pTrevTrevs

Not sure I wanna type up a whole report for STS-41B, a mission that's probably been done to death, but here are a few pictures nonetheless.

Looks great! Is the Soyuz-TM-era window bulge a separate part or is it integrated into the orbital module?

1983: Congratulations on a new BDB update: January: The Solar Maximum Mission satellite develops a serious problem with its attitude control systems, preventing it from operating some of its instruments. A Space Shuttle mission is quickly organized to repair the spacecraft and is set to launch sometime next year. November '82 to February '83: Skylab-83A, the first mission to the space station to use the new manned mission designation system, performs its four-month mission. April: STS-12 spends five days aboard Skylab installing replacement hardware and upgraded systems to extend the aging station's life. Skylab has now spent nearly a decade in orbit, and is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain as its equipment becomes more and more outdated and past-warranty. The crew of Challenger will mitigate this problem somewhat by replacing Skylab's old sixties-era electronics with new solid-state hardware, installing new and additional life support features, and removing broken or obsolete parts. The mission also installs extra sleeping bunks in Skylab to accommodate crews of five to seven astronauts, as well as a projector screen, extra exercise bikes, and similar amenities to enable larger and longer stays aboard. July: On the west coast, Landsat 4 launches a year behind schedule. The new Delta-3920 makes use of its improved upper stage engine to place the heaviest Landsat yet into a polar orbit, from which it will collect high resolution imagery of the Earth. August: A Saturn IC launches from LC-34 with a classified Air Force payload. This is the first Department of Defense payload to launch aboard a Saturn rocket, a fact noted by some as evidence of the increasing militarization of space under the Reagan Administration. This mission also marks the eighteenth launch of Saturn IC, finally making it the most flown Saturn in history, beating the Saturn V's seventeen-launch record. NASA would have preferred not to make this historic launch carry such a secretive payload. In fact, for decades NASA has insisted that the Saturn family only be used for civilian missions, but the Air Force has exploited the administration's lack of funding for FY1984 with an offer they simply couldn't refuse. August: Skylab-83B begins its four-month stay aboard the station. This is the first mission to require a resupply from an unmanned AARDV in some time, and the eighth Aardvark freighter remains docked to the station for three of the four months aboard. November: STS-41A launches with a suite of instruments designed to map Earth's magnetic field. Challenger also carries a small satellite which will be released in orbit for atmospheric studies. Read more in Shuttle Adventures.

I heard that KH-11 and Hubble are suspected to be similar because they were transported in similar containers, but I can't remember where.

Quiet, there are no magnetometers in BDB yet.

STS-41A: Doin' Science: November, 1983. STS-41A, the first mission under NASA's FY1984 budget and the first to use the new STS designation system, launches on a weeklong Earth observation mission. The payload is a suite of scientific instruments and Spacelab hardware designed specifically for use aboard the Shuttle, the most notably of which is a magnetic mapping array made up of two whip antennas and a long telescopic boom extending at right angles from each other. Challenger will also deploy a new satellite and fly an arrangement of thirteen GAS canisters for smaller institutions across the country. Challenger's next flight is STS-41B in February, and will take the meaning of "off the hook" to a whole new level...

I know this is like my third consecutive post, but... STS-12: Home Depot: I have upgraded to KSRSS Reborn, so you should notice a marked improvement in visuals this time around. April, 1983: STS-12 marks Challenger's second visit to Skylab, after delivering the AMDA on STS-10. This flight was originally scheduled to deliver the European Research Module to Skylab, however the complications with the Canadarm and a design flaw which prevented the ERM from fitting into a Shuttle payload bay has forced the module to be remanifested for launch on a Saturn IC sometime in 1984 or 1985. Instead, STS-12 will deliver supplies and equipment to upgrade the interior of Skylab, such as modern computers, additional sleeping bunks for crews of up to seven, experiment storage racks for the AMDA, and more. In order to fit all this hardware aboard Challenger will fly with the Spacelab pressurized module to provide extra cargo space. Finally, the crew will perform an EVA while docked to Skylab to install external connections between the AMDA and the Skylab MDA, completing its installation.

Steve has his own TUFX profiles (I use them sometimes too, they're nice), but some of the effects in that photo look like they've been added in post. Now, if you're looking for something like a grainy TV camera image, I have a set of TUFX profiles that I think work pretty well for that. Maybe I should advertise them a bit more.

Interlude, STS-10, STS-11: STS-10 really does not deserve to be lumped into a post with another mission, but I lost most of my photos of it when my save got corrupted and what you see here will be the remnant I already posted in other threads. Bear with me, and we'll be back to your regularly scheduled Shuttleposting momentarily. Challenger's next flight will see a return to Skylab, but instead of delivering the Power Tower, she will be carrying Spacelab LM-2 to resupply the station with consumables. Following Columbia's maintenance period, and due to delays surrounding the arrival of Discovery, Challenger will fly all the missions in 1982, 1983, and the first half of 1984, earning her an admirable streak of six consecutive missions by the time Discovery arrives to relieve her. With her status as the only orbiter in active service during this time, she will earn a reputation as the workhorse of the Shuttle fleet, capable of any kind of mission, or any challenge, as it were.

Soon.

Immediate restraining order.

Bad news everyone; while trying to mod my game some more the other night, I accidentally corrupted my save, and while erasing it to start with a clean install I accidentally permanently deleted my screenshots folder. At this point I believe I'll just start a new save with a new, modern set of mods. That being said, I also have plans to make a different save approximating the one I've been flying my shuttle missions on, by manually placing the relevant craft into the proper orbits and time-warping to the proper date (1983). It might probably will take awhile, but I hope to resume covering Shuttle missions eventually. In the meantime you can view my STS-10 flight over at the Bluedog Design Bureau thread, since that mission delivered a new docking adapter to Skylab. As of the date of writing this video I also have flown STS-11, however all photos of it were lost in the recent incident.

My own:

Well fellas, my modding addiction finally led to me possibly corrupting my game, and in the process of making a clean install I accidentally perma-nuked my screenshots folder. Oh well, I took this opportunity to upgrade to KSRSS Reborn. Allow me to treat you all to the first screenshots under the new status quo:

Spaceflights of 1982: The Greatest Crossover in Cinematic History: Got a lot of minor missions to show off this year, but I like to feature them anyway. Not every spaceflight is a blockbuster, you know. January: Insat 1A / Delta 3910 PAM-D: March: STS-8 (Challenger) with Insat 1B (India), Palapa B1 (Indonesia), and SPAS-01 (West Germany): April: Intelsat 5-2 on a very icy Atlas: June: Satcom 5, on the first launch of Delta 3924. Exchanging the Delta-P with its Apollo LM descent engine (the supply of which is diminishing rapidly) for a new AJ-10 variant on the Delta-K, the Delta 3920 series offers yet another increase in power for an incredibly resilient launcher. Even in the face of reusable space shuttles and increasingly cheap Saturn IC launches, Delta refuses to die. August: STS-9/Spacelab-1: Won't say much here for the same reason I didn't say much about STS-8. Visit Shuttle Adventures. September: Skylab 12, the first five-man expedition to the station, launches from LC-34. While Skylab flights are rapidly becoming seen as uninteresting and routine, today's launch is special. Skylab 12's primary objective will be to oversee the addition of the station's first major expansion in over six years, cooperating with STS-10 (Challenger) to install and checkout the new Androgynous Multiple Docking Adapter... October: Challenger launches with the Skylab AMDA. I haven't even covered this one in Shuttle Adventures yet, so you should feel special seeing it here first.

STS-9: Spacelab-1: August, 1982: After yielding the spotlight to her younger sister for the last three flights, Space Shuttle Columbia returns to flight for one last mission before her scheduled maintenance period. This time, she's flying the European-built Spacelab module, a pressurized compartment installed in the orbiter's payload bay which provides additional living space and research facilities. Spacelab equipment has flown on the Shuttle several times already, in the form of the OSTA experiment packages and the Spacelab pallets used for cargo and instrument storage, but the Spacelab Laboratory Module expands the Shuttle's ability to conduct crewed research in microgravity tenfold. In preparation for this flight, the longest mission to date, Columbia has undergone a number of modifications, including the addition of a Ku-Band antenna to relay data through TDRS-1 in geostationary orbit, the disarmament of her ejection seats, new amenities in the mid-deck such as sleeping bunks, higher-capacity fuel cells, and new SSMEs rated to a higher level of thrust. Her original engines have been removed and are in the process of refurbishment in order to be installed on the fourth orbiter Atlantis, scheduled to arrive to the fleet in 1985.

So, I did this, and after a little work I was able to get the new pad into my save. Only problem is that it’s not showing up as an available launch site, even though it appears to be set as such in the Kerbal Konstructs menu. Strange, but I’ll work on it.

Have you considered asking for permission to adapt textures from BDB, Near Future, and the like? Some of the newer parts added to the former have really great foil textures.

Did you enable crossfeed on the ET decoupler?

STS-9 coming soon:

Actually, I already have KSPCF installed. Come to think of it, I didn't have this problem nearly as much before I installed the mod.

Anyway, you guys want some bloopers? Because I've got some freaking bloopers... Maybe this is what I get for using the Breaking Ground robotics system. How do you guys move large objects with the SRMS? Also having weird problems (which may or may not be caused by the same thing as the SRMS spaghettification) with parts of the orbiter moving slightly every time I load a save. It's not funny anymore.

Magellan, you say?!? 376, you say?!?

As I understand it, the updated LC-39 comes with a setup for an ahistorical KSC; were you able to easily adjust it back, or did you leave it as it comes off the shelf?

If there are any intentions to expand this mod to feature more texture variants, might I recommend a few? I have photographs to back all these up, but I've also verified them against this guide to Orbiter external markings. From what I can tell, it appears accurate. The wings of Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour during their early days all had a different insulation pattern than is depicted in base SOCK. Instead of a smooth line as seen in the mod, it appeared much more jagged. It appears this pattern disappeared around the time the orbiters switched from the NASA worm and black wing tiles to the Meatball and white tiles: Additionally, the same three orbiters also had a different pattern of thermal blankets along their sides during the "Worm Era". It's very subtle, and the untrained eye can miss it, but if you know what to look for you'll see that there are significantly more blankets on the orbiters during this period than later. As a matter of fact, they cover almost the entire payload bay, leaving only a small strip at the top of the fuselage bare: More OMS pod variants for versatility. Columbia and Challenger were identifiable by their gold umbilical plates, which are represented here already with the early OMS pod texture. However, both orbiters were eventually updated to have black tiles on their OMS pods, while their gold plates were retained throughout their service. Conversely, Discovery and Atlantis both flew their first missions with white OMS pods like were seen on the first Shuttle flights, only neither of them ever had gold umbilical plates. (Technically, Atlantis flew her first two missions with black tiles on her starboard OMS pod only, but come on, even a pedant like myself has to draw the line somewhere).