CobaltWolf

It's something I've hinted at before but I don't think y'all actually know about it. It's not something BDB-content related (ie not some new secret parts I'm working on) but more... artistic.

But then why did they have a warehouse full of NK-33s? Did they make them for N-1 and never use them?

Oh? I thought the N1 engines WERE NK-33?

Any more details on the N-1F and N-1M? They sound interesting!

That's awesome! I love that kind of stuff. I should have @DiscoSlelge post his too, maybe link a gallery of BDB mission patched in the OP? I am sort of keeping a list of things I'd like to put there when I get around to reformatting it... I'm waiting for a certain project to be completed before I update it.

What could this be? Could it be.... an upcoming Taerobee update? D: Since @Jso asked for a small moratorium on BDB updates so that he and our playtesters can stabilize the balance of the mod again, I decided to take a look at @VenomousRequiem's old Sounding Rocket models, and then decided to PM @Beale. Since he needs a finished sounding rocket, and I need to get these finished somewhere... well, why not? Seen above and below are a smattering of the parts that we're adding - there are a couple missing (Namely, science packages) but this should give you an overall idea of the scope. The parts will be 0.3125m in diameter, as opposed to 0.125m. It's sort of an unfortunate compromise, since the original 0.125m Taerobee was found to be a bit too small for the VAB editor as well as leading to some strange physics stuff IIRC. Hopefully the update will also include a balance and bugfix pass as well; expect some nerfs on the Bumper and the X1. Please note that I don't really plan on adding much more than this - no X-15 (wait for Downrange Experimentals), no... I don't ever know what else you people would ask for. Anyways, couple questions: 1) Would you prefer to have to recover the science experiments via parachute, or simply transmit the experiments back? 2) What sort of science payloads would you like to see? I'm thinking just a simple module with the stock thermometer and barometer experiments. While @RoverDude's Sound Rockets are awesome, the experiment packages are a little OP. This is meant to be the same sort of idea - a fun little way to start your career - but I don't want to add too much extra science to the game. Letting players snatch the atmospheric science around the KSC early on seems like a good compromise.

Thanks! Before I get asked - how much control would I have over the shader if I wanted to make the whole capsule reflective? Would I be able to paint on grime etc that would reduce the reflectivity in areas?

Crossposting from the Windowshine thread, finally figured it out. Keep an eye out for a BDB Compatibility pack at some point over at that thread.

@Avera9eJoe as usual, it was user error. I'm not even sure what I was doing wrong before, but now I can get the rest of the BDB stuff done.

Yeah but I wasn't concerned with adding a bunch of random parts. I recommended KRE since those are just the parts that are needed to make something approaching a functional SpaceX style flight profile...

Chris, Hi! It's great to hear that you are using KSP to teach your students, I believe I know one of them Reusability type parts are a bit out of the scope of this mod, since we focus on older/more primitive technology. However, I do have some suggestions for mods that would make it possible. Please note that, since the game only recently updated, they have not all been properly updated to the most recent version. Additionally, I am a little iffy on the prospect of using mods in a classroom; having given some lectures myself I'm all too familiar with technology's tendency to act cranky at the absolute worse possible time. Anyways, Kerbal Reusability Expansion: Adds parts based on the work of SpaceX and Blue Origin. Landing legs, grid fins, SuperDracos... This one is updated and should be working well. Flight Manager for Reusable Stages (I cannot get this to link properly, scroll up to aikixd's post on October 25th for the most recent working version) The problem with reusable parts and stages in KSP is that you can only control one at a time. I can't say I've ever used it (I don't really have much time to play these days) but my understanding is that it lets you take a snapshot at stage separation, finish flying the ascent for the payload, then go back to the snapshot and control the booster for landing, after which the two 'timelines' are re-merged. It hasn't been properly updated by the original author but a community member appears to be maintaining it. Trajectories Not much to say here, lets you see better predictions of what your trajectory will be since the stock ones don't account for the change in trajectory that aerodynamic drag will have on your ship. If anyone else has more good/essential mods for this kind of stuff, please feel free to chime in. Chris, best of luck with your class! Please let me know if you have any questions or anything I can help with. My content roadmap is more than a bit full at the moment, but if you have questions on any of the existing parts in the pack (how they go together etc) I'd be more than happy to answer them. Cheers, Matt EDIT: Sure, we'll just worship Mr. Paypal money instead They're both making good progress on their own projects, and both are doing significant work to advance the technology of spaceflight, reusability in particular. You should just be happy that there is some significant competition in spaceflight driving things forward. A decade or two ago that wasn't the case.

Alright yeah we were talking about the same thing (and I just realized how stupid it was to shorten 'Saturn V' to 'S-V' in my post...) I just wanted to make sure. Saturn has already had a couple incremental balance passes that are up on the Github, namely the S-IVB. I checked it just now, it's a far less radical change. I guess just for reference, if you're trying to test balance changes, make sure you're using the latest master as a reference point and not the latest release; and make sure you're checking to see if anyone has committed more balance changes since you last downloaded. Anyways, going to tag @Jso to make sure he sees this. CryoEngines/CryoTanks assumes double the IRL density of lqdHydrogen; I'm not sure where we are on that front. Note that we no longer support LF+O configs for the cryogenic stages. Also, I don't think we support/test with FAR. Personally I'd rather not worry about balancing for those aerodynamics since that's a whole other can of worms. Now that I think of it, another thing we're running into is that we removed all the fuel from the engine mount sections... we should probably add that back in.

I saw a picture once of a solid launch vehicle that basically consisted of a Minuteman placed on top of a Little Joe II in place of the CM. Which I could find it again, it was neat looking.

I generally just assume 1m IRL = 0.625m in KSP, since it makes it easier to size in my head. Considering that most stuff IRL is very close to round meters when reading reference material. And I don't fully understand your last paragraph, so just to clarify: The S-IC and S-II are 5.625m, and the S-IVB are 3.75m. Part of why the S-IVB was kept that size is because the Saturn 1 first stage was already made in 3.75m, but there were a lot of other compelling reasons for making it that size. The Saturn balance is still somewhat in flux, especially because, well, we never were able to properly test in 3x scale once we locked in to developing for KSP 1.2. We fought hard to nerf the Saturn, especially the S-V, without breaking the entire system. Now we need to go the other way - which mostly means rolling back those changes. The parts are currently overmassed, and the tanks are currently a bit underfueled. Unfortunately, for that to be worked out I'd need to stop making new parts for a bit; poor @Jso can't keep up. Sounds like it's time to work on some other projects for a bit... Of course, if anyone, say, wants to make a MM file with some balance adjustments we could review... Speaking of KSP versions, do I need to do anything or can I just tell Spacedock that we still work?

Jeez. That's buns. I use .dae for my exports (I historically have not had good experiences with .fbx) but I have never heard of .msh and .mdl. The colliders won't be too hard if you have the parts in Blender. Need to make a rough model approximating the shape of the parts and export them into Unity, drag them to the parts in the hierarchy... thrustTransforms etc would have to be placed in Unity too. At that point you'd probably be better off updating the models and textures while you're at it. I still can't believe that the release download wouldn't use .mu files.

So, out of curiosity, why was it sending those requests? I looked at the wiki and it just looks like a normal wiki page. And would it really get that much traffic?

SoonTM

.dae are collada model files. You'd need to bring them into Unity, build out the colliders etc and then export them into .mu files. Were they in .dae in the release? 0.o

Oh, myself, @Beale, and some other modders have big plans for UK rockets... and not just real ones either. Stay tuned On a related note, jumping back and forth from Saturn to Apollo to Saturn to Vega to Centaur to Apollo to Scout to Saturn to Skylab has completely destroyed my sense of scale. I have no idea how big things are relative to each other now. Perhaps some graphics would help?

Did a bit of noodling, just to see how the geometry would work out. Not an 'immediate priority' as it were. As in, don't expect it in this update. I'm going to model Skylab/Spacelab for a bit now.

I've been meaning to export out a .mu of the Titan 1 shroud by itself for personal use for some time (I have a headcanon for my non-existant playthrough where the primary LV is kerolox Titan 1 based, and the engines are replaced with H-1s at some point...) so it shouldn't be a problem. It'll probably get shoved back to my 'get all the issues on the Github cleared' rush at the end of this dev cycle tho. I'm not entirely sure what you mean though? Do you need .mu files of the engines with the shrouds removed, AND .mu files of the shrouds?

Not my thread, but let me know if I missed anything worthwhile on here (scroll near the bottom). As always, all my art assets etc are free for anyone who asks. Speaking of the J-2S... is there a noticeable difference in appearance compared to the standard J-2? I was planning on just having it be a partUpgrade for stats.

whoa!

GUYS NO

Right click > copy image location > paste it into the post?