Inner Planetary Shuttle System

[Roger Jolly]

Don’t want to stifle anything with particular rules, but here’s my opening plan and execution:

Basic:
Reusable Shuttle and Travel rockets with probably disposable Orbital rockets

Obviously to reduce total payload costs from Earth but more so as transport for off-Earth manufactured materials and equipment among the rocky planets, astroids and perhaps outer moons

Phase 1:
A) Venus survey equipment delivery
-rover
-surface communications relay
-satellite relay

B) Return Travel rockets to LEO for refueling

C) Land Shuttle on Earth for reloading

Original payload design:

First Launch configuration:

Just a bit short on fuel, but ok I guesstimate

First birth over Venus, A-OK

Satellite is separated and deployed

Unpowered Rover is brought in together with the ground base for initial atmospheric break

Whoops, too deep, my on the fly plan was to bring the Rover down at once and the Base on the next around, but they come in at once and will be far spread

My eyes glaze over with the slow Rover drop,
Rover lands but Base is obliterated...
And this Rover designed for Phobos is hopelessly outmatched by Venusian mts

Thankfully I have some reserve fuel in the Shuttle nose, why didn’t we atmo-break?
Who planned this!?!

Travel rockets were ditched in orbit

Damn, came in hot and my finger figgited on the rear chute button and cut it
...all our monkeys are dead

 

[Roger Jolly]

Having failed practically all of Phase 1:

Phase 1 redux

Needs a better Rover:

Trimmed Orbital stages:

Not quite enough fuel was left to refuel the Travel rockets left in orbit, but my glorious space station where they were waiting was more than happy to supply

Sadly this fine station inadvertently fell out of the sky after I brought it in to 32km for transfer maneuvers, but transfer was a success

Nice atmo-break, thought I might need a bit of prograde for a second

And so forth...

Good feeling about the Rover,
But bumped the separator rim of the relay dish and blew up the parachutes...
Definitely an unacceptable risk there, not much left but an inch closer

Bit heavy in the rear, but one half chute looks good

Picked it up from a dead stop here like nothing

This Rover Rules Venus

 

[Roger Jolly]

Phase 1...Final, I swear

Need 3 satellites for proper coverage anyway

Removing the separator from the dish works just fine, nice

Sending a whole new Shuttle because I’m in a hurry...hmm, let’s not get too rushy

Nice new safe dish

Not nearly deep enough, fine for the Base but takes a dozen or so long ass orbits for the Rover to fall out of orbit

Um

Hazza!

Got the 3 satellites about as nicely spaced as could be for the moment, but this Rover is landing as it pleases about as far from the Base as it can (on the bottom there with the other Rover)...note that for Mars

Wheels might take it, but too fast like this

Broke the nose on both Shuttles,
Need to move chutes forward

And the wheels get no traction at all,
And damn this thing is ugly

 

[Roger Jolly]

Phase 2:

Rather than aim for the same on Mars in phase 2 I decided to get over my head and go for the limits with a Dish Module for my Astroid mining base,
Which required a bigger shuttle and no doubt more Space rocket...

And so,
The Beau Hunk UltraMax Shuttle:

With more hold, more wheels, solar panels and an extra parachute...

And a bigger first stage,
What could go wrong?

Barely needed that 2nd stage, but I’ll need those engines to reach the Belt

Damn...

Crap...

Maybe some controlled demo...
5 or 6 strikes later...

Hung up, and Oh Hell!
BAIL OUT!!!

Shucks...

 

[TtTOtW]

Phase 2:

Rather than aim for the same on Mars in phase 2 I decided to get over my head and go for the limits with a Dish Module for my Astroid mining base,
Which required a bigger shuttle and no doubt more Space rocket...

And so,
The Beau Hunk UltraMax Shuttle:
View attachment 30229 With more hold, more wheels, solar panels and an extra parachute... View attachment 30230 And a bigger first stage,
What could go wrong?
View attachment 30231 View attachment 30232 Barely needed that 2nd stage, but I’ll need those engines to reach the Belt View attachment 30233 Damn... View attachment 30234 Crap... View attachment 30235 Maybe some controlled demo...
5 or 6 strikes later... View attachment 30236 Hung up, and Oh Hell!
BAIL OUT!!! View attachment 30237
Shucks...

Lol, awesome XD

 

[Roger Jolly]

Having destroyed all of my Travel Boosters I’ve gone back to the blueprints and reconfigured both Shuttle designs to fit them

Since the large shuttle isn’t launched with boosters I’ve re-tabled the Mercury mission

So...

Phase 2:
Mercury deployment and Shuttle return
Rover/Ground Base/Com Sat

The payload and full size rocket with boosters

As I imagined the naked Shuttle with 2 Booster configuration was hopelessly underpowered, so I tried with the second stage refueled in LEO

This to ran short for Mercury orbit, I tried to fool with Venus on the way but my approach just got faster...
So I decided to go for a flyby delivery

Took several tries to get the shuttle slow enough for the payload to be in range of making its own orbit with adequate fuel for landing but leaving the shuttle as far out in Sun orbit as possible, which wasn’t much

And made more failed landings than I could remember, here’s a couple remarkable fails

But finally:

Floated the top nicely up the hill without saving

Rover up the hill for com synching

Love that map

Now the easy part, fuel permitting...

Not quite the break I hoped for, but reserve fuel should be fine, I hope

Stole the fuel from the Boosters before I dropped them which was silly

Nice improvement on chute position despite the excess fuel

And it drives nice at 6m/s with added wheels

A laborious success!

 

[Blazer Ayanami]

"Having destroyed all my (MANNED) Boosters"

Could someone judge this guy for crimes against humanity?

 

[TtTOtW]

The Sentinel is our keeper of such offenders.

 

[Roger Jolly]

All booster pilots are independently contractors who signed wavers and are given the option of a Wiley Coyote flying suit for a small fee not much more than their pay

 

[TtTOtW]

All booster pilots are independently contractors who signed wavers and are given the option of a Wiley Coyote flying suit for a small fee not much more than their pay

I like the way you think

 

[Roger Jolly]

Safety First

 

[Roger Jolly]

So anyway, back to the Astroid Belt, or not...

Decided to make some larger boosters for the trip, which turned out to be unnecessary

Attached and fueled at Earth station

First tried to let loose the payload to match orbit itself, letting the shuttle return easily to Earth for minimal fuel

This would have worked, but having a large surplus of fuel I decided to just bring it all out to top off tanks in a retry

Got the shuttle damn close to the Mining vessel, but to make a long story short, it just couldn’t be done in an effective way

Got a video I can’t figure to post, but shows my target spiraling nicely toward my shuttle on a Lord knows him many year voyage and just when I think I might have it the target goes into quantum leap mode, bouncing around in random hopeless arcs

 

[TtTOtW]

So anyway, back to the Astroid Belt, or not...

Decided to make some larger boosters for the trip, which turned out to be unnecessary View attachment 31203 Attached and fueled at Earth station View attachment 31204 First tried to let loose the payload to match orbit itself, letting the shuttle return easily to Earth for minimal fuel View attachment 31205 This would have worked, but having a large surplus of fuel I decided to just bring it all out to top off tanks in a retry View attachment 31206 Got the shuttle damn close to the Mining vessel, but to make a long story short, it just couldn’t be done in an effective way View attachment 31207 View attachment 31208 Got a video I can’t figure to post, but shows my target spiraling nicely toward my shuttle on a Lord knows him many year voyage and just when I think I might have it the target goes into quantum leap mode, bouncing around in random hopeless arcs

Try again.

 

[Roger Jolly]

Tried many times, retreated to my cave, must cultivate my force...
Like trying to land an electron on a proton

 

[TtTOtW]

Tried many times, retreated to my cave, must cultivate my force...
Like trying to land an electron on a proton

Oh... I can do that! *procedes to start building an Electron*

 

[Roger Jolly]

Trouble is getting any sort of workable measure at 10,000.0Mm, where 100Km is the finest scale but I need well under 1Km for visual

I can align orbits to within 100km easy enough, then tiny thrust in the right direction to 0.1Mm and get it spiraling in for a “near” miss before spiraling out, stop, counter thrust and back and forth but never anywhere close to a visual

This would work, but the problem is the initial orbital alignment which leaves my app/peri way to rough at +/-50km at best with the orbital tracker lines all skippy and jumpy and impossible to visually align...
All I got is that way too vague pair of numbers

 

[TtTOtW]

Trouble is getting any sort of workable measure at 10,000.0Mm, where 100Km is the finest scale but I need well under 1Km for visual

I can align orbits to within 100km easy enough, then tiny thrust in the right direction to 0.1Mm and get it spiraling in for a “near” miss before spiraling out, stop, counter thrust and back and forth but never anywhere close to a visual

This would work, but the problem is the initial orbital alignment which leaves my app/peri way to rough at +/-50km at best with the orbital tracker lines all skippy and jumpy and impossible to visually align...
All I got is that way too vague pair of numbers

Then what

is this? And that was without fine tuning closer to the target.

 

[TtTOtW]

Trouble is getting any sort of workable measure at 10,000.0Mm, where 100Km is the finest scale but I need well under 1Km for visual

I can align orbits to within 100km easy enough, then tiny thrust in the right direction to 0.1Mm and get it spiraling in for a “near” miss before spiraling out, stop, counter thrust and back and forth but never anywhere close to a visual

This would work, but the problem is the initial orbital alignment which leaves my app/peri way to rough at +/-50km at best with the orbital tracker lines all skippy and jumpy and impossible to visually align...
All I got is that way too vague pair of numbers

You are concerned about apo and peri. But you missed the part where you prioritise targeting the actual target.

 

[Roger Jolly]

You are concerned about apo and peri. But you missed the part where you prioritise targeting the actual target.

I can’t hope to find the closest approach line, I’ve gotten that under 100km, but then it jumps to another part of the orbit and is lost...it would literally take all day to find it again at that point, scanning the...
Let me calculate, 20Bm x pi = ~65Bm circumference close in looking for a dodgy dotted line I could easily miss even if I did know approximately where it was...

Think maybe if I get objects aligned degreewise then maybe burn perpendicular to orbit a bit?...but not sure inward or outward

I will give it a go

 

[TtTOtW]

The more exactly you match the orbit, the more the little line moves.

 

[Roger Jolly]

The more exactly you match the orbit, the more the little line moves.

And the more impossible it is to find...

But I have good news!

 

[TtTOtW]

And the more impossible it is to find...

But I have good news!

... you found it?

 

[Roger Jolly]

Emerging from my cave of force solitude I vow to do it blind!

After fidgeting some while getting as close in the usual way I abandon gaining visual and begin docking maneuvers from the map view some unknown 100s of Km from my station, a bit of full burn this way and that with great deal of doubt mixed in and...

Praise baby Yoda!...there it is down by the power bar
Being fully unprepared, not even having planned where I’d attach the payload, I jump to the station to close a solar panel,
Don’t lose this!

Voila!
Comm Unit complete

Topped off all the transport rockets and almost the station itself, left 12% for shuttle return

Bit close

Damn, Why!?!
and I forgot I need to ditch the Rockets in orbit...

Well, use it then

Dropped rockets in the atmosphere, life’s little blessings, it went fine

Bit front heavy, careful on the downhill

 

[TtTOtW]

Emerging from my cave of force solitude I vow to do it blind!

After fidgeting some while getting as close in the usual way I abandon gaining visual and begin docking maneuvers from the map view some unknown 100s of Km from my station, a bit of full burn this way and that with great deal of doubt mixed in and... View attachment 31220 Praise baby Yoda!...there it is down by the power bar
Being fully unprepared, not even having planned where I’d attach the payload, I jump to the station to close a solar panel,
Don’t lose this! View attachment 31221 Voila!
Comm Unit complete View attachment 31222 View attachment 31223 Topped off all the transport rockets and almost the station itself, left 12% for shuttle return View attachment 31224 View attachment 31225 Bit close View attachment 31227 Damn, Why!?!
and I forgot I need to ditch the Rockets in orbit... View attachment 31228 Well, use it then View attachment 31229 Dropped rockets in the atmosphere, life’s little blessings, it went fine View attachment 31230 View attachment 31231 Bit front heavy, careful on the downhill

See, I tolja!!!

 

[Roger Jolly]

See, I tolja!!!

Thank you for the support

“Docking maneuvers from the map screen”

I’ve messed with that before but always gave up, seemed a clear way to wreck an orbit and run out of fuel,
But sticking with it and checking the orbit alignment between thrusts I could see how it went all wonky at first but then came back into alignment as I really zeroed in