Flight Question Interested in this type of fly......(don't know how to call it)

[769270865]

The fly made by David Courtney that inspired by this agentgonzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHTY5Emu_ZA

I try few times but I always went to high when I get close to the base I try to reenter the ship just become a free fall.Well for this type of fly you should don't let your Pea above 80KM right? During the ascent I can't let my Apa stay about 70KM, does roll upside down will help?Can I go to other base with this method？

 

[RisingFury]

Flight, not fly.

I'm sorry, I had to. I couldn't resist.

 

[ADSWNJ]

The fly made by David Courtney that inspired by this agentgonzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHTY5Emu_ZA

I try few times but I always went to high when I get close to the base I try to reenter the ship just become a free fall.Well for this type of fly you should don't let your Pea above 80KM right? During the ascent I can't let my Apa stay about 70KM, does roll upside down will help?Can I go to other base with this method？

I think they call it valet parking . No dents or scratches on the pain job either, so very nice. Bring it back in 2 hours please.

David did a beautiful flight there, right on the redlines for the hull's temps to get the maximum possible main+scram ascent. Regarding the PeA - I reckon you should focus on the velocity and altitude, as you are not worried about doing any orbits here. Regardless - you'll see that David get her up to close to 10,000m/s, so your ApA will balloon out on the other side of the orbit (i.e. normal ISS-like orbital insertion would top out at around 7,600m.s)

On the reentry - you want to retro-burn early enough to give yourself a glideslope. Burning to zero speed right above the base essentially makes you a brick (or a base jumper, or a stunt pilot?!).

I'd love the see the Glideslope 2 user profile for this Cannonball Run!!

 

[garyw]

It's a suborbital hop. Personally I like doing this in the TX. Mach 5 at 150,000 she holds a pretty decent profile and can do Wideawake to most places on the planet in less than 3 hours.

One thing I'm going to do soon is a New York to London Heathrow run. The SR-71 did it in 1 hour 54 minutes and I think that even from a full stop to full stop the TX should be able to easily beat that by at least an hour.

 

[dgatsoulis]

Usually suborbital hops are done with suborbital speeds. This one was a suborbital hop done with "super"-orbital speed.

In the video blixel got the XR2 at ~10 km/s. To keep from getting ejected from the atmosphere he inverted the ship and used the negative lift to keep him inside, going into "super-cruise" mode at alt ~73 km.
Lowering the altitude at that speed would mean instant vaporization, so he lost some of the speed with a retrograde burn as he approached the target base.

All in all an excellent flight. The XR2 can be pushed slightly more than that but not much.

 

[blixel]

The fly made by David Courtney that inspired by this agentgonzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHTY5Emu_ZA

I try few times but I always went to high when I get close to the base I try to reenter the ship just become a free fall.Well for this type of fly you should don't let your Pea above 80KM right? During the ascent I can't let my Apa stay about 70KM, does roll upside down will help?Can I go to other base with this method?

This is a fairly tricky flight, but I want to start by saying I made quite a few piloting mistakes in that attempt that I flew a year ago. In particular, you'll notice how much I'm struggling to maintain control of the vessel between 8 and 11 minutes. Looking back at it now, it looks very, very sloppy to me.

Fortunately I've learned some new tricks in the last year. I've done several high speed inverted re-entries when coming back to Earth, and that experience has helped me improve my piloting during this KSC to Wideawake flight. The same principles apply when coming back to Earth (from the moon, or from another planet) at 11km/s or higher.

I recorded a new KSC to Wideawake speed run attempt yesterday and was planning to upload the video to youtube in a couple of weeks, but since this discussion came up here, I decided to upload it now.

I still made mistakes, and I don't think I'll ever be as fast as agentgonzo, but this was a much smoother flight.

The main reason this flight is so much smoother is because I added a bit of forward COG shift. This makes the nose of the vessel want to settle into the atmosphere, so maintaining control of the vertical speed just becomes a matter of inputting a tiny bit of elevator as needed. Whereas in the other video, my Vertical Speed is bouncing back and forth between -100 and +100 because I am fighting so hard to keep the vessel in the atmosphere. Since I had the COG shift at 0.00 last time, the vessel wants to fling itself out into space even though it's inverted.

In my opinion, the hardest part of that flight is A.) staying low enough in the atmosphere that you don't skip out, and high enough that you don't burn up. And B.) when it's time to flip over to do the braking burn, it takes a lot of practice to make sure you allow the XR2 to go up a few extra kilometers so you can turn over for the braking burn, but not allow your Vertical Speed to get out of control - in which case you will end up at 100km+ altitude before you know it.