Project Mercury

[VincentMcConnell]

I can\'t wait for this, by the way will it be capable to orbit or be sub-orbital?

Cleaning up this thread, I came upon your post. I have a very detailed answer for you...

The Mercury Capsule is capable of practically anything around Kerbin. We are working on a Redstone right now for when you want to launch your capsule into suborbit. It will not be able to achieve orbit. For that, you\'ll have to use the Atlas. Right now, the Atlas has not been done, because we have a lot of work to do on Redstone. I\'ll have some pictures of the Redstone when I get a basic texture going, but doing the capsule has been work enough on its own. The Atlas, of course, will be able to get you into orbit, but you won\'t really be able to fine tune the orbit with the capsule, and here\'s why:

Mercury couldn\'t really change its orbit. It could tilt this way and that way, but it didn\'t have linear thrusters like the Gemini that could boost into different orbits. This is why a lot of people look at the Mercury as a tin can. You put a guy in it, shoot him into space and let him control very little of his orbit after the booster cuts off. This isn\'t to say this mod is going to be boring. There\'s still a lot to do and we\'re going to be putting a hatch on it. You can do EVAs from the capsule if you\'d like, but right now, no such hatch has been put on -- primarily because the part tools for hatches have not yet been released.

Last of all, we will be making a Little Joe Rocket. That little short booster that was used to test the launch escape tower. In fact, we\'ll probably need a Little Joe... [You\'d get it if you already knew about the LES problems we\'ve been having]... (nothing that won\'t be fixed.)

Anyway, if you have any more questions, don\'t hesitate to ask.

[RichieD76]

Your not coming across the sticky pad problem are you? And that\'s what\'s causing the LES tower to stick you firmly to the pad?

[VincentMcConnell]

Your not coming across the sticky pad problem are you? And that\'s what\'s causing the LES tower to stick you firmly to the pad?

No, the problem lies somewhere in the part itself. It will not thrust in orbit or in space at all.

It has thrust defined and the rockets fire, but it doesn\'t actually lift it anywhere.

[VincentMcConnell]

Got an update for everyone on the Redstone Missile.

I did the texturing on the booster itself tonight. The only thing left to texture on it is the actual engine part (the dark gray in between all the fins).

MrPwner will be increasing the Polygon Count to get rid of this blocky look, but as of now, my job is still texturing. Remember, none of these updates depict release-ready textures or models, so don\'t feel disappointed if you see something that looks a little rough. I am constantly working on smoothing things out and fixing them.

[Sbowyer28]

How wide is that?

[MrPwner]

The redstone is over 2m wide right now, but we\'re going to scale everything down to real world values (1.78m wide).

[JebThrillMaster]

Looks amazing now with the missile to launch it!

[VincentMcConnell]

How wide is that?

As Pwner said, it\'s over 2 meters at the moment, but everything is going to be scaled down before the first release. It looks really big on the pad. In fact, the Mercury/Redstone already dwarfs the launch tower, but it flies fairly stable until you have to pitch over. We will have some control surfaces in the making soon and we will probably be improving the way the capsule and booster actually moves and make the ASAS a little stronger if possible.

After the scale down, I think it will look much more realistically sized for a one-Kerbal rocket. Right now, the capsule looks like it could fit 2.5 Kerbals

On the more advanced side of the news for the Redstone, we\'re currently in the process of making it much smoother so you can\'t see those blocky panels and such. The textures will still be compatible. I also have to texture the adapter piece but cross-texturing between parts can be hard.

[VincentMcConnell]

Looks amazing now with the missile to launch it!

Thanks! I\'m personally really excited to see how the Atlas is going to look, too. The Redstone missile I got was really impressive the first time I saw it. It was untextured and black, but there was some work to do to get it to the state in which it currently is.

[Sbowyer28]

Well if its 1.70 in RL in KSP wouldnt it be 1m wide since the real Mercury had barely enough room for an astronaut

[VincentMcConnell]

Well if its 1.70 in RL in KSP wouldnt it be 1m wide since the real Mercury had barely enough room for an astronaut

So far a lot of it has been, 'How realistic can we get everything?'

There was talk from me before I became a worker on this project about reducing capsule mass for safe reentry, but ultimately we decided on keeping the mass realistic and just adding more drag to the chute. So it\'s possible that the capsule might be rescaled down to just above 1 meter or so, but right now, we want to try rescaling everything to about 1.7 and then seeing how it looks. There\'s always room for adjustment and we have plans for more than just one release.

[VincentMcConnell]

Here\'s a picture of the Redstone in its current state. I had to retexture the aft section and the tank.

The words are in a bad place in that picture. Things can be rolled though in the VAB, so just don\'t keep your words under your fins.

[VincentMcConnell]

OK. Last update of the night. I should go to bed. It\'s 2:02AM and I put a lot of work into this despite a lot of obnoxious crap that happened in real life throughout the evening.

The Redstone is REALLY shaping up. To the point where it will probably be fully textured and done in the next two days. That doesn\'t mean the Mercury will be ready, just the booster.

It was easier than I thought but it still required some measurements of the real deal and some calculations and such. Pwner did an awesome feature in Blender to smooth out the models.

(Don\'t ask me how. I can\'t navigate Blender to save my life. It\'s more complicated than Orbiter 2010 for sure.)

As you can see, the rescale has not yet been done, so it\'s pretty big. But we plan to drop the size down. I\'d hope we could get something in the area of 1 meter, as the Mercury capsule had a diameter of 6 feet (a little over average height). And the Mercury holds one Kerbal, but we want it to look like a tight squeeze. The textures and everything will still apply after the rescale, but the Redstone is almost done. A few more kinks to work out in some places, some color altering and a little issue with flickering red at the connection between the adapter and then capsule and I will put the Redstone aside. This also marked the first time I 'cross' textured something! Which means that I textured two different parts so that the paint job would meet up in game. It\'s harder than it sounds, especially when your map is curved.

I\'m still dreading the capsule texturing, but it will get done for sure. I\'m thinking making a separate layer over the current base color with the window, flag and decal 'Kerbal States' and a hatch and then making the corrugated metal texture a separate layer that will get added in later in the texturing process, but it\'s certainly scary.

The Atlas is going to be hard, but it will be fun. Especially when it flies!

Now we have some actual flight issues to work out with the Redstone, but the configs come absolutely last.

[MrPwner]

A little bit of progress here.

I found out how to get smooth parts while the lighting still looks normal (Edge split modifier FTW! =P).

Gotta keep learning

Also, the fins now have the rudder parts and function as control surfaces (Thanks to Nutt007! )

I still have to fix the LES, but I\'ve got an idea for that.

And then I\'ll start on the Atlas launch vehicle. A lot more detail in there (redstone is just a large cylinder) so it\'s going to be interesting for me.

[Bioman222]

Just so you guys can compare his stuff, to the real thing, Here are some picures I got from Google:

Mercury-Little Joe:

Mercury-Redstone

Mercury Atlas

Edit: As a bonus, here are some Kerbalized versions of these rockets:

Little Joe

Redstone

Atlas

This looks like it\'ll turn out great!

P.S Fun Fact: The Redstone Rocket was originally made to carry a nuke.

Edited August 22, 2012 by Bioman222

[MrPwner]

Thanks!

P.S Fun Fact: The Redstone Rocket was originally made to carry a nuke.

So was the Atlas, in fact most of the early launch vehicles are ICBM derivatives. Even the Soyuz today has its roots in the first ICBM ever (R-7)

[Emilio]

Hahaha, the little joe is so cute XD ! This is totally kerbal !

[LaydeeDem]

A little bit of progress here.

I love how this mod is shaping up! Glad I could help.

[Bioman222]

I was curious, shouldn\'t the retro pack be a LFE?

[VincentMcConnell]

I was curious, shouldn\'t the retro pack be a LFE?

No.

[VincentMcConnell]

Hey everyone. I\'ve been real busy lately working on a real life spacecraft simulator thing and also just enjoying KSP with some rocket science to allow for perfect flights with no tests. I have had a few days break from texturing but I expect to do a little more work tonight. I just got the new shaded parts so I have to go ahead and import those into my game and then see what I have left to do with texturing for now.

[MrPwner]

Hey there, a little update here.

I've fixed the problem with the LES, I basically cut it up into the three powered nozzles and the tower as you can see below:

The LES in action:

I still have to fix the decoupler, though, that doesn't work as it should. The ejection force isn't applied.

Also, I've started work on the Mercury-Atlas, I've got the model for the adapter/decoupler ready, the fueltank mostly finished and started on the engine, which is very (very) complicated (pic of model here, couldn't find picture material from the actual engine)

Anyway here's a render of what I have so far:

EDIT

More progress on the engine, getting the curves aligned for the LOX line was.. interesting

Edited August 5, 2012 by MrPwner

[crimsonknight3]

Thats awesome work so far! I like the look of it How long has it taken you to get this far?

[CAPFlyer]

Just out of curiosity, how do you plan to configure the half stage and determine when it's "empty" since technically it uses the main fuel supply? The Atlas I and II were an elegant design of their time, but the staging and fuel supply was always something that even some of the most seasoned Lockheed vets never fully understood what brought the original designers to settle on that design and staging arrangement (and this is from asking them directly)

[MrPwner]

Well, when the solid rocket boosters run out, that half stage will be jettisoned. The sustainer engine will keep firing all the way through and use the main fueltank.

I'm not really sure how to get it all working while looking as realistic as possible, especially the decoupler. Because when the thrust from an engine damages some other part on your ship, the thrust will not be applied. I've got some different ideas for it, though, and I'm sure we'll work it all out.

They did the stage-and-a-half thing because they didn't know if they could ignite a rocket engine in a (near) vacuum. But why they did it this way, and not a clustered 1st stage like Korolev did, is a mystery to me

Thats awesome work so far! I like the look of it How long has it taken you to get this far?

I've been busy with it for 3 weeks now I think, but I haven't worked on it all the time, a lot of time was spent with trial & error, learning blender and finding measurements, information and picture material.

Edited August 5, 2012 by MrPwner