Project Mir station complex / UR-500 family

[N_Molson]

Maybe they had a lot of surplus from the Zond era... Or maybe some equipement in the station was important or valuable enough to make an escape tower necessary (something like a big experimental RTG ?). Because else it makes little sense, a standard fairing is lighter, more aerodynamic and efficient. Or they still had manned plans for the Proton in 1988 ? Seems a bit hard to believe.

 

[MarkWatney2015]

Maybe they had a lot of surplus from the Zond era... Or they still had manned plans for the Proton in 1988 ? Seems a bit hard to believe.

Until the late 80s there are still plans in man-rating the Proton, however they don't use the 7K-L1 (Zond) anymore. It was the TKS-VA spacecraft that use this configuration:
http://www.astronautix.com/t/tks.html
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/proton-k.htm

The configuration above is used in double VA test flights...

The fairing on the far right (Almaz-Merkur) uses the same configuration as the TKS-VA....

The TKS-VA is on the far left....

Proton-TKS

 

[N_Molson]

Second stage in action :

 

[cosmonaut2040]

But I don't see why they would have equipped the rocket with an escape tower... Last Zond (Zond 8) was launched in 1970, I think it could be that one (color film). Though unmanned, the Zond flights were equipped with such a tower. My guess is that this is old footage they picked more or less randomly for their documentary (which point is to "sell" Proton vehicle services to make some much needed money, as they say at the end "Roscosmos is ready for your proposals"). If so, it is really awesome, I would never have expected to see a Proton/7K-L1 rocket on film !

Yes, I believe that is indeed random footage. There are several different rockets in the film. The rocket shown at 1:20 is definitely a 7K-L1 rocket.
I don't see any escape tower on the other rocket we talked about, only an atypical fairing - looking quite like the illustration of the Salyut 1 rocket posted by MaxBuzz earlier in this thread: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/mir-station-complex.38117/post-578559

unfortunately no, I can even name the shooting date November 29, 1986 a part from the ship the Souyz means that this is an ordinary military satellite based on Almaz

I don't think you are right, Almaz service section looks quite different from Soyuz.

 

[MaxBuzz]

Salyut-1 with a detail of the Soyuz spacecraft

 

[MaxBuzz]

rocket proton Zond program

 

[MaxBuzz]

good drawing of the launch pad

 

[4throck]

Indeed.. must try it out!

Yes, I believe that is indeed random footage. There are several different rockets in the film.

That's common with all documentaries. The same happens with Saturn footage.
The only way to sort footage is to look at the date and exclude all rockets that came after it. That's why early documentaries are important ;-)

 

[N_Molson]

So from the pics above the Proton/7K-L1 really seems all-white, no markings, just like the UR500. Can't be sure for the black stripe, as that part is 'buried' in the launch system. A rollout pic showing the whole rocket would be awesome.

 

[N_Molson]

Work on the stage 1/ stage 2 "hotfire" separation (quite important stuff as it is a common characteristic to all Proton versions), also added a "maxq" effect (looks so-so, maybe a mesh with variable alpha would look better) :









Also I'm happy with the launch vehicle performance, I'm getting very close from the original Proton-1 orbital parameters.

What remains to be done is mostly modeling launchpad (quite a lot of work in meshing and coding), and the Proton Satellite solar panels deployment animation (should not be too hard). And an ascent script of course. Now again the launchpad and the ascent scripts are assets that will be common to all versions.

Next one will be the 3-stage Proton-K for Mir station modules delivery, as 1) it suits MaxBuzz needs 2) its less complex than the 4-stage versions.

 

[MaxBuzz]

you have solar panels with one mesh (easier for animation) or split into multiple meshes (prettier)?

 

[N_Molson]

Nice Soyuz you have there ! I think you're doing it the right way, 1 object for the panel itself, another for the casing. I did the same for the PTK Orel. We need two objects because the materials are very different. Then you have the hinges and stuff like that. I have nothing against a lot of objects, that's often better to do it that way (again because of materials, because it saves UV mapping pain and because it often solves normals issues).

What would save me a lot of time would be to name your Blender objects as follows :

-> "From parent to child" logic, using numbers like :

00_Solarpanels_left_01
01_Solarpanels_left_casing01
02_Solarpanels_left_hinges01
03_Solarpanels_left_02
04_Solarpanels_left_casing02
... and so on ...

Blake's mesh exporter has an option to "sort meshgroups by Blender object name" and it is extremely useful.

When coding the animation through the .dll, I have to tell Orbiter which meshgroups (= Blender objects) are used for the animation. So usually my workflow is to have Blender open with scene objects list and Visual Studio open so I can Alt-Tab and simply look in Blender the index (number) of the object like "00_Solarpanels_left". Orbiter uses only numbers and starts counting with zero, so its why the first object should be named "00" or "000" if you have more than 100 objects (it is the case for the Proton stage 1 !).

I often "test" the animations in Blender using parent-child hierarchy and the rotation tool, it gives me the reference points and shows me if everything lines up correctly.

 

[N_Molson]

... and another thing I really want to do is to include russian comments for the main events of the rocket ascent (with XRSound API). It adds so much to the immersion. But I can only understand a few words, so I'll need your help there. Of course having like the original audio of the Mir launches would be awesome, but really we can use commercial Proton-M or even Soyuz footage, that will do very well.

What I need is stuff like :

Launch preparation comments (I know russians don't make countdowns), like when the service tower rolls away, etc...
"Liftoff"
"Launch vehicle performance is nominal"
"There is a problem"
"MaxQ"
"Stage 2 ignition"
"Stage 1 separation"
etc... , all main events during the ascent until satellite separation can be interesting.

 

[N_Molson]

Also, the animations for the Proton Satellite are now working :

 

[N_Molson]

Also from varied sources Proton 4 satellite is different. It is even heavier (17000kg!!!) and features a fully enclosed 'interior' protecting all the heavy electronics, being the heaviest scientific payload of its time. It was launched at 51° inclination, while Proton 1-2 were launched at 61°.

And Proton 4 was officially named Proton 3, because the real 3 was a failure, UR500 stage 2 did not ignite correctly. That's a 75% reliability ratio, seems reasonable for those early launches.

Edit : found an interesting drawing that matches the rare Proton-4 pics from museum exhibits :

@MaxBuzz: if you can translate it, could be interesting ?

And no way it fits the basic nosecone, I'll have to add a cylindrical section to it.

 

[N_Molson]

Proton-4 aka "the Beast" in Orbiter :



I'm coding the .dll so that you only have to add "VERSION 4" in the scenario to have Proton 4 instead of Proton 1/2/3 ; it updates the mass, the mesh, the animations reference points and the launcher interface reference point.

So it works, the only issues now are that 1) the second stage is too short to house that big satellite aft section 2) with 17.000 kg it seems we're a bit short on Dv (that was expected, I mean 5 tons is a huge difference). IMHO it would have made sense to use (and test) a Proton-K second stage on this flight. So I'll try that, I have the feeling that the numbers will "magically" line up.

So maybe we're doing "experimental spaceflight history" there, that would be cool






Also started working on a proper launchpad, using Google Earth for general proportions and dimensions... and of course the Proton first stage model I did earlier, to make sure everything matches :

Note that the rail track gauge (inner track) is 1520 mm, aka the "Russian gauge" (slightly wider than in Western Europe).

 

[MaxBuzz]

the sound can be taken from the broadcast of the proton launch, most importantly, there is an event scale 3D graphics are also present
from the first sentence it follows that this is the Yamal-601 satellite (it is better to cut it out)

another launch

third launch (valuable because there is a pre-start preparation)
https://my.mail.ru/inbox/sergey.r/video/124/75201.html

 

[N_Molson]

Blender's generic "brick" texture, once scaled correctly, looks very much like the concrete slabs you can see on Google Earth... And the great thing is that, in fact this isn't a "generic" texture, it is parametric so you can define the color, the size of the bricks/mortar, the frequency, if bricks are aligned or not, anything... And you can blend it with a concrete texture, so that it will look even more realistic. Then exporting the texture to a .dds for Orbiter is easy.



Edit : and those panoramic pictures are... simply... amazing !

Carrier Rocket Proton-M on the launch pad 360 Panorama | 360Cities

360° panorama photo from Kazakhstan by Andrew Bodrov. October 14 at 12:37 Moscow time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to start Proton-...

www.360cities.net

 

[MaxBuzz]

i can make a locomotive for a rocket Proton?

 

[N_Molson]

i can make a locomotive for a rocket Proton?

Please do ! Again I'm assuming the rail gauge is 1520 mm in Russia, right ?

Also from ILS mission planner's manual :