JAXA+ | What if Japan had an unlimited space budget? | 2060-02-18 - Massive crewed missions to Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and more! [VIDEO]

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2045-12-14 - The Koujin crew transport arrived at Vesta. The last of the Earth Departure Stage's fuel was used to brake about 200 m/s, then detached. The Asteroid Orbit Stage burned for over 4500 m/s of Delta-v, making several maneuvers to intercept the Landing Module in low Vesta orbit (90 km) on December 17. Once it got close, the lander performed an automated docking with the transport. Heisuke Koishi, Takeshi Kakoi, and Rena Minase boarded the lander, which undocked and de-orbited using five LEROS-4 engines (1.3 kN each) to land in Marcia Crater on December 18. After planting the flag, the crew made long, floating strides in the low gravity to the Habitation Module (over 100 m away), which they would stay in for over 9 months.

At the same time, the Inari mission was getting ready to send another three astronauts to Ceres.

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Using the last of the Earth Departure Stage's fuel

Earth Return Stage used for rendezvous

Landing Module (arrived in 2044) docks

De-orbit

Heading to the base

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2045-07-24 - Several months before the Koujin mission landed people on Vesta, construction of the Inari Ceres transport had already begun.

2045-12-13 - After assembly and refueling, the crew of the Inari mission lifted off. Kei Nagase, Takahide Ishikawa, and Hikari Tsuchiyama docked to the massive vessel. On December 21, the spacecraft began its two-part transfer burn to Ceres, to arrive in February 2047.

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2045-07-24 - Earth Return / Asteroid Orbit stages

2045-08-20 - Earth Departure Stage

2045-09-12 - Earth Departure Stage Booster 1

2045-10-06 - Earth Departure Stage Booster 2

2045-10-30 - First refueling tanker

2045-11-22 - Second refueling tanker

2045-12-13 - Crew launch

2045-12-22 - Second Earth departure burn

 

[BrobDingnag]

9 months at 0.025 g? How’re they going to maintain their muscle and bone masses? I’d think one of the greatest challenges would be simply moving around on the surface. The same will go for Ceres (I didn’t know, until I looked it up, that Vesta and Ceres have roughly the same gravity, despite the significant size–and therefore density–difference. Interesting!), too.

 

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9 months at 0.025 g? How’re they going to maintain their muscle and bone masses? I’d think one of the greatest challenges would be simply moving around on the surface. The same will go for Ceres (I didn’t know, until I looked it up, that Vesta and Ceres have roughly the same gravity, despite the significant size–and therefore density–difference. Interesting!), too.

At this point, I was thinking that they would have cybernetic implants (developed in the 2030s) that assist bodily functions in low gravity (this was a plot point in a 2022 animated series called The Orbital Children, which also takes place in 2045).
There is also enough gravity to "walk," although it's very slow and floaty.

2045-12-24 - Heisuke Koishi, Rena Minase, and Takeshi Kakoi boarded the Vesta Cruiser and drove over 10 km to the east in Marcia Crater, which was the largest and youngest of the three "snowman craters," the others being Calpurnia and Minucia. The surface of the crater is mostly made of basaltic rock (known as eucrite) and is rich in iron. Due to the low gravity, wheel traction was also lower, and the motor was set to 5% of normal power to avoid excess torque.

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2046-09-20 - After nine months, the three crew members left the surface habitat, using the small landing module to easily launch back into orbit and dock with the interplanetary transport. On September 26, the transport ignited its single LE-N2 engine to return to Earth (~4800 m/s).

2046-09-26 - Departure from Vesta

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2047-02-07 - After 1 year and 2 months, the Inari crew transport finally arrived at Ceres, slowing down by over 5000 m/s to meet up with the landing module in a 90 km orbit on February 9. On February 10, the powered descent and landing commenced. Kei Nagase, Takahide Ishikawa, and Hikari Tsuchiyama became the first Japanese astronauts to set foot on the largest object in the asteroid belt. Over the next 6 months (a shorter stay due to transfer windows), they would live in the surface base on Occator Crater. On February 15, they explored the crater in the Ceres Cruiser, driving 20 km south and up the central hill. Occator was known for its bright spots, which were made of salt deposits (mostly sodium carbonate) left behind when briny underground water rose to the surface through cryovolcanism. The water had already sublimated into the vacuum of space, and the process could still be happening today.

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2047-08-06 - The Koujin Vesta crew transport returned to Earth after a journey of over 3 years. The Earth Arrival Vehicle undocked and decelerated by over 4000 m/s using its LE-N engine. After the capsule separated, the nuclear stage boosted out of the way to avoid entering Earth's atmosphere. Heisuke Koishi, Takeshi Kakoi, and Rena Minase splashed down off the western coast of Borneo in Indonesia.

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2047-08-10 - The crew of the Inari mission only stayed six months on Ceres, due to the different launch windows from Vesta. The next launch windows were 4 months from now (requiring an additional 1000 m/s in Delta-v for the Ceres-Earth transfer), or waiting another one-and-a-half years. After docking with the transport, they began their return trip on August 16.

2047-08-16 - Leaving Ceres

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2048-12-20 - After over another year in space, Kei Nagase, Takahide Ishikawa, and Hikari Tsuchiyama undocked in the Earth Arrival Vehicle, slowing down by 4900 m/s before entering Earth's atmosphere and splashing down in the Caribbean Sea.

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Comparison of interplanetary ships (Mars, Venus, Vesta and Ceres)

 

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After sending humans to the Moon, Mars, Venus, and asteroids, JAXA+ was now ready to venture into the outer solar system. The Raijin mission, named after the Japanese god of lightning and thunder, would transport 3 astronauts to two of Jupiter's major moons (discovered by Galileo) in the 2050s. They would stay a few months at a pre-deployed base on Callisto, then briefly land on Ganymede. The other two Galilean moons, Europa and Io, were not an option as they were deep inside Jupiter's radiation belts. The longer duration of the mission in interplanetary space required heavier radiation shielding and more propellant, resulting in the initial mass of the piloted vehicle approaching 6000 tonnes.

A new launch vehicle, the H-ZA, was developed to carry payloads up to 1070 tonnes (fact sheet), about twice the lift capacity of the Sea Dragon. The core stage diameter was widened to 21 meters, and the fairing to 26 meters. It had 19 LE-Z engines on the first stage with up to 8 SRB-Z boosters (a total of 11 times the Saturn V's launch thrust), and 4 LE-Z vacuum engines on the second stage.

(I made a custom patch to add gold foil textures to the ROTanks mod.)

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Tanegashima model by Tyler Raiz. Instead of using the Kerbal Konstructs mod like in their video (which causes the custom island model to disappear at a certain distance), I had to:

- resize the island to a more reasonable (but not exact) size
- edit the Earth heightmap .dds, replacing the default terrain with water (so it doesn't intersect with the new island model)
- move the space center in LaunchSites.cfg
- create a patch to use the PQS City2 function of the Kopernicus mod to have the island visible at longer distances (like in Katniss's Cape Canaveral mod)

A test launch lifting a 1000 t liquid hydrogen tank into low Earth orbit

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[BrobDingnag]

It’s back! And it’s ludicrous! I love it. Perhaps at this point a mod or two could represent an asteroid mining/spaceship manufacturing process that would let you avoid launching rockets 10 times the size of the Saturn 5 from the ground now? It would also give you several entries in the series to show the establishment of this manufacturing infrastructure.

 

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It’s back! And it’s ludicrous! I love it. Perhaps at this point a mod or two could represent an asteroid mining/spaceship manufacturing process that would let you avoid launching rockets 10 times the size of the Saturn 5 from the ground now? It would also give you several entries in the series to show the establishment of this manufacturing infrastructure.

The Realism Overhaul mod doesn't have that kind of scope. It is only limited to technologies (such as engines) that existed or were at least component-tested in real life. Also, landing on an asteroid in Real Solar System (larger than in the original game) has buggy collision detection - quicksaving and reloading might put you a kilometer away or even inside the asteroid.

 

[Nik]

Yay !!

FWIW, I could not find how your JAXA managed to 'buy off' the Japanese fishing fleets who've stymied umpteen lesser launches by refusing to leave their traditional fishing grounds...

Totally tangential, looks like the recent release of that near-homeopathic diluted Fukushima waste-water will finally destroy the cruel legacy market for dolphin / cetacean meat. Even though the currents run the other way...

 

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Yay !!

FWIW, I could not find how your JAXA managed to 'buy off' the Japanese fishing fleets who've stymied umpteen lesser launches by refusing to leave their traditional fishing grounds...

Maybe they paid them off with the unlimited budget. Or the ASB gave them a supply of fish, I don't know.

 

[BrobDingnag]

The Realism Overhaul mod doesn't have that kind of scope. It is only limited to technologies (such as engines) that existed or were at least component-tested in real life.

Wait, so the engines in even your most recent, largest ships were actually laid out on paper? Like, in the early ‘60s or something?

Also, landing on an asteroid in Real Solar System (larger than in the original game) has buggy collision detection - quicksaving and reloading might put you a kilometer away or even inside the asteroid.

Oh, easy workaround, then. Phobos and Deimos are slated to become the gateway to the outer solar system IRL, and their gravity is completely negligible. Building assembly/launch sites there would give you a major time boost and save on launch mass (since you’re basically pushing away with RCS). They’re on rails, so there shouldn’t be any problems like with proc-gen asteroids.

 

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Wait, so the engines in even your most recent, largest ships were actually laid out on paper? Like, in the early ‘60s or something?

Oh, easy workaround, then. Phobos and Deimos are slated to become the gateway to the outer solar system IRL, and their gravity is completely negligible. Building assembly/launch sites there would give you a major time boost and save on launch mass (since you’re basically pushing away with RCS). They’re on rails, so there shouldn’t be any problems like with proc-gen asteroids.

NERVA II was apparently planned in the 1960s.
I don't think functional in-situ assembly mods like Extraplanetary Launchpads (which I've seen other people use, but haven't tried yet) are officially compatible with Realism Overhaul either. The RO/Realistic Progression community mostly likes to emulate the early Space Race era.

Besides, this scenario is partly inspired by The Destroyer, who likes to launch huge kiloton-class rockets from Earth in KSP RSS/RO.

(on another note, I'm thinking of doing another KSP playthrough in the default planetary system with colonization, extraplanetary launchpads, and interstellar mods, so I can play KSP 2 as it was meant to be)

 

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2049-09-30 - Three DRTS-X relay satellites (DRTS-X16, 17, and 18) were launched by an H-Z 102 rocket to Callisto. These satellites were powered by RTGs as sunlight was less powerful at Jupiter's distance. They would reach Jupiter by the end of 2052, and arrive at Callisto in early 2053.

Advances in materials allowed for the construction of lighter hydrogen fuel tanks that could carry more propellant in the same volume. A propulsion bus similar to the one used for the Ceres comsat network could thus be used to take the trio of satellites all the way to Callisto orbit.
(meta note: the new version of Realism Overhaul for KSP 1.12 changed tank masses when LH2 is loaded)

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2050-10-01 - One year after the comsats were launched, the first module of the Raijin Jupiter Cargo Vehicle (JCV) was launched by an H-ZA 208 rocket. It weighed over 1000 tonnes at launch and consisted of the Earth Departure Stage (21 m diameter, 2 LE-N engines) and Jupiter Orbit Stage (13.9 m, 1 LE-N engine).

2050-10-27 - An H-Z 102 launched the Jovian Moons Landing Module (JMLM) and Callisto Habitation Module (CaHM) to rendezvous and dock with the JCV using a auxiliary propulsion stage. After arriving in Callisto orbit, the CaHM would proceed to land on the surface while the JMLM would remain in orbit until the crew arrived. A propellant cache would refuel the lander after the stay on Callisto, so it could land and take off from Ganymede after being pushed there by another vehicle.

On October 30, the Trans-Jovian Injection was performed, to arrive in early 2054. It was split into three burns (1400 + 1500 + 3700 = 6600 m/s) due to the relatively low thrust of the LE-N engines.

Third trans-Jovian burn (after stage separation)

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1st burn (apogee)

2nd burn (apogee)

 

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2052-12-27 - The Data Relay satellites were the first to arrive in the Jupiter system. Just over a month later (2053-02-06), the three satellites settled into 8-hour equatorial orbits 2900 km above Callisto.

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2054-01-19 - The Jupiter Cargo Vehicle performed orbital insertion and reached Callisto in late February 2054. After entering a 500 km parking orbit, the Callisto Habitation Module and Jovian Moons Landing Module separated from the transfer stage. On Feburary 26, the CaHM used its 4 RL10 engines to descend to 100 km before landing in a flat equatorial area where Jupiter could be visible just above the horizon. Like the Tsukuyomi Moon base, which had to be powered for several days without sunlight, it used a Kilopower nuclear reactor and needed large radiators to dissipate heat.

Callisto had been selected for its safe distance from Jupiter’s radiation belts. Ganymede is at the innermost limit, while Europa and Io are constantly bombarded by radiation.

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2054-09-26 - The first module of the Raijin Jupiter Piloted Vehicle, consisting of the Earth Return Stage and Jupiter Orbit Stage, was launched into a 400 km orbit by an H-ZA 208 rocket. Over the next six months, six more H-ZA 208s would launch the three parts of the Earth Departure Stage, as well as three refueling tankers. On March 9, 2055, the crew of the Raijin mission launched: mission commander Hachirota Hoshino (whose girlfriend worked in orbital debris cleanup), engineer Ken’ichi Obikawa, and scientist Juri Araki. The crew vehicle and orbital habitat brought the total mass of the JPV to 5700 tonnes in low Earth orbit. The JPV began its departure in two parts from March 12 to 14, changing its velocity by a total of 6500 m/s (2900 + 3600) for a 2 year journey to the Jupiter system.

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2054-09-12 - Launch of Earth Return Stage and Jupiter Orbit Stage

2054-10-08 - Launch of Earth Departure Stage

2054-11-02 - Launch of Earth Departure Stage B1

2054-11-27 - Launch of Earth Departure Stage B2

2054-12-23 - Launch of Refueling Tanker 1

2054-01-17 - Launch of Refueling Tanker 2

2055-02-11 - Launch of Refueling Tanker 3

2055-03-09 - Launch of Raijin crew and orbital habitat

 

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2057-06-22 - The Raijin Piloted Vehicle entered an elliptical orbit around Jupiter, using the last of the propellant in the Earth Departure Stage before activating the JPV's Jupiter Orbit Stage. 1 month later, the Jupiter Orbital Vehicle, a relatively small craft intended for transportation within the Jupiter system, undocked from the rest of the massive JPV. The JOV would enter Callisto orbit on July 23 while the JPV would continue to fly past on other side of Callisto, a gravity assist to lower its orbit around Jupiter. On July 25, the JOV docked with the Jovian Moons Landing Module (and propellant cache), which had been waiting in a 500 km orbit. After the crew transferred into the lander, they left the JOV and propellant cache behind as they made their descent and landed near the Callisto habitat. Hachirota Hoshino, Ken’ichi Obikawa, and Juri Araki climbed down, planted the flag, and walked to the habitat where they would stay until December.

The Jupiter Piloted Vehicle one day before orbital insertion
(zoomed in with low field of view)

The Jupiter Orbital Vehicle docked to the Jovian Moons Landing Module

Right to left: Hachirota Hoshino, Ken’ichi Obikawa, and Juri Araki landed on Callisto

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Orbital insertion around Jupiter

The Jupiter Orbital Vehicle undocks

Arrival at Callisto

Callisto orbital insertion and rendezvous was performed in three phases (and one plane change)

Rendezvous with the lander

The Jovian Moons Lander descending onto the surface of Callisto

The Callisto habitat, now occupied

 

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Cinematic trailer for the Raijin Jupiter mission