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Tag Archive: Bob
Nov 08 2019
Operations Summary – Week of 11/4/19
Aug 06 2019
Ascension Mk1 Flight 7 Analysis
Finally, after nearly 3 years of rocket development, the time had come to launch a kerbal into space! While we expected there might be some issues during the mission no one was ready for the Monolith to make another attempt at keeping us grounded. After Specialist Bob was loaded up into the rocket and it was raised vertical on the pad, atmospheric pressure began to decline shortly after it was powered up, a sign that storms were forming. This storm was being generated by the Monolith and was last seen to impact rocket flights back in February. Since then a cooling system was installed to prevent the storms and it appeared to work until this flight, which led us to develop a new theory as to why the Monolith was generating the storms in the first place.
The Flight
Rattled from his experience in the capsule during the storm, Bob ceded his spot to his backup Specialist Bill, who boarded the rocket 6 days later after a new cooling unit was installed around the Monolith and a day’s delay due to weather. Pre-launch operations proceeded without issue leading up to the 5 minute GO/NO GO poll, which failed due to upper-atmospheric wind conditions that neared the launch commit limits for flight. After some discussion among the launch team, using our experience with past Ascension missions, the decision was made to proceed with the launch. The countdown resumed and the rocket lifted off the pad with Bill atop it at 15:58:00.20 local time.
Jul 24 2019
Ascension Mk1 Flight 7 (Specialist Bill)
Jan 07 2019
Ascension Postpones Orbit for Capsule Technology Testing
Over the past week since returning from holiday break program teams have been working on how they want to approach operations in 2019. For the most part everyone stuck to what they had going when 2018 drew to a close, but the Ascension team is continuing to move forward with a big change they began to plan late last year which is to forego further attempts at making orbit with just the Mk1 lifter and instead focus on preparing for sub-orbital capsule flights.
The main reason behind this decision was due to successive failures at modeling an ascent profile that would reach a decaying orbit using the new Launch Vehicle Designer that comes with the Trajectory Optimization Tool from ArrowstarTech*, one of our external partners. Even when the test payload mass was reduced as much as possible, 278kg down from 1t, the rocket was still unable to reach a final state at MECO that would carry it around the planet at least once. The main problem is that the rocket uses control surfaces for guidance, which means it can only control its pitch for about half of the ascent – past 37km the air grows too thin for the control surfaces to have effect on the rocket’s orientation. Although the natural force of gravity can continue to lower the nose past that point, it will do so only based on how fast the rocket was pitching before then. In the modeling, if it pitches over fast enough to end the burn with a positive perikee, it stays within the atmosphere. If it pitches over less aggressively to prevent this, past the point of aerodynamic control its nose doesn’t drop fast enough to push the orbit perikee out from under the surface while still making it to space before MECO.
May 25 2018
High-Altitude Science Survey 42
Specialists Bob & Bill trek overland aboard Utility Task Vehicles to release a balloon over Zone MOI65 in the rough interior Highlands and collect material science data for Probodobodyne Inc
May 18 2018
Low-Altitude Science Survey 34
After a near-disaster in the southern sea, specialists Bob & Bill head north to Sector B-C49 to perform similar temperature gathering in a body of water that can be just as unpredictable & dangerous
KSA Main Image Gallery
