Beccab

Not really. Falcon 9 only launches when recovery conditions over the ocean are optimal

I really hope now it doesn't land twice

Amazing! Do you also plan on eventually doing 1.875m and maybe 5m self levelling legs sooner or later? They are currently the only sizes missing at the moment iirc, and would fit well with the expansion

True, but they aren't orbital as far as I know. That's the important part

Fantastic!

Alright last of the designs in which I plan to use the Lunar orbiter, a Duna relay. Overall I'm happy of the result, it does the trip to Duna on an Agena upper stage, enters orbit with aerobraking and a heat shield and does the rest with the onboard thrusters. I don't know the exact deltaV number due to weird staging, but the orbiter alone for sure has more than 1000 m/s, perhaps close to 1500. Since the Ranger solar panels don't retract and wouldn't have survived the aerobraking, to make it a bit efficient the thing has two separate ones: the first one for the interplanetary journey is mounted on the heat shield and also jettisoned with it after the aerobraking when the normal ones can extend. Edit: Now the tiny rover is on Duna too-and thanks to a Lunar Orbiter skycrane!

I have made three designs total with the lunar orbiter atm: First one, the original, uses four of the Ranger landing engines and no other tank (there is a monoprop tank, but it's there mostly to balance the camera's mass and avoiding to land upside down), which was very high thrust for minmus but at minimum throttle was able to land; can get 755 m/s of deltaV mostly thanks to its low mass Second design, the Lunokhod-like lander+rover, with the Orbiter's midcourse correction engine + four of the small monoprop engines (as you said they are node only, so I first added the DLC's servo and then to its node the engines) and 4 of the bigger monoprop tanks in the middle of the orbiter. The lander itself is pretty light but the rover brings the mass up to twice the previous lander, so it only gets 445 m/s of deltaV: Third, I'm working on a third design based on the Orbiter for a Duna flyby, which uses the Restock+ 0.625m tanks and semisphere as well as the original 4 Ranger landing engines. Despite being heavier than the first lander can reach an almost decent 941 m/s of deltaV: Never used it, sorry

That gave me an idea... Screenshots of the whole missions, I took a lot of them this time because I really really liked this rover: Rocket is the same fat Atlas as before but with more boosters, upper stage a weird mix between Centaur and Titan, the lander is similar to the previous one but with monoprop engines and lots of fuel and the rover is a kitbash between lots of probes and the Tantares mini wheels. Except from these everythin else is from BDB!

Thanks! I can't believe it took me so long to realise that the Ranger landing legs fit so well under the lunar orbiter

Unmanned mission to Minmus' surface, with a heavily modified Lunar Orbiter and a (very) fat Atlas:

Actually no, that wouldn't work. Lunar Starship was the highest rated of the three without including the cost, and was even awarded the contract before starting to rediscuss the dates of the milestones to fit the payment. So even if BO actually halved their cost again they would still have a lower rating than Spacex, and thus to be selected together with them would still need Congress to double the HLS founds (and which would still be half the money NASA had originally requested)

This is true. It is also true Starship is not a spaceplane, nor lands like one

Given that you said "without landing", what are you suggesting, making a full 15 meters high falcon 9 second stage just crash somewhere without burning, all this from orbital velocity? Doesn't seem safe at all

Personally, to transport them I used three ways: - For the small modules, engines on the sides perpendicular to the module, ensuring the mass is always in the middle; - alternatively, placing the thruster in the back and adding some fuel pods sideways to balance the mass, jettisoned just before landing; - For the 3.75m modules, directly with engines placed on the sides, Jamestown style (the "fuel cupola" in this screenshot is jettisoned before landing as well). To assemble them, I ended up with three ways as well: - The intended way, as in using the robotic rover and wheels included in this mod and placing the modules above them for transport (didn't work too well in parallax with collisions enabled); - A rover with moving arm, which proved useful but at the end of the day was just too light to carry full modules without tipping over; - A skycrane with grabbing arm, with lots of fuel that on minmus was more than enough for all the modules I took there after its arrival. the last two are shown in this screenshot:

The orbital refuelling part is true, that is the current plan, but it still includes Superheavy for the launch. If I remember correctly even a Starship with no payload isn't an SSTO, let alone refuelling another one and making the suicide burn

That's fair and also true, it does happen usually because of me doing stuff I shouldn't. Is there a dev thread of this or something similar to follow?

Question, would it be possible to make a part that permanently locks a vessel in one place in a planet? Sort of like a grabbing unit, but placed sideways to the terrain and shaped like a mining drill. It would reduce kraken attacks that make minmus level gravity base building a bit tedious, and also make asteroid base building possible

NFLV is fantastic for launching the large parts

Fantastic mod, I love messing with the rover! Are more 0.9375m parts planned?

Hello, first of all great mod! It seems that in career mode the Libra grid fins and hydra recovery bays are available from the start. Is this intended?

Great mod! I love the new Saturn parts revamp. I have a question regarding waterfall in relation to solid fuel rockets: I know that currently there is no way to make it replicate correctly sea level solid boosters, but could it be used on at least the vacuum solid fuel rockets, like the ones on the scout? Thanks!

Hi, I am using the latest BDB release in KSP 1.8 and while sending the Duna lander to the Mun I noticed that if I try to activate the interior overlay in it, it appears rotated of 180 degrees compared to what it should be. I can provide a screenshot if needed