Zootronian Spaceflight Standards

The Zootronian Spaceflight Standards are a series of guidelines published by the Zootronian government about safety, docking, and manoeuvring spacecraft. See the full text below.

Section 1: Pods

 * 1) A pod must have mounted one less than a parachute for each crew member's capacity, and one for every heat shield, but at least 1 parachute. See section 10 subsection 1.
 * 2) A pod must contain a heat shield capable of surviving re-entry, see section 9, below.
 * 3) A pod must be able to escape a malfunctioned launch vehicle, see section 4, below.
 * 4) A pod must contain resources, and a means of, orientation, through separation and re-entry.
 * 5) No pod resources may be intended to be used before pod separation, or during emergencies. Separate stores must be used.
 * 6) Pods may only contain monopropellent if used, otherwise, it must not be included.

Subsection 1: Electric Charge

 * 1) Electric Charge (EC) must be replenished as fast or faster than maximum usage, when all consumers, excepting engines and thrusters, are active at full capacity, including reaction wheels, and no main reactors are active.
 * 2) EC must be replenished faster than nominal usage, when all consumers, excepting reaction wheels, are active, and only solar panels and constant energy sources are active. This excludes main reactors and fuel cells.
 * 3) EC must be stored to last 48 hours of nominal usage, with no generated EC, or 200 units, whichever is larger.
 * 4) At least 100 units, or 5 minutes peak usage, discounting engines and thrusters, separate from re-entry resources, see section 1, item 5, must be included as an emergency reserve.

Subsection 2: Monopropellent

 * 1) Monopropellent must be stored in quantities of:
 * 2) 7 units/planned docking manoeuvre/1 ton wet mass
 * 3) 4 units/planned burn or manoeuvre (not including docking)/1 ton wet mass
 * 4) 1 unit/1 ton wet mass.
 * 5) Monopropellent may not be used from orbital stages during launch, and the tanks must be shut off.

Subsection 3: Attitude Control Systems

 * 1) RCS system power must be available at 1 unit/5 tons wet mass in pitch and yaw directions, and 1 unit/10 tons wet mass in roll directions.
 * 2) Fins and other mechanisms may be used to supplant RCS thrusters, with 1 unit of surface lift being equal to 1 unit of RCS system power.
 * 3) Reaction wheel power can be used to supplant RCS thrusters, with 2 units of reaction wheel power being equal to 1 unit of RCS system power. In addition, this power consumption must be provided for by the booster stage, with enough EC to last 15 minutes, see section 2, subsection 1.

Subsection 4: Propellants

 * 1) Propellant and fuel must be available to provide 1.15 times the needed delta-V, see section 3.

Subsection 1: Payloads

 * 1) A payload must include a way of separating from the parent craft.
 * 2) A payload must include a means of deorbiting or disposal.

Subsection 2: Delta-V Budgeting

 * 1) Enough Delta-V must be included so that it is at least:
 * 2) 1.2 times that of manoeuvres which take place in unstable orbits.
 * 3) 1.1 times that of manoeuvres which take place in stable orbits.
 * 4) 1.5 times that required for a landing.
 * 5) 1/10th that required to attain orbit, to be used to deorbit.
 * 6) 500 m/s /rendezvous/1 g gravity ASL.
 * 7) Delta-V required for a launch is to be calculated using:
 * 8) *The atmospheric delta-V of all stages except for the last stage.
 * 9) *1/10th of the total delta-V is to be calculated using the vacuum delta-V of the last stage.
 * 10) *The remaining delta-V of the last stage is to be atmospheric.
 * 11) *This calculation does not factors in about 1.1 times for a safety margin, but should not be counted on. It will always produce at most the actual delta-V of the booster, but sometimes less.

Subsection 3: TWR

 * 1) The Thrust-to-Weight Ration (TWR) of stages operating in an atmosphere intersecting orbit must be at least 1.2.
 * 2) The TWR of stages operating in a stable orbit must be at least 0.2.
 * 3) The TWR of a stage which operates in an atmosphere must not exceed 2.0 initially, except for launch escape systems, see section 4, which may not exceed 25.0 initially.
 * 4) The TWR of any normal stage is recommended to not exceed 5.0 initially.

Subsection 4: Miscellany

 * 1) The perigee of an asteroid may never go below 1,000 km (1,000,000 m).
 * 2) A fission reactor may never be inside the atmosphere of any terrestrial body, unless the reactor has never been used.
 * 3) All nuclear waste storage containers are considered to be hazardous, whether loaded or empty, unless the container has never been loaded. Those hazardous containers are never to be impacted into any terrestrial body, and are suggested to be disposed of, when needed, by impacting into a non-terrestrial body, or by terminal insolation.

Subsection 1: Launch Escape Systems

 * 1) A Launch Escape System (LES) must be capable of throwing clear all crewed parts and hazardous parts from the path of a malfunctioning booster at its max TWR while less than 5 km from the ground, true altitude, and safely returning them to the surface.
 * 2) A LES must have a TWR of at least 5.0, or 1.5 times that of the booster, whichever is higher.
 * 3) A LES must have a TWR not exceeding 25.0.
 * 4) A LES is encouraged to be jettisoned at the end of your 1st or 0th stages.

Subsection 2: Safety Systems

 * 1) A system must be in place to be able to deal with a fault during any part of the flight plan for hazardous and crewed parts.

Section 5: Procedures
Action groupings are recommended to be set as follows: 1: Routine activity, reactors/engines startup and shutdown 2: Transition between orbiting and landing 3: Safe craft for docking/manoeuvres/etc. 4: Prepare craft for orbital activities 5: Drop LES, safe abort systems 6: Booster state transitions (center engine cut off) 7: Transition controls to alternate location 8: Activate/deactivate strong control systems (airbrakes, RCS) 9: Release payload 0: Activate parachutes, drop spent LES Abort: Shut down all engines, activate LES
 * 1) Action groupings 1-4 are reserved for payload operations.
 * 2) Action grouping 5 is free, but recommended as a safing system.
 * 3) Action groupings 6-9 are reserved for booster operations.
 * 4) Action groupings 0 and abort are reserved for emergency systems.

Section 6: Propulsion

 * 1) Propulsion craft must contain a remote guidance unit (RGU) and EC for such.
 * 2) Propulsion craft must contain enough fuel, if nuclear, for at least 1 day at full power output.
 * 3) Propulsion craft must produce less heat, if nuclear than their cooling capacity, and it is recommended that craft have 1.1 times the needed cooling capacity.
 * 4) Propulsion craft may not be impacted onto any terrestrial body, nor may they enter any terrestrial atmosphere, if they contain any nuclear components, unless components have never been activated, see section 3 subsection 4 item 2 and 3.
 * 5) Propulsion craft may not use direct nuclear propulsion within cis-minmar space.
 * 6) The loading of fuel and propellant onto a nuclear propulsion craft must be done with separate craft.
 * 7) A craft which carries nuclear fuel must be fully fault- and fail- safe, see section 4 subsection 2 item 1.

Section 7: Docking

 * 1) All docking between landed craft is to be carried out by AGU (Advanced Grappling Unit).
 * 2) All docking between propulsion stages and payload stages for orbital assembly shall use grip-o-tron ports on both sides of the linkages.
 * 3) All probes shall dock using 0.625 m ports, unless they are too large for such, then they will be treated as a orbital payload craft, and dock using a standard port.
 * 4) All connections between station parts shall be made using clamp-o-tron sr. ports.
 * 5) All connections between station resource storage parts shall be made using space-y 3.75 m docking ports.
 * 6) All connections between stations and spacecraft shall be made using standard clamp-o-tron docking ports.
 * 7) All docking of orbital craft shall use standard clamp-o-tron docking ports.
 * 8) All docking of debris and ships without docking ports shall be conducted by an AGU.

Section 8: Boosters

 * 1) Side boosters must contain separative force one size larger then central stack stages, see item 2.
 * 2) Stack stages must include a:
 * 3) * Separtron if 2.5 m wide and longer than 1 orange tank.
 * 4) * MRS Flingatron if 3.75 m wide and longer than 1 S3-14400 tank.
 * 5) * Space-y Ejectatron if 5 m wide and longer than 1 F26 tank.
 * 6) The final stage of a booster must include a RGU (RC-L01 or RC-001S) or SGS.

Section 9: Testing

 * 1) All craft must be tested in simulators for all fail modes and abort modes, with adjustments made, until the craft does not cause issues.
 * 2) All craft must similarly be tested in simulators in a normal mission until no issues arise.
 * 3) All craft must be tested in simulators to ensure that parachutes will work properly.
 * 4) Simulator flights must also run through the flight computer's code, to check for errors.
 * 5) Simulator flight notes must be added to vessel documentation, unless they have been changed.

Subsection 1: Capacity

 * 1) Enough parachutes must be included on a crewed part at the rate of 1 less than 1 per crew member, and a further 1 per heat shield included, minimum of 1 parachute.
 * 2) Non-crewed, but hazardous parts must have enough parachute capacity to safely land twice their mass.
 * 3) Non-crewed and non-hazardous parts which need to be landed safely must have parachute capacity to safely land 1.2 times their mass.

Subsection 2: Opening

 * 1) A parachute must fully open at no less than 500 m.
 * 2) A parachute must partially open at no less than 1000 m, preferably 2500 m.