European Agency of Space Stuff

Routine Mission (1955-01-25): A simple SR-2a sounding mission that succeeded with no complications. Routine Mission (1955-06-25): This mission necessitated a modified version of the SR-2d with the second stage engines and fuel removed and the first stage power reduced somewhat. This made the rocket slow enough to be capable of re-entry, allowing for the returning a biological experiment. It was a successful mission.   Routine mission (1955-11-23): For this mission we were tasked with taking up an ' advanced biological payload' in a sub-orbital trajectory and returning it. The modified re-entry capable SR-2d was selected for the job. Buddy the dog has successfully returned to Earth safely without any issues and earned his wings! Historical Aside: The first dogs in to space were strays called Tsygan and Dezik, sent up as early as 1951 on R-1 rockets . Dezik perished on a second flight after the parachute on their capsule failed. Tsygan survived the programme and would be adopte...

Reminder: Our mission objective is fly a sub-orbital trajectory travelling over 3000km across Africa, putting us in Egypt (or thereabouts). Our payload is not expected to survive re-entry in to the atmosphere. Just a video this time, I don't want to spoil anything: Next Post: Dogs (and cat) of space

Having received more contracts regarding film and biological sample opportunities, I decided to take stock of our options. From the selection available, it was clear that continuing rocketry missions would be more profitable at the current time than continuing with the Y-1 project. As a result, I'm shelving the Y-1 for now and focusing on the many rocket contracts available until we have some breakthroughs in our technology. Which leads us to... Routine Mission (1953-10-11): Sent up an SR-2c payload to complete another downrange filming contract. About half way through the mission the rocket experienced thrust loss, meaning that it was impossible to complete the mission objectives. The engine then cut out entirely at around 90% of the burn. Naturally, this is the first failed mission of the project, as the universe spites us for going off piste. I did manage to recover a little bit of film data, but all in all, this was a wasted four months of engineering. Despite this failure, I d...

Routine Mission (1953-02-27): Sent up an SR-2c payload to complete a biological capsule contract. Went smoothly without issues, netting a big ol' payment which was immediately funneled to R&D. To complete our next mission from the French Ministère des Armées , to take an early film camera and photograph a stretch of North Africa from a height of at least 100km while travelling over 200km, will require a variation of our SR-2 design: This monster of a single engine-staged rocket is capable of taking the 160kg payload over 200km high and nearly 650km downrange, all the way to the west coast of Africa, where parachutes can bring the film down safely for study. The mission was completed successfully on 1953-06-04. We now have 40k in funds and 39 (!) in unspent Science™. 20k of those funds are going to be push straight in to ongoing R&D, which continues to be our main priority. The sooner we can unlock new materials technology, the sooner we can make the leap to more powerful en...

Time for our first rocket-plane flight! I will be performing this flight in full virtual reality, using the amazing Kerbal VR mod. I've had to reduce the graphics somewhat (disabling scatterer , specifically) in order to maintain VR compatibility. Unfortunately I haven't yet unlocked one of the plane cockpits which supports all the fancy buttons either, so I'll be controlling it using the Oculus Touch controllers for now. The objective of this mission is to drop launch our Y-1 rocket plane from our mothership , maintain level(-ish) flight at a speed of at least 343m/s for at least 30 seconds, then touchdown on the Saharan desert. In the cockpit is heroic test pilot Matt Clarkson . You'll notice that after I turn off the engines I start performing banking turns. Generally, in flight, you control your speed with your throttle and control altitude with your pitch. However when your engines are off and when you are in a state of gliding, you have to control both by maneu...

I noticed in the final simulation that sometimes the design re-enters on the opposite end of the payload than I'd planned. Rather than adding more ablative steel I had a bit of a rummage through the other equipment we already have. I decided to re-purpose a thrust plate. Thrust plates are designed for separating fuel tanks from rocket engine(s) and allowing the mounting of multiple engines. Since they sit directly above rocket engines, they are rated for around 2000K instead of the 700K of steel, making them effective as heat shields for our purposes. As you can see, the flight went well:  aaaand touchdown: Our payload returned successfully and we're now drowning in Science™! We also have enough money to fund the Y-Plane project, finally coming up next...

Here's the SR-2 first flight video (raw unedited): No problems! Nice, easy flight, sneaking our payload up to a comfortable 140km. Still, this is quite modest given the capabilities of our rocket. We'll want to take the core concept and develop it at a bit to push the envelope and score some more contracts. In the next post we'll look at developing the SR-2b, a multi-stage variant of the SR-2 taking advantage of our rocket's untapped power.

SR-1 Flight 2 was a routine mission to continue gaining telemetry for our space program. I've recorded this flight so it's available for a watch below (warning for audio loudness!): After this there was a third flight of the SR-1, designated SR-1b. In order to get maximum value out of the SR-1 before we move on to other programs, I decided to take advantage of existing production lines by effectively sticking a SR-1 rocket on top of the existing one, creating a three-stage rocket: This worked well and reached a height of 240km for almost no extra expense. Such is the value of having multiple stages taking advantage of already tooled parts, especially when the final stage has less gravity to fight due to our altitude. This makes it sound like we've solved rocketry; just slap more rockets on top of each other! But eventually we'll run against the fundamental nature of rocketry governed by the tyranny of the rocket equation, which can be summed up as: " But to get tha...

Launch Date : 1951-03-10 Rocket/Payload : SR-1 Mission : Achieve Kármán Line It's launch day!   Liftoff successful, second stage deploys without any issues!   We make the 119km mark without losing our fins, hurrah! (Side note: They did not survive atmospheric re-entry, but that's still better than expected). Nice view of Spain and Morocco from here. The take-away haul from this is 4 science points worth of data for research. Enough for us to start working on improved rockets and supersonic flight. It will take about 15 months for all the research to complete, so we're way ahead of the game. Many smaller objectives completed successfully: We now have over 100k funds to play with, so lets immediately start investing in R&D and Vehicle Assembly Building upgrades to speed everything up. A second SR-1 rocket is under construction to complete more science, but we also need to start planning our designs for our first supersonic jet (to test crewed flights) as well as bigger a...