For All Kerbalkind Ep. 5

[Music] welcome back to for all kerbal kind last episode both space programs saw a satellite put in orbit and beardy beat me by 45 days as we can see here but both of us are still just capable of barely putting anything into orbit this episode i'm hoping to look at maybe putting things in orbit that can stay there for much longer than two and a half hours but definitely fulfilling some contracts that push satellites just a little bit further here we see sputnik in orbit and the cat stone in orbit looks like i got up to 2 000 kilometers and he only got to half a thousand kilometers so i mean my satellite's higher but yeah he beat me by 45 days so what we have is almost 300k funds and i need to decide where that needs to go because we need to speed up our program a lot but we do need to save some money for some things there's a lot of decision making to do but i think what i'm gonna do is spend all of it on kct points to make research and vehicle building faster however first i'm going to get the next few rockets situated before i dump any points in so i can sort of balance things between r d and the vab so let's get to some rocket building well the first thing we have on our list to build isn't exactly a rocket nope this is our x-plane the kel x2 long boy is being refit after the events of last episode we need to make this thing capable of high altitude flight we need this thing to be safer than ever before capable of landing on actual landing gear but the first thing we are getting situated here is the rcs ports we are going to be using those to control that in the upper atmosphere where our control surfaces are practically useless and we've also swept the wings a bit to add a little bit less drag i think it'll help with lift and less drag and supersonic flights i'm not really an expert on aerodynamics but if it has a swept wing it looks like it goes faster so it obviously must go faster right that's my mindset anyways we're covering the top of these landing gear with black paint just so that they don't stick out white on the top there i didn't really like how that looked it's the same draw tanks except yeah we have three landing gear now so we'll be able to land pretty much however we want i also changed the way the tail looks a bit i messed around a little bit with having a bottom side tail fin for yaw as well but the instability was just absolutely insane so i ended up deleting that but we did put our elevators our tail wings in that regard swept and on the bottom of the aircraft instead of connected to the tail wing so it's a bit interesting i think we have a little bit more pitch control when we have to pitch up a lot versus when it's on the tail wing it's sort of blocked by the main wings in the airflow so i think we will increase stability with this quite a lot so we got swept wings landing gear we're adjusting our ejection system here and also we are gonna slap a small wheel onto the butt of this aircraft just so that we don't strike the bottom and blow up the whole darn thing next up we have our headstone 1 rocket which we are simply adding integral tanks instead of separate structure because last episode we did have integral tanks unlocked but we didn't have enough time to actually apply it to our missile here so this increases our efficiency by decreasing mass and i think it also increases utilization as well basically it's just a good idea to get out of the way as for our ketstone2 missile we are simply decreasing the amount of helium on board as well as getting a new science experiment on board for the science gains in wallops we have another sounding rocket i'd like to build we're upgrading our kbrm1 to the kbrm2 this time no longer carrying any payload for the us air force because as we know from last episode as soon as you complete the first satellite all sounding rocket contracts just disappear so this is now on a science collection mission and it's not going to be able to do a whole lot but i intend on basically flying this through the upper atmosphere collecting a tiny little bit of science every time it launches and this just going on in the background as our complex in brownsville texas builds bigger and bigger rockets like satellites and eventually i would like wallops to also launch the scout launch vehicle however we don't quite have the technology for it yet so it's pretty much just in the background buying time and getting a very very small trickle of science as it does so but that's going to wrap up the builds for the intro here so we can go ahead and spend all of our money and stuff now all right with those under construction it looks like our space center is hovering in the air that's always nice but anyways we're gonna move ahead to spending all of our money basically first thing we're gonna do is accept this contract because we are in fact able to do that that's what kept stone one is going to do 292k funds now so let's go into our upgrade points let's see where exactly where are we we appear to have moved to an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean that's kind of interesting so let's put all of the money we possibly can into upgrade points the wallop site here with our sounding rockets are getting one single point now let's move on over to brownsville where we are going to put everything else all right heading into research and development i think this node here 1956-57 orbital rocketry is what we are going to start with april 25th 1955. late in the day a final refitted headstone 1 is rolled out and readied for launch its payload a small monkey aboard a capsule specially designed to keep them safe during the intense flight intends to be lifted further and faster than ever before all systems are go as the clock counts down to lift off [Music] [Music] all systems are nominal throughout liftoff and the capsule is jettisoned from the headstone missile left on its trajectory above and into the gulf of mexico [Music] [Music] this late in the day it is actually easier for the us navy and air force to acquire visual contact of the small capsule and recovering the happy to be home space explorer within is made swiftly the mission is a resounding success in the morning after a successful launch in the mission control we have one more advanced biological suborbital experiment contract this time to do the exact same thing except reach a speed greater than 4 000 meters per second orbital speed unfortunately this is too fast of a speed for the capsule to re-enter without burning up on re-entry so we're gonna have to do something to slow down before we re-enter but this is entirely possible so we're going to accept this contract boost our funds up and we're going to decide what we want to do with the funds later for right now we're going to hop into the vehicle assembly building and set up this mission which is going to be a combination of the catstone 1 and headstone 2. we're going to merge those together and get a capsule that can reach 4000 meters per second and then slow down a little bit before re-entry i'm going to go ahead and drop one point into the vab may 13 1955 a brand new aircraft the kel x3 has arrived in brownsville texas it is capable of high altitude flight something the soviet union has become well known for according to certain covert informants eileen kerman a now decorated pilot for the foundation has played a major role in establishing the flight plan for today's mission eileen is set out to match the highest altitude record set by soviet air launch test pilots to date but she aims to do this taking off from a runway on the ground drop tanks are jettisoned shortly after one minute taking off into the gulf eileen keeps the aircraft in a shallow climb before leveling out just above 10 kilometers altitude gaining speed for the most daring maneuver ever attempted by foundation pilots reaching 550 meters per second eileen pulls close to eight g's as she transfers her horizontal speed into a vertical climb the powerful engines behind her continue to propel the aircraft upwards as the atmosphere quickly bleeds away leaving all control to reaction control thrusters utilizing highly pressurized htp eileen brings the aircraft to an altitude of 76 kilometers just over the service ceiling of the aircraft's breathing system but eileen is breathless for a different reason this is the closest to space kerbal kind has ever seen so close one could just reach up and be there and yet all too soon the aircraft reaches apogee and begins to fall back into the atmosphere again but just for a moment the final frontier was within reach eileen's aircraft nose dives at breakneck speeds straight down into the atmosphere she must wait until reaching the lower atmosphere before pulling out of the dive until then the x3 is a missile headed straight down to the surface certain death even arriving below 30 kilometers if she is to pull too hard on the stick the aircraft might just disintegrate around her with a mere few hundred meters to spare she pulls out of the dive flight control erupts into a roar of celebration and eileen performs a barrel roll just to solidify the mission [Music] the flight isn't over until wheels touch the tarmac however eileen reports she's approaching stall speed as she makes the shallow turn towards runway 27. just narrowly missing the ground with the tail of the aircraft she successfully touches down with no further issue and a big sigh of relief this mission has single-handedly brought the foundation back into the light amidst the red scare and just for a moment morale and optimism are once again as high as the sky oh boy that got us a lot more money than i thought it would we hit a lot of altitude records i think each one incrementally gives us funds 50 kilometers 60 kilometers 70 kilometers and well of course we did that as well as completing our contract of only reaching 50 kilometers so that's always nice in the mission controls it looks like we have four x-plane contracts to choose from these x-planes high contracts are the most profitable and it looks like i'll be able to complete a few more of these this one is only 70 kilometers so it looks like peter gets to fly the exact same mission or i might try air launching it although to be honest it is more fun taking off and then landing to be honest so we're going to grab the x-plane tight difficult because 20k advancements funds that's a free kct point and then another one for completing it so let's accept that and then figure out what we're gonna do with all our money for now we're going to be putting it all into kct points again it's now just deciding well where that's going to go so i think we're gonna put two into the vab and then three into r d may 22nd 1955 just over a week after eileen's brave mission peter is determined to pull off the exact same stunt [Music] the x3 floats 16 kilometers above the edge of the stratosphere as peter takes in the view of stars directly in front of him [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all too soon the eye of the storm is passed and the throw ride continues once again peter struggles with the reaction control thrusters reporting an unplanned but controllable spin on the way down [Music] luckily he is able to pull out of the dive with ease and glides his way back to the ksc touching down successfully both remaining pilots have now flown as close to the edge of space as possible and are eager to grab a beer and discuss what the future of space travel might be like that flight was exhilarating as always back into the mission control um deciding to finish off the fourth of four experimental rocket plane contracts because these x-plane high contracts first of all the x-plane high difficult we can't reach 90 kilometers yet without well making the pilot suffocate this one we are capable of completing but if we look at the current reward percentage is at zero so there's absolutely no point in doing this yet until we can actually profit off of it explain supersonic is about 3 funds more profitable however i didn't want to finish this one off because it was the last one so we're gonna accept that and then we have 63 k funds that is looking like two upgrade points to me and we are going to split them up we're gonna put one in the r d and one in the vehicle assembly building [Music] june 9th 1955 the x3 experimental aircraft is ready for flight once again eileen straps herself in and readies herself for a routine testing of various systems in flight dropping from a carrier 9000 meters up at 175 meters per second only half of the engine chambers initially fire this becomes evident to the pilot immediately and the problem is remedied the x3 starts its shallow climb to reach an intended 28 kilometers altitude nearing the targeted altitude for tests all internal systems suddenly shut down save for the engines which continue to thrust the aircraft higher the pilot struggles to reset flight systems as ground control scrambles to find the cause for the problem luckily eileen is able to reset flight systems and regain control of the aircraft before any further problems occur eileen is instructed to glide the aircraft back to the ksc for analysis immediately which she intends to do approaching runway zero niner eileen reports speed is excessive and that she is about to do something unorthodox to bleed speed ground control nervously watches the x3 perform a barrel roll before disappearing from view diving beneath the runway from their [Music] perspective [Music] moments later an explosion erupts into view luckily the ejection system performs its necessary function to save eileen from the wreckage fire crews and paramedics rushed down to the runway towards eileen who slowly emerges from the bent-up cockpit her thumb high in the air indicating high spirits despite the mess of a flight today july 9th 1955 wallops resumes flight tests into and above the upper atmosphere with sounding missiles this time with a brand new entry the kbrm2 aiming to study scientific equipment in environments such as the vacuum of space 12 seconds after liftoff the air b engine experiences a transient shutdown and the missile reaches an altitude of just below only 14 kilometers failing its mission july 23rd 1955 early morning a second headstone 2 is fueled and ready for launch its mission today is to place the foundation's second satellite into orbit of the earth the explorer too rather than a mere stunt brought on by political pressure of the red scare this time scientific equipment has been installed the small space probe will conduct ion mass spectrometry and measure radiation effects during its very brief two-hour period of operation [Music] [Music] two and a half minutes into the mission the kedstone 2's main engine prematurely shuts down leaving the satellite 10 kilometers shy of its intended altitude for orbital insertion it is quickly decided to fire the first of three sergeant stages early to increase this altitude and fill the gap the remaining two booster stages would then wait until apogee to propel explorer 2 into orbit of the earth [Music] 6 minutes and 38 seconds later after liftoff explorer 2 is successfully in orbit the science instruments on board continue to run for just over 2 hours transmitting its findings back to the team in brownsville texas all the while mass spectrometry proves quite a successful endeavor while radiation measurements fail to operate had the satellite been placed in an orbit just twice as high perhaps there would have been more to discover this mission resulted in a partial failure we weren't able to reach the correct orbit for the contract because of that failure so we are going to rebuild kedstone 2 with explorer 3 uh and part way through construction we're going to unlock early avionics and probes which is hopefully going to get us a slightly lighter slightly longer lasting satellite we were able to conduct one science experiment on board which got us eight science so let's go ahead and spend that eight science with 21 up top let's see what we want to get i think our best bet right now is to go with primitive solar panels because we have a solar contract and these might help keep our satellites alive a little bit longer which in turn will get us more science all right early avionics costs 4 000 so we're going to purchase that we're down to 13k down here our build time went up to 65 days i believe that is because yeah this is technically no longer tooled uh but you'll see our delta v went up to like 10 325 that is actually really really cool let's go down here and check this avionics is going to be 8 000 to purchase the early avionics type for near earth i'm gonna hold off on doing this because of how little funds we actually have now for tooling this avionics just to speed up our real time by like a week or so i think let's see where is it yeah only 127 funds yeah so hardly anything to boost for 10 days there with that tooling with the extra delta v margin i'm wondering if it's possible we could add on some new science experiments as well so explorer 3 will have the radiation detector and hopefully get to a higher orbit to actually make use of it and also have an early tv camera as well [Music] october 23rd explorer 3 eagerly awaits its mission atop a third catstone two missile one minute and 28 seconds into the flight the kedstone's main engine experiences thrust loss this dramatically increases the duration of time required to burn through the entirety of its propellant and with that increases the chance of an engine failure due to overburn something studied with kbrm1 launches the year before luckily the engine does not fail despite this and explorer 3 is on its way to orbital insertion [Music] during the final boost into low earth orbit the satellite was pointed ever so slightly too far above the horizon accidentally lowering its final perigee a mere seven kilometers below its intended orbit despite barely missing orbital parameters due to recent upgrades and hardware the satellite is able to stay alive for much longer estimated to last anywhere from one to four days compared to just a few hours in previous launches explorer 3 continuously transmit data collected from a radiation detector the data once processed by ground teams proves the existence of a van ellen belt surrounding the earth a zone of energetic charged particles most of which originate from solar wind captured by and held around earth by its magnetic field the foundation fascinated by this discovery aims to launch a similar mission in three months time explorer 3's batteries have just died and the satellite lasted an unexpected five days well four days 23 hours 41 minutes it's pretty much five days and i believe it collected about eight science for us so far mostly from the visible imaging experiment because the radiation experiment is something that lasts 90 some days so we're going to be launching some more satellites with that experiment on board in order to collect all the science from it and in order to complete this science experiment from it which we were so close seven kilometers higher on the perigee and we would have had it so what i'm gonna do with explorer four is aim for a bit of a higher initial apogee so that there's a little bit of a threshold just in case i point the nose too high again and mess with our perigee with the orbit a little bit of a buffer should help us complete this contract finally we're also unlocking a pretty major science node which i know the soviets have had all year 56 to 57 orbital rocketry this has a lot of engines for us which means more capable rockets satellites that can go higher and a lot of fun unfortunately i won't be able to utilize any of this until explorer 4 completes its mission successfully due to the fact that i only have 7 000 funds to my name right now but we do have an x3 flight coming up next which will hopefully get us just a little bit more money while we wait for explorer 4 to arrive november 1st 1955 the soviet union launches their second satellite successfully into orbit of the earth sputnik 3. all that is known of the craft to the foundation is that undecipherable transmissions intercepted from it last for quite a long time far outlasting the explorer satellites to date it is theorized soviet solar panel technology is progressing rapidly while the united states is still several months away from utilizing the same form of electricity production with their own satellites november 19 1955 the launch facility in wallops virginia readies themselves to fire another kbrm2 missile into the upper atmosphere and beyond compared to science gained from satellites in orbit of the earth science gained would be comparably small but in the race to space every little bit counts with four seconds of fuel remaining the air b engine shuts down however this does not deter its mission of researching the upper atmosphere in any regard the instruments on board transmit small amounts of data before crashing into the atlantic ocean we have 5 303 funds remaining at the current point in time but luckily an x3 is ready for flight and we can complete a 75 kilometer altitude contract no problem at loading the edited craft file looks like all of the solid boosters decided to fire upon loading the vessel and for the interest of safety i'm gonna go ahead and recover this vessel and replace all of these solids for our ejection system so that we actually have an operational ejection system for the flight so this might take another week or two but that's all right december 10th 1955 it's now peter's turn in a newly built x3 aircraft five days prior peter had attempted today's flight but ejection boosters fired shortly after being rolled out to the runway the problem now resolved peter aims to complete the same mission he and eileen flew earlier in the year once again reaching 75 kilometers altitude and nose diving back to glide to a landing [Music] reaching an altitude of 76 kilometers peter slowly spins the aircraft allotting himself an unprecedented 360 degree view of the horizon from the edge of space the x3 handles perfectly as peter corrects the spin to fall back into a denser atmospheric pressure [Music] [Music] touching down at runway 27 the mission is a complete success okay we'll be able to refit the x3 put some fuel tanks on and then air launch it to complete this x-plane supersonic flight just holding above 500 meters per second at about 13-14 kilometers and that should be absolutely no problem foundation has seen quite a successful year launching three satellites into orbit of the earth despite the superior capabilities of soviet counterparts phil's crew and faculty with high spirits during the holidays now if only they could secure government funding from their explorer satellites somehow another successful launch might just about do it january 2nd 1956 eileen is given the task to once again test x3 systems during high-speed flight this time she is instructed not to perform any unplanned maneuvers released from the carrier aircraft eileen immediately and accidentally jettisons the drop tanks instead of lighting the engines the xlr11s are lit shortly afterwards and eileen proceeds with her mission as if nothing had occurred despite the loss of fuel from the start the x3 was able to maintain 14 kilometers altitude at 600 meters per second for three minutes eileen glides back around to runway zero niner and lands the aircraft with no further issues reported mission successful [Music] january 19th 1956 explorer 4 is readied atop a headstone 2 missile the previous satellite launched proved the existence of a van ellen belt this mission aims to conduct further radiation measurement studies of it liftoff is successful and the foundation's fourth satellite is on its way [Music] [Music] reaching a successful initial apogee of 275 kilometers the booster stages are jettisoned and maneuvered to the desired orientation for orbital insertion three boosts occur in rapid succession and explorer 4 has been successfully placed into orbit of the earth with an apogee of over 10 000 kilometers the satellite is able to measure radiation at a much wider range of altitudes furthermore the accomplishments of the explorer satellites have finally and quite literally paid off as a contract is completed and funds have poured into the space center once again the usefulness of kedstone 2 missiles has proven invaluable to the interest of space exploration thus far but the age of larger rockets is quickly approaching with explorer four in orbit we finally got paid for that contract i was just barely missing the past two launches so we have a lot of money right now and we're gonna take a look at mission control here to see the contracts we now have unlocked this is the only one we have selected in active the one of three and we're gonna be doing this shortly i was pushing back this launch to make sure i got the satellites in as quickly as possible but for the contracts we have available to us these were still here a solar-powered satellite which will have solar panels in about 80 days currently uh polar orbit satellite which would be great for scientific satellites since the polar biome ends up outputting a little bit more science than the others and down here we have our very first lunar contracts these give us quite a lot of money and specifically the advance of these i'm very excited about now in order to really complete lunar contracts we might be able to do it without maneuver nodes if we know how to time things correctly however i'm not the most accurate when it comes to doing things like that so in order to unlock maneuver nodes see if i can actually find it with the right click and this sort of buggy uh there we go so in order to upgrade maneuver nodes it's going to cost 200k funds here to upgrade to mission control it'll give us more active contracts which means more advanced money as well as fulfilling one of the requirements and the other requirement is the tracking station at 50k funds so that would be 250k funds gone right away however with accepting new contracts we have would basically cover the entire cost of that it's just a matter of do i think we'll be able to launch things successfully at the moon within three years and i'm inclined to say yes taking a look at science here to back that up i think we might be able to bootleg something that works without these nodes but these nodes will make it a lot easier and those would be lunarage communications so we can have control and transmit science back all the way out to the moon basic avionics and probes will make probes lighter and use less power usage but more importantly it finally unlocks deep space avionics which is avionics that can be shut down that can go back and forth between controlling the spacecraft and a sort of sleep mode to save on power however these are quite heavy i do believe compared to the others the other things that might help us out in this endeavor are the next engine nodes which give us some much needed upgrades in order to lift heavier things into orbit as well as some new rockets two nodes down another thing to consider is building the 150 ton launch pad which costs 150k funds however this i think can wait just a little bit so what i finally decided is we are adding more capable satellites and slightly larger rockets to our science initiative as well as the tiniest of lunar probes at least conceptually so we are gonna go ahead and upgrade mission control that's a lot of our funds gone we're gonna go ahead and upgrade the tracking station well it's gonna have to wait for lunar range communications so that gives me a really good idea of what tech node to decide on researching next there we go and then lastly we are going back into the mission control building after a lot of thought i've decided to accept the smallest of the three advances with lunar flyby just to play it safe and to make sure i don't put us in a situation where we're forced to do things that compromise other missions and we're going to accept the first polar orbit satellite because i'm going to attempt this with explorer 5. back up to 400k funds we now have some rockets to build here we have the what will be explorer 5 satellite which is going to launch into a polar orbit around the earth which goes over the south and north poles what i ended up doing was swapping out the procedural avionics for our newly unlocked 20 inch x-ray detector which is something that will last 10 days in orbit completing science experiments as opposed to five days with the previous explorer satellites of course i added shininess because you know that means it'll work better right and we're doing another science experiment other than early tv camera and radiation detector we also have applied a micro meteorite detector so we will be detecting well micro meteorites bouncing off of the vessel if any are there it's a 91 day duration science experiment just like the radiation detector so we'll only be able to really complete about a ninth of that contract but every little bit counts and this will buy us time waiting for another rocket to build which i'm going to be building next this is also using the upgraded version of the ace of the a series engine the a7 and we also have tool this avionics are now using the lighter version i have just very smartly realized we have solar panels i honestly did not realize this okay so solar panels added 10 days to the build time however that is perfectly fine considering it's gonna complete the science experiments to their entirety so long as this makes it to orbit we're still doing a polar launch we've saved the craft file and now let's save the edits and now we can go to making the new vessel alright so this new probe is being vaguely inspired by the pioneer probes however it is going to be called pathfinder this is something that someone in the comments section uh suggested for our first satellites which i ended up going with explorer but their name and their uh description of why they suggested this name was just too good not to use more than just an explorer pathfinder lights the way for all future vessels and considering i'm gonna be trying to launch this at least towards the moon it just fit way too well with our solar panels on board i'm so glad that i realized we actually had those unlocked for a while uh that makes this mission entirely possible i thought we had to wait for the next node the next solar panel node to come out but well we have solar panels and we are absolutely going to use them for the probe it's going to have a solid booster and this solid booster was uh the real life vanguard upper stage which would put things into orbit of the earth however we are putting that entire stage into orbit of the earth and that will be the stage that will launch us towards the moon you need about 3 100 3200 give or take meters per second of delta v to get from low earth orbit to the moon and that's exactly what it ended up having i was quite happy with that our pretty much goal for pathfinder would be to get close enough to the moon to at least get to its sphere of influence just to transmit a little more science back and also to show the soviets we definitely mean business in this space race you've been first in everything up until now but we are going to try to push ahead here and we're actually going to be attempting this before any attempt on the soviets part if i'm not mistaken so even if it fails it's definitely going to well mean business for them now the rocket itself is vaguely based off of the thor rocket the first stage here is the first variant of the lr-79 engine which in real life was the r d versions of thor missiles basically it is not the most efficient and it is very likely to fail it's got a 20 failure rate-ish and i think with extra pre-flight we brought that down to about 15 or 17 and i think the same goes for the upper stage the second stage which will put our probe into orbit of the earth uh the aj10 early and that is basically the vanguard upper stage in fact the solid booster is also from vanguard they're both from vanguard so we have a thor guard uh as opposed with thor abel however it is simply called the pathfinder missile for all intents and purposes when we have the next engine node unlocked we will have the technology for the thor able except for the solid booster on the top that's going to be a few nodes away i do believe the tanks on the side of the upper stage here are actually holding htp for the rcs thrusters which those thrusters move around a bit i have spent like four or five different times throughout 1956 going back and giving this craft some small edits every now and then so it's a little bit difficult to try to keep track of everything that has gone on with the edits like things have changed what you see here there's there's some slight differences um basically yeah those rcs ports will go down i think we'll add another one as well and we've also thrown some flags onto this craft now the last little bit of edit we are going to give the pathfinder probe and i think this was later on in the year that we're doing this footage on screen is adding rcs ports to the probe itself now we are able to use these for final velocity adjustment due to the fact that when we have no avionics control we still have for and aft control and considering it's a solid booster and we don't need to change our attitude to go for or aft these are going to be what ensures we can at least try to get close to the moon so the booster will take us most of the way there and our rcs ports will finish the job all right so purchasing all of our funds here we're gonna have a total of nine i'm gonna put see we're 34 in the vab not including the i think two points in wallops now and then 49 in research february 18 1956 intelligence and tracking systems indicate the successful launch and insertion of a satellite into a polar orbit of the earth by the ussr meanwhile plans for attempting the same feat are well underway in the united states once again slow to the draw march 16 1956 a ketstone 2b missile is rolled out onto the launch pad a brave space explorer in the form of another small monkey is carefully boarded into the specially fit capsule system keeping them alive and relatively comfortable for the duration of the coming flight this time around the intention is to up the ante reaching velocities higher than four kilometers per second on a suborbital flight which would transport the small crater across the gulf to the coast of florida where navy recovery vessels await successful liftoff and the capsule is away [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all systems report nominal behavior for the duration of four and a half minutes at which time retro thrusters fire to slow the craft for re-entry the intense heat such a trajectory would have provided in a purely ballistic reentry is proven to melt materials used on the vessel a new type of heat resistant surface will be required to advance flights like these as far as orbit of the earth and much further beyond as for now our little critter has a safe flight and drifts slowly down to the gulf of mexico via parachute with that successful mission what's next is to accept the first solar powered satellite contract as our next satellite will have solar panels on it let's do three three points into our vab april 14th 1956 wallops virginia performs another successful kb rm2 test flight probing the upper atmosphere despite an initial aerodynamic occurrence causing the missile to climb higher than intended a small amount of data from the upper atmosphere was still collected june 10 1956 explorer 5 is readied atop a new headstone missile intent on reaching a polar orbit to study any differences in radiation measurements high above the north and south pole the new satellite features more robust internal clockwork as well as external solar panels to keep the batteries alive for an undetermined period of time though it is assumed several months of active data collection and transmission at the very least so [Music] [Music] a highly reflective surface encapsulates the small satellite in hopes of acquiring visual contact from the ground due to the sun's reflection onboard sensors are designed to detect strikes from micro meteorites on its surface as well for the next week or so people of the united states find themselves looking up an attempt to catch a glimpse of sunlight gleaming from the satellite passing overhead an artificial shooting star if it were one with no intent of falling down to the surface [Music] successfully completing first solar and first polar contracts netted us with a lot of money and also access to a whole plethora of satellite contracts looks like five of them and i'm not sure what one i want to go with quite yet but before we accept anything the first thing we need to do we need to upgrade the tracking station honestly the new rocket we built for the pathfinder probe is capable of doing communications atmospheric analysis sun synchronous navigational satellites like it's going to be able to do a bunch of satellites in earth orbit i don't know if it's going to be capable of geostationary quite yet but it's possible that we could build a probe small enough to actually do this so we can probably fulfill all of these contracts with that rocket it'll get better as time goes on as well as these lunar contracts the first ones as well so i'm really confident we're able to do this and in about 75 days we'll have a max of seven contracts so we'll be able to do a bunch of them possibly a few at once uh it's really looking exciting for that but one of the contracts we have to accept right now is x-planes supersonic so with our 16 science i'm to go ahead and select the 1958 orbital rocketry node we can upgrade to our aj10 and an upgrade to our lr79 which is used on the new rocket and that'll make getting things into orbit even easier we'll be able to put a little bit heavier payloads and that will be absolutely fantastic as we move ahead peter gets another x3 flight under his belt today looking to perform routine high-speed testing in the aircraft [Music] touching down on the final stretch of the runway the mission comes to a close success another x3 flight under our belt we're going to go ahead and grab four kct points we're putting two in the vab and two in r d tracking station just got upgraded now we're warping ahead one more day where mission control will be upgraded from level one to level two and at that point we have patched conics we have flight planning we have maneuver nodes there we go and we also have max active contracts of seven it's possible we could do a sun synchronous orbit with a hundred units of nafsa payload as well as a temperature scan and a barometer scan i wonder if it will let me select all of these at once i think it will and if i do that we'll be able to knock all three of these out of the way also accept the lunar impactor contract as well because if we get a lunar impactor it also meets the requirements for lunar flyby because you know you have to go within 5 000 kilometers in order to well impact the moon after all september 16 1956 nerves at the ksc in brownsville texas have reached an all-time high as the pathfinder one has completed all status checks its mission today will be for the first time to explore earth's closest neighbor and only natural satellite the moon if all goes well the pathfinder probe will be set on an impact trajectory and on the several day journey to get there continuously transmit data from onboard instruments about the effects of radiation temperature and micro meteorites on the small spacecraft hurtling its way ten thousand meters per second away from the earth through the vacuum of space early in the morning the mission is underway its launch window occurs at the point in time where the lunar plane closely matches that of the launch facility flight believes this point in time is now and the mission lifts off from the pad [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so three minutes and 25 seconds into the flight the second stage is separated from the first left to coast for another three minutes before firing its engine placing pathfinder one into orbit of the [Music] earth [Music] [Music] once in orbit ground control is to direct the onboard systems when to fire for the moon with lack of automation this requires connection to a team on the ground to fire the engine this is the job of a spacecraft tracking and data acquisition network team in madagascar unfortunately since this has never been done before acquiring a planned trajectory proves to be quite difficult nevertheless a time to fire is chosen and pathfinder one is sent on its way to the moon [Music] ground teams direct the spacecraft to fire small hdp thrusters to finalize the trajectory and feeling confident the small probe will find its way at least close to the moon it is left to drift through space on his way onboard radiation sensors detect and prove the existence of a second van allen belt as well as the possible edge of earth's magnetosphere no instruments designed specifically to study the latter of the two are present in about one week's time the probe loses connection with earth stdn sites as it drifts out of range for its transmission capabilities telemetry data transmitted up to that point show a good trajectory for the moon it will be several days before connection is once again restored as pathfinder 1 will begin to fall victim to earth's gravity well once again ground teams sleep at their station rather than going home to rest anxiously awaiting this point in the mission nobody will know if the trajectory is still go until the probe reconnects 12 days and 5 hours into the mission std insights report transmission with pathfinder 1 is back online and telemetry data suggests its trajectory is heading straight for the moon the reaction to this news is one of relief and pure elation the data begins to stream in again radiation measurements micrometeorite strike data temperature readings telemetry fluctuations pressure data all being transmitted to earth being recovered by eager scientists itching to further our understanding of the cosmos as the twelfth day of pathfinder one's mission comes to a close transmission is once again lost blocked by the surface of the moon and the space probe is assumed to have been destroyed moments later that is going to wrap up this episode of for all kerbal kind thanks so much for sticking around for this one i know i haven't had an hour-long video in well ever but we also did just hit 5k subscribers so consider this sort of a celebration for that yeah we're ending off today's episode with a lunar impact and we are going to well deal with all of the science and money that we get from that next episode where the era of satellites is truly getting started if you want to see what the soviet union has been up to there's a link to beardy's video in the end screen as well as the description below there's a discord down below where all sorts of stuff is always going on and thank you guys so much for watching and peace out [Music] you

Channel: N9 Gaming

Views: 29,996

Rating: 4.9837961 out of 5

Keywords: Kerbal Space Program, For All Kerbalkind, For All Mankind, Space, Rocketry, Gaming, Alternate History, Realism Overhaul, RP1, Realism, Simulation, Spacecraft, Multiplayer, N9 Gaming, TheBeardyPenguin, Kerbalism, Realistic, Flight Simulation, Rockets, Gameplay, 1.8.1, Space Race, To the Moon. Realism, United States, Soviet Union, Space Exploration, Flight Sim

Id: 4Ha1TqYn9AI

Length: 60min 42sec (3642 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020