Blog Post 5: Recap and Reflectionm

I published this before I typed anything in it, sorry if this confuses anyone.

For my (possibly? I think, technically) last blog post, I have been tasked with a recap and reflection; this is good, because I probably would not have given this project as much reflection as it deserved otherwise.

My goal, which I succeeded in (partially), was to reach the Mun in a simulation. I feel like, however, I did not actually do the best I could. Seeing Dani's animation earlier today made that abundantly clear, I think. Although rocket science is by no means easy, once you understand the concepts and have the formulas down it becomes a lot easier than one might expect.
If I wanted to, and put in more hours, I definitely could have made it further. Doing some quick research from the cheat sheet I talked about earlier today in my presentation, and my final product's chart I had made (below), I can see mathematically that to make it to Eeloo it requires 9590 m/s of delta-v (about), and that my rocket had 15957 m/s of delta-v.

My final rocket's charts and notes. I killed many astronauts making my final rocket, design phase included.

 Now Kenny, you say, is it not true that you are a terrible pilot (proof from presentation below or here, for all those morning-blockers that missed it)? Is it not also true that making it to the Mun was difficult itself?

To both questions, I would answer yes. I would also say, however, that I could have done what I did earlier if I tried, and I could have practiced my piloting skills more. Additionally, where this simulation really shines is in its orbital mechanics which I wasn't really able to use so much with my goal (it's drag mechanics are especially horrible, but they are supposedly improving it in the next update.) Having the rocket go to Eeloo would have added more challenge, added more research, added more fun, and also would have added a tad more realism.

Thinking about my presentation today, which I think went surprisingly well (did I go two minutes under?), I would like to further address the delta-v and specific impulse related stuff; first of all, if I had more time I would have explained it more in depth because I feel like it didn't make enough sense in my presentation. Researching these too concepts made up the majority of my research because they were so crucial.
 Delta-v would be the rocket slowing down or speeding up in measurements. Since rockets in space have no friction and would technically go forever at the same speed in the same direction assuming there is no gravity, this is pretty much the most important number to know.
Specific impulse was luckily calculated by the simulation I used, but it is essentially the thrust produced over the weight of the propellants, and is used to measure efficiency. Usually rockets with low specific impulse have a high thrust, and vica versa, which made this trip difficult without ASPARAGUS STAGING, which ultimately saved this project. I explained it in blog post 4, I think?

Moving forward, just like Jason Smith is doing with his language, I do think I will continue this in my free time. I don't think I'll do as much as I'm sure he will be, but I also think that this was something fun and interesting, and now that I know for sure that this rocket can also make it to Eeloo (and mathematically speaking Moho), not to mention the other moon around Kerbin, Minmus, I don't see why I shouldn't practice more complex orbital maneuvers like the Hohmann Transferral Orbit and learn about launch windows.

Before I link to my comments for this post, did you know that the videos I've been recording are in 720p? That's a lot higher than I thought.
Additionally, if I end up going to other places I will post videos and the like on this blog simply because of how much fun I had doing it; especially if I set the concrete goal of having enough to write 250 words on this blog each cycle, that should allow me to actually continue with something I had I found very interesting. (I don't actually know if I'll follow through with this though!)

For this week I blogposted on the following people's blogs:
Jason Shu's (Stop-Motion Animation, Blog Post 4)
Nathan Leung's (Web App Development, Vlog)
Sam Klugherz's (Longboarding, Blog Post 4)

Comments (Cycle 5, I think)

I commented on these people's blogs:

Jason Shu's vlog (Stopmotion Animation)
Sam Klugherz's vlog (Longboarding)
Greg Orr's vlog (Running a Half-Marathon)

Blog Post 4: Mun Landing

This will likely be my shortest blog post in terms of word length but also one of the longest in terms of content length.
I have landed on the Mun, yesterday sometime, and after a night of processing I can post the landing, but only the link, here. Perhaps it's for the best, however, as it is an hour and sixteen minutes long. I haven't even watched it all, besides when I recorded it.

I'll go through some of the main issues I had while flying this rocket. I deleted the recordings of my failures, not realizing that they could be useful here. My bad!

Third-to-last stage blew up the last stage - By this I am referring to the unrecorded time, which happened many times, where the rocket failed because the base was hit by the decoupled engines and tanks and blew up. I wasn't able to identify for sure why this happened, but I would put my money on it being that the rocket was going fast and some force was spinning the decoupled stage. To address this issue, I cut the engines until I felt that the decoupled stage was far enough away from the remaining rocket.
I crashed into the Mun many, many times - This was more a result of poor flying skills than anything else. I flew my rocket and each time I accidentally did so into the dark side of the Mun. This resulted in me not being able to see the surface of the Mun. The last time I got lucky more than anything, because I was a poor pilot. Luckily I learned how to make up for this with asparagus staging and the like.
I almost crashed into the Mun while flying away from the Mun - I was able to fix this, but it was an unbelievably close call when I ran overtime and almost crashed into the Mun. From this, I learned to be more careful when flying about 16 tons of metal in a vacuum.
 
I don't really have much else to say, but I did take some screenshots of the latter portion of the video so that you don't have to watch it all but still get to see some of what I saw.
Here you go!

We have landed on the Mun!

Melgel takes the first steps on the Mun!

Melgel trips, falls, and struggles to get up

After Melgel gets up, he places a flag on the Mun

Some time later, we have returned to Kerbin

Splashdown!

I'll be sure to get the comments in on a different blog post tomorrow or the day after. Oh, and remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Update: Design and Research

I'm going to get right into this with the video of what I would consider the most ridiculous rocket ever created:

If that video doesn't work, a Youtube mirror be here.
It started off pretty serious (I will be using part of it for the next design), but eventually I got kind of tired and decided to throw caution to the wind. This ridiculous monstrosity is the result. The first one isn't even worth mentioning.

I did actually learn something else pretty important, which I will be employing for my final rocket design. I found a forum posting that explains it way better than I ever could, here.
I'll be explaining it, and some background, anyway; the concept was originally created sometime in the 20th century, but it isn't seen very often in real life (I'm under the impression only rocket has used it ever so far at all, and one is planned to be used?) because of how complicated fuel transference is. It's really good but not good enough to be worth all that work.

I'll be referring to this as I explain asparagus staging.

Something I just realized that maybe you don't know much about is staging itself. Since rockets attempt to be efficient, and since sometimes things run out of fuel, rockets use staging to order and plan what to get rid of when. So, if we look at the no crossfeeding diagram, and see (S1) around (S2)s, you can see what stages each engine is. All S2 circles, or engines, will be gotten rid of at the same time.
Next let's look at the lines. those lines show us which direction the fuel will be flowing. So, for the first diagram, not fuel is flowing anywhere, in the second, all to the first stage, and for the bottom one they are also all going to the first stage.

Moving onto what the asparagus staging does specifically, since all the fuel is flowing through a bunch of engines and into the first stage they are all sharing, effectively, the same fuel. However, since the fourth stages connect to the third and the third to the second and so on, we can get rid of the fourth stage and still have a full third stage; not only that but we'll have massively decreased our mass (I say massively but at that point it's not usually to massive) so that the delta-v goes up.
I'll get you a more specific example when I finish my next rocket (which will be quite serious), likely tomorrow.

As promised last week, however, I scanned the charts for all of the Time To Fly rockets. It's not a diagram or anything, but if you're interested you can see the data for each of the stages and how I record it.

It's so fancy isn't it?

I say 'payload' and I guess it could technically be considered one, but I'd say it's more part of the rocket than anything. This was right around where I was beginning to understand specific impulse and delta-v I think. If I remember correctly I really started to get it in between II and III, but who knows.

For whatever reason the rockets don't save anymore, so I won't be able to give them to you (unless you want me to explain how to build it from scratch, but that'll take too long and I'm pretty sure only Trevor has this).
Speaking of, thanks Trevor for showing the simulation today in Afternoon block. Although he showed the plane aspect of it all, it made the class more entertaining and also helped to show what I was doing a bit more, I think.

Comments (Cycle 4?)

Jason Smith's (Hebrew with Haste)
Matt Autieri's (Self-Portraits)
Josh Chu's (Meddling with Melodies)

Video Blog!

Here is the video blog, originally assigned to be due yesterday.

I realized while recording and doing a bit of editing that I don't seem very enthused about it. Noticing the art in the background, I figured I'd also show you my more creative side with four pictures: two of some of my greatest artistic achievements, and two of my cats. It will go as follows: my greatest artistic achievement (ever); a picture of my cat, Indie, wearing my glasses; my vlog; a picture the other of my two cats, Rocky, when I found him yesterday sitting on my chair (in case you were wondering, they are siblings about a year and a half old); finally, a self-portrait made in first grade that will give Matt a run for his money.

Here is my greatest artistic achievement. Last year, we were tasked with painting a picture that represented happiness. I feel like I succeeded.

A pot of gold, a rainbow, a smiling flower, a pink cloud, AND nyan cat? What could be happier!

Now a picture of Indie.

If you look to the top left, you'll notice I'm eating pretzels in this picture.

Now, for the vlog. There is no music in the background, but if you want you could listen to Rockets - Galactica (1980). It's four minutes of space rock, according to Wikipedia. I recorded this video and edited it with Windows Live Movie Maker, which is obvious based off of its high quality. If anything goes wrong, please comment on it in the comment section.
The password is: pa$$word (if it needs a password, it doesn't seem to need one for me?)


The Very Best Blog from Kenny Daily on Vimeo.

Let's end this as I said we would. First, the picture of Rocky.

Rocky enjoying the sun

Finally, my self-portrait.

Matt can't beat this!

Blog Post 3: Around and Around

New news!
First of all, something I am very proud to announce, after a whopping total of six programs installed and two programs used online, excluding YouTube, I have found a way to record my screen and show it to you in a high quality form!
Observe in the form of a gif of a probe falling to Kerbin!

Needless to say I am very happy!

The recorder, which is free, can be found here. The video to gif online program can be found here. The .avi file to .mp4 file online converter can be found here. The downloaded .avi file to .mp4 file converter can be found here.

Moving on, I have researched a lot since we last met and have applied it to the simulation. I have begun some planning for the Mun mission.
If we'll start on the research, I've mostly been researching the launch and flight related stuff, and have stopped for the most part on the orbital mechanics. Orbital mechanics are less important for the Mun seeing as how close the Mun is; no Hohmann Transfer Orbits needed here!

The two most important equations are the equations for Delta-v and the thrust-to-weight ratio (which is usually referred to as the TWR).
The thrust to weight ratio is rather straight forward, and is used to see if a rocket can lift off of the ground. If it is less than one, it will not lift off the ground. The equation goes as follows: Ft / m * g, where Ft represents the force of thrust, m represents the mass of the rocket, and g is the local gravitational pull.
For example, let's consider a rocket with engines that give 270 kilonewtons of thrust, has a total mass of 33, and is on Kerbin's surface, where the pull of gravity is 9.81 m/s squared.
The equation becomes 270 / 33 * 9.81.
This becomes 270 / 323.73.
The ratio is then less than one, and the rocket will be unable to lift off the ground. This is incredibly important so that I know if a rocket I thought would work can get a foot of the ground, let alone into space.
If none of that made any sense, NASA has a wonderful page describing it here. Try not to get too distracted by the plane; although it can also be applied there along with the lift-to-drag ratio, I will only be using it in terms of rockets.

The other equation is for delta-v; it is the most important equation in rocket science when it comes down to it. It is the rocket equivalent to saying that you have a gallon of fuel left and your car runs 40 mpg, so you'll make it 40 miles. The difference here being that since in space there is no friction, you could technically go an infinite amount of miles assuming nothing gets in the way.
For that reason scientists and engineers use delta-v to describe the capabilities of a rocket or space plane. It describes how much the vehicle can change its velocity; so, if a rocket had a delta-v of 100 m/s and was going at 0 m/s currently, it could change that so that it is going at 100 m/s.
The equation goes as follows: Isp * ln( mf / me ) * 9.81 m/s^2, where Isp is the specific impulse (basically the efficiency of the engine, how much thrust is produced per the flow rate), mf is the total mass of the craft, and me is the dry mass (the mass of the rocket without the mass of the fuel). 9.81 m/s^2 is to convert the delta-v to m/s, the desired unit, and ln is natural log.
NASA has a more comprehensive guide of it and the Ideal Rocket Equation it is based off of here. To be completely honest, though, I didn't understand what they were saying and just found a forum post that I felt explained it better; my description of it above is essentially what the forum posting said.


Moving away from the research, I have launched three Kerbals, the astronauts, into orbit and back using that research and the delta-v map below.

This map describes the approximate amount of delta-v required to reach certain bodies.

As you can see from the map, you need 4550 m/s of delta-v to reach a low Kerbin orbit. I planned for failure and gave my rocket about 3000 additional m/s of delta-v. Lucky I did so, because after
calculating it again while in orbit I found I only had about 980 m/s of delta-v left.
If you are interested, I will hopefully be posting my notes on the rocket tomorrow or the day after. It is on graph paper, so I will have to transcribe it onto an excel sheet; I'll probably put it on a Google doc and post the link when I find the time.

Some more interesting things, about Time To Fly III, the rocket in question. Don't worry, no casualties involved in the other two!
Since some of the videos were too large for the in blogger program, here is a link to a playlist of them all. The first is 8 minutes long of making the orbit, the second is 45 seconds long of some space walking, and the third is of the reentry of Time To Fly III.

Since I couldn't show you them here directly, here is a screenshot of the dark side of Kerbin:

The dark side of Kerbin. Jebediah is loving it, but the others are quite afraid.

I'd like to end saying that this week's goal is to design a rocket to get to the Mun, and planning the mission. My next post will be centered around this, I think, unless I remember to transcribe and post the link to the design and notes on Time To Fly III; I will attempt to do this tomorrow.

I commented on these people's blogs:
Matt Autieri's (the fourth blog post)
Eric Lang's (the third blog post)
Nathan Leung's (the Cycle 2 blog post)
 

Blog Post 2: Back to Kerbin

I have made significant progress since last post, which was just yesterday. For one, I have discovered three different websites that I will be using, and did today. In order of easiest to understand to hardest to understand and all, they are: here, here, and here. The first link is from NASA and the California Institute of Technology. It consists more of the concepts and less of the formulas involved in orbital mechanics and such. It links to the second site I've been using, which is primarily formulas for orbital mechanics. The third site I haven't really used yet, or even validated as much as I should have, so as I look into it I may find that it is incorrect and simply not use it.

On the subject of orbital mechanics, I must say that there are a lot of formulas. At first I was using the second link mostly, but as I reached the halfway point I began to get a headache from all the numbers; or the lack thereof, really. I went over to the NASA/CIT one and found it much easier to understand, as it gave examples in addition to explaining each topic; I wouldn't have understood foci very well if it wasn't for the NASA/CIT site explaining it to me. I'm still looking through both websites, but I made it about 50% of the way through the second link so far today and read two or three pages of Chapter Three in the NASA/CIT website.
I have learned some important vocabulary, some important formulas (none of which are memorized, mind you), and the basics of what I would need to do to get from the Earth to, say Mars. That knowledge can be applied here to discover the trajectory which will help me get to the Mun with a minimal amount of fuel. I still need to read up some more from both sites, and likely others, before I feel like I can really say I understand the subject well enough to explain the most basic of the basics to someone else; I'm still learning the basics myself, after all. I can definitely say as it stands, however, that I do know the most basic of the basics right now. I know what things like foci are, I know how to calculate some things like the eccentricity of the ellipse, and I know some of the orbits that I will be basing my trajectory off of to reach the Mun.

There are some things that I should touch on that I brought up in the last blog post, and some other clarifying comments I myself was unaware of.

Let's start off with my 'safe elliptical orbit'.

Look how safe it is now!

 Do you see that blue line? That is the orbit now. The orbit that I had, which was not as obvious to me until letting the simulation run for 25 in game days, was not really an orbit at all. It was a 'sub-orbital trajectory'. It may have looked like an orbit, and it was for 25 days, but the periapsis (the point of the orbit closest to what the rocket is orbiting around) was too close to the primary (which is to say Kerbin, what the rocket is orbiting around). It basically hit the atmosphere one too many times and is now crashing into Kerbin.

Luckily, however, I found a different screen recorder to show it all.

It's no cat gif, but it'll do

Here it is for anyone who is curious. It is called Screen Recorder, and works well enough for smaller things. If I had to complain, which I do, I'd say a couple of things: the color is off, the frame-rate is low, the quality is even lower, and the audio is wonky. As I was recording the crash into Kerbin, everything was going fine enough, the quality of the textures were OK, and I could hear the crash well. However, when I viewed it in the player it looked much worse, and I did not hear a crash and instead some weird clicking sound near the end?

Here is the (admittedly sub-par) view of Test Rocket One crashing into Kerbin. It's three minutes long, but I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't watch it all:

 

If you cannot view it in this Blogger format, I also a Youtube mirror here.

Although the screen recording isn't the most important aspect of this all, and I should be and have been focusing on the research aspect of this project, I do want to give you a nice recording of at the very least the manned Mun landing. If you know of any good and free screen recorders for PC, I'd be happy to hear about them.

Another thing that I should mention about last post is this: the Kerbol system (the one in Kerbal Space Program) and the Sol system (ours in real life) are remarkably different.

In the center of the screen Kerbin (Earth equivalent). Smaller circle Mun (Moon equiavalent). Larger circle Minmus (additional moon, no real world equivalent)

In the center, Kerbol, the sun of this system. Various orbits surround it. This is the Kerbol system in its entirety (as of the most recent update).

Our solar system in its entirety, including the Oort cloud for comparison. Found here.

This means that I will no longer be referring to anything as 'Earth' or 'Venus'. Although many planets like Kerbin are made to represent others like Earth, some bodies, like Minmus, have no real-world counterpart. One of the things I learned from my research was the importance of consistent language to convey information. I will be attempting to do just that here.

That is, for the most part, it. I cannot think of anything else I should need to mention in this blog post besides who I commented on, and to give you this image of my headquarters at night. I thought that it was interesting.

My headquarters at night.

I commented on the following people's blogs. If the links don't link correctly, they are the most recent posts:
Trevor Bert's
Jacob Cohen's
Paul Scott's

Blog Post 1: To Space (and orbit)!

Since I was little, I was always interested in space and rockets. With the ability to learn about anything I want that was given to me by this Genius Project, I will be looking more into that. I will be launching rockets in the 'Kerbal Space Program', a thirty dollar rocket simulation game that can be found here.

My goal will be to learn more about rockets and the physics behind them; I will be learning mostly about Newtonian physics, as that is the focus of the simulation. Using Newtonian physics, I will be having rockets (and space planes) reach orbit and other planets. My end goal, and project, is to have a successful manned mission to the moon and back, something done in 1969.

There is one possible problem with my end goal and project; I fired up the simulation today to test it out. I was unable to record the launch due to some technical difficulties involving either Camstudio, a free screen recording software, Youtube, or two conversion programs I installed (sorry!). However, I can show you some screenshots of what I ended up with today instead of the full video.

Anyway, the problem I noticed is that it may be too easy to get to the Moon (or Mun). These are the images of what I ended up with after my first attempt, which was quite the success. The focus was to learn the controls and test out the recording software, but I also achieved what appears to be a safe elliptical orbit.

Shot of the orbit from above. In the center can be found the Earth, or Kerbin. It is only half visible due to the Sun's location. The blue oval is the orbit I have created with my rocket, and the grey circle is the Moon's orbit. The grey dot itself is the Moon.

Orbit from the side. Again, grey is moon, blue is rocket. Unfortunately some things are in the background here; the sun and another orbit. However, the important thing in this picture to know is that my orbit pretty much in line with the moon's.

Basically what I'm getting at is that my job may be slightly easier than it seems; since I am running this in sandbox mode, I don't have to worry about the costs. Other, more difficult modes exist in this simulation (in that they require funding and also simulate the administrative aspects of space agencies). There are, of course, some issues with my rocket which I will explain below.

Rocket with a view of the Earth.

I know that it might be hard to see some of the things I'm about to point out, but here we are. This was the first rocket I launched, and it won't be my last, but some of the things that should be noted about it are:
No decoupling! Notice those booster engines? The ones that look like miniature rockets? That's a bad thing, representative of my sorry lack of decoupling. This was, I think, a problem I faced with this rocket in that when the tanks were out of fuel I wasn't able to get rid of them. Although I was still able to reach an orbit, it resulted in inefficiencies with my rocket that resulted in less fuel to go further. This brings me to my next shortcoming.
Too little energy! Fuel specifically, but energy in general. There was very little fuel, just enough to get into this orbit, and nothing to give the rocket any electricity. That electricity bit is important for this rocket considering it isn't manned and instead is run by electronics. Although I don't know if that means I will no longer be able to control it or not, which, if I could not control it, would make it space-trash and a potential hazard, but important for satellites and such nonetheless.
It wasn't manned! Although this was a good thing this time, considering its lack of fuel, parachutes, and really anyway to get anyone back home, this means that I will have to consider other things that I haven't mentioned here if I went to get there.
It was named Test Rocket One! This one doesn't matter too much, but what if Sputnik was called 'ABC' instead? That monumental moment in history would have been a bit of a joke I think. This means that, from this point on, I will be naming my rockets more creatively, or at least come up with a creative name to call them all. 

To wrap this up, I'd like to say that, all in all, the mission was a success. My goal today was simply to learn about the programs I was going to be using, and I swiftly discovered that some of my resources weren't working, and the basics of controlling the simulation. I think this quick success spells well for my future, which is to the Moon (and maybe beyond, if I find out that getting to the Moon is too easy)!



P.S. Next blog post will be focused on the research I've done on topics like aerobraking that I already know a little bit about that I used to make it out of the atmosphere. I hope that will give me some more time to find a more reliable screen recorder, which I feel like was the source of the issue we had today.
Also, please tell me if you notice anything strange, have any questions, or have any suggestions about my blog or project. Thanks!
One last thing, here are some more screenshots for your viewing pleasure since I was unable to get the video up and running.

The rocket, with the UI, facing the moon.

UI-less view of the Sun and the Earth. In the middle is the rocket, but it is hard to see.

An image of my headquarters, which is, may I say, quite beautiful; birds can be heard chirping in the background.

Edit: Also, I will be changing the design of my blog over the course of the next few days. I think it will be finalized by this Saturday or Sunday.
Also, I fixed a spelling mistake I noticed in a separate edit.
OK, one last edit, this is it I swear:
 I commented on the following blogs (the most recent posts, if the direct links don't work):
Nathan Leung's
Jason Shu's
Sam Klugherz's
(if you don't like how my links are set up I'd be happy to change them)