Author Topic: Modelling Mars (Read 226792 times)

Dalhousie · « **Reply #280 on:** 03/16/2015 09:57 pm »

Quote from: Ronpur50 on 03/15/2015 08:30 pm

All of the elements were launch to be placed in orbit as close to the Skylab Workshop, so as to allow assembly crews to work from there.

Mike and Bob will have to tell me what that means as far an in-plane orbit would be.

I assume this orbit would allow a Trans Mars Injection burn?

Probably a lot lower inclination, I suspect.

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #281 on:** 03/17/2015 11:38 am »

Yes, this is the ground track for the MER launch. It is a much different inclination than what a useful Skylab would be. I am not an expert on orbital mechanics. So I don't know if a mission to Mars could be launch from the Skylab orbit. And I know it would have been impossible to travel from one orbit to the other if Ares was assemble in this orbit and Skylab crew was used to assist. We maybe just using crew on the assembly flights to be the sole construction crews.

mike robel · « **Reply #282 on:** 03/17/2015 06:42 pm »

Another difference is MER was a direct injection to Mars, as all of our Mars Probes have been.

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #283 on:** 03/17/2015 06:48 pm »

I am just gonna keep building rocket models and take pictures, and let some one else worry about orbits, lol. I have several items ready for the 21st, and will hope to have a few more ready.
I need to do a few more for the TMI on the 22nd as well.

mike robel · « **Reply #284 on:** 03/17/2015 07:18 pm »

Good Plan, Ron...

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #285 on:** 03/18/2015 02:10 am »

I dug out my 30 year old NY Times with the article on the upcoming mission!

Dalhousie · « **Reply #286 on:** 03/18/2015 09:57 am »

Since the Moon and Mars are both in the ecliptic, I suggest the orbital plane would be similar to Apollo parking orbits.

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #287 on:** 03/18/2015 09:31 pm »

I have been enjoying my day off taking photos and working on models, while watching Star Trek.

Here is two I did today, the rest stay hidden until the 21st.

Both are revisions of previous photos, which I needed to do after changes to the model. The video still from the tanker approach and the docked tanker and Ares Booster stack.

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #288 on:** 03/20/2015 03:15 pm »

Historical weather from the Weather Underground for March 21, 1985 for Titusville, FL.

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KTIX/1985/3/21/DailyHistory.html?req_city=Cocoa&req_state=FL&req_statename=Florida&reqdb.zip=32922&reqdb.magic=1&reqdb.wmo=99999

Would the wind have scrubbed? It looks like at 9:37, it was not as windy as later in the day.

Edit: Shuttle had a LCC for wind of 39 MPH, it would be OK!

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #289 on:** 03/20/2015 07:06 pm »

I also have this report on Merritt Island that has similar temps, but greater visibility(9 miles).

http://www.almanac.com/weather/history/FL/Merritt%20Island/1985-03-21

mike robel · « **Reply #290 on:** 03/20/2015 08:58 pm »

We need a picture of the Ares lit up by searchlights!

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #291 on:** 03/21/2015 03:16 am »

Morning dawns on March 21, 1985, 30 years ago. A slightly overcast morning soon would give way to a "It is typically hot, humid Florida weather here, on this historic day, Thursday, March 21, 1985."

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #292 on:** 03/21/2015 03:18 am »

"Astronaut Stone reports “It feels good.”
T minus thirty seconds.
We are just a few seconds away from switching on the redundant sequence. This is the automatic system for engine cutoff.
T minus twenty-seven seconds and counting.
We have go for redundant sequence start.
T minus twenty seconds and counting. Sound-suppression system fired. Solid Rocket Boosters armed.
T minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.
T minus ten, nine, eight.
Main engine start."

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #293 on:** 03/21/2015 03:22 am »

"The Saturn VB was inching its way upward past the launch tower, almost skittishly, its automated controls swiveling its five first-stage engines to correct for wind shear. Right, left, forward, back, in a series of spasmodic jerks hard enough to bruise her.
No simulation had even hinted at the violence. It was like riding out of an explosion.
“Access arm,” Stone called. “Clear of the tower.”
John Young, Houston capcom for the launch, came on line.
“Ares, Houston. Copy. You are clear of the tower.”"

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #294 on:** 03/21/2015 03:24 am »

"“Houston, we have a good roll program,” Stone said.
“Roger the roll.”
The Saturn was arcing over the Florida coast, toward the Atlantic.
Down there on the beaches, she knew, children had written huge good luck messages into the Florida sand. GODSPEED ARES. York looked up and to her right, toward the tiny square window there. But there was nothing to see. They were cocooned; the boost protective cover, a solid cone, lay over the Command Module, blocking out the daylight."

(Zoom in on this one, and you can see the tiny Saturn VB)

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #295 on:** 03/21/2015 03:26 am »

"Stone said, “Thirty-five thousand feet. Going through Mach one point nine. SRB combustion chamber pressure down to fifty pounds per square inch.”
“Copy,” John Young said from the ground. “You are go for SRB separation.”
“Rog.”
She heard a faint, muffled bang; the cabin shuddered, rattling her against her restraints. Separation squibs had fired, pushing the exhausted solid boosters away from the main stack. She felt a dip in the thrust; but then the acceleration of the MS-IC’s central liquid boosters picked up again, and she was pressed back into her seat.
“Roger on the sep,” Young said.
“Smooth as glass, John.”
The solid boosters would be falling away like matchsticks, dribbling smoke and flames. The strap-on solid boosters were the most visible enhancement of the VB over the core Saturn V design; with their help the VB was capable of carrying twice the payload of the V to Earth orbit."

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #296 on:** 03/21/2015 03:27 am »

"“Three minutes,” Stone said. “Altitude forty-three miles, downrange seventy miles.”
“Coming up on staging,” Gershon said. “Stand by for the train wreck.”
Right on schedule the first-stage engines shut down.
The acceleration vanished.
It was as if they were sitting in a catapult. She was thrown forward, toward the instrument panel, and slammed up against her restraints. The canvas straps hauled her back into her seat, and then she was shoved forward again.
The first-stage engines had compressed the whole stack like an accordion; when the engines cut, the accordion just stretched out and rebounded. It was incredibly violent.
Just like a train wreck, in fact. Another thing they didn’t tell me about in the sims.
She heard the clatter of explosive bolts, blowing away the dying MS-IC. And there were more bangs, thumps in her back transmitted through her couch: small ullage rockets, firing to settle the liquid oxygen and hydrogen in the huge second-stage tanks.
Vibration returned as the second-stage engines ignited, and she was shoved back into her seat."

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #297 on:** 03/21/2015 03:29 am »

"“Copy, John. Preparing for NC Two…”
The crew had arrived in orbit with half the Ares cluster: their Apollo Command and Service Modules, the Mars Excursion Module — the MEM — and the Mission Module, their habitat for the journey. The rest of the cluster — the main injection booster and its huge fuel tanks — had already been placed in orbit and assembled, ready for them to dock with it.
The Mission Module was a squat cylinder, with the Apollo a slim, silvery cylinder-cone attached to its front, and the MEM — a fatter, truncated cone — stuck on the back. Fixed to the base of the MEM’s shroud was an Orbital Maneuvering Module, a fat doughnut fitted with a modified Apollo Service Module propulsion system. The OMM would be discarded before they docked with the booster cluster. But first Stone had to use the OMM in a series of four burns, to chase the booster cluster around the sky."

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #298 on:** 03/21/2015 03:32 am »

"York watched the cluster roll with silent grace past her window.
The booster cluster was squat, pregnant with fuel. Its heart was a fat MS-II booster, a Saturn second stage, modified to serve as an orbital injector. Fixed to the front of the MS-II was an MS-IVB, a modified Saturn third stage, a narrower cylinder. To either side of the MS-II were fixed the two External Tanks, fat, silvery cylinders as long and as wide as the MS-II stage itself. The supplementary tanks carried more than two million pounds of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, propellant Ares would need to break clear of Earth orbit.

She could see the great flaps of the cluster’s solar panels, folded up against the sides of the MS-IVB stage like wings; the panels would be unfurled when Ares was safely launched on its trajectory to Mars. There was the bold red UNITED STATES stenciled against the side of the MS-II, and the finer lettering along the long thin protective flaps masking the solar panels, and the NASA logo; and she could make out the support struts and attachment pins which held the External Tanks in place against the flanks of the MS-II, and the gold-gleaming mouths of the MS-II’s four J-2S engines, upgrades of the engines which had pushed Apollo to the Moon."

Ronpur50 · « **Reply #299 on:** 03/21/2015 03:35 am »

"To assemble this much mass in Earth orbit had taken all of nine Saturn VB flights over the last five months — half of them manned. The booster stages and their tanks had been flown up and assembled more or less empty, and then pumped full of gas from tanker modules. The cluster was an exercise in enhanced Apollo-Saturn technology, of course, and the essence of its design went all the way back to the 1960s. But NASA had had to develop a raft of new techniques to achieve it: the assembly in orbit of heavy components, the long-term storage of supercold fuels, in-orbit fueling.
Sailing over the Earth, brilliantly lit by the unimpeded sunlight, the booster stack was complex, massive, new-looking, perfect, like a huge, jeweled model. Once they’d docked, she wouldn’t see the cluster from outside again like this for a year. Not until, she realized with a jolt, she receded from it in the MEM, in orbit around Mars."

All quotes from Voyage by Stephen Baxter. If you haven't read it, READ IT!