OHM Mars 1994 – Russian Mars Transfer Vehicle 1.0

[OrbitHangar]

Author: 80mileshigh

Mars 1994 was the product of Russian nuclear thermal rocket development in the 1980s and early 1990s. Using a bimodal propulsion system, the vehicle was designed to take a crew of five on a 460 day round trip, with 30 days spent on the surface of Mars.

Includes a virtual cockpit and custom sounds for main thrust and cockpit ambience.

Requires Vinka's Spacecraft3 dll.

DOWNLOAD

 

[Izack]

Wahoo! I saw this in the screenshot thread! I'm downloading it now and can't wait to try it out! Spot on! :thumbup:

 

[4throck]

Really cool VC :thumbup:. Nice to explore and the hardware looks real and MIR like as it should.

 

[orbiterguy]

good add on

 

[IronRain]

looks a bit like the Transporter used in Avatar nice add-on :thumbup:

 

[francisdrake]

This is a very interesting addon! I flew it to a rendezvous with Phobos, starting with the 'Mars encounter' scenario. The engine power providing an acceleration of nearly to 2 m/s² is quite high. Those russian NTR rockets must have quite a punch!

The RCS seems a little too responsive for a ship of this size. While it is fun to swirl the ship around in a minute, I would assume the pilots to be more fuel conservative in reality.

The virtual cockpit is visually very appealing, I could imagine living in this environment for the months it takes to travel to Mars. Just the straight walls seem a little too simple; I would assume them rather be curved, following the outside shape of the vessel (at least for part of their circumferecne, like an aircraft cabin).

To summarize: A very good and realistic vessel. Looking forward to have landers in a future update

 

[80mileshigh]

This is a very interesting addon! I flew it to a rendezvous with Phobos, starting with the 'Mars encounter' scenario. The engine power providing an acceleration of nearly to 2 m/s² is quite high. Those russian NTR rockets must have quite a punch!

The RCS seems a little too responsive for a ship of this size. While it is fun to swirl the ship around in a minute, I would assume the pilots to be more fuel conservative in reality.

The virtual cockpit is visually very appealing, I could imagine living in this environment for the months it takes to travel to Mars. Just the straight walls seem a little too simple; I would assume them rather be curved, following the outside shape of the vessel (at least for part of their circumferecne, like an aircraft cabin).

To summarize: A very good and realistic vessel. Looking forward to have landers in a future update

Thanks

Initially I plugged the numbers straight in from astronautix but they were certainly wrong somewhere. One suggestion I received in development was that the dry mass was more likely to be in the 60,000-80,000 kg range as opposed to 800,000kg on astronautix. After that, I kept adjusting the numbers until I could fly the mission profile with minimal propellant remaining. I've retained the main engine thrust rating as given on Astronautix however.

The VC was modeled after viewing a number of photos from inside Mir, then assuming it would be a little tidier.

I've had this model almost as is, since 2007. I delayed releasing it firstly because I couldn't get SC3 to make the landers do what I wanted, and then because I couldn't satisfy a translation of the Astronautix specs to the mission profile in Orbiter. Eventually I just had to draw a line and hand over what I had. I'll get back to building some landers in the future...

 

[paleto]

Very nice add-on. Thanks

 

[francisdrake]

"Eventually I just had to draw a line and hand over what I had. I'll get back to building some landers in the future... "

This is a decision every addon-maker to take sooner or later. I am glad you decided to publish it, as it is definitely flyable and a valuable addition to the Orbiter vessel fleet.

Concerning the Mars landers: The Astronautix page shows cylindrical landers with a concial nose. I am not quite sure how they work, probably like a biconical(?) supersonic entry vessel, with a nose-high entry attitude. This requires a pitch-over maneuver after dropping the heatshield, which is a pretty thrilling maneuver during a fast-paced Mars landing.

Some time ago I tried to make a Mars lander based on a 1960s MEM (Mars excursion module), which seems to be a workable aeroshell design. Below is a screenshot of the MEM docked to the Mars1994 ship in Mars orbit.

The MEM has a mass of 46 ton and a diameter of 8.5m. If you want to play around with it can be downloaded from
http://home.arcor.de/francisdrakex/download/MEM-0b.zip

 

[80mileshigh]

Thank you! I'll have a look at this.

 

[castorp]

Beautiful!
Congratulations & many thanks!!

cheers
hc

PS You've inspired my enthusiasm again for Orbiter, so thanks for that as well!

 

[Chub777]

"Eventually I just had to draw a line and hand over what I had. I'll get back to building some landers in the future... "

This is a decision every addon-maker to take sooner or later. I am glad you decided to publish it, as it is definitely flyable and a valuable addition to the Orbiter vessel fleet.

Concerning the Mars landers: The Astronautix page shows cylindrical landers with a concial nose. I am not quite sure how they work, probably like a biconical(?) supersonic entry vessel, with a nose-high entry attitude. This requires a pitch-over maneuver after dropping the heatshield, which is a pretty thrilling maneuver during a fast-paced Mars landing.

Some time ago I tried to make a Mars lander based on a 1960s MEM (Mars excursion module), which seems to be a workable aeroshell design. Below is a screenshot of the MEM docked to the Mars1994 ship in Mars orbit.

The MEM has a mass of 46 ton and a diameter of 8.5m. If you want to play around with it can be downloaded from
http://home.arcor.de/francisdrakex/download/MEM-0b.zip

You can actually re-enter in this without the flames.

 

[astrosammy]

Nice ships. I had much fun together with the MEM, landed 11km from the MER-B landing site. And with its windows it makes the last hours before Mars orbit insertion amazing. Rotating the stack in LEO was a bit painfull, but possible.

I'll try to write a dll with some better RCS control in the next days and give it to you if you want, good that it has no animations, that makes coding much easier.

 

[80mileshigh]

I'll try to write a dll with some better RCS control in the next days and give it to you if you want

Of course, I would be very interested. Thanks.

 

[PeterRoss]

The vessel is great, and I really like to use it in my regular flights in the inner solar system. But it lacks the ability to perform manoeuvres while with landers docked to it. It really needs some smart RCS control which will take into account mass center shift like they do it with Dragonfly or Kulch's Tranzit.

 

[Submariner]

You can also go into the .cfg and jack up the attitude thrust power. I hate to do this but it was the only way to get it to rotate when part of a stack.

 

[Moach]

wow! very cool indeed!

i was desperately looking for a nice realistic mars-trip vessel :thumbup:
now i can try and launch myself further than the moon for the first time :uhh: (wait, what??) let's see how that one goes :lol:

 

[PeterRoss]

You can also go into the .cfg and jack up the attitude thrust power. I hate to do this but it was the only way to get it to rotate when part of a stack.

Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyy!!! :hmm:

---------- Post added 08-15-10 at 01:58 AM ---------- Previous post was 08-14-10 at 07:27 PM ----------

You can also go into the .cfg and jack up the attitude thrust power. I hate to do this but it was the only way to get it to rotate when part of a stack.

Well you're right, it's not good. Still my method of rotating this vessel is more stupid but more fun: I'm using attitude thrusters of lander (i.e. DGIV as yet) in translation mode to rotate the whole stack:blink:

 

[Mister Mxyzptlk]

So when will the RCS be fixed. The inability to maneuver a stack is (mem) really kills the fun.