S005A Supply 03
After the separation of Space City from UKSS, a lot of restructuring would be required and with the aging of the Salyut modules, in time a replacement would be needed. Some of the modules were docked together with disposable maneuvrable units which meant that restructuring would be tough.
Supply 03 took off under the commercial partner program and would launch on a potential reusable Charon Heavy. The second stage was an Arrow III derived upper stage, but now carrying a supply module.
The return of the Charon Heavy was again a failure. This time the parachutes deployed too late and once crashed into the ocean not a single piece could be recovered. The KOS team went back to the drawing board.
Supply 03 docked without any major difficulties, though stability assistance proved tough. The supply side was getting crowded with the many docked craft.
C021D Delta A1
Part of the spin-off of the Delta program the Delta A1 was created. The “A” stood for applications, more derivatives were already planned. A small, lightweight version of the iconic craft that took over a dozen crews to Kerbins Satellites. Now with stretched space for even more crew. Despite it was a new craft, the first flight could be crewed because of the high reuse rate. The capsule was directly derived from Delta, the service module was Charon Heavy derived, the launcher was a standard Wodan-12B4.
The mission commander was Jebediah Kerman, mainly for the return in Orbiter 2. Katsuki and Dobal are mission engineers responsible for operating the new workshop and the restructure mission. Erilorf and Fjalarr were the rotating science crew for UKSS.
“KSC we have cleared the tower,” an optimistic Jeb took the Delta A1 into a spin just before the solid rocket boosters burned out. As a result, they would be flung into a safe distance by the centrifugal force. The second stage set the craft in a 100×100 km orbit and the service module made docking alignment a breeze. “Uh, KSC why am I reading 0 on the RCS fuel?” Jeb sounded surprised. He managed to maneuver the craft, using the main engine, within 1 meter of the docking port. A slight thruster movement from the station itself managed the dock.
Next up was Katsuki who installed the new arm and moved the Firesarr lab to the new position after replacing the docking port. She also learned that docking force should be set to zero to avoid a spinning station.
In the side position, the main port on SkyLab became free for the planned extension of the station with a power enhancement.
After that, Salyut 02 swung around to the other side to create a separate hub of docking nodes on each side of the station, rather than close together in the middle. Here Katsuki had to re-align the docking ports so that docking would align the solar panels. Meanwhile, the new docking arm held Salyut in a nearby position.
After that Kirus, Jeb and Elifal boarded the Orbiter 2 which had been docked for almost 200 days now. The landing gear was misaligned but both Space X and KSC wanted to wait no longer with the return. Re-entry went reasonably smooth, but after having bled of most speed the craft started a spin.
“Jeb here, the craft is unstable, I think she has too much fuel left.” eyeballing the reserves there was indeed a lot of fuel in the tanks, but how to dump it? Without waiting for a KSC reply, Jeb ignited the LV909 space engine in the atmosphere. Pushed in their seats the crew experienced an acceleration as the horribly inefficient engine burned through the reserves but allowed Jeb to regain control.
“On final approach, 60 m/s,” Jeb sounded calm. The idea was to stall the craft, deploy the chute and hope it would stop before the gear would give in, it didn’t.
Orbiter 02 was lost as Orbiter 01 was lost: by sliding off the runway and leaving a sizable hole in a bright explosion. Fortunately, the slow speed made sure the crew survived. Orbiter 03 had a proven gear redesign, but KSC had become uneasy at this point and the papers wondered if this was the end of Shuttle designed spacecraft?
KSC Archives 