Usquanigo
New member
I know there isn't much to do in Project Mercury, especially since they actually had autopilots, that worked most of the time, but still, it's SOOO well done, it just sucks you in. The panels give the impression of a 3D pit, so much is modeled and functional, the failures spice things up, and the countdown is just icing on the cake. Makes you feel like you are really there.
Top it off with the new repaints that just got done, and either of the KC-LC14's and it's just stunning.
The only potential down-side is that this level of completeness in an add-on is quite capable of being jading.
I just completed the first 4 manned flights, in realtime (essentially). I didn't MR-3, and 4, then MA-6 and 7. The Mercury-Redstone flights I just hung out. But the Mercury-Atlas flights were over 4 hours long, that's just too much to sit and stare at pixels sliding by.
So I did the MAs at work and let it run in the background, checking on it periodically.
Failures aside, I looked up the actual flights to both find out what happened during the flights, and to see what the pilots did (did they let the autopilot go, or if not, what did they control and when, etc), then mimiced that. I even disabled the retro jetisson for Glenn's mission, since they had a faulty sensor that made ground control think the heat sheild was only held on by the retro pack, so he had to release it manually.
I was off on my splashdown point with MA-7 too, just like Carpenter, and for similar reasons - got distracted and missed the exact retro firing time.
MA-7 had a tower jettison failure, I had to trigger that manually.
MR-4 had a capsule sep failure and I had to deal with that manually as well.
MA-6 had a chute deploy failure, so I had to trigger that one too, but that only needed the pull ring, didn't have to go to the circuit breakers like I did for MA-7's tower jettison.
Was really fun getting to know the systems and controls of the Mercury capsules. And following the count-down, listening to the calls of all the systems, doing a light check, looking at power read outs, verifying the dials, etc. Then riding the critical points out to watch for failures.
The improvements in the works sound awesome, I will definitely have to revisit it sometime.
(I had previously conquered orbital intercept, docking, and travel to and landing on the moon, then got bored, felt like there were no reasonably realistic challenges left - going to other planets with warp drives was outsidethat scope. But then the Apollo Anniversay brought be back here and I saw someone talking about an off-plane Moon-shot and relaized, that was something I never did. So I got fired back up again. Then I just decided to go to Apollo in the spirit of everything, but then saw Project Mercury and thought starting at the beginning made the most sense
)
Gonna skip the longer last 2 missions. I went into space, corroborated that, then went into orbit, and corroborated that mission. Science accomplished. (couldn't do the balloon or vis tests really, but 'sok, is close enough)
Now on to Gemini.
Top it off with the new repaints that just got done, and either of the KC-LC14's and it's just stunning.
The only potential down-side is that this level of completeness in an add-on is quite capable of being jading.
I just completed the first 4 manned flights, in realtime (essentially). I didn't MR-3, and 4, then MA-6 and 7. The Mercury-Redstone flights I just hung out. But the Mercury-Atlas flights were over 4 hours long, that's just too much to sit and stare at pixels sliding by.
So I did the MAs at work and let it run in the background, checking on it periodically.
Failures aside, I looked up the actual flights to both find out what happened during the flights, and to see what the pilots did (did they let the autopilot go, or if not, what did they control and when, etc), then mimiced that. I even disabled the retro jetisson for Glenn's mission, since they had a faulty sensor that made ground control think the heat sheild was only held on by the retro pack, so he had to release it manually.
I was off on my splashdown point with MA-7 too, just like Carpenter, and for similar reasons - got distracted and missed the exact retro firing time.
MA-7 had a tower jettison failure, I had to trigger that manually.
MR-4 had a capsule sep failure and I had to deal with that manually as well.
MA-6 had a chute deploy failure, so I had to trigger that one too, but that only needed the pull ring, didn't have to go to the circuit breakers like I did for MA-7's tower jettison.
Was really fun getting to know the systems and controls of the Mercury capsules. And following the count-down, listening to the calls of all the systems, doing a light check, looking at power read outs, verifying the dials, etc. Then riding the critical points out to watch for failures.
The improvements in the works sound awesome, I will definitely have to revisit it sometime.
(I had previously conquered orbital intercept, docking, and travel to and landing on the moon, then got bored, felt like there were no reasonably realistic challenges left - going to other planets with warp drives was outsidethat scope. But then the Apollo Anniversay brought be back here and I saw someone talking about an off-plane Moon-shot and relaized, that was something I never did. So I got fired back up again. Then I just decided to go to Apollo in the spirit of everything, but then saw Project Mercury and thought starting at the beginning made the most sense
)Gonna skip the longer last 2 missions. I went into space, corroborated that, then went into orbit, and corroborated that mission. Science accomplished. (couldn't do the balloon or vis tests really, but 'sok, is close enough)
Now on to Gemini.
