Skylab-Shuttle | KSP Alternate History Documentary | KSP RSS-RO

[@mrguy1073]

I’ve always loved the idea of Skyla being saved In my save file Skylab eventually expanded and became the international space station and is still in service as of 2083 having grown into the biggest commercial port in LEO

[@tetraxis3011]

Thats an old as spacestation. The skylab components would be 100 years old.

[@CT1409Echo]

@@tetraxis3011 i would assume that older components would be swapped or repaired

[@MrCubFan415]

Please make this a KZbin series.

[@dodo-ur5os]

@@CT1409Echoor perhaps the original module is kept as a sort of museum

[@Wurtoz9643]

@@CT1409Echospace-station of Theseus

[@uhb0t]

I love it however it is sad that good ksp content creators, like you, don’t usually show up on many peoples fyp and they don’t get a picture on what amazing content is really about

[@willharmatuk4723]

The shuttle entry (reentry) into the atmosphere occurs with the shuttle’s nose pitched up at about 40 degrees, and it rolls from side to side to keep from bouncing back up too high. For what it is worth.

[@rosaliemontalban9395]

Thanks for info of the shuttle

[@Damon-N]

I love the accuracy of the shuttle launches, doing the gravity turn so the shuttle is upside-down, the white fuel tanks which was on the first 2 shuttle launches, the shuttle bay doors opening at different times, it's just amazing 👏 👏 👏

[@AluminumOxide]

Lovely cinematic video! By the way judging by the way you land the shuttles, it seems you dont have Ferram Aerospace Research mod installed. That mod allows you to glide a great distance, with real lifting body physics

[@thepilotben]

Thanks for watching! Thank you for the great suggestion, I've never got around to trying FAR but it sounds like I should give it a go 😊

[@hegemonycricket9549]

I still have a bottle of Skylab Repellent that someone gave me a couple of weeks before it deorbited that summer.

[@DinoRicky]

Cool

[@alexandermakovics4583]

Really nice video, love the subtle sliding pans. What could have been!

[@basila33]

One problem - Shuttles could not stay in orbit for more than couple of weeks, thus crew had to wait next flight without any means to return to Earth. Any fail of life support, fire, micrometeorite and so on and they die without chance to save. NASA would have to continue Apollo flights or build new capsule which would be docked to Skylab for safe escape.

[@alexanderleach3365]

Awesome alternate history video.

[@mikekopack6441]

Very well done!

[@TheKeenTribe]

If I'm correct, they stopped painting the fuel tank after STS-2 to make the shuttle 600lbs lighter

[@RucaTuga]

Great video! Love the supporting tower and all the movement parts detaching from the rocket previous to launch. Could you share the mod that adds the tower and the space shuttle set?

[@longlakeshore]

The delay in the Shuttle program in the late 70s was a huge disappointment and just the beginning of endless eye rolls with STS. Skylab was lost in May 1979, the first Shuttle launch didn't happen until April 1981 and there were so many problems which had to be fixed the second launch didn't happen until November 1981--seven months later. NASA never turned orbiters around as quickly as planned. We were supposed to get two launches a month. We had the Shuttle for 30 years (360 months) which should have been 720 launches. We got 135. Part of the justification of its expense was that it would replace all our other boosters : Atlas, Delta & Titan. That never happened. The stupidity of putting crew on the side of a rocket instead of on top with an escape facility became painfully obvious with the loss of two orbiters and 14 crew. In retrospect the Shuttle program was a dog. When the Shuttle finally flew it was said "it had nowhere to go" since Skylab had been lost. Even though most STS missions would launch satellites not service Skylab the loss of our first space station was painful to watch..

[@CodeS7-w4t]

Loved it so much

[@Jhonaexploracionespacial]

Hey, what mods did you use?

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

*_Great_** video...👍*

[@MrCubFan415]

Would have been nice to fit Skylab onto the ISS somewhere. Oh well

[@KiRiTO72987]

Man ive always wanted to play in RSS/RO but have some skill issues

[@astroevada]

How tf you got bluedog to work with RSS/RO?

[@thepilotben]

Thanks for watching! I use custom config files that I made to rescale the performance for RSS RO 😊

[@rowanbarnes3835]

@@thepilotben Is there any chance you could share that config file? I've been stuck on this for ages, and it would be immensely helpful!

[@chriscushman6580]

Really nice animations… though not very practical…. Honestly the number shuttle missions it took could have been cut in half…. Saving billions of dollars on a station that was boarder in on old tech when it launched…. I also wondered why no permanent replacement for the missing solar shield … they flew how many missions? 40 using the flimsy parasol? I can honestly understand why they didn’t try harder to save her… they didn’t need a shuttle mission to do a reboots interview a safer orbit… that could have been a remote controlled mission.

[@Wafflechamps]

Its not an animation its KSP RSS what if

[@lukestrawwalker]

Well honestly shuttle and a space station were designed to work hand-in-glove. Each gave a "reason to exist" to the other. Shuttle was, early in its career, deemed the "be all, end all" of launch vehicles and originally intended to eventually supplant ALL other other launch vehicles entirely. OF course that never happened, even though the US gubmint TRIED to make it happen... the Challenger disaster finally put the last nail in the coffin of that dream... and exposed the utter senselessness of using an EXPENSIVE *MANNED* spacecraft to do simple launches of unmanned satellites better launched on unmanned rockets, even if they were expendable.

[@brianarbenz1329]

Presumably John Young and Bob Crippen would have been on that 1979 Shuttle mission, making John Young a Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Shuttle astronaut. Even without the Skylab involvement, he was the most versatile astronaut.

[@lukeworster4525]

KSP=Krazy super plane

[@soupsoupblockmango9001]

No KSP=Kerbal Space Program

[@brianarbenz1329]

Wonderful job on this! It’s a great look at what could have been. Skylab occupies a warm place in my heart. I was 14 when it launched and Pete, Joe and Paul heroically saved it. What a terrific success Skylab was!

[@brianarbenz1329]

And kudos to Askerad, for excellent and dreamy musical scoring!

[@DinoRicky]

Wait r u talking about irl Please don’t r/ woosh me just curious

[@lukestrawwalker]

Only problem was, Skylab was designed as an INTERIM space station, not a permanent one. It was launched fully provisioned for the three crews that would be launched on Apollos to her, (Skylab 2,3, and 4) complete with their food, clothing, necessities, scientific experimental materials and gear, etc. Skylab, having been constructed from a converted S-IVB rocket stage, had the forward hydrogen tank converted into living space with storage, and outfitted with amenities such as the kitchen, space shower, living quarters for the three crewmen, scientific gear, etc on two "floors" constructed of triangular-holed honeycomb gridwork floors that special shoes with matching "locks" on the bottom could be locked onto, to keep the astronauts in place. In the center of the common bulkhead that separated the hydrogen tank living quarters from the lower, smaller oxygen tank, a "waste airlock" was installed, and the lower oxygen tank designed to be vented to space and in vacuum. Through the waste airlock, the astronauts threw away all their garbage-- from soiled uniforms to food packaging and other wastes, so the oxygen tank acted like a big "space dumpster" with whatever air blowing the material out of the waste airlock into the oxygen tank venting overboard into space. Eventually this "septic tank" or space dumpster would fill up, which would require a different means of getting rid of waste materials produced on the station. The Soviets solved this problem. Most of their early Salyut stations, which were based on converted hulls of Proton rocket stages early on, which launched fully equipped for their planned crews, and later missions simply carried up a small amount of extra materials needed and left it on the station. Obviously this wasn't acceptable for long-term habitation of a station-- a resupply vehicle would be needed, reboost of the station was necessary to overcome orbital decay, and a means of disposing of garbage and waste from the station was necessary for a station to be permanently habitable. Subsequent Salyut stations incorporated a propulsion system derived from the Soyuz instrument module (service module in the West) installed on the back of the station to house reboost propulsion engines, and a second airlock at the center of the rear of the station in addition to the forward airlock for Soyuz to dock with visiting crews. This allowed two crews to occupy the station at once, and allowed for a second docking port for a resupply vehicle. The Soviets then modified their Soyuz into an automated unmanned resupply craft, replacing the reentry crew module from the middle of the three-module Soyuz vehicle and replacing it with unpressurized storage area housing propellant tanks, and designed an automatic refueling system that coupled up when the spacecraft docked, making the resupply vehicle a space tanker. Soyuz's basic "orbital module" which was on the forward end of the spacecraft served as pressurized cargo carrier, since it docked directly to the station, allowing hatches to be opened and cargo removed as needed, it also would serve as additional storage or a "pantry" while the resupply vehicle was docked. It of course also used the same instrument (service) module as Soyuz, so very common with Soyuz. They called their resupply craft "Progress", which is still in use servicing the ISS today. Progress could automatically dock with the back port on Salyut stations, where the station crew could unload the supplies sent up, whether provisions and clothing or additional scientific experiments/equipment and supplies. Progress could refuel the Salyut's orbital propulsion system for its reboost engines, and could burn its own instrument module engines to reboost Salyut before departing the station. Once all the supplies were removed, all the trash and disused instruments and broken gear or waste materials were loaded into the pressurized orbital module of Progress, and then the hatches sealed and Progress would back away, and perform a deorbit burn to put itself on course to burn up in the atmosphere. Thus the station itself could be resupplied with provisions and garbage/waste disposed of by Progress vehicles continuously. Crews could transport up to the station and back to Earth via Soyuz. Later adding a multiple docking "node" to the front of the Soyuz module was used to create the MIR station, so that additional modules could dock at its four sideways-and-upward/downward facing ports on the node, as well as being daisy-chained off the end as needed, creating a truly modular space station. Of course Mir would continue for many years right up to the ISS. Skylab COULD have been continued to be used by the US, but it would have had to be completely resupplied and waste hauled back to Earth via shuttle, as the US had no resupply module available otherwise. Skylab had suffered some degradation to its interior and equipment due to the heat exposure after the destruction of the meteoroid shield during launch and the subsequent overheating of the station... so what that would bode for the usefulness of Skylab long term who knows. I have a feeling that over time Skylab would have started falling apart, and it holding out that long would have been problematical. We'll never know. Mir was pretty well falling apart after its 14 years in orbit, so they say. Course the first modules of ISS, the Russian ones launched on Proton rockets and the first node delivered by shuttle, have been up there a LOT longer... heck shuttle took 13 years of assembly time over 40+ shuttle flights just to reach "end of construction" in 2010 with the shuttle retirement, which left a few modules on the ground, actually. SO maybe Skylab would have been fine for all those years, even drifting around unmanned. Hard to say.

[@CT1409Echo]

bro wrote a whole book💀

[@brianarbenz1329]

I largely agree with Mr. Strawwalker’s “book.” Five years of vacancy would have made the Skylab very difficult to reuse, and its technology would have to be updated so thoroughly that building a new space station would have been more practical.

[@jaypaint4855]

19:21 This is the first shuttle landing i’ve seen in KSP that wouldn’t have destroyed its landing gear. You sir are an excellent pilot.

[@SofieBrink]

Really well made, loved it

[@Nostalgic9080]

This is a great video. How do you get your shuttle lanuches and landings so accurate

[@Yaivenov]

Was the original plan to put the adaptor module on the front docking port? Seems like it would be more efficient to leave the teleoperator stage docked there to provide boosts when shuttle is away. Curious if this was in the plan or your own choice. Awesome work btw, I still haven't quite figured out space plane voodoo.

[@thepilotben]

Thanks for watching! Very good question and I'm not entirely sure. I probably could've made the program a bit more efficient but there's always room for improvement 😊

[@lukestrawwalker]

Yeah it would have made more sense to do that and put the docking port on the side port of the Skylab... the reboost module could perform reboosts and if the docking gear were up to the strain, even the shuttle's forward thrusters could have been used for reboost. The shuttle would have to dock facing the far end of Skylab with the vertical tail up between the forward two solar arrays on the ATM...

[@ewanlebozec9208]

The original skylab reactivation proposal was indeed using the front docking port, no idea why but that's what every diagram about it shows, probably for the 25kW power extension

[@tetraxis3011]

Didnt know that Skylab had an extra solar array that was lost in the accident, always thought it was only the X array and the right array.

[@brianarbenz1329]

The other array is somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic. It was sliced off its folded place on the exterior of the Skylab about a minute and a half into the launch by a micrometeoroid/sun shield which was ripped away by aerodynamic pressure higher than anticipated. There were honeycomb-like indentions built into the surface of the micrometeoroid shield and engineers had not accounted for the fact that they would fill rapidly with extra air during the climb. That extra air put more pressure into those indentions and that ripped the shield away. The other side's solar array was locked into its closed position by the shield's impact, but fortunately was not permanently locked. Joe Kerwin and Pete Conrad meticulous cut it free on a quickly planned and exhausting spacewalk. It was a glorious moment when the panel was freed and began opening. It was like watch something bloom and come to life!

[@kevincgustafson]

How am I just seeing this now!? Well done.

[@thepilotben]

Wow, I'm a big fan of your channel, thank you!

[@kevincgustafson]

@@thepilotben Keep up the good work!