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Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:BTW Siege, would you like to combine undersea exploration efforts? I was thinking of making a first test prototype undersea station but in a shallow water region before we dip into deeper waters.

Sure, that works for me. By this time I'm probably building my own prototype in the Orizaco basin (to the east of San Dorado) which I reasoned would be fairly shallow.

Ryan Thunder wrote:[...] (that is, trace the current world map. Mind you its a pixel by pixel thing, so maybe its not totally unreasonable that I'd have trouble motivating myself to do it...)

[...]

To add to that, if anybody has any better ideas, I'm open to suggestion.

Ryan Thunder wrote: To add to that, if anybody has any better ideas, I'm open to suggestion.

How about "accept slightly lowered accuracy of shorelines and just use the magic wand"?

Really, I don't think anybody's going to complain about his shoreline not looking QUITE as it should...

PeZook wrote:Really, I don't think anybody's going to complain about his shoreline not looking QUITE as it should...

Indeed. These are not the Hearts of Iron forums, after all.

My congratulations to the MESS for their recent success.

*whips FASTA grots into working harder*

DarthShady wrote:My congratulations to the MESS for their recent success.

*whips FASTA grots into working harder*

No No. Whips aren't good enough.

First execute some of them for being so slow, then whip them.

"So slow"?

We're going to the moon ten days after the MSA. And because of political pressure, the Soyuz based systems didn't clock anywhere near as many hours in space as they should

EDIT: Some observations from the first simulated lunar mission:

1) The flight to Selene took nine days instead of four. Might've messed up orbit definitions somewhere

2) Taking a full-scale OTL lunar lander to the surface is totally excessive. I managed to land with 50% fuel left.

3) Return to Terra is a total bitch

Well if it makes you feel better you can do what I did, and will continue to do, leave 25-30% of fuel on the surface forming a depot on the surface for once we get the "Eagle" up there. Actually right now since I designed the missions before we realized how much lower the Delta-V requirements are I probably could be stockpiling a ton of fuel in space.

What really matters is we got there, now we can move on with our plans.

I will have my moon base or some grots head.

CmdrWilkens wrote:Well if it makes you feel better you can do what I did, and will continue to do, leave 25-30% of fuel on the surface forming a depot on the surface for once we get the "Eagle" up there. Actually right now since I designed the missions before we realized how much lower the Delta-V requirements are I probably could be stockpiling a ton of fuel in space.

Yeah, no shit. I did all the Tsiolkosvky calculations assuming empty masses equal to original Apollo spacecraft, which means we can easily leave as much as 5-8 tonnes of fuel on the surface with each flight

Or do several landings and takeoff of the entire lander, though that's pretty risky, at least 'till the main engines are tested thoroughly in operating conditions. It would suck to be stuck on the surface because of a malfunctioning main engine.

Also, a peculariar quality of our system is that cislunar flights run a decent risk of shooting off into solar orbit even with small Delta-V changes during the flight. This is probably due to the fact that Selene is on the very edge of an escape orbit: a mere 0.83 km/s more and instead of orbiting Terra, you'd fly away into outer space.

Also:


I think I'll call it the "Ugly Duckling"

It looks like a frickin' Tripod from Mars. Do we equip our landers with heat rays, perchance?

SiegeTank wrote:It looks like a frickin' Tripod from Mars. Do we equip our landers with heat rays, perchance?

If we don't, we really, really should.

It's actually a real design: the LK Soviet lunar lander. Only a mockup was ever built, but I think it's the ugliest vehicle ever conceived

Fun piece of Apollo 11 trivia: In a conversation between Houston and the crew prior to the landing, the crew was advised to look out for the goddess Chang'e and her rabbit companion. Here's the actual transcript [PDF warning] of that conversation.

Combine that with a portion of the plot of the Touhou game Imperishable Night, and you get what that mission controller told Selene 7's crew.

... where do these crazy-ass moon-rabbit stories come from?

SiegeTank wrote:... where do these crazy-ass moon-rabbit stories come from?

Pareidolia, mostly. Look at the lunar mares the next time the full moon's out. Some people chose to interpret them as the form of a rabbit, and it just stuck.

Heh...with only slight optimization of the descent trajectory, landing was achieved with 80% of lander fuel intact

And the orbits are okay, I just screwed up my TLI burn: transit time from Terra to Selene with a Hochmann Transfer Orbit is around five and a half days, which does present some unique challenges WRT life support supplies. Our astronauts are probably really damn glad for the (relatively) spacious orbital module they can snooze in and that spiffy space toilet. By comparison, the longest Apollo mission was Apollo 17, which took 12 days 13 hours: in our case, this will be the shortest type of space mission, with 11 days spent in transit. If we wanted to replicate Apollo 17's mission plan, it could take as much as 15-16 days.

All that happens because, while Selene is on an orbital identical to the Moon, TLI requires less speed (about 1km/s less to be precise), and thus transit takes longer

Funny stuff happens when we actually model our solar system, eh?

On the other hand, we don't necessarily need to use a Hohmann transfer orbit. If we decide that 5.5 days is too long, we could do a faster orbit, with a penalty to weight actually transferred. If a multiple mission to a single site is used, you can send the unmanned bits on the slow way, and rocket the manned capsule fast.

Beowulf wrote:On the other hand, we don't necessarily need to use a Hohmann transfer orbit. If we decide that 5.5 days is too long, we could do a faster orbit, with a penalty to weight actually transferred. If a multiple mission to a single site is used, you can send the unmanned bits on the slow way, and rocket the manned capsule fast.

Fuel requirements raise exponentially, though, since available transfer orbits are pretty limited - and the faster you go, the more fuel you need to expend to be captured by Selene, which has utterly pathetic gravity.

PeZook wrote:

Beowulf wrote:On the other hand, we don't necessarily need to use a Hohmann transfer orbit. If we decide that 5.5 days is too long, we could do a faster orbit, with a penalty to weight actually transferred. If a multiple mission to a single site is used, you can send the unmanned bits on the slow way, and rocket the manned capsule fast.

Fuel requirements raise exponentially, though, since available transfer orbits are pretty limited - and the faster you go, the more fuel you need to expend to be captured by Selene, which has utterly pathetic gravity.

Well, of course. Still might be worth it for the manned flights. Less time in the Van Allen belts.

Shady I hate to say it but if your OTH radars can tell whether or not the IFF is turned on or not and that it was an attck vector relative to the NFT assets I'm freakin stealin that tech

CmdrWilkens wrote:Shady I hate to say it but if your OTH radars can tell whether or not the IFF is turned on or not and that it was an attck vector relative to the NFT assets I'm freakin stealin that tech

Shh! That capability is secret!

It's a birthday surprise for crews of MESS bombers

CmdrWilkens wrote:Shady I hate to say it but if your OTH radars can tell whether or not the IFF is turned on or not and that it was an attck vector relative to the NFT assets I'm freakin stealin that tech

Serves me right for writing shit late at night, with interruptions. The post has been edited.

hey people, shouldn't it be close to mid-2017? Because if that's so, the second nuclear supercarrier in the UCSR should be comissioned in Severomorsk.

Stas Bush wrote:hey people, shouldn't it be close to mid-2017? Because if that's so, the second nuclear supercarrier in the UCSR should be comissioned in Severomorsk.

Didn't we slow the time to 1 week = 1 month? Is it 6 weeks now?