Your Greatest Flights

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Hey everyone,

So I wanted to start a thread to ask about any memorable flights that you've had in Orbiter.

I guess I should go first. I probably have a couple of wild flights that I was happy to finish alive, but without question the trickiest was my "deorbit to the pad" at my old base in Ecuador, using a UCGO Shuttle-A.



The goal for me was to de-orbit my Shuttle-A safely onto one of the VTOL pads that you can see right in the middle of the picture, on the other side of the runway. (The base was the Titicaca one BTW). This was tough because the ship was loaded up with lunar ore cargo, and low on fuel after a trip to the moon & back. My flight skills were also a fair bit less polished, and I had trouble understanding AerobrakeMFD at the time. I recall that landing the sucker properly took quite a few tries, mostly either dropping in much too early, or overshooting into central South America. Finally, on about try 60-80, I finally managed to pinpoint my descent to the right spot. Using the hovers & my aux pods, I managed to kill my horizontal speed after overshooting the base by a little bit, but I ran out of fuel before I could align to the pad properly, and landed on the grass about 50 m from it. (I later discovered that the aux pods throttle had been stuck open at about 0.4 N forward, screwing up an otherwise perfect landing)

So whats your story?

 

[Kyle]

The first day I figured out how to work Interplanetary MFD was by far my greatest flight, went to every planet in the solar system and had fuel left over. I think that might have been my most epic flight, that or the first time I flew with D3D9 with reflection support and Earth glow, absolutely stunning.

 

[Izack]

Great thread idea!

I have flown so many Orbiter missions in the last three years that I can't remember offhand all the better ones (I've also lost a hard drive, with scenarios involving great missions.)

Highlights I can remember are my uneventful yet incredibly fulfilling OFSS-3 Soyuz flight, which was the first and possibly only time my flying skills have been exposed to other Orbinauts.

Last year, I was on a test-flight of the DSV Deepstar I was (am :shifty working on, on a course for the asteroid 5786 Talos. On rendezvous, I mixed up my burn times and suddenly found myself falling directly toward the asteroid, pointed directly toward it. There was an extremely stressful 180 degree turn manoeuvre (the structure rotates so slowly!!) followed by a hasty 'Velocity-Match' burn in IMFD with the main engine + forward RCS. We had our fingers crossed, squeezing every bit of forward thrust we could out of the ship. We came closer, closer, closer... and finally came to a stop with only 15 metres to spare between the engine bell and the asteroid's surface. I sat there at the computer, looking at the altitude ribbon on SurfaceMFD, and then released a long-held sigh of relief.

 

[mode1bravo]

Way back when I flew the Gemini 10 double rendezvous and spacewalk successfully with just enough RCS (Project Gemini 4.5/no attitude autopilots/limited RCS). Using the Agena as a stepping stone to the other one was really fun. After reading "Go Play in Space" and other such tutorials and then putting that to good use making that flight work on the first go is the best memory for me.

 

[rseferino]

In my case it was a moon landing with LM Apollo, I pass the point of landing and I was out of fuel, in the end achieve down, with 8.16 kg of propellant in the tanks.

 

[IronRain]

My greatest flight was my first flight to mars with MER Spirit. Took me a couple of days to understand IMFD so when I finally touched down safely I was really happy. This was about 2 years ago but I still have a note with the landing coordinates (I wasn't following the real time line) where I will setup a Martian base as soon as complete flights are possible with markp's DRM add-on

 

[Cizurator]

My greatest flight was during one of my first flights with Orbiter, back in June 2007. I was figuring out how basic things work (orbital mechanics, atmospheric behavior etc.).

And one day, I lifted off with Proton rocket carrying Zarya module, trying to not to fall down again - and there came the moment..."What do these little dots stand for?" - (it was apogee and perigee). I watched them for a while, looked at the speed - and in that moment I GOT IT! :idea:
The result was almost precise circular orbit 350kmx350km. I was so happy, that I created a screenshot, presuming this moment should be remembered

A week later I built my first space station. Those times were epic

 

[Noeyedeer]

When I successfully launched the shuttle manually. I have tried multiple times after that achievement but to no success.

 

[sorindafabico]

- My first EJS (Jupiter sling)
- Six-year trip to Mercury doing slings in Venus
- My firsts AMSO Apollo 8 and 11 flights
- My first direct EDL in Olympus (with a DGIV)
- The first time I simulated STS-88

 

[SolarLiner]

I once got back from a Mars mission on a DGIV. I reentered the atmosphere, aited, and landed directly on the wideawake runway, without using any engines !

I had the "no burn" activated but still, I'm very proud of this reentry. I used Interplanetary MFD to bring me home.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

The flight I did for the Orbiter Forum Space Station. I was delivering the Nebulus truss adapter module to an early stage of the space station. I flew Discovery on a near-perfect flight including proper rendezvous, rotational pitch maneuver, and docking. I think the whole thing lasted around three hours. Below is a pic of the rendezvous over KSC. I swear, I didn't plan it, it just happened that way!

 

[Columbia42]

There have been so many flights, but definitely my most recent memorable flight was a trip to Rigel Kentaurus using Orbiter Galaxy and Artlav's Hius ramjet spacecraft. It was a 15 year trip (Earth time, not sure about time dilation) including three years spent orbiting the Earth-like planet in that system and setting up a temporary base there.

 

[iamwearingpants]

I have two legendary flights of mine that fit the question:

- I took off from KSC in an XR-2 with unlimited fuel, and ascended normally until I inverted myself and ended up reaching 13km/s over South America. Eventually I got bored and cut the throttle, ending up in an hyperbolic trajectory. I braked just a bit, making my orbit's apoapsis somewhat beyond the moon. Just having learned the art if inverted re-entry and dangerously impatient, I ended up in africa or something after a flawless performance. (except for when I flipped, jesus that was dangerous)

- About a year ago and a few months before the above flight, I figured out transx and ended up going to Saturn out of nowhere (spawning the memorable skype message "BRB GOING TO SATURN") using an arrow and a shuttle PB total immersion. I actually made it to saturn and even ended up orbiting Titan, where I sent down a shuttle PB with some of my crew in it. Poor Peter Falcon was jettisoned sometime during the descent, making it down alive until about 50m above the surface where he tragically ran out of oxygen. I docked the PB back to the Arrow and went back to Earth, but ran out of fuel during the braking burn. Crap. Since I still had the PB I loaded all 6 of my crew inside and completed the burn. ending up in Antarctica with barely any fuel.

 

[Pipcard]

Flying an XR2 to the Arrow, docking, doing a transfer to Mars, and landing the XR2 on Mars in late 2011.

 

[Koloss]

My greatest flight so far:

I had an Arrow Freighter in Earth Orbit at about 230 Kilometers.
Then I fueled up my DGIV at Wideawake International, put a flag kit, a landing beacon, a solar panel and a base module inside the docking port and started the DGIV towards my freighter.
This procedure I repeated three times - everytime with different cargo and of course I transfered the crew so that at the end I ended up with 13 people at the Arrow Freighter.

Then I fired up the engines of my Arrow Freighter and head to Jupiter! After a long and successful voyage I landed the DGIV at Europa, releasing a landing beacon and then landing the Arrow Freighter automatically.

That was an awesome journey. Can't wait to do it again!

 

[jb860]

My greatest flights were the first time I manually got to orbit earth, going to the moon in a Falcon 9, and going to Saturn in a Falcon 9.

Don't have much time, though for a future flight I plan on going to multiple planets at once just like Kyle did.

Kyle how long did it take you before you were able to do such a flight? What kind of spacecraft was used?