Challenge: What's the most mass you can fly from Cape Canaveral to Brighton Beach in an XR2 with MainFuelISP=1 without pinging a fuel warning light? Bonus adulation if you can get back to the cape with or without an alarm!
Story: I was hoping to use the low-ISP settings to allow me to bring cargo to LEO and force me to install extra tanks for the Moon. It sounded pretty good on my little solar calculator, but I can be a pretty sloppy pilot so I made a test run to be sure. So two main fuel tanks and the CHM in a default scenario and away I go.
Kind of ominous right from the start when a tank emptied before reaching orbit. Still, almost in orbit is like "almost 80% there" so into orbit and off to the moon we go!
Even more ominous looking at the lunar insertion burn. The payload fuel is long gone, and I'm sweating the eventual landing a bit. No turning back now though.
Ugh. Descending to the beach, and shutting up the main fuel alarm by crossfeeding until the RCS fuel alarm comes on. Visual landing on an alternate pad (ie, the closest one) with both warning lights on. Clearly nobody is flying my space line twice. [Especially after they heard me remarking how much I'd like a runway so I could use the breaks. I hope the cockpit door is soundproof.]
Looking back I think I could have done better. Fewer passengers and a lot less oxygen would have helped. I got a bit ansy in the descent too, since I actually had plenty of fuel. The round trip might even be possible, though in my case that probably means an XR2 landing on the Moon followed by a hundred tones of molten slag cratering the SLF.
Story: I was hoping to use the low-ISP settings to allow me to bring cargo to LEO and force me to install extra tanks for the Moon. It sounded pretty good on my little solar calculator, but I can be a pretty sloppy pilot so I made a test run to be sure. So two main fuel tanks and the CHM in a default scenario and away I go.
Kind of ominous right from the start when a tank emptied before reaching orbit. Still, almost in orbit is like "almost 80% there" so into orbit and off to the moon we go!
Even more ominous looking at the lunar insertion burn. The payload fuel is long gone, and I'm sweating the eventual landing a bit. No turning back now though.
Ugh. Descending to the beach, and shutting up the main fuel alarm by crossfeeding until the RCS fuel alarm comes on. Visual landing on an alternate pad (ie, the closest one) with both warning lights on. Clearly nobody is flying my space line twice. [Especially after they heard me remarking how much I'd like a runway so I could use the breaks. I hope the cockpit door is soundproof.]
Looking back I think I could have done better. Fewer passengers and a lot less oxygen would have helped. I got a bit ansy in the descent too, since I actually had plenty of fuel. The round trip might even be possible, though in my case that probably means an XR2 landing on the Moon followed by a hundred tones of molten slag cratering the SLF.
