Chapter 34: The UCS Shuffle
The good news distraction is still brewing, but I made it and I should be ok for next time as well. If not I'll try to bring it up a little sooner if I can. Thanks to defconh3ck for some help with both Capella and ICE, the big modules/stations are some very fun ideas to work around with.
Chapter 34: The UCS Shuffle
As 2022 marched by, Capella took step after step in assembly operations, by now, a hole had been cut in the LOX and LH2 tank domes and they had been fitted with the buffer to prevent damage to suits, umbilicals, and liners. Additionally, a section of liner had been installed in this intertank tunnel for additional padding. The current step in progress was installing the metal struts the “floors” would be structurally supported by. To do this the astronauts worked from the bottom up to minimize work in confined spaces, starting at the aft of the LH2 tank and affixing the struts to the baffling on the tank walls. As they went, they installed round plastic hooks on the struts to eventually hold the liner in place. Absolute care was taken to prevent sharp edges from forming during the installation of the struts, which involved a relatively simple indicator. Both astronauts carried a few sheets of a flexible material made specially to cut when run over a surface with a specified jaggedness. It was a slow process, but each joint and corner received a spot check from the sheets. Removing a sharp edge was a whole other process, effectively involving a clear bag to catch shavings and a jumbo-ified file to fit the astronauts' gloves. Fortunately, these were, so far, few and far between.
Left in Capella’s wake at Michoud, the ICE core stage was finally almost done fighting through delays. Her saddlebag module lay at the ready and the stage finally slipped out of the assembly bay. ICE spent little time sitting around outside of the bay as she was loaded onto the Pegasus barge and floated up to trade places with Ursa at Stennis for a little bit in order to give her plumbing-filled crown module a thorough run through before departing for Florida. Ursa made her way back to Michoud for a pretty extensive dismantling. Though she had received maintenance at Michoud before, the inspections had been far less in-depth. With over a decade of continued service, even some of her highest cycle life components were beginning to push their luck a bit, the highest concern of which being her tanks, which had soldiered on since her implementation. The worry for these parts was great enough that it was so far undecided if she would even return to service or simply reassembled and retired. Her companions, the Earthbound boosters were in a similar position, having been recently pulled off their stand beside Ursa and placed in storage for the time being. The last of the original set was down too. Kite, had been sent back to Palmdale to be kept up in case another use came along for her, but as it stood, the chance was diminishing by the day. Their futures were currently uncertain, but in a press conference for ICE, NASA officials were adamant about not scrapping any of the original group.
Back with ICE, though, her service was only just beginning, but there would need to be more than just a core stage to achieve her purpose. The intended tankers to be built for Leviathan were still a while away and needed a testbed for temporary storage of cryogenics for the journey to ICE as a more permanent home. Given Phoenix’s experience handling cryogenic propellants with Firelight 4, a payload bay mounted tank would serve as this testbed and pave the way for full scale tanking operations. The tank modules were wrapping up construction themselves, aiming to beat ICE to orbit for a unloaded test flight to prove out the tanks themselves as well as the new APAS variant for cryogenic transfer produced in conjunction with Roscosmos. Ground tests were going well, as expected the main docking elements, shared with the conventional APAS, were operating just fine. The secondary elements, namely the connection and sealing of the cryogenic transfer lines were a bit more tricky, with sealing not occurring correctly on occasion, among other scattered issues. Unsurprisingly, these issues were borderline identical to those typically seen with launch pad umbilicals. Resultantly, the resolutions were also very similar, with most issues on the test stand being resolved by simply backing the lines away from each other and trying again. With this and the other transferable knowledge from pad umbilicals meshing well, the port was deemed ready for flight and would hopefully see their chance in the latter half of 2022, which was approaching quickly.
While Phoenix was stepping up to clear the way, the foundation work for Leviathan’s tanker was in swing as it waited. Several sub-scale mockups had appeared and the general design had mostly solidified. Original ideas would have a whole new tanker sent every time, but with several tankers expected per MTV fueling operation and two MTVs per Martian expedition, this was an extremely costly option. The revised plan was substantially more cost-friendly, but came with the usual penalty of complexity. There would be one tug, a self-propelled transfer element with a hollow cage, almost like a payload fairing half, consisting of attachment points and a radiator shell. So far, not all too different from the original plan for the tanker in appearance, but there was something missing, though, the fuel tank. This would be the expendable part, a sizable tank with only the most rudimentary of attitude control measures. This tank would be lofted by a cut-down version of Leviathan, missing its Firelight 8 upper stage and having the fairing and payload adapter placed directly on top of the nose cone barrel. Given its LEO destination this missing stage would not be necessary and would almost almost restore the expense of the original plan anyway. Once tossed into orbit, the core would return home, like always, dropping off its nose cone barrel in the process and the tug would need to approach the tank which was only able to hold its attitude steady, grab it, and take some fuel for itself. From there the plan was largely the same as the original: carry it to the depot, transfer fuel, and leave. From here the tug would toss the tank into a sub-orbital fall and return to a safe orbit where it would await the next tank. With the elimination of as many expendable elements as possible, only throwing away a nose cone barrel, fairing pair, and tank structure, this method would drive down costs to a much more comfortable level, making the journey to Mars that much more feasible.
Chapter 34: The UCS Shuffle
As 2022 marched by, Capella took step after step in assembly operations, by now, a hole had been cut in the LOX and LH2 tank domes and they had been fitted with the buffer to prevent damage to suits, umbilicals, and liners. Additionally, a section of liner had been installed in this intertank tunnel for additional padding. The current step in progress was installing the metal struts the “floors” would be structurally supported by. To do this the astronauts worked from the bottom up to minimize work in confined spaces, starting at the aft of the LH2 tank and affixing the struts to the baffling on the tank walls. As they went, they installed round plastic hooks on the struts to eventually hold the liner in place. Absolute care was taken to prevent sharp edges from forming during the installation of the struts, which involved a relatively simple indicator. Both astronauts carried a few sheets of a flexible material made specially to cut when run over a surface with a specified jaggedness. It was a slow process, but each joint and corner received a spot check from the sheets. Removing a sharp edge was a whole other process, effectively involving a clear bag to catch shavings and a jumbo-ified file to fit the astronauts' gloves. Fortunately, these were, so far, few and far between.
Left in Capella’s wake at Michoud, the ICE core stage was finally almost done fighting through delays. Her saddlebag module lay at the ready and the stage finally slipped out of the assembly bay. ICE spent little time sitting around outside of the bay as she was loaded onto the Pegasus barge and floated up to trade places with Ursa at Stennis for a little bit in order to give her plumbing-filled crown module a thorough run through before departing for Florida. Ursa made her way back to Michoud for a pretty extensive dismantling. Though she had received maintenance at Michoud before, the inspections had been far less in-depth. With over a decade of continued service, even some of her highest cycle life components were beginning to push their luck a bit, the highest concern of which being her tanks, which had soldiered on since her implementation. The worry for these parts was great enough that it was so far undecided if she would even return to service or simply reassembled and retired. Her companions, the Earthbound boosters were in a similar position, having been recently pulled off their stand beside Ursa and placed in storage for the time being. The last of the original set was down too. Kite, had been sent back to Palmdale to be kept up in case another use came along for her, but as it stood, the chance was diminishing by the day. Their futures were currently uncertain, but in a press conference for ICE, NASA officials were adamant about not scrapping any of the original group.
Back with ICE, though, her service was only just beginning, but there would need to be more than just a core stage to achieve her purpose. The intended tankers to be built for Leviathan were still a while away and needed a testbed for temporary storage of cryogenics for the journey to ICE as a more permanent home. Given Phoenix’s experience handling cryogenic propellants with Firelight 4, a payload bay mounted tank would serve as this testbed and pave the way for full scale tanking operations. The tank modules were wrapping up construction themselves, aiming to beat ICE to orbit for a unloaded test flight to prove out the tanks themselves as well as the new APAS variant for cryogenic transfer produced in conjunction with Roscosmos. Ground tests were going well, as expected the main docking elements, shared with the conventional APAS, were operating just fine. The secondary elements, namely the connection and sealing of the cryogenic transfer lines were a bit more tricky, with sealing not occurring correctly on occasion, among other scattered issues. Unsurprisingly, these issues were borderline identical to those typically seen with launch pad umbilicals. Resultantly, the resolutions were also very similar, with most issues on the test stand being resolved by simply backing the lines away from each other and trying again. With this and the other transferable knowledge from pad umbilicals meshing well, the port was deemed ready for flight and would hopefully see their chance in the latter half of 2022, which was approaching quickly.
While Phoenix was stepping up to clear the way, the foundation work for Leviathan’s tanker was in swing as it waited. Several sub-scale mockups had appeared and the general design had mostly solidified. Original ideas would have a whole new tanker sent every time, but with several tankers expected per MTV fueling operation and two MTVs per Martian expedition, this was an extremely costly option. The revised plan was substantially more cost-friendly, but came with the usual penalty of complexity. There would be one tug, a self-propelled transfer element with a hollow cage, almost like a payload fairing half, consisting of attachment points and a radiator shell. So far, not all too different from the original plan for the tanker in appearance, but there was something missing, though, the fuel tank. This would be the expendable part, a sizable tank with only the most rudimentary of attitude control measures. This tank would be lofted by a cut-down version of Leviathan, missing its Firelight 8 upper stage and having the fairing and payload adapter placed directly on top of the nose cone barrel. Given its LEO destination this missing stage would not be necessary and would almost almost restore the expense of the original plan anyway. Once tossed into orbit, the core would return home, like always, dropping off its nose cone barrel in the process and the tug would need to approach the tank which was only able to hold its attitude steady, grab it, and take some fuel for itself. From there the plan was largely the same as the original: carry it to the depot, transfer fuel, and leave. From here the tug would toss the tank into a sub-orbital fall and return to a safe orbit where it would await the next tank. With the elimination of as many expendable elements as possible, only throwing away a nose cone barrel, fairing pair, and tank structure, this method would drive down costs to a much more comfortable level, making the journey to Mars that much more feasible.