Tag Archive: Extremis

May 10 2018

Extremis Phase Two Planning Extended

Phase Two began back at the end of February and calculations were completed last week to give mission planners 71 trajectories to review – 3 were found to be not feasible due to increasing the closest distance from the sun the spacecraft was allowed to travel. Unfortunately we made an error in the last report where we said the fly-bys that included Moho and Plock were in separate years – they are both in the 2020-2021 launch year. However this ended up not mattering since the fly-by that includes Moho would require an obscene 14.752km/s of delta-V to achieve, one of 14 trajectories that exceeded the 3km/s mission constraint after the new calculations. Of the options remaining, only one mission so far has been selected, which will launch in August of 2021 and perform a fly-by of Eve, Jool and Plock that will take just under 3 years at a cost of 2.6km/s of delta-V.

Mission planners will now return to calculating possible fly-by trajectories for 2019 and 2020 that exclude these three planets to see if we can find any other possible combinations under 3km/s of delta-V that have not yet been explored, like a route from Kerbin>Duna>Sarnus>Urlum/Neidon.

May 04 2018

Operations Summary – Week of 4/30/18

View post on imgur.com

View operations details »

Mar 30 2018

Operations Summary – Week of 3/26/18

View post on imgur.com

View operations details »

Mar 23 2018

Operations Summary – Week of 3/19/18

View post on imgur.com

View operations details »

Feb 28 2018

Phase 2 Plotting Begins for Extremis Program

Since Phase One wrapped up late last year mission planners for the Extremis program have been busy analyzing the 584 feasible trajectories that were found to visit multiple planets. The initial requirements for further study in Phase Two were a mission length of less than 10 years and a Δv requirement of less than 5km/s. The Δv requirement was lowered to just 3km/s after some additional development work from the Ascension program engineering team gave a clearer picture of how much the rocket could potentially lift into orbit. With these requirements, only 68 were picked for Phase Two trajectory plotting. Within all those possible missions is a visit to every single planet, but the pickings are unsurprisingly slim for Plock and Moho with one mission each that could potentially fly by them, thankfully not in the same year. Phase Two will potentially give us a better idea of the viability of most of these missions, and we will have to see afterwards if additional searching is needed to fill any fly by gaps. We expect to hear results by May or June.

Feb 21 2018

KSC Operations Cease Indefinitely Due to Legal Injunction

Earlier today the KSC administrators were served a court order to cease operations immediately by lawyers tied to Monolithic interests. We won’t go deep into the legal mumbo jumbo but suffice to say they found a loophole in the various laws and ordinances that were pushed by us through Assembly when we first sought permission to build a surface facility. It would appear our own legal team was not fully competent in their job, although our legal counsel always maintained that we had rushed the process. Regardless, it is now illegal for any surface operations to be carried out within surface built structures. Of course we have immediately filed an appeal but this will only serve to get the wheels rolling on our eventual court case without rescinding the order to cease operations. We have no doubt that we will eventually prevail, especially since the move has also angered some powerful Assembly members who were getting behind plans for the first surface colony, but this new blocking tactic by Monolith worshipers is sending a clear message as well to us and the government.

While we are forced to cease operations at KSC this does not affect KSA HQ underground in Umbarg so we can continue to operate in a limited capacity. Extremis planning will remain ongoing, as well as keeping up on the Asteroid Tracking Network and any scientific news or astronomical events. Design work will continue on the new K-3X from C7 and the Genesis program while also getting set for the next Deuce build as we stockpile parts in our HQ warehouse. Thankfully the loophole only affects occupied and permanent structures so Arekibo and ATN Central will continue to undergo construction. Scientists studying the Monolith were planning to attempt another piercing of the outer surface with a more powerful cutting laser but this will have to be postponed. Of course the next Progenitor launch is now delayed as well.

Stay tuned to our twitter feed for updates on the legal battle, and know that we will be coming back strong once KSC operations are allowed to resume!

Jan 12 2018

Operations Summary – Week of 1/8/18

View post on imgur.com

View operations details »

Jan 11 2018

Ascension Debuts Lifter Engine, Updated Orbital Roadmap

After months of competition between C7, Bluedog Design Bureau, Armstrong Siddeley & Royce Engineering, Archtagon Aerospace and more comprising a total of 12 designs, the Ascension program has awarded its1.25m lifter engine contract to NovaPunch and its K2-X!

Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 10 2018

Extremis Program Enters Phase Two Planning

Since it was first announced back in June of last year, Extremis has been hard at work determining how best to fly past every planet in the Kerbol system with three missions. When it became apparent that our initial 2018 launch date was looking very likely to slip into 2019 the decision was made to just toss the original routes and start anew, but with a much, much more detailed exploration of what was possible within a given time frame. Program directors decided to break the process of planning the three missions down into three phases. initially Phase One was expected to be completed sometime around October but the calculations turned out to be more complex and required additional time. The first milestone was finally achieved late last month when Phase One wrapped. So what was it all about?

Read the rest of this entry »

Dec 01 2017

Operations Summary – Week of 11/27/17

View post on imgur.com

View operations details »

Older posts «

» Newer posts