parts [1.12.x] Sounding Rockets! Start small. Dream big!

[Taki117]

Ok.....my head is about to explode over here...

Did the ballon and bits get removed?

Told some fella on the Steam forums about em.....have now spent an hour looking for them. Even on fresh install with only USI stuff there are no ballons, or the lil box experiments.

Seriously.....kinda starting to feel like a nutter over here.....

The balloon bits were part of a beta release, it got buried in the thread somewhere.

[KhaosCorp]

Well drat...thanks for letting me know Im not going crazy =)

Guess its time to go a huntin

[parrots]

Well drat...thanks for letting me know Im not going crazy =)

Guess its time to go a huntin

I hope RoverDude doesn't mind, I've pulled this from his sig. It's the USI dropbox, there's a bunch of stuff there. As it's pre-release it'll be full of bees, as the man says.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1fsuzvl35s2gppt/AAD8kNgBm6rO9m4paXmwuqA0a

If you want the balloons, download SoundingRockets_0.2.0_PRE.zip from that link.

[UnanimousCoward]

I hope RoverDude doesn't mind, I've pulled this from his sig. It's the USI dropbox, there's a bunch of stuff there. As it's pre-release it'll be full of bees, as the man says.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1fsuzvl35s2gppt/AAD8kNgBm6rO9m4paXmwuqA0a

If you want the balloons, download SoundingRockets_0.2.0_PRE.zip from that link.

And if you use RemoteTech, you'll also want the ModuleManager config I posted a while back so that your sounding rockets can actually be used:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/102502-0-90-Sounding-Rockets%21-Start-small-Dream-big%21-0-1-1-2014-12-24?p=1664838&viewfull=1#post1664838

[Argonicus]

Missiles are good, but how to manage them? To specify where to fly?

[ultrasquid]

Missiles are good, but how to manage them? To specify where to fly?

For these sounding rockets, prop them up with the included sticks to aim them in the direction and angle you want them to go.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Sounding rocket parts are great fun. Use them as boosters for light scout aircraft, or use Tweakscale and make cute little cruise missiles with scientific payload for those boring long range survey missions.

The payload trusses can also make your interplanetary probes look that much more sinister...

[RoverDude]

Yeah, I have to expand on this mod some more

[AlexinTokyo]

Any danger of sneaking these into stock 1.0 as part of the Karbonite integration?

[MoeKitsune]

Wait... Karbonite's being integrated into stock?

[Nitrous Oxide]

Any danger of sneaking these into stock 1.0 as part of the Karbonite integration?

Only if we get airbags and floats too.

USI4stock

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

Wait... Karbonite's being integrated into stock?

Sort of. Some kind of resource system is coming to 1.0 (including ISRU for refueling), RoverDude is being/has been consulted about it, and Karbonite will use (or extend?) that system.

[Drakoflame]

So, I was messing around with this and ended up making this adorable little probe thingy and.. well... I used the Small Blimp part, and started lifing, I got the gas mass down to 0%, and was traveling upwards at around... 1400m/s when I got high enough that the balloon exploded, and thanks to Kaboom (amazing for planned unexpected explosions) to get rid of the gondola, and then activated my little terror. I used the XL SRB, the .65m one with about, 16 sepetron motors attached to the bottom... I managed to get halfway into orbit using just those XD. I then used Modular Rockets Monoprop engines to get the rest of the way and desided half way thru thru that I wanted to visit Kebal Klaus, was a major dissapointment... But in doing so, I captured a beautiful picture of teeny tiny Minmus and Mun. That all inspired me to think of some sort of delevery system, allowing for sounding rockets to be launched off of a larger rocket to fly into another planet. The reason I explained all of that, is because I was wondring if there is a way to make a part that flies off apon impact, allowing for a rocket to be launched without a parashoot, and have it land safely with all the science (either it being some kind of core, or using another mod called Science Containers... its been a life savor... it allows the comand pod/probe core to collect all of the science form the ship, instead of storing it on the part or having a kerbal go out and grab it while falling thru the atmosphere at 1000+ m/s).

Do you think something like that is possible RoverDude? I know it can be done with sepatrons and action groups, but I was wondering if it would be possible to make a part that detects colision and auto-ejects the core?

Either way this mod is totally awesome~~

Also: maybe some sort of propeller? So that way you can make little RC probes that can fly on planets with atmospheres and collect data if a kerbal is stranded in a hole or without an engine (an all to common problem with landing to fast, thinking you can do it without parashoots... you can't do it very well atleast... poor kerbals...)

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

The Exploration Pack has little electric propellers. They also respond to RCS controls, which is the best thing ever for little atmospheric probes.

[BaseDrifter]

I started a new career recently and have been playing around with sounding rocket parts, specifically the Meteorological, Aeronomical, Materials, and Engineering experiments. It seems to me like they would be better suited to be one time use only experiments like the Mystery Goo.

With all four experiments being re-runnable, I was able to get quite a large amount of science just orbiting around Kerbin, Minmus, the Mun, and Duna from all the various biomes. Seemed a little too easy to spam these experiments.

[Goddess Bhavani]

I like stuffing all my spacecraft, large and small, with sounding rocket payloads. They seem a little OP compared to other 'normal' science payloads for the reason above ^

[Teza]

I like to try and land these rockets on the runway island from the launch pad, it takes a while to aim it up just right!

[A9p]

The balloon and blimp parts have rapidly become my goto for illogical but within atmosphere test contracts - the whole thing feels very kerbish indeed.

[Cydonian Monk]

Just wanted to say thank you again for these little rockets. I may be done with them for the moment, but I've had a great deal of fun collecting flight data and look forward to using them (unchanged) when KSP 1.0 comes out to compare the performance.

[Goddess Bhavani]

I like to try and land these rockets on the runway island from the launch pad, it takes a while to aim it up just right!

That's fun.

I pretty much let them fly all over the place at random!

They work nicely as booster rockets for planes and full sized rockets too.

[1of6Billion]

I'll leave this here...

Bugged launch (for my Minmus Lighthouse Challenge). I used a few small cones from this mod for aesthetic reasons. They seem to have other magical properties as well.

Launch went fine after removal of the cones...

BTW, I launched this a dozen times. Never ever resulted in blowing up the launchpad AND the runway Only when I was recording

Edited February 23, 2015 by 1of6Billion

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

Hey, how do you get balloons to move sideways? I'm trying to reach the island runway using a balloon with a capsule under it, and I can go straight up and down, but when I try to tip it over to move forward, it just wobbles back and forth. I tried attaching sounding rockets to the back, but they never have enough thrust. Help?

EDIT: I'm using the weather balloon.

[DiamondHawk427]

When it says "two srbs", what happened to the big one in Kottabos Gaming's review?

[futrtrubl]

Hey, how do you get balloons to move sideways? I'm trying to reach the island runway using a balloon with a capsule under it, and I can go straight up and down, but when I try to tip it over to move forward, it just wobbles back and forth. I tried attaching sounding rockets to the back, but they never have enough thrust. Help?

EDIT: I'm using the weather balloon.

Ballons of course have no propulsive thrust and Kerbin has no winds (unless you use Winds). So unless you add propulsion you can't move horizontally. Also big gas bags have a LOT of drag so you will need something sustained to move anywhere useful, eg real life blimps.

When it says "two srbs", what happened to the big one in Kottabos Gaming's review?

There are 3 SRBs, that front page info is out of date.

[Drew Kerman]

Hey, how do you get balloons to move sideways? I'm trying to reach the island runway using a balloon with a capsule under it, and I can go straight up and down, but when I try to tip it over to move forward, it just wobbles back and forth. I tried attaching sounding rockets to the back, but they never have enough thrust. Help?

EDIT: I'm using the weather balloon.

Use a slightly offset CoM to tip the balloon a bit. or, use the blimp. I don't know about the balloon but I've done three blimp flights so far (they are in the twitter stream but I have yet to get a dispatch out on them) and I got several m/s horizontal speed going both up and down due to it tipping forward a bit - my first flight that went to 25km and back down traveled over 60km west of KSC. After I balanced it out better, my third flight I was able to go straight up, but coming down had enough of a lifting effect to give me horizontal motion as well. The blimp also has nodes on either end you can stick a small engine on