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GSpace Blog #004[]

Finding the way – the Direction Program[]

GSpace finished the Atmosphere Program on 30.04.2017. Its complete success regained most of the agency’s old reputation. Meanwhile, a twin-program for the liquid surface planet visiting Atmosphere Program was also being planned, to reach every solid-surface planet in the solar system, too. However, these missions needed to be planned very carefully, because the previous year’s disastrous manned mission was still alive in the minds of the people.

One of the main problems was navigation. The way to travel for example to GOL was very long, and included many sub-destinations, because of the limited capabilities of the NaviComp system. This problem already arose during the Atmosphere missions and meant an even bigger problem to the upcoming Apollo missions. The leadership of the agency decided to call a new program into being: the Direction Program, having Col. D.P. as its leader.

The goal of the program was to somehow ease the navigation between far away points. After some interesting, but almost impossible ideas, the most popular one was accepted: there must be a waypoint for every planet that can be seen from HOM. As only LUN and PUR are close enough to HOM to see them in the NaviComp, a waypoint (WP) had to be set up for all the other 10 planets. In addition, 2 test missions were included in the program, which adds up to 12 missions in total.

The first mission, DIR 01T was a test for how the missions will work: Col. D.P. with the Shuttle flew to the calculated WP location between RED & HOM and put the coordinates into the NaviComp. The conclusion was evident: using the Shuttle for these missions was just too expensive due to its high fuel consumption. (Remember, this was the old Shuttle, not one from the new series.) During the DIR 07 mission, the Shuttle was almost lost, because of the lack of fuel, Col. D.P. barely managed to bring it home. However, it was still used for 5 missions in total, including the other test mission. The remaining 7 missions were carried out with the help of my ship, GSS Flash.

The Direction Program was declared successfully completed, but it was not a perfect achievement. As the second test mission already indicated, the WP-s were not too accurate for long distances. This was due to the fact, that – according to a Centauri Spaceworks blog post – the NaviComp signal of the planets shows their clockwise orbital entry point, not their centre.

To sum up, the Direction Program was an interesting concept, but it was not implemented well enough to be completely successful. On the long term, it still helped our astronauts a lot, and made long-distance trips much easier by giving a direction to ships to fly in.

Written by: Gen. Á.D.

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