Moving on (sort of)

Been a bit too busy to blog lately, but yes, I did follow the return to earth of Soyuz TMA-8 last week. I was somewhat impress to see that the NASA TV coverage had improved since the last time. The views of the plasma trail both from the ISS and from the ground were amazing .... first time I have seen that for a Soyuz spacecraft. I'm not too sure which one of the 3 fireballs was the descent module (SA), but I'm guessing it's the less bright one ... well at least it make sens as it's the only module that isn't been destroyed during the reentry. That leave the brighter one to be the service module (PAO) which at that point should still have some propellant, thus burn brighter? ... Hmm ... well I'm not so sure anymore now ... better ask more knowledgeable folks ...

Work on the OctoberSky addon for Orbiter have been progressing nicely lately. Over the week-end we added a new Soyuz variant to our (small) fleet, the 7K-OKS (used only for Soyuz 10 and the ill fated Soyuz 11):

The latest patch (released last week) for the 2006 edition have not only fixed the animation bug which was crippling us, but also introduced a couple of new API calls which are making our life much easier (adding and removing meshes on the fly and changing the Center of Gravity) :-) Nice going Dr Martin!

While castorp, my partner in crime, is busy meshing away, I'm going to be reworking on the reentry sequence ... obviously the whereabout of the thermal blankets (EVTI) will be once again a subject of this blog ... X-