Having some fun working on a magical "set global velocity" engine. Hate me as much as you like.
Sweet! Why another one though? There are several working add-ons available for when you need to say "Engage!"
When I
flew there a few years ago, I called it Boreas I (the four planets being named after the wind spirits of Greek mythology.)
It would have been a whole lot more interesting back then if IMS had been around. I could have avoided this hideous contraption:
Aughh (eyeballs shatter & fall to the floor)
:jawdrops:
Thats Awful! The control must have been brutal on a stack like that. Why not just a single longshot on its own?
Anyways, the Altair finished her refits, then relaunched just in time to meet the launch window.
A very minimalist ship built for two, with some strange tendencies. More on that later.
accel when fully loaded was only about 0.1-0.2 G
, so I had to double kick my ejection burn. Here was number one:
Coasting away into the sunset:
And back around for the second swing:
After that things went nicely, although the odd quirk I mentioned made for some frustration. Since UPS and D is so far from its star, radiant heating wasnt quite so much of an issue, but whenever it went into planetary shadow, it seemed to experience an MCS overload. My rough guess is that going into shadow puts more of a load on heating (needed to keep the food storage from freezing solid), which in turn cranks up the ASTG generator, which in turn starts producing more heat than the 70 kW MCS can handle...
So things actually get better once you get out into the open.Getting closer to the target:
Approach and orbit insertion burn:
Safely parked in orbit around UPS and d II, but Delta vee will be quite close for the return trip, as the challenges of navigating in a system like this shaved a good 1500 m/s off the budget. Till then
