Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2012
- Messages
- 508
- Reaction score
- 20
- Points
- 33
- Location
- Somewhere.... out there.....
- Preferred Pronouns
- he/him
Europa L2 Station construction was officially completed today although there are a few odds-and-ends to finish up.
The 2 XR5s we brought along are now being used to bring up water melted from the icy surface of Europa. That water will be converted into LOX for the station and LH2 to fuel SSTV-01 for our trip home. As we barely used 25% of our total fuel load to get here, we could make the entire return trip back without refueling, but just in case our entire bank of EHEs fail on us, we need every drop of fuel we can bring to use the NTEs to get us into some sort of a stable orbit in the Earth-Moon system.
Only 1 XR5 will be returning with us. The other 1 will be left at the station for local use. The 2 man crew of the XR5 we are bringing home will be our only passengers so we won't have to activate most of our life support and hydroponics modules on the return trip. We have been running them at full power since we arrived at Europa and the extra resources we have produced have been transferred to the station to give them a good supply to start with. To help keep our center of gravity balanced, the XR5 will be docked at our forward docking port once we undock from the station and will remain there until we're safely in LEO. Then it will undock and move to one of the side docking ports so we can dock with the ISS.
The XR5 returning with us will also act as a lifeboat should our entire propulsion system break down or be unable to slow us down completely once we reach the Earth-Moon system. Hopefully if it comes to abandoning SSTV-01 the XR5 will have enough fuel on board to get us into some sort of highly elliptical orbit around the Earth from which we can be rescued.
At the current rate of processing water from Europa, we will be fully fueled and ready to leave Europa well before our departure date in 10 days. Once we have left the gravitational influence of Europa, we will use our on board software to calculate a return trajectory. The current mission timeline gives us 15 days to phase our Jupiter orbit with a proper departure trajectory for our TEI burn. Our actual TEI burn may occur before the 15 days are up if our phasing allows it.
All boards are green at this time.
Remaining mission timeline is as follows:
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder
The 2 XR5s we brought along are now being used to bring up water melted from the icy surface of Europa. That water will be converted into LOX for the station and LH2 to fuel SSTV-01 for our trip home. As we barely used 25% of our total fuel load to get here, we could make the entire return trip back without refueling, but just in case our entire bank of EHEs fail on us, we need every drop of fuel we can bring to use the NTEs to get us into some sort of a stable orbit in the Earth-Moon system.
Only 1 XR5 will be returning with us. The other 1 will be left at the station for local use. The 2 man crew of the XR5 we are bringing home will be our only passengers so we won't have to activate most of our life support and hydroponics modules on the return trip. We have been running them at full power since we arrived at Europa and the extra resources we have produced have been transferred to the station to give them a good supply to start with. To help keep our center of gravity balanced, the XR5 will be docked at our forward docking port once we undock from the station and will remain there until we're safely in LEO. Then it will undock and move to one of the side docking ports so we can dock with the ISS.
The XR5 returning with us will also act as a lifeboat should our entire propulsion system break down or be unable to slow us down completely once we reach the Earth-Moon system. Hopefully if it comes to abandoning SSTV-01 the XR5 will have enough fuel on board to get us into some sort of highly elliptical orbit around the Earth from which we can be rescued.
At the current rate of processing water from Europa, we will be fully fueled and ready to leave Europa well before our departure date in 10 days. Once we have left the gravitational influence of Europa, we will use our on board software to calculate a return trajectory. The current mission timeline gives us 15 days to phase our Jupiter orbit with a proper departure trajectory for our TEI burn. Our actual TEI burn may occur before the 15 days are up if our phasing allows it.
All boards are green at this time.
Remaining mission timeline is as follows:
- 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
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder
