CobaltWolf

How are you attaching the LM? The bottom node on the descent stage is actually two identical nodes - one should have the engine attached to it, one should attach to the SLA. Do you mean the SIM bay on the Service Module? It should be something you decouple. I think. If I remember. I thought the Atlas 2 omitted the LR-101s and that’s why it had the roll thruster module.

Fun from Twitter EDIT: OH! Also, Viking update - I made a really nice launch adapter for it.

Here is the image I was thinking of about it, I don't think I have a study document or anything.

There were studies back in the day for SRBs that could be shut down (and reignited!) using an extinguisher system. I don't think it made it very far, I think it was mostly a result of experts trying to push the capabilities of SRBs past what was needed.

Most SRBs don't have them in real life. You either adjust the amount of propellant or shape your orbit differently to use a set amount of delta V. The shutdown on the BDB solids is a gameplay consideration to make them more useful, since I don't expect players to spend weeks/months planning a mission and shaping the trajectories haha. I won't give an ETA, since work hasn't even begun on texturing the lander or getting it in game. I'd say before Christmas though. (Also, I am still looking for more people to sign up to the patreon) Here's an update on the orbiter, though:

I believe it has something to do with igniting the SRB - though I thought usually the ignitor was at the top. A lot of the STAR motors have them.

More Viking development stream! Working on the propulsion section today! https://www.twitch.tv/cobaltwolfy

Hey, so I lied. Whoops. Taking care of bed bugs is a lot of work, it turns out. You should share pictures! I could see us doing MEM at some point, it's just things take time so me saying "I'd like to do it" means it might take a couple more years once I commit to it haha. We've looked into it before, but the document doesn't seem to be available, sadly. I'd probably say nah to the LLRV, just not enough practical uses for it vs making actual lander variants. I was thinking the one from Space 1999 You'll have to ask Invader, but I think there are some Voyager variants planned. Probably not the Grumman LSS, but I have had my ear turned a bit to making a MOLAB-type rover at some point. The problem is there's a lot of different designs for it, and I'd want to kind of pick one and stick with it. Wait, is Engine Ignitor itself included in the download? I thought it was just compatibility cfgs. Yeah that's how you have to do it, never really thought that hard about it. I still use Imgur to upload my pics for the thread. It has an IVA??? Pretty much... there's only one MM detector on the bottom, and the photometers go in 3x symmetry. I explained on the stream, there were some compromises I had to make for those experiments.

Thank you Foxx, and everyone else, for the well wishes on this landmark (?) achievement. I'm so glad to know how much joy this project has brought people, so many of whom I've never even met. This September will mark 8 years of working on BDB - more than 1/4 of my life. It's honestly been worth every moment, and we have no plans of stopping any time soon. Now, I was planning on having some really cool Viking Orbiter previews by now, but I didn't get as far as I'd wanted. Work has been pretty crazy lately and taken a lot out of me. Then back in May my car got totaled, and last week my phone got bricked, and now as of yesterday we have bed bugs in our apartment. That's not even half of it the stuff that's been going on the last few months, and things have been taking a lot of energy, time, and money I don't really have. Sooooo... I guess now is as good a time as any to do my annual plug of the BDB donation pages! You can do one-time donations through my Paypal donation link, and recurring donations can be made through the BDB Patreon (I don't have time to do Patreon-exclusive content, it's just if you want to help support the me). There are some expenses I associate with BDB - mainly software and subscriptions - and keeping those numbers up helps make sure I'm not paying for the time I spend on this. And if people are extra generous, maybe it will help keep me and my wife on track with saving for our honeymoon. I can see there has been a lot of discussion since my last post (4 pages?), I will have to come back later today and reply to as many specific posts as I can. In the meantime, here's the current progress on Viking. I was hoping to have the solar panels, antennas, and core at least fully textured. There's still a lot of wiring to be added to all these parts.

Care to elaborate?

There is no proper version of that motor, no. It's a lot more work than it looks, you never wind up being able to reuse as much as you'd like from the existing model. Not only that, but the stock wheel system doesn't support tracks like that. In any case, there's still a ton of work to do for the flown Viking parts, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. That will take up my entire summer, if not more - even small requests are time consuming and require me to sustain interest for several weeks or months. By the time I get to that point I'll likely be ready to work on something different.

Never said I was making rovers... It's just Viking.

Stream is live!

Streaming again today! Viking Orbiter dev stream starting ~2 hrs from this post (1:30ish Eastern). Going to be a chill stream, just blocking in/modeling. This probe is still in a pretty early state so you'll also probably see me refering to reference a good bit.

Booting up the stream now! Next stop: THE SUN

Absolutely incredible news...I'm going to be doing a dev stream this afternoon (~2 hrs from this post). We'll be getting Helios in game, and afterwards maybe we'll work on modeling the Viking Orbiter for a bit. Stay tuned.

Alright, good news / bad news time. Good news - the new Helios parts are pretty much ready! Bad news - I'm going out of town and won't be back for over a week. So we'll have to wait a bit to see it.

There were studies for both, not sure on the context (if the Gemini ones were all the earlier ones, or what)

Unfortunately, I'm pretty out of the loop and wasn't very technically minded in the first place; the average mod user probably knows more than I do about KSP issues these days. So I don't know how much I, personally, can help with the kind of bugs some people are reporting at the moment. Apologies! Hopefully someone here on the thread can help more. Uhm, put it this way - enough parts that I'm not interested in taking on the project right now, haha. And certainly not without something more than a blog post to go off of. I honestly have no idea what could even cause that. I see errors in your log but nothing that would have anything to do with SRBs..? Hmm. I appreciate the work but I'm not sure on those engines specifically. I don't think the GE-405H is the best model for the Transtar. I think the AJ10-118F or 118K would be more appropriate models. If it's a relatively simple performance variation we could try adding that as a B9 switch to one of those engines. For the Agena, I don't think we have any fluorine engines in the mod. I'm skeptical of fluorine as a fuel, since (as I understand it) it's even more dangerous/difficult to work with than hypergolics. I also have a concern from a gameplay POV - I don't want an engine with vastly improved performance that uses standard LFO. LH2 engines have their performance balanced in game by the tank requirements and boiloff. LF2 (represented as LFO) doesn't have the same drawbacks. I'm not sure what performance the CECE had. A quick look says it was mostly a tech demonstrator for deep throttling, which isn't applicable to KSP (at least outside of RO). We already have a good number of RL-10 variations so I think there is already one with identical performance stats. Again, I'm not sure, but my best guess looking at the log would be running out of memory? But your mod list isn't nearly as crazy as some of the others I see, so I don't know. I know we use 1/4 real thrust. ISP should be the same as IRL. I know we have a crazy spreadsheet for converting SRB stats. And stuff like tank volumes/weights are also calculated by a spreadsheet. Most of the work for figuring that out was done by Jso, who isn't part of the team anymore. I'm not sure how she got the values she uses; I just still use the calculator spreadsheets.

I'm looking into it, I have the document the post is based on, just haven't looked at it too much. It will probably just be "loosely inspired" tbh.

Yeah, I remember reading that in 2017 or so and being really impressed with the illustrations. I usually try and work from actual documents. I can try and see about tracking down the sources DSFP used. The more I look the more I realize how may parts FLEM would need. To be clear, it isn't something I'm currently planning on doing. I am a bit interested though. EDIT: Looks like the main paper is on AIAA, if anyone can grab it for me... https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.1966-36 Got it, didn't have anything useful

Yeah, I never even committed to making FLEM. I think after I finish the Helios revamp I'd like to try working on the orbital half of the Viking missions to see if that helps move those things along. I also don't know if there's any primary sources available for FLEM, which is something I strive to find before working on things anymore. I actually do 3D work professionally, though you'd be surprised how little overlap there is between my real job and KSP. I certainly don't get to hand paint textures for my "professional" career. Mostly just buying car assets off Turbosquid and ramming them together like a toddler, haha. Does that include the 4.25m "straight" walled SLA? Or just the expanded ones. Correct, the best way is usually to delete the Bluedog_DB folder from your GameData and replace it with a fresh one. If you know what you're doing, you can try replacing smaller chunks of the mod, but it could easily lead to problems.

Ha, you make it sound so easy. I forgot part of it landed, that's definitely a lot more complicated than I thought.

What do you mean all IVAs don't work? Most of the ones in the mod are the black "void" placeholder IVA. If you have Kerbal portraits in the lower right of your HUD, the IVAs aren't broken.

The official update is I have not heard anything since the announcement was made, which in retrospect was premature. I'd like to at least get the files from Akron to finish them but his IRL is very crazy. FLEM would be cool to have some day, I think we only have the S-IVB Venus Flyby design for that sort of thing at the moment right? I think the idea with the Gemini version is, even if the 'garage' isn't pressurized, at least you don't have to worry about the astronauts floating away...