Voyage by Stephen Baxter

[Belisarius]

A few screenies to let you all know where I am with Voyage

Saturn V-B with 4 SRBs blasting off with Ares Mission Stack

MEM retrofires to descend to Mars surface

Historic first step: Natalie York steps on Mars surface March 25 1986

Ares Mission patch - tacky version

All mission elements are fully functional, but there are compatability issues and lack of permission preventing me from uploading as of now. I have flown several missions according to the flight plan in the book, and everything worked fine. Great fun.

Will advise - I hope to get it done by the end of May

 

[teago]

This is sweet man! The only thing is in the first picture of the S VB, where the MEM is: i'm pretty sure that the MEM's shroud is contained within the shell of the S-2 and not just above it like you have. The book should have an illustration in the beginning showing this. But probably it is a limitation of what you can do with development, I know the only thing that kept me from doing something like this is my lack of skill in modeling or flight programming. Can't wait for it man!

 

[Belisarius]

This is sweet man! The only thing is in the first picture of the S VB, where the MEM is: i'm pretty sure that the MEM's shroud is contained within the shell of the S-2 and not just above it like you have. The book should have an illustration in the beginning showing this. But probably it is a limitation of what you can do with development, I know the only thing that kept me from doing something like this is my lack of skill in modeling or flight programming. Can't wait for it man!

Thanks for your enthusiasm, you just saved the whole thing. I was going to chuck it for lack of interest, but if there's at least one fan of the book who wants to see it fly in Orbiter, that's enough for me.
The SVB as you see it is pretty closely modelled on the book illustrations at the end of the book, where the flight plan and configurations are shown. Maybe that was only in the UK edition? Anyway, you need it bulging out like that to store the MEM, a pretty bulky piece of hardware.

BTW, talk about lack of skill at programming and modelling, you can't get worse than me. I groped at it, using pre-existing models, then learned bit by bit to modify them using Pablo Sanchez Luna's meshwizard. I still don't really know what's going on, but it seems to fly OK.

 

[Notebook]

Looks good, and a good book.

N.

 

[Missioncmdr]

I enjoyed the book. Should be a fun mission to fly in Orbiter.

And, as a side note, the book I have includes illustrations. I could scan them and post them if anyone wants to see them.

 

[Richieb]

Nice addon idea, cant wait to see it and would love to see the illustrations you have.
Keep up the good work

 

[FlyingSinger]

This is really cool - Baxter's book was great, and the screenies look really cool.

There was a previous add-on for this by Rich Wall, circa fall 2004. I can't get to Orbit Hangar now and I don't have the zip on this PC, but I found a text file called Apollo_Saturn2Mars_v0.98.txt which may have also been the name of the zip file, as well as some screen shots (dated 2004 so not mine since I didn't find Orbiter until March 2005).

I'm not sure if Rich's version is still around and if it is, whether it works with the latest Orbiter, so it's cool to see an up-to-date add-on for this alternate history Apollo-Mars program.

I hope this isn't discouraging - there are multiple Orbiter versions of various space programs, so go for it!

 

[Belisarius]

There was a previous add-on for this by Rich Wall, circa fall 2004. I can't get to Orbit Hangar now and I don't have the zip on this PC, but I found a text file called Apollo_Saturn2Mars_v0.98.txt which may have also been the name of the zip file, as well as some screen shots (dated 2004 so not mine since I didn't find Orbiter until March 2005).

I'm not sure if Rich's version is still around and if it is, whether it works with the latest Orbiter, so it's cool to see an up-to-date add-on for this alternate history Apollo-Mars program.

Mr Wall's addon was inspired by Voyager rather than a direct recreation, as I have been trying. It's available at avsim under the name you quote. I think it might be out of date for the present Orbiter. It uses triple-size Saturn Novas instead of the SV-B with SRBs, and the lander is a kind of modified Skylab.

Hope to finish this soon. But I can't upload until I get Andy McSorley's permission, and I still can't get in touch with him. Thanks for your encouragement.

 

[Graham2001]

There was a previous add-on for this by Rich Wall, circa fall 2004. I can't get to Orbit Hangar now and I don't have the zip on this PC, but I found a text file called Apollo_Saturn2Mars_v0.98.txt which may have also been the name of the zip file, as well as some screen shots (dated 2004 so not mine since I didn't find Orbiter until March 2005).

I'm not sure if Rich's version is still around and if it is, whether it works with the latest Orbiter, so it's cool to see an up-to-date add-on for this alternate history Apollo-Mars program.

Rich's version V0.98 is still available on AVSIM. From memory it does not run on the latest version of Orbiter due to changes in the way space stations were handled.

 

[Belisarius]

Now ready for a beta-version upload. See OrbitHangar thread

 

[Zachstar]

Is it possible you can design this with Velcro Rockets?

 

[Belisarius]

You probably could - the existing Saturn VB launcher is a Multistage vessel. All you need to do is put the Mission Stack on a Saturn Velcro with boosters. I'll look into it next week. I don't know if the Velcros are fully programmable like the Multistage.