Challenge Beyond Realistic -- DG to the moon in half a day

[PeriapsisPrograde]

Orbiter was made with a bit of fun intended, right?

Turning limited fuel off, I managed to send a Delta Glider over the "airbace" in incredible time. (SimT = 52304 LOI) From the stock scenario, "Docked to ISS," take the DG to the Moon as fast as possible.

How fast can you go?

 

[iamwearingpants]

I can't even get my DG to the moon when it's a quarter of the distance!
And you do it in half a day?

 

[PeriapsisPrograde]

I can't even get my DG to the moon when it's a quarter of the distance!
And you do it in half a day?

Turning limited fuel off...

That's how :yes::jiggy::bananadance:

 

[Spacethingy]

In my SGU Manifest at x5 FTL... About 0.25 seconds. :lol:

 

[dgatsoulis]

Orbiter was made with a bit of fun intended, right?

Turning limited fuel off, I managed to send a Delta Glider over the "airbace" in incredible time. (SimT = 52304 LOI) From the stock scenario, "Docked to ISS," take the DG to the Moon as fast as possible.

How fast can you go?

Nice work.:thumbup:

If you want to push the DG even more, try to go for 9 hours, from the beginning of the scenario to LOI (~250km circular orbit).

8 hours 25 min is my personal best and i think that if you start from Mir, you can get as low as 6.5 - 7 hours.

 

[Columbia42]

Nice work.:thumbup:

If you want to push the DG even more, try to go for 9 hours, from the beginning of the scenario to LOI (~250km circular orbit).

8 hours 25 min is my personal best and i think that if you start from Mir, you can get as low as 6.5 - 7 hours.

Is that with limited fuel?

 

[APDAF]

I could do it four but it would be a one way trip as I would crash into the moon.

 

[dgatsoulis]

Is that with limited fuel?

Yes.
Limited fuel, complex flight model, damage and failure, non spherical gravity sources, radiation pressure and gravity gradient torgue are always checked in most of my flights.

I'm attaching here the 8 hours 25 min playback, if you want to see it.

It was all pretty simple. First look at BTC2.0 MFD to see how much dV the DG has. (~32 km/s)

Then use IMFD to set up a Moon intercept flight that uses slightly less than half of that. (~15km/s).

Once out of Earth SOI, IMFD-> Base Approach-> 50km Alt (Orbit insert). You can play around with the coordinates of the landing site, but at this speed (and since you only have to get to Lunar Orbit), the difference is only a few of m/s, no matter the coordinates.

After you perform that MCC way out of Moon's SOI, you will see your PeA (Moon) dropping. But since you will need to start the orbit circularization burn, way before you reach the PeA, it's ok.

There are lot's of improvements to try out in this flight. I think that an 8 hour flight should be possible.

 

[flytandem]

A little twist on this is something I will do to add variety to orbiting.
It is a real time flight from wheels rolling to wheel stop on Brighton Beach. Done mostly overnight while sleeping.
Like this... about the last hour of the evening before going to bed, instead of watching some depressing news program, do a flight from a base on the Earth (i have a base at my home town of San Bernardino) heading in a direction that will be the shortest way to get to a trans lunar injection. Do the entire climb to orbit, circularization of orbit and transfer burn without warping time. You might even find that you can still watch TV since there is a bit of waiting time between the burns.
The transfer burn needs to be well planned so that you will be in plane to arrive over Brighton Beach on your first orbit. Also you should plan the strength of the transfer burn so that it matches with what you have planned for the next morning. Example you might have a wake-up time of 7:30 am and leaving the house at 9AM. Plan the burn so that you will be doing the orbit insertion at the moon at 7:40 AM. This gives you 10 minutes from when your alarm clock goes off to plan and do the burn. Then while prepping breakfast and showering you keep a periodic eye on the corrections needed to land at Brighton. And you will need a dedicated 10 or 15 minutes for the powered descent and landing which will be done probably an hour after the orbit insert.
If you like you can refuel and launch again and plan a return trip so that it arrives back at Earth for when you get back from your day at work or school. I've not done that part yet in real time. I never seem to have a full 2-3 hours of free time in the morning to dedicate to the real time landing launch and eject back to Earth. YMMV.