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[WIP] Real Scale Boosters


NecroBones

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NOTE: Discussion has moved HERE.

 

Real Scale Boosters

 

Note: This pack is intended for use with "Real Solar System", or otherwise a more realistic scale version of Kerbin. The parts included will likely be severe overkill in a more normal KSP installation.


Introduction:

This is really early in development, as of this posting, and it's not 100% clear where it'll end up. But I'm at a point of welcoming some input in some areas, and I also want to have a space to show what I'm doing.

The idea behind this pack is to provide a variety of "Kerbalized" versions of real world boosters. These are not meant to be true replicas, but rather stick to the art style I've been establishing, and create usable rocket stages with realistic performance stats where I'm able to get decent numbers for the real world counterparts. I'm trying to track down the sizes, masses, fuel capacities (in terms of mass), thrust, and ISP numbers for each thing before I start. The art assets attempt to capture the overall size, shape, and color of their real counterpart while sticking to the "SpaceY" art style, for the most part.

My plan is to include only the boosters, and not the payload portions of these rockets. For example, the Saturn V parts will likely have the first three stages, but no Apollo spacecraft. The idea is to build your own payload and use realistically performing analogs to the boosters used in the real world. To that end, some adapters and fairing parts will probably also be included so that other KSP parts will function with these boosters.

This is an idea that's been rattling around in my head since about June 2015. I keep going back and forth on whether or not I want to make 10m parts for SpaceY, and I figure a more interesting way to start on 10m parts is to make a realistically performing set of Saturn V parts.

Again, the idea is that this would be working primarily with RSS and/or RO in mind, but a stock-alike set of settings aren't out of the question either. I'm thinking this way, since the main reason to have realistically sized rockets is probably to have realistically sized space and planets too. ;)

As of this writing, I have the first two stages of the Saturn V functional, except I haven't made the J-2 engines for the second stage yet. Mainsails work pretty well here though. ;)

Depending on what I have enthusiasm for, and can find stats and measurements for, I'm thinking I may do at least a few of these:

 

* Saturn IB (probably a must, since really only the lower portion of the rocket is differen)

* STS (Space Shuttle) boosters and tank, possibly RS-25 engines to go with it. This is a big maybe.

* SpaceX Falcon 9R. This is the reusable version of the Falcon 9.1. Other mods have made really great Falcon 9 replicas, but it would be cool to have one in this art style too.

* SLS (CDR version)

* Ariane 5

* Delta IV Heavy

And possibly others.

 

 

Flight test of the Saturn S-IC with 5x Rocketdyne F-1 engines:

 

Edited by NecroBones
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Just as is expected from a NecroBones mod. :)

1 hour ago, JPmAn said:

(wants to find someone who can make stock ksp configs for this, scaled down...)

Back on topic: Amazing! Jeb might want to ride on an F-1 with infini-fuel on! :cool:

Your signature does not allow you to post this in this forum.  Just kidding.

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1 hour ago, CliftonM said:

Just as is expected from a NecroBones mod. :)

Your signature does not allow you to post this in this forum.  Just kidding.

Haha. Very funny. Now, the rockets that I want on this mod are on my profile photo.

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Hehehe. :) Anyway, glad you guys like this so far!

 

I do have one thing to brainstorm at this stage (har har) of the Saturn V development. I believe Realism Overhaul makes ullage thrusters matter quite a lot. I haven't decided how to handle them on the Saturn V yet. Normally they should be on that interstage adapter between the S-IC and S-II segments. The thing is, right now I have the interstage set up as an omni-decoupler (stack separator). In order for the ullage to work, it would need to decouple from the bottom, then run the ullage motors, then deouple from the top.

 

The problem is I don't think it would work well to put ullage motors into a part that is also a stack separator. When staging, it would stage both things at once. It would still kind-of work, since the interstage is actually hollow with colliders built onto into the sides, and I think it would still push against the S-II pretty well even when detached. But I think that's an ugly solution.

 

So I see a few different workable scenarios:

 

1.  Leave it this way, but put the ullage motors on the S-II where the fuel feed ridges normally are.

 

2. Put the ullage on the interstage, where they should be, but turn the fuel tanks into the decouplers, allowing for separate staging events.

 

What are your preferences?

Edited by NecroBones
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I would say it comes down to whether you want this pack to be more realism oriented ie designed for Realism Overhaul, or more gameplay oriented ie a SpaceY type pack, just bigger. If it's the former I would go with the second option. But the more intuitive, gameplay oriented option would be the first, in my opinion. 

 

Oh, and a question: most of the information on SpaceX's BFR is rather speculative at the moment, and it's probably still a few decades away, but have you considered something like it?

 

Some STS hardware without the orbiter would be welcomed by many of us, I'd like to add.

 

Edit: @NecroBones I really like the radial ullage motor idea, personally. You're probably only talking 20 of them max per rocket, and users will already be saving parts by using these large boosters. Plus people can mess around with the ullage motors separately if they want.

 

Would they be solid-fueled single fire motors, or multi-use?

Edited by Jodo42
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2 hours ago, Jodo42 said:

Oh, and a question: most of the information on SpaceX's BFR is rather speculative at the moment, and it's probably still a few decades away, but have you considered something like it?

I think if I could get enough good information on sizes, masses, etc... enough to make educated guesses about the rest, then I could probably consider it.

 

1 hour ago, Phineas Freak said:

@NecroBonesyou could have a slim decoupler (like a ring) for the S-IC/S-II separation, place the ullage rockets on the interstage and then make the interstage a second decoupler.

I thought about the idea of a separate decoupler ring, but I think the reason I wouldn't want to do that is two-fold. First, it adds more joints, and since these are already large parts, it'll make the rockets more bendy than they need to be. But also, putting the ullage rockets on a decoupler at all means that they'll stage together. It could be possible to combine the ullage with the lower separation, so depending on which joints split, etc, that's not impossible to do. But I also want to make it user-friendly in terms of what goes where.

 

The third option I forgot to mention is to make radially-attached ullage motors, like sepratrons, which makes them optional and you'd have control of when to stage them. But that of course also increases the in-flight part count.

 

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5 hours ago, Jodo42 said:

Edit: @NecroBones I really like the radial ullage motor idea, personally. You're probably only talking 20 of them max per rocket, and users will already be saving parts by using these large boosters. Plus people can mess around with the ullage motors separately if they want.
 

Would they be solid-fueled single fire motors, or multi-use?

 

Probably single-fire solids. I'm pretty sure that's what was used on the Saturn V. So far I haven't found any stats on them, like ISP/thrust/mass. But I haven't searched that hard yet either.

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7 hours ago, NecroBones said:

The third option I forgot to mention is to make radially-attached ullage motors, like sepratrons, which makes them optional and you'd have control of when to stage them. But that of course also increases the in-flight part count.

 

The more I think about it, the more I think I should just do this. It's more stock-alike and gives the player the most control.

 

--------

Got some third stage stuff working:

KSP%202016-01-03%2020-37-23-37.jpg

KSP%202016-01-03%2020-38-49-39.jpg

Edited by NecroBones
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Wow, impressive work! 

Another option would be, while maintaining ullage on the interstage, the following. Decoupling would seperate the first stage. To avoid another staging action you could let the interstage decouple automaticially when the ullage engines are depleted. This would hardly make it more complicated. Maybe give the option when you rightclick on the interstage to seperate without firing the ullage engines. 

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4 hours ago, Sea4nl said:

Wow, impressive work! 

Another option would be, while maintaining ullage on the interstage, the following. Decoupling would seperate the first stage. To avoid another staging action you could let the interstage decouple automaticially when the ullage engines are depleted. This would hardly make it more complicated. Maybe give the option when you rightclick on the interstage to seperate without firing the ullage engines. 

Unfortunately I can't do that. It'll just be a parts pack, without a plugin, so I won't have the ability to change the staging and right-click functionality like that. The way KSP handles staging is that a staging event will trigger everything inside the part at once. So if it has decoupling and ullage motors in the same part, they'll stage together. The only way around that is probably to use action groups, but I'm trying to avoid forcing people to do it that way.

 

On 1/3/2016 at 11:23 PM, Sequinox said:

YESYESYESYESYES

Seriously man, I support this 100% for just that line alone. Delta IV Heavy doesn't get enough love it seems.
Looking forward to following this mod!

Forgot to reply to this earlier. Yeah, it's kinda funny that the Delta IV Heavy doesn't get much attention, and yet, it's partially responsible for getting me into making parts in the first place. I was playing around with rocket designs using nothing but stock parts, and realized that the main thing that was missing in order to make a stock Delta IV Heavy was just a small orange tank to go above the white section on its boosters. So that was the first part I made (for MRS), and then I just kept going. :)

 

 

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2 hours ago, NecroBones said:

Forgot to reply to this earlier. Yeah, it's kinda funny that the Delta IV Heavy doesn't get much attention, and yet, it's partially responsible for getting me into making parts in the first place. I was playing around with rocket designs using nothing but stock parts, and realized that the main thing that was missing in order to make a stock Delta IV Heavy was just a small orange tank to go above the white section on its boosters. So that was the first part I made (for MRS), and then I just kept going. :)

Yeah, that was my main problem when I built my stock Delta IV Heavy. Excited to see this mod progress! You're doing awesome work man!

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The cool thing is that the data I've been looking at all lists the Delta IV booster cores as 5m in diameter. So any existing 5m mod parts should line up nicely with those.

 

For the Falcon 9 on the other hand, it's close to a stock diameter, but not quite. It's 3.66m in diameter. When I model 3.75m parts, to make them line up nicely with the stock tanks, I find that I have to go about 1% bigger (3.7875m). That puts the Falcon 9 at 96.63% of that diameter. I can either fudge the diameter upward, or just make a really small adapter. I'm leaning toward the adapter, since I want to get sizes right wherever it's practical.

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19 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

The cool thing is that the data I've been looking at all lists the Delta IV booster cores as 5m in diameter. So any existing 5m mod parts should line up nicely with those.

 

For the Falcon 9 on the other hand, it's close to a stock diameter, but not quite. It's 3.66m in diameter. When I model 3.75m parts, to make them line up nicely with the stock tanks, I find that I have to go about 1% bigger (3.7875m). That puts the Falcon 9 at 96.63% of that diameter. I can either fudge the diameter upward, or just make a really small adapter. I'm leaning toward the adapter, since I want to get sizes right wherever it's practical.

I'm having slight trouble understanding here. From what I get the options are to make the Falcon 9 parts 3.75m, or make them 3.66m and add an adapter for compatibilty.

If you ask me I think the latter is a better idea. You get compatibility and accuracy for just an extra part as opposed to just compatibility.

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I support 12ft Falcon 9 (I presume it's 12ft, 3.6576m, not random-metric-size).

For the S-I-II interstage, how about this? Make the S-IC itself a decoupler on its top node. Make the ullage rockets radially attachable (indeed in one flight, IIRC, none were fitted, and the number varied flight to flight). Finally make the interstage a decoupler on its top node. Presto, perfect 2-plane separation.

Since someone (cough) added decoupler toggling to stock, the S-IC can even have its decoupler turned off. :]

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Very cool idea. I know a lot of people who use RO and or RSS don't have the patience to research and "stick build" lifters based on real world designs. This will be a great help for the. I'm personally the type of rocket geek who does just that, so I probably won't use this. The SpaceY packs are a mainstay in my regular KSP install, and appreciate the quality you put into your work.

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3 hours ago, Sequinox said:

I'm having slight trouble understanding here. From what I get the options are to make the Falcon 9 parts 3.75m, or make them 3.66m and add an adapter for compatibilty.

If you ask me I think the latter is a better idea. You get compatibility and accuracy for just an extra part as opposed to just compatibility.

 

2 hours ago, DBowman said:

FWIW I'm with @Sequinox; the adapter lets  people do pure faithful replicas and also plays nice with stock parts.

Sorry, I know when I get into "thinking aloud" it can be hard to follow the stream of consciousness. Yes, I think we're all agreeing that keeping it accurate to the 3.66m size would be best, and provide an adapter for those who want to use stock parts with it too. I'm doing the same thing with the Saturn V already. I haven't posted the screenshots, but I made some adapters:

10m - 6.6m (a fueled adapter that has the same size and shape as the S-IVB insterstage)

10m - 7.5m

6.6m - 5m

 

2 hours ago, NathanKell said:

I support 12ft Falcon 9 (I presume it's 12ft, 3.6576m, not random-metric-size).

For the S-I-II interstage, how about this? Make the S-IC itself a decoupler on its top node. Make the ullage rockets radially attachable (indeed in one flight, IIRC, none were fitted, and the number varied flight to flight). Finally make the interstage a decoupler on its top node. Presto, perfect 2-plane separation.

Since someone (cough) added decoupler toggling to stock, the S-IC can even have its decoupler turned off. :]

You know, I like that a lot. I just made the edits to the configs before typing this. I'll probably do some test launches tomorrow. Thanks! For some reason I didn't think to split it out that way.

 

I do have the ullage motors functioning as radial parts:

 

KSP%202016-01-05%2000-32-22-72.jpg

KSP%202016-01-05%2000-33-11-00.jpg

Edited by NecroBones
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On 1/3/2016 at 0:39 AM, NecroBones said:

 

Probably single-fire solids. I'm pretty sure that's what was used on the Saturn V. So far I haven't found any stats on them, like ISP/thrust/mass. But I haven't searched that hard yet either.

There were 4 types of SRMs on the Saturn V:

S-IVB Ullage SRM: 60 Kg, 15 kN, 220 s VACISP, 3.8 s burn time.
S-II Retro SRM: 226 Kg, 155 kN, 197 s VACISP, 1.5 s burn time.
S-II Ullage SRM: 256 Kg, 102 kN, 257 s VACISP, 3.8 s burn time.
S-IC Retro SRM: 230 Kg, 337 kN, 148 s VACISP, 0.6 s burn time.

(Thrust values for vacuum conditions. Mass values for loaded conditions. Source: Saturn V Flight Manual)

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