[1.8.1-1.12.x] Modular Launch Pads v2.6.1: Launch clamps evolved: Real-style launch bases and towers [03 July 2023]

[AlphaMensae]

The existing Small Service Tower 2 - Pole Type has now been remade into the Mini Modular Service Tower - Pole Type. It is now 6 styles of a 6m high tower section, and are the old tower variants broken down and split into modular stacking sections, with the base pad disabled for the additional sections.

The 6 styles are: 2 all-large types, 2 all-small types and 2 half-large half-small types (large and small meaning diameter of the pole). The large pole sections go on the bottom like the original version (itself based on the LC-46 "tower" used for the Athena II). Now any height of the pole-type tower can be made, in different configurations as well.  

 

It's now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub. It shares the same part name as the old pole tower, so craft files will load, though they will look quite different.  

Also added the Gray-Drab color to the Launch Stands texture series, though so far only the pole tower uses it.

Also changed the Mini Truss Service Tower to Mini Modular Service Tower - Truss Type, as it's the other "Mini Modular" tower.

What's next to do:

The Launch Stands crew elevators will be next to be transferred over to the new textures. The Mercury one will become two parts, one for the Redstone (with rollback animation and fixed crew walkway) and one for the Atlas (fixed, with the flip-up walkway), and the Gemini one will be remade.

After that will be remaking the Rectangular Launch Stand into the Atlas (Atlas SLV and Atlas II) Launch Stand, along with adding the ummanned Atlas service tower and a special Agena/Centaur umbilical arm (which was a "fallback" vertical arm).

[Starseeker]

Are there plans to add a crew airlock to the general crew access arm? The Soyuz-style gantry doesn't work for a lot of situations, but right now it's the only part that allows access to pods inside fairings.
(Love the mod so far, btw!)

Edited April 24, 2020 by Alex33212

[AlphaMensae]

8 minutes ago, Alex33212 said:

Are there plans to add a crew airlock to the general crew access arm? The Soyuz-style gantry doesn't work for a lot of situations, but right now it's the only part that allows access to pods inside fairings.
(Love the mod so far, btw!)

Yes, it's been added to the General Crew Arm in the v2.1 dev branch. The Soyuz gantry was just a simple addition, so I was able to push that out immediately as a point update to v2.0, but the v2.1 General Crew Arm has been changed too much, so it's still in the AlphaDev branch.

It's also not done being changed, as I'm going to eliminate the separate Style 2 and Style 3 variants for both the Large and Small Mounts. I'm going to fold the style 2 into the Style 1 arm (I can do it without making a duplicate arm), and the new arm will be renamed to just the "General Crew Access Arm", with separate Large (for the Large General Crew Elevator) and Small (for the Small General Crew Elevator) mount versions. The old Style 3 (Alt 2) arm has become the Rodan Crew Arm, with the mount changed to work with the Shuttle FSS Tower.

As of right now I've changed the titles for the soon-to-be-removed arm variants to "*** DEPRECATED ***". They will remain in the AlphaDev branch for a little while, then be removed; they will not be in the v2.1 release.

[Starseeker]

3 minutes ago, AlphaMensae said:

Yes, it's been added to the General Crew Arm in the v2.1 dev branch. The Soyuz gantry was just a simple addition, so I was able to push that out immediately as a point update to v2.0, but the v2.1 General Crew Arm has been changed too much, so it's still in the AlphaDev branch.

It's also not done being changed, as I'm going to eliminate the separate Style 2 and Style 3 variants for both the Large and Small Mounts. I'm going to fold the style 2 into the Style 1 arm (I can do it without making a duplicate arm), and the new arm will be renamed to just the "General Crew Access Arm", with separate Large (for the Large General Crew Elevator) and Small (for the Small General Crew Elevator) mount versions. The old Style 3 (Alt 2) arm has become the Rodan Crew Arm, with the mount changed to work with the Shuttle FSS Tower.

As of right now I've changed the titles for the soon-to-be-removed arm variants to "*** DEPRECATED ***". They will remain in the AlphaDev branch for a little while, then be removed; they will not be in the v2.1 release.

Ah yeah, I was just told about that before you replied, and I'm really excited to see how it works out in the 2.1 release! Probably gonna try out the dev branch too, since a lot of my designs end up having a fairing around the pod ^^;

[AlphaMensae]

20 minutes ago, Alex33212 said:

Ah yeah, I was just told about that before you replied, and I'm really excited to see how it works out in the 2.1 release! Probably gonna try out the dev branch too, since a lot of my designs end up having a fairing around the pod ^^;

The major change in the general crew arm was a switch from a center-pivot design to a side-pivot design (like the Saturn-Apollo crew arm). This allowed the arm to rotate up to a full 180°, as well as allowing the arm to sit flush with the elevator shaft.

The arm was also slimmed down a bit, so it could be used for both the Large General Crew Elevator (the current General one, but remade as separate modular sections) and the new Small General Crew Elevator. A downside to the side pivot was that a separate part was required for the small elevator, as the pivot point had moved as the small elevatow tower was narrower.

[TranceaddicT]

On 4/5/2020 at 1:09 PM, AlphaMensae said:

@Nnimrod Yes, I do have plans for a launch rail, but it won't be as fancy as those, due to the limitations of the lanch clamp module. It will work like a standard surface-attach launch clamp, but with a rail instead of the stock clamp's umbilical. That way it can be rotated for a directional launch. 

Coming back to KSP after a long hiatus.  Been scouring the forums to see what's been happening only to find this!

Brilliant!

I love starting off with sounding rockets and THIS will make it so much more enjoyable.

[Starseeker]

Definitely finding a lot of use of the various bits in the dev branch; put together something that, while it doesn't actually serve a purpose, looks pretty cool
(and yes, there's enough space for crew to access, despite the corridor clipping with the service tower)

Spoiler

 

[Cheesecake]

A little Question:

Is it possible to make such sagging pipes?

[svcino]

6 minutes ago, Cheesecake said:

A little Question:

Is it possible to make such sagging pipes?

NO, It's Impossible to do in MLP mod Because How to Complex Design are?

[Cheesecake]

8 minutes ago, Wirelex said:

NO, It's Impossible to do in MLP mod Because How to Complex Design are?

Why should this be impossible? The included drop pipes retracts like a hosepipe already. So physically this should be possible. I think @AlphaMensae can answer this better.

[svcino]

Ohh...

[AlphaMensae]

4 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

A little Question:

Is it possible to make such sagging pipes?

 

The umbilicals are simple telescoping tubes for the sake of simplicity, modularity and to make them easily adjustable in length.

Making them like actual curved hoses would be vastly more complex to model and especially to animate, far more more work than I want to do. They would also be of a fixed length with no adjustment possible, so there would have to be dozens of different types to accomodate all the various fuel tank and fairing diameters. They would also require a tower to be located at a specific distance from the rocket, probably also restricting the type of launch base needed. 

So, yeah, the straight style may not be realistic, but they are simpler to make and use.  

[alberro+]

Hey, I've got an issue. When I spawned a rocket, it spawned around 1000m in the air. I have KK and MLP as the possible culprits. Any assistance is appreciated!

[Stone Blue]

8 minutes ago, alberro+ said:

Hey, I've got an issue. When I spawned a rocket, it spawned around 1000m in the air. I have KK and MLP as the possible culprits. Any assistance is appreciated!

Try installing World Stabilizer as a workaround

 

[AlphaMensae]

41 minutes ago, alberro+ said:

Hey, I've got an issue. When I spawned a rocket, it spawned around 1000m in the air. I have KK and MLP as the possible culprits. Any assistance is appreciated!

That's the 1km spawn bug, caused (If I remember this right) by animated colliders spawning below the ground.

It might be an issue with whichever KK pad static you used.

[alberro+]

1 minute ago, AlphaMensae said:

That's the 1km spawn bug, caused (If I remember this right) by animated colliders spawning below the ground.

It might be an issue with whichever KK pad static you used.

Actually, about the animated colliders! The shuttle tower I use isn't always properly autostrutted, and sometimes wobbles a bit due to the massive shuttle swing structure.. Perhaps that is the culprit? 

[AlphaMensae]

New Mercury-Redstone type Crew Elevator is done and now on the AlphaDev branch of the GitHub.

It replaces and uses the same part name as the old Mercury type crew elevator.  The Atlas type elevator will be next.

The elevator shaft has been raised about 4.5m so it can sit over the launch stand and any fins present on the rocket, with the front of the shaft sitting snug (well, not that snug  ) against the rocket. To access the elevator car, there is a ladder to climb, a suitably low-tech way for the early career for which the elevator is intended.  

There is only one height available, due to the A-frame style of the side supports. It is also not meant to be a full recreation of the Redstone gantry, as that is way beyond the scope of a crew elevator, and there already is one in Tundra's Space Center/KSC Extended.

[Stone Blue]

19 hours ago, alberro+ said:

Actually, about the animated colliders! The shuttle tower I use isn't always properly autostrutted, and sometimes wobbles a bit due to the massive shuttle swing structure.. Perhaps that is the culprit? 

ya.. i noticed I needed to have the rokit autostrutted to the pads/towers i was using, or it wobbled right off the pad, and the Kraken appeared.

As to the 1km spawn bug, thats definately a seperate bug, in stock KSP,  and while I think there *may* be moar than one cause, animated colliders spawning below ground is a DEFININATE, confirmed cause. OPT has this issue with several parts.
World Stabilizer "fixes" it, tho its a band-aid fix.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Stone Blue

[alberro+]

2 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

ya.. i noticed I needed to have the rocket autostrutted to the pads/towers i was using, or it wobbled right off the pad, and the Kraken appeared.

As to the 1km spawn bug, that's definitely a separate bug, in stock KSP,  and while I think there *may* be more than one cause, animated colliders spawning below ground is a DEFINITE, confirmed cause. OPT has this issue with several parts.
World Stabilizer "fixes" it, tho its a band-aid fix.

I found the cause, and it's waayyyyy more specific than I thought it'd be. Apparently the solar panels from Habtech2 cause it, and I'm not entirely sure. Tested again, and what I said about the tower was completely wrong, however it does wobble quite a bit.

[Stone Blue]

2 hours ago, alberro+ said:

I found the cause, and it's waayyyyy more specific than I thought it'd be. Apparently the solar panels from Habtech2 cause it, and I'm not entirely sure. Tested again, and what I said about the tower was completely wrong, however it does wobble quite a bit.

hmmm... that very well could be. For some reason, KSP looks at the bounds or something, of animated parts, and takes into consideration the extended/deployed bounds, and if they would intersect below the ground collider, if deployed, when spawning the vessel, it kicks it up to 1km.
So even tho the parts are retracted/not extended, IF they *would* intersect the ground when deployed, the spawn bug is triggered.

And yeah, try autostrutting everything that makes up the custom launchpads, AND autostrut to the vessel... that should eliminate the wobbling long enuff to have a good, safe launch vOv

[alberro+]

42 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

hmmm... that very well could be. For some reason, KSP looks at the bounds or something, of animated parts, and takes into consideration the extended/deployed bounds, and if they would intersect below the ground collider, if deployed, when spawning the vessel, it kicks it up to 1km.
So even tho the parts are retracted/not extended, IF they *would* intersect the ground when deployed, the spawn bug is triggered.

And yeah, try autostrutting everything that makes up the custom launchpads, AND autostrut to the vessel... that should eliminate the wobbling long enuff to have a good, safe launch vOv

Well, those panels are definitely not 1km, so maybe it's a given safety boundary?

[Stone Blue]

2 hours ago, alberro+ said:

Well, those panels are definitely not 1km, so maybe it's a given safety boundary?

idk... yeah, its not the size of the part/collider... IIRC, one of the OPT docking or drop bays has bottom doors that would barely intersect the ground collider if deployed on the ground, on stock landing gear... but it still puts you at 1km vOv

[AlphaMensae]

Well, I have been planning the Mercury-Atlas Crew Elevator under a rather large misunderstanding. The Mercury-Atlas astronauts actually boarded their spacecraft from the big mobile service gantry. The tower that sits close to the Atlas was actually the emergency egress tower as well as the Launch Umbilical Tower (there's an umbilical line going to the Mercury capsule, it has a similar semicircle thing the Gemini used). No wonder I have never seen the flip-up walkway in the down position in all the photos I've seen.  

With that cleared up, I'm still going to call mine the Mercury-Atlas Crew Elevator, used for both boarding and egress, even though the actual one didn't appear to be an elevator.  

It will have a switchable style between one for the stock tier 2 and 3 launch pads (wide ones) and the TLC-14 pad from Tundra's Space Center, which like the real one is narrow; the egress tower sort of half hung over the side, with a support going to the ground.

Also, the upcoming Atlas Launch Stand will be a new part, as it's too different from the existing Rectangular Launch Stand to be a replacement.  The Rectangle stand though will be modified like the Round one was, and become a full square shape, and renamed the Square Launch Stand.

[AlphaMensae]

I forgot to mention this, but the new Redstone Crew Elevator also works with the Mercury-Atlas from BDB, in case you want a A-Frame type elevator for that as well.

[AlphaMensae]

Well, after using Kerbal Konstructs (v1.8.1.15 and KSP 1.8.1) and Tundra's Space Center for the very first time and following all the steps needed, I was able to spawn something to TLC-14. Then the next day when I restarted KSP, I couldn't spawn to TLC-14 anymore, got the stock pad instead. I even tried removing KK and TSC and reinstalling them, but that didn't work, still spawn to the stock pad.  I am soooo confused....

That means I have to cancel the TLC-14 variant of the Atlas Crew Elevator and make it work for the stock pads. It can still be used with TLC-14, but will have to be placed on the pad in front of the Atlas, not exactly like IRL but will have to do.