Kerbal Space Program Mission #3

Experimental Test Launch 3: Eyeballing the numbers

Day 5

Active project: Experimental Rocket Project

Next mission: Experimental Test Launch #3

Selected vehicle: Thunder Road 3

Assigned crew: David Kerman

The other David quit when he realized this wasn't the sign-up for the raffle.

At Thong's recommendation, Kerbal Space Program has recruited one of its new applicants, David Kerman, for our next mission.

Was told nothing.

I would like to say David has gone through our rigorous training process, but frankly there isn't one. After suiting up he'll be strapped into the Thunder Road 3, which shall be wheeled out to the launch pad. Further instructions will be provided during the flight.




The countdown is set to T-minus 5 seconds as soon as the tranquilizers wear off but before David realizes where he is.

Five... Four... Three... Two... One.

This is clearly not the cab back to the hotel.

Another successful launch brought to us by a trio of SRBs, providing similar performance as on Mission 2.

This time around the boosters are immediately decoupled once exhausted.

Although for some reason the rocket begins to drift pretty bad afterwards (the green circle on the navigation ball is the direction of movement; it should be closer to the direction the ship points on the gold cross-hairs) It may be an issue with available thrust versus weight, or simply poor stage timing.

Fortunately David is able to compensate the lost altitude once the second stage is decoupled. At this point there's plenty of thrust and fuel left to get out of the atmosphere.

Catapulting the Thunder Road way up to 70 kilometers, it will be best for David to wait until reaching apoapsis before applying further thrust. Trust me, I mostly know what I'm doing.

Space ain't the kind of place to raise a kid.

Plotting a course this way allows all acceleration to be applied evenly forward rather than adding extra altitude.

In fact it's cold as hell.

In the meantime, we pop open a goo canister and record its change in properties. For science!

This orbital course leaves the Thunder Road at about one quarter fuel remaining. Turns out this is far better than last mission.

With a stable orbit achieved, there's time to perform the second canister test, this time under the full effects of a vacuum and weightlessness.

Doesn't receive any AM/FM, can sometimes hear KSC's playlist in the background.

David jumps back into the command pod to transmit the EVA report. Unlike this text-only report, the goo canister experiments require further study from the space center and a broadcasted report would only be of partial value. He'll be bringing these back home at the end of the mission.

Maybe tape a penny onto the pod, it might give us free transmissions.

A setback is discovered partway through a second EVA report transmission: not enough electrical power to transmit. The pod only carries so much charge at a time and is only recharged by the rocket engine.

Good enough excuse to perform the orbital transfer test to Kerbin's moon! This is the primary orbital test I wanted performed during ETL3 as it will show whether the current rocket design can perform a fly-by of the moon.

We test the Thunder Road 3's ability to reach the natural satellite's orbit by accelerating using all but the last few units of fuel. This will push its apoapsis as far as possible but leave the lowest point just a few kilometers above the atmosphere.

I'm surprised to say we have a success.  The Thunder Road is now on an extreme elliptical orbit that reaches as far as the moon. What kind of mission can be accomplished next with this kind of range? That I will answer later, as we have about a day before David reaches this ~11 million kilometer distance and then the same amount of time as he slowly fall back to low Kerbin orbit. Sit tight, David.