Oblate Prince

Yes! Any help is appreciated. But I'm certainly not ready to put stuff in the game at this stage. I need help with configs, playtesting, and balance. Also Unity. ------------------------------------------- This is the carbon TPS. It has the great virtues of being really easy to apply to curved objects and not taking up much space on a texture sheet. I'm still undecided between this and the HSRI tiles. The latter is more attractive but less versatile (and also annoying).

Texture work begins: I'm not entirely sure about the HSRI tiles (and welcome peoples' inputs). Most images of the XS-1 show carbon-grey heat shielding. On the other hand, I'm quite taken with the texture.

Blocked out the silhouette for the hull and scaled up to accommodate a slightly bigger cargo bay. Looks like most of the work is going to be in textures, at least for now. I'm not really seeing the need for greeblies on a hypersonic hull (but if anyone has better XS-1 reference images than the ones that show up on google that may change yet). A normal map will probably work just fine. Expect a flat surface-attachable wing mount with nodes to attach the wings without messing with surface attach. That's roughed out here. I'm dreading the prospect of doing landing gear. Any thoughts on the best dependency to use would be appreciated. Or I might just retexture and rescale the stock gear. Animated cargo bays are going to be hard enough for me as it is. https://imgur.com/OMqJuK5 https://imgur.com/tgamYMT

This is the beginnings of a 'harder' sort of spaceplane mod designed to play nicely with rescaled systems and the more realistic art styles of BDB, Tantares, and KNES (hopefully). Don't expect any wacky magical airbreathing engines here. I'm very new to Unity and don't have very much free time. Expect models and textures to come well before any in-game parts (unless somebody holds my hand through the process). Expect various part mod dependencies/synergies throughout the development process. The goal is to make spaceplanes for the rocket crowd. Some fudging on tank mass may be required; I don't expect or intend to make this mod compatible with stock spaceplane parts. Roadmap: 1. ROO (Reusable Orbit Option): an ~2.5m set of spaceplane parts based on concept art for the Boeing XS1. The ROO is designed to function as marginal SSTO, transporting about 1.5 tons to LKO in JNSQ (target DV ~5200 m/s but subject to player input) using methalox engines. It is better suited to carrying a dedicated 1.5m upper stage on a suborbital trajectory Batch 1: [Expected soft dependencies: BDB, Provenance Aerospace] 2m tank 4m tank 6m tank long 2.5 > .625 nose short 2.5 > .625 nose Engine plate ROO > 2.5m adapter ROO drone core ROO delta wing ROO stabilizer Batch 2: ROO wing flaps 2m cargo bay 4m cargo bay 6m cargo bay 1.875m cargo bay crew module/airlock 1.875m cargo bay command module 1.875 >1.25m cargo bay module adapter ROO methalox engine (targeting half a BE-4 engine) ROO kerolox engine (target TBD, subject to player input) Joey upper stage tank S Joey upper stage tank L Joey engine Joey fairing base/avionics package 2. TO BE DETERMINED And now, pictures https://imgur.com/jC3tcTX https://imgur.com/cVfjn6J https://imgur.com/b0Necm7

Does the Grannus primary config work when combined with the JNSQ rescale config?

The Seasat texture is my absolute favorite thing! Would you happen to have the RGB values you use for the white, black, red, and grey color variants? I'm looking to make a few parts and match BDB's color scheme.

I'm contemplating making a few spaceplane parts with an eye to a more conservative (and easier to texture ) style than Porkjet's parts and properly balanced for a 2.5x-3.2x scaled game. Also, jets are a hard no. The goal is to make parts that are clean enough to blend in with BDB, Tantares, or ReStock but simple enough to be within my very limited texturing abilities. To this end, I'm looking for suggestions from the community as to what fuselage profiles would be the most useful to people without overlapping with other mods (in particular, Moroz). Reference images and documentation of serious orbital spaceplane proposals would be a great help in deciding on the exact size and shape of the fuselage parts. I'm not interested in airbreathing designs or far-fetched proposals. I'm also not likely to do any reach-y requests. Don't expect IVAs, RO configs, etc. ----------------- Tentatively, I'm shooting at least one set of parts: something substantially larger than the Moroz spaceplane but smaller than the Mk3 fuselage. This might hopefully cover the Boeing XS-1, MAKS, the upper stage of various Saenger concepts, and (with the help of tweakscale) the X-37. Definitely looking for good reference and thoughts on what people think is best in terms of size and shape. I'm also considering a larger fuselage but at this point, I'm unsure what I want to use as my template. Suggestions and references are particularly welcome here.

Figured. If anyone's whipped something up let me know. If not, I may take a crack at learning MM so I can set up at least a few configs for stuff I use regularly.

Is that set of community-made Tantares tweakscale configs from ages ago still around (and not broken)?

Is the Earth Orbital Escape Device (http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Future_Expansion#Orbital_Escape_Device) too far out of scope? It's a neat tie in between the updated Agena and a Saturn update. Also, I'm all about unusual command pods!

My Therapist: Beige Atlas isn't real, it can't hurt you. Beige Atlas: . . . (I'm so sorry -- I've only just downloaded the dev release and I'm having far too much fun.)

Therapist: Flat Leo isn't real, he can't hurt you. Flat Leo: . . . In any case, I just scaled down the Giotto and added an extra seat in the 1.875m pod. That actually works better than the structural piece. Just covered the window :p I hope I can sell other people on this setup -- it's a really nice way to get a flatter, more modern silhouette without compromising on aesthetics. The revamped Gemini is the most attractive spacecraft out there!

Yeah, I stuck with your general idea (i.e. trapped on Mesbin with no real way to do space travel) but also wanted to explain how four kerbals magically rolled out three rockets to the pad in one in-game day :p Particle Man will show up as well, I imagine. Just wait until I unlock some more BDB science experiments!

No, there was also a plain structural adapter with the exact same proportions as the Giotto. It's still in the release version (and I could add it back into my dev version save but the texture doesn't match anymore). It's "bluedog_Gemini_Structure_A", I think. Also, were there plans for a white texture for the pressurized an unpressurized 1.875 cargo parts?

One thing I'm really, really missing from the latest dev version is the 1.5m > 1.875m adapter with the Leo texture. That part was tremendously useful (possibly only to me though). I love tweakscaling it and putting it on top of the Botticelli to make a FlatLeo. You can either do a Fuji style pod that way or mount a bigger docking port on the nose for Big-G-type spacecraft. Also, has anybody made an MM config that allows two kerbals to fit in the Botticelli? There are two seats, after all! Behold: EuroLeo! (The Agena -- except the RL81 -- the is tweakscaled. Thanks to @Well's parts and more tweakscale, we have a rather neat service module too.