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STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttle

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STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttle

Postby GinGin » Thu Aug 23, 2018 8:17 pm

Small Fictional Scenario on my last trip into Space ( without any failure for once )


August 2018, Nasa decided to restart STS program for military purpose.
Vandenberg was chosen for that purpose, Hidden Launch site into the mountains on the Pacific Coast.
Top secret location for a top secret mission. 3 Astronauts, Ex Military guys, Commander, Pilot and Mission Specialist.
Aim of that Mission : " Exploratory Mission", Polar Orbit, 300 Nm.


Launch at Sunrise, new Camo for the Launch site, Trees and bushes

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Cockpit ready, Holdover time finished and final countdown initiated

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Burning sky at the horizon, heading South for the pole.
Not a discret Launch, they might said it was a couple of Fighters Sonic Boom..

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Foggy Morning on California, soon enough we will be in space again after 7 years of inactivity

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Out of Amosphere, Boosters Separation, and no more G's to handle. No Warnings, no failures, Stage 2

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Main Engine Cut Off. Passing through 60 Nm and climbing towards our Apogee of 200 Nm

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ET separation and Oxygen Dump by the Main Nozzles
Atlantis is still in good shape, hopefully

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Sunset now, and what a view
40 mn before OMS 2 burn to raise the apogee to 300 Nm
Actively working on our Checklist to prepare the lady

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Working while enjoying a view, what more could we ask for ?

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Out of the shadow, overflying Madagascar and DAP manoeuvers the Shuttle to the correct attitude for the burn

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Time to use our last Cannon Camera :)

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EXEC and ignition of the ergols, monitoring of the parameters during 4 mn.
Nothing to report

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Good burn, OMS are secured with Helium and Ntrogen valves closed until the next burn
300 Nm Apogee, and circularisation in 45 mn, looking good

Time for more Check list

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GPC reconfigured for Orbital OPS.
2018 and my i Watch is faster than those antiquity


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Doors opened, Max intensity for Halon lights.
Small secret cargo is there.
It has to be damn important to spend half a billion to put it into orbit

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Last burn, 50 % of Props remaining, just enough for our deorbit later on.

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ECLS fine tunning, Environnment, Control and Life Support.
In other terms, Radiators are activated and Freon cooling is monitored :)

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All good, porla orbit, 301 by 296 and Freon Temp at 53 °

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Post insertion finished. Rest time before the RMS operation




Nap is over, time to work on that INTEL Satellite
Our desk for the next hours

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Very well modelization of RMS activities, giving me some headache with all those angles and positions.
Hard to master that thing





Another Sunrise above the South Pole, Breathtaking

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Checks done, the arm is removed from its safety position
Very useful layout to both contemplate the scenery and work on the RMS

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Let's use the coordinates to automatically position the End Effector near the point of attachment.
Item 25 to check the reachability of that position, GOOD, perfect.

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For the last part, it will be manually done for the fine tunning

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Satellite Grasp, some attach points to release and we can safely put it out of the bay

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Probe is now working on its own, and final checks are made.
Mission partially accomplished, time to head back to Earth

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Time to Go back, several checks to do before that.
First, let's close the payload doors

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We can follow that process on the DPS, to see if everything is well closed and latched, so cool

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GPC final reconfiguration, let's wake up those antiquities
GPC 1 2 3 and 4 for Entry Soft, 5 for Back up and System Management

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Polar Orbit, so we have pretty much a large choice of terrain below use.
How ever, crossrange might be an issue there as the Earth is moving " faster"below us compared to a full eastward Orbit
I choose ZAZ and Kefvlavik, not too far from each other ( reachable from the same entry interface) and quite offset laterally to cover a greater zone of recovery.

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Thermal ReConfiguration of the Shuttle.
Bye Bye Radiators, Hello again Flash Evap
Mindblowing Shadow effects

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Lets rock there.
5 mn of burn, 500 ft/s to loose to decrease the Perigee around 20 Nm
Its gonna be tight Fuel wise, Shuttle is pushed in its limits .
Parameters looking good, some more monitoring

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Good results, but too far laterally from ZAZ ( more than 500 Nm of crossrange, not doable)
It will then be Kef in Island, lets go for Ski and Hot Wine

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4000 Nm at Entry Interface, perfecto ( it would have been 3300 for ZZA)
Glowing Plasma and last checks especially for the Hydraulic Pumps

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And another Sunrise to salute our discreet arrival above the Ocean

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Frozen world in sight Commander

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And some Golden clouds to welcome us, Ray Ban incoming :)

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Kef in sight, Runway 28.
180 ° into the HAC to be well on the path at 6 Nm final /12000 feet


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Sliperry Runway, even maybe contaminated but who cares, no go around there
Strong Braking coupled with anti skig and chute will do the job

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Welcome home Guys, Well done and be ready for a confidential debrief
Not very secret with the airliner in the back ahah

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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby wlbragg » Thu Aug 23, 2018 10:09 pm

Applause, you sure make that look like a lot of fun! :D
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby eatdirt » Thu Aug 23, 2018 10:35 pm

Thanks for the picture and the story that comes with. Nice work with the payload, and the landing, looks perfect!

"Nothing to report". What's about this recurrent APU low pressure, you're making economy up there? :)))

Feed us again with the missions, pictures are amazing!

cheers,
Chris.
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby Catalanoic » Thu Aug 23, 2018 10:46 pm

nice fictional story. what a waste of money to orbit a small satellite but i understand shuttle fans. i hope nasa will keep out of expensive and unconcrete exploration adventures and focus on science. let commercial take the leap and no worry of mils, they've money
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby GinGin » Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:44 pm

Thanks guys.
Indeed, overall a shuttle mission was evaluated around a billion dollars averaging 30 years of missions.
We could have send guys on Mars with that xD
But still a fascinating bird complexity wise.

@eatdirt: low pressure during Entry prep is quite normal .

recirculation pumps that keep hydraulic fluid under pressure for thermal management during orbit are switched off and pressure decrease around 2000 psi, kept like that by accumulator.

Then put back to 3000 by Hydraulic pumps in green range 5 mn before entry to spare APU fuel :)
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby F_D2760 » Fri Aug 24, 2018 8:01 am

Nice story and job!

Regards.
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby Thorsten » Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:22 pm

Hm. trajectory map positively seems to suck for high inclination orbits. I wanted to re-do it anyway, it was my first canvas code, it's pretty bad...

How did you manage proper targeting? I guess LEO targeting can solve this.
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby GinGin » Sat Aug 25, 2018 9:59 am

@Thorsten : I didn't try LEO Tools, smart idea, I ll try next time

For now, I just projected the next half orbit at 180° from where I was.
Then taking a 90 mn orbit, Earth will move by 22 °, ie. 1400 Nmish. So I took two site covering the Earth rotation during one polar orbit ( ZZA and Kef, separated by 1000 Nm
Re entry interface was almost the same ( 4000 Nm for Kef and 3200 Nm for ZAZ), so a bit of luck, because I couldn't have cover ZZA crossrange xD
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby GonzaU2 » Sat Aug 25, 2018 3:07 pm

Edited
Last edited by GonzaU2 on Tue Jan 19, 2021 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby Mikoyan_2129 » Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:15 am

Damn, when I googled "Flight Gear" after a friend recommended it to me, I didn't expect it to be able to modelise space missions as well... That's a great surprise, especially with the tale of the mission and the flurry of pics!

And did someone mod the game to include the soviet space shuttle, the Buran?
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby Thorsten » Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:25 am

And did someone mod the game to include the soviet space shuttle, the Buran?


There's no 'mod' required - but to model a spacecraft, you need data. NASA has all the Shuttle performance data and operating manuals in public domain - I kind of doubt one even gets comparable material for the Buran (and it'd probably be Russian then, so someone who speaks Russian would have to do it)...

There's Vostok-1 though...
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Re: STS 01 X Shuttle Secret Mission : Polar Trip with Shuttl

Postby GinGin » Mon Oct 15, 2018 5:46 pm

Buran, it is for Thorstenovsky dev :mrgreen:

I can't find a proper picture of the cockpit though :(
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