our atmosphere on 10/24 but current projections place it over water and will be updated when it enters our SOI on 10/22. Also, congratulations to the ATN for breaking 1,000 discovered asteroids in its first year of operations!

Celestial Snapshot of the Week

Tekto is a highly-inclined moon of Sarnus which means it does not cast its shadow on the planet with every revolution of its 7.7 day orbit like Slate & Eeloo do. Starting this month its orbit has begun to cross between the sun and Sarnus, dropping its shadow atop the north pole of the gas giant. Over the next 10 months the shadow will slowly work its way down to the south pole and in mid-July 2018 Tekto will once again no longer cast shadows on Sarnus for a time. Commander Valentina got this photo from her scope this week, showing the second time Tekto’s shadow crossed Sarnus. She’ll take another look in a few days after we reach opposition with the ringed planet.

From the Desk of Drew Kerman