Recent content by Roger Jolly

First try, if I make the refueler a bit bigger and top it off completely before sending it to Mars it will land properly on Earth We’ll see next mission

Fire the engines on approach before hitting the atmosphere, also Low density/Large surface area, like a big empty rocket moving sideways mitigates heat too This thing basically free fell to Earth (very little lateral/orbital velocity, the one full fuel tank is just a tiny reserve), I let the...

I think the largest fairing is 14m, 7 squares, Stretch that rocket out Verrry basic satellite, didn’t quite make Mercury

Wow, wouldn’t have guessed Mars could make that much heat, even Earth Still laden with fuel I guess

Mission 2 Establish landing base Sending up some fuel for Hopper returns Not bad for an eyeballed configuration This isn’t helpful, I sure miss the old transfer window arrangement :confused: A quick peak on the way to decelerate at Mars I done it again, those light parts, it shot off...

Forgot how slo-mo the Phobos environment was :oops: good to be back with new mission plans and see some old friendly icons :)

Mission 1b: Deploy Base Drone detached, going over the top Positioned and deployed Drone secured, reorbit Starhopper And voila, pop up camper ready for duty Escaping the rover proves difficult, But finally with some rolling about the magnetism is overcome Rover drone is on his own

Phobos Mission 1a: Prospector Base, load, launch, land Payload: Phobos is so small, I’m big :p After quite some time coming to rest in pinnacle crater

Oops, my smiley disappeared, forgot forum has it’s own :)

Burning up in the atmosphere over and again

Hello, good to hear from old people Glad to have new things to do, the reentry update has panned out nice

Oops, wrong pic was actually 22.0km bounce on the final mission, got a previous bounce mixed in

And so, final mission…of innumerable After several passes through the upper atmosphere, starting at a 24km entry I bottom out at 20.2 and rise in a false escape to 28.8 before going in for the final plunge; It doesn’t always work out like that and doesn’t seem to matter for the peak...

How many models I do not know, quite the endeavor handling the Venusian wind; Here’s a few pics I happen to have from the evolutionary path The original lander, the blunt base proved impossibly unstable in the lower atmosphere I didn’t take a full pic of the final lander coming in, here’s the...

My point isn’t that China is better than the US, far from it, but it is not at all worse and while the British empire is long dead and the US is in free collapse the Chinese are rising hard; That requires a sober assessment, think what you will about the chess board Interestingly the Chinese...