CobaltWolf

I'd be insulted if you didn't!

what does that even mean..? No plans for any shuttle related stuff.

Ding ding ding ding! Vega is a really cool stage that I've been wanting to do for a long time... I made sure that it would be compatible with Centaur parts, so you can 'swap' the parts with their equivalent Centaur parts (ie, switch the Vega avionics with Centaur Avionics, etc) and everything still fits together. It uses the Centaur interstages. For those that don't know the interesting little story behind it, in the late 50s when NASA was formed, they settled on Atlas as being their main 'medium' lifter (since some version of Saturn was still planned for larger human spaceflight) for the foreseeable future. They proposed two upper stages, both using the balloon tank construction technique. One, Centaur, would be an advanced hydrolox upper stage that would take as much as a decade to become available. For the interim, NASA planned on using a upper stage made by GE and Convair, called Vega. It used kerolox for fuel, and the engine was a vacuum modified version of the GE Vanguard first stage engine. This would be used until the Centaur was ready. It was the last US Kerolox upper stage development effort until SpaceX came around. In real life, the Air Force decided to share their Agena stage with NASA, the D variant of which had somewhat similar performance (at least to LEO...) as the Atlas/Vega. NASA cancelled Vega, and moved the development money into the Centaur project. Of course, with BDB, you're not limited to 'what actually happened'. With Vega as an LV, the early planetary missions would have gone very differently. It was a fair bit more capable for payloads going to the Moon or out of Earth SOI, but remember they would have had to pay to develop it. That would either cut into other budgets, or delayed Centaur significantly. With Centaur delays possibly affecting Saturn... But what if things like the Ranger series were more successful, as well as less limited in terms of size... Vega adds 4 parts - engine, engine mount, avionics, and the main tankage. I didn't take many screenshots of it last night, I was stuggling to get the engine effects working. I think I'll just take an evening to finish polishing everything before I start posting more about it. More info here and here.

Well, I was up until around 2 last night, and I couldn't iron out some issues I was having due to a somewhat unique engine configuration. Since I have to leave for the weekend now, I'll have to finish it some time this coming week, before taking a break from BDB to work on some other projects (little burnt out on Apollo stuff, taking care of some other KSP-related obligations). Some hints: It's a new complete rocket stage, with engines, tankage, avionics etc... It's very old.... It's something nobody (except for 1 close friend) asked for... The logo printed on the engine bell is a hint...

We were going to wait for DMagic (can't tag on mobile...) to finish the new plugin stuff before making a 1.2 release; didn't make sense to let people run off to play now and then break their saves. If you don't care about that, then i believe all the dependencies are updated for the old DMSA version. I'll have to look into that and see what impact it will have. Either way, finishing the new experiments I shared some months ago is coming up to be a priority for me soon.

I found out that I'd forgotten to paste the damn image in... carry on...

Yup! I mostly made them default to different paint jobs so that they could be told apart in the VAB part list. All the other bits (SMs, MMs, solar panels, different HGAs, etc) are coming soon too. Very nice! ~Update~ Look-y what I found... Hrmmmm.... Wonder what it could be for?

Yup! I believe we were wondering about the AARDV Tugs that would have been used for Freedom. They would have had to be CADS since they'd be docked to the ports that the Apollos would eventually dock with. Yeah I had no idea about that book until someone posted it. I'll have to keep a watch for your new project! I knew you'd show up eventually. I solved it by adding a second version of the capsule with the stats changed, and giving it the matte white Skylab style thermal control paintjob. I then made it so the player can switch between the matte white and the classic base metal appearance, on both capsule, thanks to @Angel-125's plugin. Well thanks for tagging him! Maybe he'll see it. I think around here it's mostly just cus everyone knows that you have an account here, and you tend to be more public/talkative whenever I see you. I have two co-authors that people forget about a lot too

I hope you didn't disappoint me again dad...

Wha... I... T-Th-That's what we're talking about.

DAE TITAN HAS HOLES?!?!111

Out of curiosity, and this more goes for the thread regulars and not people just now coming across the mod, but do you actually need those names changed in order to understand what parts go where?

Of course! I didn't find them - I made them! Haha No, I didn't have to do that. They're mapped to part of a full texture sheet like everything else in the model. I'm not sure what you mean for the modifications to the windows; I'll have to look at the other compatibility packs here when I get home.

Oh aren't you just adorable. I could just eat you up.

(Russian stuff!)

@Avera9eJoe Hey, I looked through the last couple pages of the thread but didn't see anything that answered my question. I had a request on Reddit for BDB to have Windowshine compatibility. Now, I've never used it, but reading your helpful post I should be able to figure out how to make it happen without too much trouble; actually, quick mini question, but some of the steps seemed like they were for people that didn't have access to the source files? I have the windows on my parts as separate meshes already and it would be pretty easy to just open them up in Unity to check the mesh names. Can I do that? Anyways, my question is, what happens AFTER I get them set up? It seems like anything I do would need to be in the TextureReplacer folder. Normally we bundle all of our compatibility files with our mod, and maintain them on our end; since we have a fair number of contributors with vested interests in keeping those files up to date whenever we make a release. However, it seems like for Windowshine the best way might be to make them, and then shoot you a link every time I update the BDB-relevant folders? Is that what I should do?

@Angel-125's core plugin for his mods. It's going to be bundled with BDB starting with v1.1, to handle part switching, station science, bunch of other stuff.

Off the top of my head: -Our mods complement each other, since his parts cover most of the soviet space program plus some stuff, my parts cover most of the american space program plus some stuff. -Tantares has more spacecraft parts. More options for orbiters, station parts, etc. I would say it's slightly more versatile as a result - at the end of the day, LVs aren't that different from each other. -I believe BDB might have more 1.875m parts but don't hold me to that. Suggested solution: Install both. I think less of you if you don't use my mods tho

*COUGH*

Uhhhh I'll have to ask Angel. I don't really know what to do with it. I split them so that you could get the Juno C type tankage by just having the longer tank. The stripe one is kind of an ugly duckling or something.

There is some strangeness coming with the umbilicals, myself and everyone else has experienced it. Considering that right now they are straight ports of the FASA parts (because who wants to learn how to do launch clamps...) we'll have to see if we can sort them out in the near future. @pTrevTrevs very nice image. I asked Foxx to cool his heels a bit with the hype posting for Skylab - it isn't even really my main project at the moment; I just started roughing in the meshes because I was stuck at the lab without my Apollo work files. Y'all are gonna run out of good hype pics if you don't take 5.

Ha, you wish. It's a spork.

Yeah you better... or imma cut u

K.

The RD-180 from the Atlas V is actually not that powerful - it's weaker than the F1 that you get at the same tech level, iirc. You're also playing CTT - I didn't make those configs. It was also placed there prior to the newer rockets being added. Empty the fuel of the upper tank. In the real Redstone it wasn't full of fuel but avionics; but I knew I couldn't do that to y'all. Like the manual? Hrmm, I'm not sure then. Sounds like it might need to get looked at. I know I've definitely made orbit in that configuration. What about with the longer tank? They are all at the same scale. They're all balanced the same as stock parts. You need a 3.2x rescale for stock parts to make sense, and so its the same for ours. The adapter? It's new for the AARDV parts.