T+ 107 Days Engineering Log

[Dantassii]

First orbital alignment burn with 4 forward and 2 reverse EHEs occurred with no engineering issues to report. Phasing burn tomorrow will use only 2 of each EHE in each direction as will all burns until we arrive on station at the L2 point in the Jupiter-Europa system.

The report from Earth is that the ETV has been loaded with all the spare parts that we will need to repair our non-functional EHEs. This will allow us to use all 17 EHEs for the TEI and EOI burns later in our mission. The ETV will also be carrying the necessary hardware to allow us to build tanks on all our unused cargo attachment points so we can return a water cargo to the Lunar Station. This may delay our departure from Europa as the original mission timeline did not include the time necessary to bring up several cargo loads of water from the Europa surface. Exactly how much of a delay this will cause will be determined by how quickly the Europa station construction goes and if any additional ETV flights are needed to bring up additional supplies.

Flight time of the ETV from LEO to Jupiter Orbit is 15 days with 10 additional days for phasing and alignment with the Europa L2 point. It will not leave LEO until we are safely on station however.

Mission timeline is as follows:

• T+108 days First orbital phasing burn with Europa
• T+112 days Second orbital alignment burn with Europa
• T+113 days Second orbital phasing burn with Europa
• T+114 days Third orbital alignment burn with Europa
• T+125 days Europa Orbit Insertion (EOI)
• T+126 days Start Europa Station construction
• T+130 days ETV leaves LEO with spare parts for our EHEs
• T+145 days ETV JOI burn
• T+155 days ETV arrives in Europa orbit
• T+200 days ETV leaves Europa orbit for Earth
• T+220 days ETV arrives in LEO
• T+250 days Europa Station construction complete
• T+260 days SSTV-01 departs Europa Station after refueling
• T+275 days TEI
• T+300 days MCC #5
• T+350 days MCC #6
• T+365 days Preliminary shaping burn for EOI
• T+375 days EOI and docking with ISS
• T+390 days Undocking and TLI
• T+393 days LOI and docking with lunar station and official end to mission #1

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Jeeez.. what is the ETV powered by, an outsize Orion drive? That's an awfully short transfer to Jupiter.

 

[Dantassii]

The SSTV has 17 forward Hyperthrust Engines and 2 reverse Hyperthrust Engines on it and fully loaded has a delta V budget of around 20 Mm/s. These engines are part of the IMS 1.0 RC 6.

It has enough delta V for a 100 day flight trip from LEO to Pluto orbit, so a 100 day flight to Jupiter is pretty easy. The main reason for going so 'slow' is this is the 'first' mission for the Hypertrust Engines and so 60 standard nuclear thermal engines were included in the design as a backup although using those it only has about 6km/s of delta V. It needed to arrive at Jupiter slowly enough so that the NTEs would have enough delta V to slow it into a highly elliptical Jupiter Orbit from which it could be 'rescued'. Once the Hypertrust Engines have been proven reliable, the NTEs will probably be removed from the SSTV along with all the truss structure they are attached to. This will improve the performance of the SSTV quite a bit.

With all 17 engines burning, the SSTV can produce about 5 G's of thrust fully loaded. That's why they are only using 2 to 4 during normal orbit adjustment burns. There are pictures of the SSTV on this site, see the "Orbiter Pictures" thread about 5-6 pages (or more) before the last one.

The Emergency Transport Vehicle is a stripped down SSTV with much less cargo capacity and is unmanned. With the fuel load on it, it can go from LEO to Jupiter orbit in 15 days easily. I think it has about 10,000 Mm of delta V although I don't have a screen capture to back that up.

Here are some pictures of the SSTV docked with the ISS to give you some idea of its size relative to something most Orbiter pilots have seen.





Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[Scav]

If that thing were to go critical, would we be looking at a dwarf star or a pulsar? :blink:

Still, that's one mean looking ship!

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Damn... the torch of sci-fi lore lives on!

 

[Dantassii]

If that thing were to go critical, would we be looking at a dwarf star or a pulsar? :blink:

Still, that's one mean looking ship!

Actually, you should imagine what the Lunar Station will look like when it is completed. Imagine something that is SO BIG that it will take something like 750-1000 XR5 missions from Brighton Beach to bring up all the components.

Thanks for the compliment.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder