OHM SpaceX launch vehicles and Dragon

[Jarvitä]

I'm not sure what the throttling capability of the Merlin engine is. Since SpaceX intends to launch people on Falcon, they would surely have controlled acceleration to insure a comfortable ride... maybe.

Mercury astronauts took 5G on ascent and 9G on re-entry. Throttling is for the weak.

 

[RisingFury]

Mercury astronauts took 5G on ascent and 9G on re-entry. Throttling is for the weak.

Woohoo! :lol:

 

[T.Neo]

Mercury astronauts took 5G on ascent and 9G on re-entry. Throttling is for the weak.

How would you like to be subjected to 5G for 4 minutes? :dry:

You need more training and fitter astronauts if you're going to subject them to more extreme forces. That isn't a good thing. You want to keep everything as mundane as possible.

Otherwise we might as well be strapping people in spacesuits to ICBMs, and have them ride down in something like [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE"]MOOSE[/ame].

 

[n122vu]

This is happening with the manned Dragon with D3D9:

I am seeing the same, but as you suspected, only in the D3D9 client. Inline graphics engine does not produce this.

Other than this, everything looks good to me. I especially love how the 2nd stage engine bell glows brighter as it heats up. Very realistic. Nice work!

 

[Glider]

same situation here... any thoughts? :shrug:

I have some thoughts, but you need to test something. Could you download the attachment and do these things:
1. try to launch Falcon_9 VS2008.scn and Payload_VS2008.scn.
2. put debug versions of Falcon_9.dll and Payload.dll to Modules\SpaceX\ folder and try to launch Falcon_9 VS2008.scn and then Payload_VS2008. Do they work ?
3. put release versions of these 2 dlls to Modules\SpaceX folder and try to launch the scenarios again. Do they work now ?

These dlls was compiled by VS2008 so they should work on your PC in both debug and release configuration. Or at least payload.dll should work, because it is very simple .dll (only 92 lines of code).

How would you like to be subjected to 5G for 4 minutes? :dry:

5-6G is only at the burnout of first stage (~15 sec.). Most of the time it is only 2-3 G.

2. In the launch autopilot, there has to be some kind of G-limiting throttling down even in cargo versions. (the reason is that NTR core stage is alas limited to maximum 7 gees at launch time, and explodes near 1st stage burnout )

Falcon 9 already has G-limiting. (it cuts 2 engines when acceleration ~5 G. Falcon heavy doesn't needs G limiting, because the payload is so heavy that acceration at burnout doesn't surpass 5.5 G. X, XH and XX should also limit G (FX throttles to 70 %, FXX cuts 2 engines ), though I didn't tested them as much as F9+FH, so may be there're more than 7 G or a bug...
View attachment VS08.zip

 

[n122vu]

If you are using the Omelek Island mesh from BrianJ's addon, use the following location info to get the pad lined up properly:

BEGIN_SHIPS
LPad:SpaceX/LPad
  STATUS Landed Earth
  POS 167.7429790 9.0492200
  HEADING 46.00
  AFCMODE 7
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000000
  THLEVEL 0:1.000000
  NAVFREQ 0 0
  TYPE 0
  SUBTYPE 0
  ANIM0 0 0.0000
  STIME 20.000000
END
F1:SpaceX/F1
  STATUS Landed Earth
  POS 167.7429790 9.0492200
  HEADING 46.00
  AFCMODE 7
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000000
  NAVFREQ 0 0
  CONFIG 0 0 1 1
  LPAD LPad
  FMULT 1.0000
  PAYLOAD Cylinder
  POFS 8.550000
END

And you'll need to remove BrianJ's pad, which can easily be done by renaming the mesh file Meshes\ART\omelek_pad.msh to something else. Note that if you want to fly the actual ART mission from the addon you will need to reverse this.

**EDIT** Actually, better way to do it is go to the config file in Config/Earth/Base/Omelek.cfg and comment out all of the lines pertaining to the omelek_pad mesh, this way there are no errors in Orbiter.log about initializing the mesh file.

 

[N_Molson]

Mercury astronauts took 5G on ascent and 9G on re-entry. Throttling is for the weak.

Yes but Mercury was 100% experimental. First US manned program, they knew nothing about manned spaceflight.

Dragon is supposed to be a 100% commercial program, with years of data about manned spaceflight.

 

[Grover]

a beautiful craft, its only weakness is the LV autopilot (final PeA of 150Km? that wouldnt bring the 2nd stage down on its first perapis, leaving orbital debris ). its always nice to have the challenge of a low thrust vessel, you need good planning to get an orbital sync going.

one bug ive found though, the solar panels seem to recieve sunlight in a weird way, on my first orbit, they lost the sunlight as they passed into darkness, then never got anything back when i emerged into dawn again. resetting their sun-tracking fixed it, but then they charged the batteries even on the dark side of the earth :S could this be a bug?

and one little nitpick, does the ext camera work? that would be handy for a visual docking reference

nice work man, 9/10 from me!

 

[Glider]

and one little nitpick, does the ext camera work? that would be handy for a visual docking reference

Ext. camera work if you have CameraMFD installed (and active in launchpad->modules ). [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2645"]CameraMFD 0.12 Beta[/ame]

 

[Kyle]

Glider, I did what you suggested and it appears to have worked, briefly. However it has reverted to crashing once again.

 

[Glider]

Glider, I did what you suggested and it appears to have worked, briefly. However it has reverted to crashing once again.

Could you download attachment and put Falcon_9.dll into Modules/SpaceX and try to launch Falcon_9 without LPad.scn. Does it work ?

 

[Grover]

Thanks Glider! ill see if i can work out more about the solar panel bug

 

[Kyle]

Could you download attachment and put Falcon_9.dll into Modules/SpaceX and try to launch Falcon_9 without LPad.scn. Does it work ?

That does indeed seem to work! I can't say the same about the other addons though.

 

[Glider]

That does indeed seem to work! I can't say the same about the other addons though.

If it worked, then I think that the problem is caused by LPad.dll. Removing LPad from scenario, changing LPAD line to "LPAD NONE", along with changing the first 0 from "CONFIG 0 0 ...something" to 1 should make all rockets working. I'll try to fix LPad.dll tomorrow.

 

[Kyle]

Just tried to do that, none of the other rockets work. The dragon also doesn't appear to work either.

 

[Grover]

whats the best re-entry method? what sort of corridor are we talking about for optimum re-entry (i dont want my UMMUs flattened by g-forces)

on the topic, how do i add UMMU? i noticed that the life support was constant at 10 days, but couldnt add any crew by pressing M (the dialogue box asked for a name, i gave it, then it seemed to forget what it was doing)

Thanks man!

 

[Glider]

whats the best re-entry method? what sort of corridor are we talking about for optimum re-entry (i dont want my UMMUs flattened by g-forces)

The best method is to reenter atmosphere with orientation hatch-down, parachute cover-up (you should see the surface of Earth you're flying above though the middle window). This orientation will create minimum G. The best perigee for reentry orbit is ~55-60 km for reentry from LEO and ~50 km. for reentry with 11-12 km/s.

on the topic, how do i add UMMU? i noticed that the life support was constant at 10 days, but couldnt add any crew by pressing M (the dialogue box asked for a name, i gave it, then it seemed to forget what it was doing)

it is not enough to press M once. You should press M 6 times and enter name, then age, pulse, weight, function, only when you press M for sixth time it will a UMMU.

 

[N_Molson]

Installed VC++ 2010 redist package and still no luck... The capsule "falls" after a given amount of time (some condition triggers attachment release ?). This also happen when the rocket has lifted off :hmm:

Also, in the Falcon heavy scenarios, the launch pad "blinkers" (lights problem ?). I'm using the default D3D7 client.

 

[RisingFury]

I just did another test of the autopilot for Falcon Heavy and made sure Orbiter was getting 150 FPS by killing all MFDs and staying inside the glass cockpit view. I jettisoned the fairing at 70 km altitude. The autopilot cam close to entering orbit. I specified 30° inclination and 300 Apogee, but the orbit was 200x70.

For some reason the autopilot burns a lot of the delta-v in odd directions. The first stage pitches up to 35 - 40° right before separation, then the second stage dances up, down, left and right seemingly in an effort to hit the desired inclination and to prevent the launcher from passing over the apogee. The angles were a maximum of around 20°.


I also have two more nitpicks...
-The uppers stage doesn't seem to have much of an aerodynamics model. It doesn't rotate into the airstream for example. As far as I know, SpaceX eventually plans to recover the upper stage as well, which means deorbiting and reentring the upper stage.
- The touchdown points on the upper stage are set so that the engine bell sits below the ground. As a result, this weird shadow happens:

I can't wait till this addon is free of bugs. It's a lot of fun!

 

[Glider]

Just tried to do that, none of the other rockets work. The dragon also doesn't appear to work either.

Please test modules from the new attachment.(overwrite all modules in Modules\SpaceX folder and try to launch included scenarios.) I've modified all modules in the same way I did with Falcon_9 from my previous attachment. If the problem still exists after you deleted LPad and if only F9 now works, then it was something wrong with old Falcon_9 and other dlls...

Installed VC++ 2010 redist package and still no luck... The capsule "falls" after a given amount of time (some condition triggers attachment release ?). This also happen when the rocket has lifted off :hmm:

Also, in the Falcon heavy scenarios, the launch pad "blinkers" (lights problem ?). I'm using the default D3D7 client.

Please, also try new modules from the attachment. Do this two problems still exist ?

I also have two more nitpicks...
-The uppers stage doesn't seem to have much of an aerodynamics model. It doesn't rotate into the airstream for example. As far as I know, SpaceX eventually plans to recover the upper stage as well, which means deorbiting and reentring the upper stage.
- The touchdown points on the upper stage are set so that the engine bell sits below the ground. As a result, this weird shadow happens:

I don't think they will succeed in recovering of second stage in a condition that allows reusage. I think that it would be a better idea to destroy a second stage during reentry (if it had speed close to orbital).
I tried to launch FH to 30 deg x 300km and got 215x77 orbit with weird attitude control. I'll try to fix that and add some rotation in airstream.