Hispa to Mars

[Hispa]

Hi!

I'm Hispa, formely known as Hispaorbiter. I recently went back to Orbiter and I'm very happy to see there's a new beta of this superb sim (thanks Martin). After a few days learning how to travel to other planets with IMFD (thanks Jarmo), I think I'm ready to go to Mars.

But I don't like to travel alone, so I pretend to give to Mars with me the station Celestium 3c (thanks Greg), two XR2 Ravenstar and one XR5 Vanguard (thanks Douglas), two Deltaglider IV (thanks Dansteph) and as a main booster, a modified Cosmos (thanks myself :tiphat that I hope can boost all seven ships to Mars. I can say it's a damned difficulty thing to rotate.

This first image is the shipset :hesaid:after the inyection burn to escape from Earth orbit. If this adventure doesn't end with a disaster (as it's very possible), I'll continue posting images when I arrive to Mars orbit. Wish me luck!

 

[mc_]

Nice ship :thumbup:

 

[T.Neo]

That is quite... impressive. Celestium 3c certainly looks cool as an interplanetary spacecraft.

 

[IronRain]

very nice! good luck!

 

[Izack]

I would very much like to know for reference how the Cosmos performs as a stack-pusher.

Good luck, Hispa in your travels! :thumbup:

 

[Hispa]

Hi again.

Thanks to the time acceleration function, I'm now just before the orbital insertion in Mars:

As reply to Izack, I must say that I had to change specific impulse and thrust power for Cosmos in order to be able to maneuver all this enormous thing. In fact, I shouldn't increase the specific impulse as much as I did, because I'm arriving Mars with at least 80% of fuel in Cosmos tanks.

To rotate this structure, I have to use translation mode, because in rotation mode I got strange and undesiderable results. When burning the main engine, I have to mantain the killrot function activated. I'm affraid this XR5 docked in a side of my Celestium is moving the center of gravity...

But I'm doing it at least. :thumbup:

 

[Richy]

THAT's an interplanetary stack! :thumbup:

 

[Hispa]

Orbital injection burn over Mars...

I pretend to reach a low PeD and then try to circularize to start operating with the smaller ships.

 

[Fabri91]

That is one awesome stack! At first I thought the XR5 was a DGIV. It must be enormous.

EDIT: could you please post the modifications you did to your "stack-pusher"? I was planning on using a similar stack.

 

[Hispa]

Finaly, I reached a low orbit with an altitude of 460km:

I'll start Mars operations tomorrow (it's too late in Spain now and I spent almost all the afternoon and night with this :blink

Fabri91: I'll upload to orbithangar the scenarios I've been saving as well as the specifications to run them (wich addons are necessary, the changes made to Cosmos, ...), but let me sleep, wake up, work, etc...

Thanks to all for your comments and interest.

---------- Post added 05-19-10 at 03:28 PM ---------- Previous post was 05-18-10 at 11:04 PM ----------

I've made a scenario file for this stack of ships. Orbit Hangar needs 24h to moderate it, but you can also get it from:


http://elojodeltuerto.com/archivos/documentos/Hispa_to_Mars.zip

Be careful with the addons necessary to run it.

---------- Post added at 05:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:28 PM ----------

I used a XR2 to visit Phobos, but I found an error when trying to land there. My ship went under the surface! :shrug::WTF:

I don't know if I should report it as a bug for Orbiter Beta or it's just a feature. I'd like to remember if I was able to land in Phobos under previous versions of Orbiter, but I can't.

No photo this time, sorry.

 

[Fabri91]

Thank you very much Hispa!
Regarding phobos: if you have the DGIV installed, you also have the Prelude base installed.
Paste this bit in your scenario's ships section:

BEGIN_SHIPS
BASE01:DGIVPreludeII
  STATUS Landed Phobos
  POS -118.7114120 30.5998550
  HEADING 40.91
  NAVFREQ 0 0
  XPDR 320
  SKINNAME phobos
  DISPLAYLANDINGPAD 1         ;0=ground base 1=mountain base (eg: phobos) 2= disable
  MAINAIRLOCK 0 0.0000
  PADLIGHT1MODE 0
  PADLIGHT1STATE 0
  UMMUCREW Sci-Peter_Salchli-33-64-82
  UMMUCREW -Itai_Weinberg-27-65-61
  UMMUCREW XI5-Cameron_Mitchell-36-65-77
END

It places a UMMU compatible base just where the mesh and the spherical model of Phobos intersect.
And it will look like this:

 

[Hispa]

There's a shadow on the martian sand...

Thanks for the tip, Fabri91. I'll do what you said.

 

[Fabri91]

Your welcome!
However landing on it is much more like docking, so be sure you are not moving (i.e, that your vessel's state is indeed "landed") before performing UMMU ops. I lost a fair amount of cargo this way.

 

[Hispa]

Resuplying olympus base at last:

If you want to land this baby on Mars, be prepared to use hover thrust extensively. :yes:

I'm looking for a launch window that allow me to send Cosmos back to Earth, leaving over Mars the rest of the ships. In this moment, IMFD says it's not possible.

---------- Post added at 07:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:12 PM ----------

BEGIN_SHIPS
BASE01:DGIVPreludeII
  (...)
  UMMUCREW Sci-Peter_Salchli-33-64-82
  UMMUCREW -Itai_Weinberg-27-65-61
  UMMUCREW XI5-Cameron_Mitchell-36-65-77

Cameron Mitchell? This guy should be aboard an X302, isn't it?

 

[Fabri91]

Don't know. This happens when I transfer crew from say the XR5 to modules that had UMMU2 since the beginning. Their rank gets messed up, but otherwise works fine. X15 doesn't refer to any vessel.

 

[Hispa]

Second shot to Phobos:

God, I LIKE this station! :thumbup:

 

[HR_Oso]

Me alegro de volver a verte por aqui, Jorge. No te veia desde los inicios de la lista de correo, allá por... ni me acuerdo.

 

[Hispa]

Igualmente te digo Oso. Digamos que Orbiter es una afición recurrente, pero que normalmente se come un tiempo que casi no tengo. Ahora vengo de jugón, a ver qué hay de nuevo por aquí, y veo que es mucho.

---------- Post added 05-20-10 at 02:34 PM ---------- Previous post was 05-19-10 at 08:58 PM ----------

I installed the hi-res textures for Mars (L10) and the mesh for Olympus mons:

It worth to see this impressive mountain of 25km high going out of the martian atmosphere. It's also too impressive to see the Valles Marineris. Now I pretend to install hi-res for Phobos and Deimos and complete the exploration of both moons. :thumbup:

---------- Post added at 03:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:34 PM ----------

Hi-res textures of Phobos:

Two words: im-pressive!

But I found that Phobos base is a little out of place with the new mesh. Still no idea if there's some kind of patch to solve this issue:

Weird...

 

[Fabri91]

There should be a way: the base is, at the end, a vessel. You can go to the scenario editor and move it a bit with the small arrows where it's longitude and latitude are specified to a point where the mesh is again intersected.

EDIT: great pictures!

 

[mc_]

So, you wanto to send Cosmos back, leaving the staton orbiting Mars as a... station? Good idea. And great pictures! Keep going.

P.S.: where can i get L10 textures for Mars?