insanity
Blastronaut
After flying a wonderful flight to Callisto and back, I want to share some of the pictures and the general mission plan because it was a lot of fun. If you haven't taken the time to land on some of Jupiter's moons you should try them- the flights are fairly straightforward but they have a couple of nice challenges and in my DGIV the return trip was a race against life support.
The flight date was set for 21-July-2009 for no other reason besides that it is today. The launch vehicle was the Energia System with a Delta-Tug attachment fired retrograde from the General Purpose Launch Pad. Here you can see the Remote Arm from the GPLP carry the crew into position over the open nosecone of the Delta Glider IV:
Obviously this process would be quite dangerous, but the astronauts are harnessed into the Remote Arm before the elevator extends. They then crawl into the crew hatch and are lowered slowly into the crew hatch where they are then helped to their seats. Two hours to go and the Remote Arm has retracted and the crew inside DGIV has begun one of two battery powered starts to close the nosecone and prep for flight:
10 minutes to go and the DGIV starts its second battery powered start in preperation for takeoff. The hatches are sealed by the Captain and the DGIV's life support systems and engines will be running until EVA on Callisto. At T-5 seconds the sound protection on the GPLP begins to roar as the Energia's engines come to life. A few seconds later the water is shut off as the rocket clears the tower. Two minutes into the flight the SRBs seperate and begin their descent back to Earth:
At around T+9 minutes the Energia seperates on a suborbital trajectory into the Pacific on the other side of the world. The delta tug is deployed and 10 minutes later is fired rise and circularize the otbit. Finally the Delta Glider IV is released and makes a turn prograde while the tug moves into retrograde to fire back to bring it back to the mid-Atlantic. At around T+60 the Energia is burning up:
The DGIV sets up a flight that will take around 2 years to reach Jupiter. After the burn is complete, the ship is spun-around to catch a nice view of the Earth eclipsing the sun:
After a few mid-course corrections the DGIV has arrived to Jupiter on-time with 7 months of primary life support and 19 months of backup. Fuel is looking good at 80%. Inside the SOI of Jupiter the DGIV moves so that it can intercept Callisto upon Jovian insertion. After the insertion burn, an astronaut is sent out for a nice photo op:
After Jupiter insertion a three-day plan to Callisto that would fly by Io was planned. This is where I got really lucky because I got closer to Io then I could have hoped for (Callisto is that dot behind it):
Finally I arrived at Callisto, made a very slow landing onto the crater in the middle of the map and planted my flag:
The return flight was fairly simple. First a plan was set up to eject out of Callisto's orbit and into Jupiter's orbit followed by a Jupiter prograde sling shot to catch the Earth near it's perihelion. Again I got lucky as I planned the first phase in TransX and the second in IMFD (it's soo much easier to do lunar ejects in TransX) it was a fairly short ejection burn out of both Callisto and Jupiter and it put me in a trajectory that was going to get me home with a month of reserve life support to spare! Here is my final view of Callisto, as we get ready to set up the sling shot back home:
The closet view we'd get of Jupiter right before the slingshot took us home:
All that was left to do now was a lot of waiting. Navigation on this phase was a little bit tighter than the inbound leg. The huge gravity of Jupiter was more of a nusiance now instead of the soft cushion it was when I came from Earth. Earth was also part of the probelm. I knew that because of my speed I would be trying a bit riskier reentry than normal (and something I've never done on Earth yet).
The plan was to align with the base early in the Earth's SOI and to set the approach altitude at 420M so that durring breaking the ship's orbit would intersect the top of atmosphere just below 200km and then to realign and set up an aerobrake. It all went off pretty well, orbit insertion ended with the DGIV at 184km alt, a closing distance of 17.3M from WIA, and 5km off of the postage stampalignment of Wideawke. Did a quick realignment burn to compensate for the next phase which was to change heading and pitch. Set up an aerobrake profile with the amazing Aerobrake MFD and flew in.
The rest of the flight was a bit off, but I survived. I ended up running pretty high temperatures with a final dive that had the DGIV in smoke until about 7km out. To bleed speed and temperature I sacraficed a lot of runway, but I made it deadstick on the centerline. Total flight time: around four years.
The last two pics are of the reentry:
The flight date was set for 21-July-2009 for no other reason besides that it is today. The launch vehicle was the Energia System with a Delta-Tug attachment fired retrograde from the General Purpose Launch Pad. Here you can see the Remote Arm from the GPLP carry the crew into position over the open nosecone of the Delta Glider IV:
Obviously this process would be quite dangerous, but the astronauts are harnessed into the Remote Arm before the elevator extends. They then crawl into the crew hatch and are lowered slowly into the crew hatch where they are then helped to their seats. Two hours to go and the Remote Arm has retracted and the crew inside DGIV has begun one of two battery powered starts to close the nosecone and prep for flight:
10 minutes to go and the DGIV starts its second battery powered start in preperation for takeoff. The hatches are sealed by the Captain and the DGIV's life support systems and engines will be running until EVA on Callisto. At T-5 seconds the sound protection on the GPLP begins to roar as the Energia's engines come to life. A few seconds later the water is shut off as the rocket clears the tower. Two minutes into the flight the SRBs seperate and begin their descent back to Earth:
At around T+9 minutes the Energia seperates on a suborbital trajectory into the Pacific on the other side of the world. The delta tug is deployed and 10 minutes later is fired rise and circularize the otbit. Finally the Delta Glider IV is released and makes a turn prograde while the tug moves into retrograde to fire back to bring it back to the mid-Atlantic. At around T+60 the Energia is burning up:
The DGIV sets up a flight that will take around 2 years to reach Jupiter. After the burn is complete, the ship is spun-around to catch a nice view of the Earth eclipsing the sun:
After a few mid-course corrections the DGIV has arrived to Jupiter on-time with 7 months of primary life support and 19 months of backup. Fuel is looking good at 80%. Inside the SOI of Jupiter the DGIV moves so that it can intercept Callisto upon Jovian insertion. After the insertion burn, an astronaut is sent out for a nice photo op:
After Jupiter insertion a three-day plan to Callisto that would fly by Io was planned. This is where I got really lucky because I got closer to Io then I could have hoped for (Callisto is that dot behind it):
Finally I arrived at Callisto, made a very slow landing onto the crater in the middle of the map and planted my flag:
The return flight was fairly simple. First a plan was set up to eject out of Callisto's orbit and into Jupiter's orbit followed by a Jupiter prograde sling shot to catch the Earth near it's perihelion. Again I got lucky as I planned the first phase in TransX and the second in IMFD (it's soo much easier to do lunar ejects in TransX) it was a fairly short ejection burn out of both Callisto and Jupiter and it put me in a trajectory that was going to get me home with a month of reserve life support to spare! Here is my final view of Callisto, as we get ready to set up the sling shot back home:
The closet view we'd get of Jupiter right before the slingshot took us home:
All that was left to do now was a lot of waiting. Navigation on this phase was a little bit tighter than the inbound leg. The huge gravity of Jupiter was more of a nusiance now instead of the soft cushion it was when I came from Earth. Earth was also part of the probelm. I knew that because of my speed I would be trying a bit riskier reentry than normal (and something I've never done on Earth yet).
The plan was to align with the base early in the Earth's SOI and to set the approach altitude at 420M so that durring breaking the ship's orbit would intersect the top of atmosphere just below 200km and then to realign and set up an aerobrake. It all went off pretty well, orbit insertion ended with the DGIV at 184km alt, a closing distance of 17.3M from WIA, and 5km off of the postage stampalignment of Wideawke. Did a quick realignment burn to compensate for the next phase which was to change heading and pitch. Set up an aerobrake profile with the amazing Aerobrake MFD and flew in.
The rest of the flight was a bit off, but I survived. I ended up running pretty high temperatures with a final dive that had the DGIV in smoke until about 7km out. To bleed speed and temperature I sacraficed a lot of runway, but I made it deadstick on the centerline. Total flight time: around four years.
The last two pics are of the reentry:
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