DBowman

monster task - I saw some guy using regression analysis from multiple launches trying to back compute the different propellant loads - it'be nice if the manufacturer just published them. in case it's useful here are a couple I had: http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_1/East_Europe_2/Proton-M/Gallery/Breeze.htm http://kbhmisaeva.ru/main.php?id=52

thanks @InsaneDruid ! ah alpha to encode specular - is more transparent = more shiny or the reverse? I figured this would be a problem, that's why I was hoping the models could do some kind of 'texture compositing'. I'll try adding something to the Briz and see how it turns out - I expect the trade off is that if the texture is high rez enough for a detailed logo then it's over kill for the tank, but if it's tuned for the tank then it's only good for low res logos. I'll check out how you did the fairings - realistically I guess that's the place logs would go - the vacuum stages would have no one to see them. Do you do the RO configs? they seemed to come as part of the mod. I've found various slightly different specs for Briz and it's engines, it would good to have urls for data sources in the .cfg. Oh also what does the decouple on the Briz APT do? as far as I can tell it just shakes the craft, I might have once mounted the engine very deep/shallow and decoupled it - is it a 'decouple from lower stacked node'? Thanks for the good work - the Proton launch pad is awesome.

To amp up the Reality you can install RSS Visual Enhancements - RVE which adds clouds and atmospheric scattering. Again this one sounds complex to install because it's built on a few other mods like EVE, Scatterer, and Texture Replacer. I found this video helpful, but for me it boiled down to: use ckan to install scatterer Texture Replacer was already present from ckan RSS install take the 'any CPU' EVE release and copy from .zip to GameData - but not the configs .zip cause that is Kerbol system download RVE for KSP 1.0.4 LInux64 from Pingopete (just hit the green button) and unzip merge the files - there is a clash on scatterer/config/PlanetsList.cfg (but for with capitalization different - so not sure what happens on linux) let RVE replace Scatterer start her up and wait quite a while .... flying past Buenos Aires. MJ adjust attitude lets you turn on some arrows, in this case orbit velocity vector. Madagascar looks nice the reality upped map view. RVE is still working on the other planets...

I've been working on a hypothetical Mars flyby using, as far as possible, only currently commercially available vehicles. It turns out that it looks very possible on paper / spreadsheets - the next step is to see how it works out 'in real life', or at least in Realism Overhaul of Real Solar System. I'd been interested to try ROnRSS but it seemed complicated and a lot to learn; install a lot of mods (which might have who knows what issues), learn about real fuels (fun?), ooohh often no throttling, limited ignitions, whaaa ullage, ... etc. Now I have a good reason to try it, I started, it's fairly approachable (you can enable the reality incrementally), and the issues have been interesting / entertaining. I thought I'd make 'the mission' be the whole trip of getting to grips with RO in case it's handy for anyone else thinking about it. I know I've found little comments scattered in other threads to be a real help. 1.1.3 - RO & RSS are not updated yet. using CKAN things installed fairly smoothly except that for Real Solar System I had to do a second pass - but once it's in it looks fantastic it does make the start time long ... 16,921Module Manager patches ... I included Tantares, Tantares LV, and RO .craft files - so I could look at/fly a Soyuz launcher Soyuz-T looks great It doesn't launch out of the box - 'failed to ignite due to insufficient resources' After playing around I realized that the fuel loading on the tanks didn't include the High Test Peroxide needed for the turbo-pumps. Real Fuels makes it easy to switch them to the correct proportions (or at least something that lets the engines light). There is a GUI you can pop from the tweakables GUI. It lets you assign available volume to whatever real resources you want and looks at the connected engines to give you helpful pre-sets. I still haven't figured out the Soyuz orbiter maneuver engines - insufficient fuel pressure ... later The Soyuz Launch Vehicle (why did they name the LV and the spacecraft the same? does not help the googlability) is very stable in flight - but I have to look up / discover the ascent profile that will put it into orbit. InsaneDruid has some advice on flying the Proton which probably holds for Soyuz LV also. I had included Raidernick's Soviet Rockets, Tantares, & Tantares LV and seemed to have multiple Proton fragments (which I'd expect) which I couldn't figure out how to put together - which I didn't expect - how hard should it be? and why does a third stage engine only have one attach node (maybe there is some adapter thingy supposed to go between the tank and engine that is hard to find). Anyway those two Sov packs didn't include a Briz-M upper stage that I wanted so I tried Insane Druid's Proton-M / Breeze-M easy to put together rcs for Briz? the parts are there but worry about that if I can orbit something has a nice Proton launch pad included RO worries include ascent path (fail so far) and vapor in the fuel lines on the upper stage I banged a Cygnus on top of a Briz on a Proton - i't doomed by mass and my piloting, but the Himalayas look great and it should give the PRC a scare.

@InsaneDruid Thanks for the fantastic vehicles! I'm using it for this In researching I learned that the ullage/vernier & RCS feed off a separate high pressure propellant system than the main engines. Some one had back calculated a bunch of flights and figured there must be 200 kg of high and 5000 of low pressure propellant in the core. It looks like they can vary the loading depending on if they need high precision / certainty of the final orbit; like 300+5100 capacity that you can load any way you like (but I don't have real numbers...). From you experience is it possible to configure the parts to model that? How would you recommend adding a flag / logo to the Briz drop tank? (or indeed other stages). I can pull in edit and save .dds no problem, but I'm a little confused re the alpha I see in you textures. I guess some non textured shading comes from the model and then the texture gets overlaid? is there some way that the models can 'take' a couple of texture layers and composite them before 'application' to the model? Then people could keep any 'decal' style changes separate from your textures, maybe it's just easier to do that in GIMP and keep the 'editing version' with the layers as an 'archive'.

exactly, I wanted to minimize arrival velocity for a short flight time in my deltaV budget. I've not flown it yet - just played around with the reference departure node. Interesting. The sensitivity of the underlying path means a three extra orbit periods between departure can change departure dealtV by 75. That is a straight consequence of reality, there would be other 'regions' that were much less sensitive. It doesn't seem straightforward to give users indications of 'the sensitivity'. I mean each craft has a deltaV / life support trade off given a certain 'lift to departure orbit' mass budget - so everyone cares about something different. I had thought to 'focus the calcs' in on that 'lower band' of flybys you must have seen, the only tool I could see to do that was limiting the Venus or Mars search times to indirectly exclude the longer flybys - is there a better way to do that? Would it be easy to be able to show the detail for a trajectory from clicking on a dot in the chart? it would make it easier to 'browse' the trajectories. Actually it might be really handy to be able to export the table to csv - so you could filter out things - like in my case if I discarded flights shorter than 490 days I'd have only 'the low departure deltaV' ones to browse and select between. Or even just allow copy on the rows you can select. 'live with it' - really it's hard to live without what you have done so far! I guess the trick would be to dynamically do more computation / higher representation accuracy only where sensitivity was high - but that's easy to say... For my mission I think I have a few 100 m/s contingency so I'll plan on mid course and encounter approach corrections. Thanks again for your help.

I learned that MechJeb in Real Solar System Realism Overhaul is a crazy docking meister. I'd never tried MJ's docking autopilot - when it works it's great, but MJ can get into oscillations that makes him circle his docking port around the other one like a planetary gear. here's MJ doing it well: These are two real life craft (Soyuz and Briz-M) I'm using for a manned crewed Venus Mars flyby I'm working on. I cannot use the usual 'zero velocity, point at each other, 1 m/s' technique because it takes the Briz about 6 minutes to get a stable pointing direction, and then it will have to do it again after the Soyuz re points etc. COM targeting would be great ... After this docking the Briz will boost the Soyuz into a highly elliptical orbit where it will rendezvous with the transfer stage (deltaV and lifesupport).

@Kryten thanks I think I'd conflated early Soyuz spacecraft H2O2 use for RCS (e.g. though I originally read it somewhere else) with the turbo thing. As you say currently H2O2 is used only for descent attitude control of the descent module - so that's good, there will be usable deltaV in the Soyuz for tweaks and final approach, over 100 m/s probably (well enough). This says the critical limiter on the SS use by is the H2O2 for descent orientation, I'll have to look into the 'certain avionics systems' issue. This harrowing sounding near disaster descent of Soyuz 5 in 1966 shows that even without attitude control the re-entry is survivable but not accurate. This shows they already have contingency plans for reentries without attitude control, 50% greater G force, and the decomposition state of the H2O2 can be monitored.

ah thanks this and your advice were exactly what I was looking for. I thrashed around on the 32 hours late encounter a little yesterday and got Venus (44 hours late) & Mars about the right time and very sensitive, about 10 prograde and 12 radial - I'll give it a shot with the earlier one. re the AoP I'd found that fixing the node time could mean it being half an orbit / 45 mins off where it was 'supposed to be' depending on where the probe was - so to 'exterminate all sources of error' I used AoP for the initial node placement and then (as you say it' more awkward) and then radial tweaks.

I did some calcs with 'vanilla', M, MT, SB, & 2 - it's a nice stage, just not big enough on it's own. I liked the H2O2 quote, I guess the Soyuz guys are levitical as far as I can tell the H2O2 is used to drive the turbos for the main engine and it slowly decomposes until sometime after 240 days the big engine wont light. The 'use by' date used to be less but they improved something about the H2O2 storage or preparation. Possibly the Soyus RCS is enough for any 'final approach' adjustments, but I'd prefer to have a storable propellant stage to be sure - Fregat with 25 restarts would be good in that respect.

@PLAD thanks for the great tool, I've used it in stock a few times and now having a go in RSS. Previously I'd 'near enough is good enoughed' and mashed the xfers till they more or less did what I wanted. I'm trying to get everything nice a neat this time for an EVME; I think I've got an initial equatorial node setup at perfect UT seconds with the first Venus Pe within 15 mins of the FBF prediction - but the Pe at 1.5M km. Here is the first two encounter from FBF: Start Planet: Earth Orbit Departure Time: 2292546240 seconds UT 26535.1 days UT 25 Aug 2023 = day 237 0.1D is 144 mins 2hr24m Y73 D255 H2.3 Start Orbit Inclination: -62.8 degrees Start Boost from that incl.: 3742 m/s Start Equatorial Z velocity: -10258 m/s Start Equat. Prograde velocity: -2521 m/s Start Boost from Equat. Orbit: 10563 m/s V Infinity Leaving Start Planet: 3538 m/s 1st Encounter Planet: Venus Time from Start to 1st Encounter: 164 days 13.6 hours Vinf in: 7493 m/s Brake to Orbit?: 5401 m/s 1st Encounter Periapsis: 26699.67 days UT 05 Feb 2024 Y74 D54 H16 8054 km altitude Vinf out: 7493 m/s and a screen shot: to 'position' the node I placed it in time and then tweaked argument of periapsis - which moves the probe around but leaves the node UT unchanged. I tweaked the AoP and could get either the above at the right time or an encounter 32 hours late. Is this variance within what you expect? If it is - then from your experience whats the best way to work with it? the late encounter is equivalent to burning a little later within the 'current' orbit which would be easy to hit. The encounter at the right time is probably under/over / before/after the AN/DN so I'd have to wait for the planets to move a little (or go early) but then some or all of where in the orbit to burn, normal, prograde would have to be adjusted. If the variance is more than you expect then do you have any ideas re how I can trouble shoot it? oh and I forgot to check 'notify me' so could you please quote or reference me.

Hi @Agathorn I've just started using RSS and I'm a bit confused I've seen you earlier in the thread say 'epoch' is 1950 and in other places I've seen @NathanKell say RSS Y1D1 is 1951/01/01 - is that consistent? maybe epoch means year 0? I have a problem also with time display re a maneuver node on map view RSSDateTime formatted UT in the GUI "2023-1" - a mismatch to Precise Node Time display (Y73 Day 19) - there is a 18 day discrepancy. I checked with RSSDT taken out and it looks like both times are displayed from the same start + seconds but KSP doesn't use leap years and RSS DateTime does (the extra 18 days are distributed through the leap years) - is that right?

I'm not sure what yo mean here. 100kg of insulation to buy three days of LOX storability? that would be long enough to rendezvous with a Soyuz. You mean the service section or just the engine? to save mass? I was thinking to use some deltav there for: the Briz boosted Soyuz to rendezvous with the Briz boosted IPM - do the rough velocity matching with the Briz, fine & close approach with Soyuz main, then dock as usual. bail out from the marshaling orbit any trajectory tuning in the first 240 days before Soyuz propulsion is 'dead'. Fregat looks real nice, better mass ratio than Briz and 25 restarts! that would make the pilot feel safer. The Briz approach would have 4 restarts after TVI and then it would be left with just it's high pressure ullage motors with maybe 25 m/s left in them (should be enough to ensure a re-entry 'somewhere'). Fregat is too small to lift itself + IPM and have enough deltaV to make the TVI. I cacled A5 lift to LEO, Block-D (under-fueled) lift Fregat(under-fueled)+IPM direct to the marshaling orbit - it works out about the same as the Proton+Briz+IPM but with more restarts & maneuver propellant left over. If only Fregat had bigger drop tanks and could substitute for the Briz. It looks like to use Fregat you'd have to go to 3 launches, so if the Briz solution blew out past 2 (e.g. need more IPM mass) or was just unworkable (insufficient maneuver contingency) then Fregat would be a good choice.

@DDE thanks - I hadn't thought of Vostochny; it's inclination is better for this flight, the Angara-A5 lifts a couple ton more than Proton, and the Block-D has more deltaV than Briz. The PLAD510 flyby is in August 2023 so Vostochny should be up and running fully by then but Angara-A5 will still be a couple of years from commercial availability - maybe for something like this they would make an exception since it will be flying military loads by then. It reads like Block-D is only 'good' for a few hours due to LOX boil-off. The ideal vehicle could lift 10 ton IPM+Soyuz and a cryonic stage that can give the payload 3750 m/s from LEO - A5+Block-D is about 1400 m/s short. Without such a vehicle the Venus Mars stack will need to use storable propellant to do the Trans Venus Injection; A5+Block-D lifting IPM+BrizCore (with just the TVI fuel) is about 100 m/s short of being able to lift it to the marshaling orbit - so you could use it but there is no advantage and more complexity + inflexibility. A5 is intended to use Briz-M also, I calced it up and it would buy 500-1000 kg more mass for the IPM which I could easily spend: 546 kg switch from 'have to develop and probably complex / breakable' Carbon Dioxide Removal System like ISS to heritage dumb foolproof radiation sheltering LiOH 150 kg add some O2 redundancy - more O2, in more tanks, with more redundant valves So Vostochny A5 + Briz would be great and could either make the mission safer or move it from 'not quite enough deltaV' to 'well enough deltaV'.

I am totally with you on the desirability of this but as far as I know each brain that grows has a huge amount of historical accident that controls the fine detail of how everything gets interconnected. It's not like a wiring diagram with everything laid out that produces an identical brain each time, it's more like a garden which gives the same overall impression but there are no 'same plants in the same place' - even in a clone. The retina to visual cortex connection through the optic never is a good example of the kind of thing that is probably going on generally. The brain grows a vast excess of 'random' connections and then starts up some firing patterns in the retina and 'prunes' out the connections in the cortex that don't look like the pattern it's expecting. The distribution of cells in the retina and the cortex is 'random but with some density' and the 'right' connections survive, each brain is unique but has the property of having a geometry preserving mapping down the optic nerve. To map the 'captured neuron state' into a 'desired recipient state' would require understanding exactly how it all works - and are only scratching the surface there. The closest we come I think is some work mapping the visual cortex to the point where we can tell that the 'test subject' is seeing a bird, and presumably therefore we could tickle the cortex to make them see one that's not there. It sounds like it could well be easier to 'remove gross inefficiencies' at one level of the biology without really understanding how the cognition actually works.

I don't know that long life helps with the biggest problem, if people need more mass to make it bearable then it would even be counter productive. 0.1c is 1,200 x faster than Juno, our current record holder (with gravity assists so we cannot even claim all of it). Kinetic energy = (m*v2)/2 so a kg at 0.1c has 1,440,000 * the energy of Juno. 'there is your problem' even if we knew how to do it it's 'more than a million times harder' than the thing we've only half done for a 1,500 kg. Maybe there is scope for making us smaller - biology is awesome and mind blowing but is also the result of 4.5 billion years of kludges, leftovers, and broken copies of stuff that turned out to be useful for something else. Hawks see much better than us in part because we grow our blood supply between the incoming light and the light detectors - oops. There could be all sort of opportunities to to re-engineer and shrink the brain, even without understanding how it does what it does. Seven halvings of human dimensions, say a 1.5 cm human rather than 1.85m would bring the kinetic energy per person down by a factor of a couple million.

I found a nice 'low' re-entry speed, short, low initial deltaV trajectory - the PLAD510: 3742 m/s, 510 days: I haven't quite 'got it' but I can see it's there so I plugged 510 days into my mass spreadsheet, mocked up the vehicles, and hacked together some pics with hyper edit. An Inter Planetary Module: a docking port leads to about 4 m3 pressurized space with food, water, fecal bags, etc etc. O2 & N2, electrics, comms, thermal control, and Cygnus solar cells are bolted on. The whole thing is bolted to a Briz which can throw it into a 3100 m/s elliptical orbit with enough fuel left over in the Briz core to do the fly by. A Soyuz with beefed up heat shield: It has standard 30 man days of LS on board to cover rendezvous with the IPM. It first rendezvous with a boost Briz which has enough delta V to match orbit with the IPM at Pe. I allowed an extra marshaling orbit of LS for fine tuning and fiddling about. The Briz verniers can make adjustments down to 0.006 m/s, probably finer with the Soyuz RCS. The whole stack has about 100 m/s 'excess' - so on the border of the possible, but 'easy' with another Briz of propulsion. At Venus Pe: There is a radiator on the other side of the IPM. The stack that does the interplanetary injection is low thrust and has just one docking joint. I need RVE or something to 'make clouds' for Venus. Mars approach: I think this is pretty much what it would look like; a half Mars, and then skimming the dark side at 150 km. Mars departure: the trajectory is not hyperbolic like it should be so it wouldn't look like this but Valles Marineris is so stunning.

Thanks very much for the mod. So far I've played around with Soyuz in RO - it looks great. The orbiter mass doesn't seem to match some references I have ( e.g. spaceflight 101 though different parts of that page don't even match each other ). The total orbiter ripped off one of the RO craft files I think is too heavy and the Propulsion Module is 2360 kg and not enough propellent kg vs 2900 kg I expected. I'm guessing that the part really is matching Soyuz 7K (which has 500 kg fuel vs TMA 800 kg) ? Do you know what's the best reference for Soyuz MS (the current version) and what's the best way for me to make / get the parts - I'm comfortable creating .cfgs. Maybe (probably?) they already exist, if not I'm not sure the best way to make them so I can 'share them back' - copy rename to the MS version? and it could be merged to RO? I forgot to click 'notify me of replies' so pls quote or @ me.

I got PLAD's Flyby Finder for RSS to look for actual E-V-M-Es - so far I've been going with the Inspiration Mars plan on 'faith'.Here you can see the Braking dV. I'm using it as indicator of re-entry velocity - which I'd like to minimize. The middle lower ones also have lowest start dV 3700-3900 m/s. From poking at a few trajectories on the upper edge of the lower part it looks like the hole in the plot is the trajectories that go through Mars, so I guess you can tune the flight to pass very close to Mars surface! I saw a couple at 140 km - yikes. On the worrying side all of these have high negative inclinations (e.g. -58 degrees). PLAD's tool gives you a prograde and normal to plug into an equatorial reference orbiter via MechJeb/Precise node; one example was -1,956 prograde and -9,983 normal for like -10 km/s wha? it wants a 'backward' orbit? - I got a bad feeling... Cranked up RO, I had a Baikonur 51 degree reference probe. I roughed in an equatorial reference maneuver node within a week or so of the right time using PLAD's numbers and got a Venus close approach at more or less the expected time as a sanity check. The trajectory looked very inclined My Baikonur reference was just in a random plane though, by launching at the right time you can get it where ever you want so I dragged the longitude of ascension node around using hyper edit until Baikonur reference orbit crossed the EVEM injection maneuver node pretty close! and the right direction! The bog standard Proton launch is almost a perfect match. According to their mission planing doc launching into the departure plane would cost about 500 kg in forgone payload. I have to assume that is 'really' more Briz propellant used, but on the upside the found trajectories are sub 4,000 m/s and I'd been budgeting 4,300 up to 5,000 - maybe the 'cheap' two Briz option will work.

I think I have a 'flight plan' that makes sense using the components; Soyuz, Inter Planetary Module, IPM lifting Briz, & 2 x naked Briz. I didn't really like 'dock stacking' 4 components (5 if you count the IPM+Briz that launches as a unit - it never need to un-dock), plus just using one Briz engine at a time means you start with 0.3 m/s2 thrust, but clustering them sounds like a bad and complicated idea. I think this plan works though: Day 0: Launch a Proton with IPM + Briz. IPM can power the Briz past it's 11 hour limit Day 0': Launch Proton with Naked Briz. (Not sure how close in time the pads can launch...) Day 0'+ <11 hours: Rendezvous and dock stack top of Naked Briz to bottom of IPM's Briz. IPM powers both Briz. Day 0'+: Briz stack does 5 Pe kicks to total 3150 m/s into a marshaling orbit, acceleration ranges from 0.5 to 1.7 m/s2. It stages a toroidal tank & a Briz core. IPM is now in an about 13 day highly eccentric orbit with Ap somewhat further than the Moon, about 40 m/s from Earth escape. Allowing some idle kick orbits, shakedown time etc and call it a week until the final kick, followed by plenty of time for remote system checks. The Proton pads will be ready for use 8 days before the second IPM Pe pass on Day 33. Day 31: Launch Soyuz. Launch is into the plane of the IPM marshaling orbit. Day 31': Launch Proton with Naked Briz (into same plane) Day 31'+ <11 hours: Rendezvous and nose to nose dock, Soyuz powers the Briz. Day 33 IPM Pe - 8h40m: Soyuz + Briz does 2 Pe kicks starting at 0.8 m/s2 to total 1700 m/s2 and stages the toroidal tanks. The burns and time is chosen so Soyuz and IPM reach their common Pe together, the Soyuz will zero out relative velocity with the Briz's remaining 1400 m/s at 2.25 m/s2 followed by dumping the Briz core and tuning with Soyuz main engines. Soyuz is now committed to the 14 day marshaling orbit with: an assured records for furthest, fastest, ... human a fall back / bail out to re-entry burn of only a few m/s Day 33': Soyuz closes and docks nose to nose with the IPM. 13 days before the last Earth Pe for system checks & 'rigging for deep space running'. Day 46: Earth Pe - Burn or bail - Soyuz+IPM+Briz can either: retrograde burn the Briz to get into a 4 hour orbit from where the Soyuz can re-enter with a -35 m/s burn prograde burn the Briz for a Trans Venus & Mars Injection the good: the three 'legs' each have only one docking max 2 components 'dock stacked' inanimate stuff takes the most time / kicks to the marshaling orbit the Pe kicks give natural places to pause and troubleshoot / reassure the crew is docked to final configuration and almost escaped within 48 hours of launch it can use the Soyuz main engine as much as it likes for tuning and maneuvering since the stage will 'expire' when it's H2O2 goes 'off'. there are a few bail / fail safe points the bad: The crew has to have 14 days life support in the Soyuz on launch. the plane matching and Soyuz to IPM rendezvous are unforgiving the Briz main engines do not throttle so: rendezvous relies on Soyuz IPM capability any in transit maneuver burns would have to use either Briz rcs or coarse by main and tweak with rcs

I've nothing against orbital construction if it's necessary. For sure remote controlled docking assembly would be required. Crewed assembly just seems like it's likely to spiral up costs and complexity. I downloaded Proton Launch System Mission Planner's Guide section 1. & section 2. Just from skimming it I can see: references I'd used quoting 23 ton to LEO are wrong since the 'payload' / 4th stage has to contribute about 420 m/s to circularize. though it's 45 N they launch to minimum 51 degree inclination (avoid China? or other downrange 'exclusion zones') they have 2 pads so could launch two Protons in 'quick succession' they can launch off a single pad minimum 25 days apart I've just started playing with RO so did a mass mockup using some 'real' parts. Briz stacks on Briz+InterPlanetary module and Soyuz docks with the other end of the IPM: I've left out some structure mass for 'stacking' etc but already you can see that with Briz fuel removed to account for circularizing (one with the interplanetary module and one without) it's 300 m/s short of the 4,300+70 minimally required. If I shed 1,700 kg of IPM it would have near 4,500 m/s - I cannot see being able to reduce mass enough. Adding another Briz for another 110 M USD, time, and complexity buys +3 ton @ 4500 m/s or brings m/s up to 5,000 - given that I cannot see how to avoid it it opens up more options on trajectory, mass, and duration.

Started playing with Realism Overhaul ... 1.1.3 for now using CKAN things installed fairly smoothly except that for Real Solar System I had to do as a second pass - but once it's in it looks fantastic 16,921Module Manager patches ... I included Tantares, Tantares LV, and RO .craft files - so I could look at/fly a Soyuz launcher Soyuz-T looks great it doesn't launch out of the box - 'failed to ignite due to insufficient resources' after playing around I realised that the fuel loading on the tanks didn't include the High Test Peroxide needed for the turbopumps. Real Fuels makes it easy to switch them to the correct proportions (or at least something that lets the engines light. I still haven't figured out the Soyuz orbiter manouver engines - insufficient fuel pressure ... the LV is very stable in flight - but I have to look up / discover the ascent profile that will put it into orbit I had included Raidernick's Soviet Rockets, Tantares, & Tantares LV and seemed to have multiple Proton fragments (which I'd expect) which I couldn't' figure out how to put together - which I didn't expect - how hard should it be? and why does a third stage engine only have one attach node (maybe there is some adaptor thingy supposed to go between the tank and engine that is hard to find). Anyway those two Sov packs didn't include a Briz-M upper stage that I wanted so I tried Insane Druid's Proton-M / Breeze-M easy to put together rcs for Briz? the parts are there but worry about that if I can orbit something has a nice Proton launch pad included RO worries include ascent path (fail so far) and vapour in the fuel lines on the upper stage doomed Proton launch - the Cygnus is about 4 ton too heavy ... nice Himalayas, this will give the PRC a scare

I guess I didn't think about craft part count. I tend to do small missions, 3 man or 2 x 3 man, so I didn't consider colonies. The Fuel Cell Array could be re textured into a six Kerbal watermathingy, to go larger I could add the processing to the convert-o-trons.

v 0.6 on spacedock.info The main feature of version 0.6 is the addition of 'Dark' parts; e driven grow lights remove the micro-biome's dependency on sunlight. The parts are one level up the tech tree from the sun driven arrays due to requiring fancy LED technology. changes: Add 'Dark' parts that run on pure e; grow-lights and insulation. Community Category Kit compliance; Soylent parts will appear in the Life Support category. Agency images fixes; just cosmetic. Less threatening logo; just cosmetic. :FOR[UDASoylent]; if you want to use module manager to do things that :NEEDS[UDASoylent]

Thanks this works for me, I could override the description for stock parts and Soylent parts based on NEEDS[UDASoylent]. I checked ksp.log and saw many lines from the @PART:FOR so I added [RCSTank1-2] qualifier - I guess it really/probably doesn't make it any more 'efficient'.