CobaltWolf

I remember when I first made the old LM, everyone tried building this but the plume deflectors couldn't be switched off...

It can go either way so easily lol. Sometimes it's something I'm well aware of and it is a little tiring having to hear about it until I get around to it. But lots of times it genuinely is a complete oversight, so on the whole it's definitely better for everyone to follow the "see something, say something" rule, even if I'm a bit grouchy on occasion. There's been pretty obvious issues that have persisted for years because I didn't know and nobody mentioned it. I'm almost certain I never added it, I barely got the lab in game before switching to the LRV project. Honestly, I think part of the issue is the "lab" functionality is abstracted poorly and only functions on the basis of a single part, rather than an entire station (or a module of a bigger one)... so if you have a modular station part set like Tantares', or even BDB's Gemini station bits, you wind up with only one part with the lab, despite the internal "compartment" theoretically being several parts long. On that note, I copied the MOL's lab modules into the LM Lab file just now. I've not tested it but I don't think there will be any issues. I don't think adding or removing modules like that would affect the craft in orbit. Usually what breaks crafts is if the model or nodes are adjusted.

I have seen the WIP build guide and it is crisp I tell you. Did you also log this on Github? Or did two people realize the issue within 24 hours of each other haha I can't believe I didn't add it the first time around, but YES it's supposed to have some sort of low-mid tier laboratory functionality. The LM variants are all in various states of unfinished - I got them all roughly in game and then the LRV took over my life since mid-May. They all need a bit more work before they're ready to release. I think there's still some silly message I wrote on the LM Truck platform... Good to know. The cargo space in the LRV itself isn't intended for any of the parts - I put it in so people can use it to set up ALSEP stations that weren't directly next to the LM. The LRV bits should all be stuffed into the Q3 Cargo part that was added a few weeks ago, though iirc one or two need to go in the descent stage due to space limitations. You should be able to use the non-snapping adjustments by clicking the angle snapping button in the lower left, same as the VAB. Uh, that sounds wrong. @Rodger is this your doing?

LRV should now be up on GitHub. Thanks and huge shout outs to @pTrevTrevs, @OrbitalManeuvers, @Rodger, @Pioneer_Steve and @Sgt.Shutesie for your invaluable feedback, troubleshooting, and input during the process! The LRV might be my favorite thing I've ever made for KSP, it's unreal to see it in game and working as well as it does (poorly, but better than I thought it would). Still plenty of work left to do on it, but the basics should all work well enough for the time being. There's still a handful of texture details I missed, and most of the science parts aren't fully configured yet. But you can deploy and assemble it and take screenshots Build guide, deployment procedures, and surface assembly instructions will be coming at some point before release.

Short S-1C and S-II White versions of most of the ETS Apollo variants... the AARDV Mk2 is on a separate texture sheet, sorry.

You're fine I just know the parts are buggy right now, and I didn't want a bunch of people running into/reporting the same issues that my testers have. Don't want to waste a bunch of people's time with something that won't work, y'know? Of course, I just played Rimworld when I got home last night and didn't put any more time into this... oops...

No, I'm not putting it on Github until it's working to my satisfaction. I've sent it to a couple people for testing and there's some pretty critical issues still.

No, not yet.

Time to get the LRV in game... https://www.twitch.tv/cobaltwolfy

Ares didn't use nuclear engines though... uh, read the book if you wanna know why - I ain't spoiling that lol. Yeah, apologies for saying I'd stream last weekend, didn't know I was going to get COVID. I'm feeling better and I think the LRV might be good to get in game this weekend. I'd like to stream some polishing work on it (basically going through and finding all the details I forgot to add to the texture) and getting it in game if I can. Enjoy some progress pics. I was stuck on the rear area for a while but I think I've come to grips with it. The main thing left now is the tool carrier and the SEP experiment antenna, everything else is at least partially textured.

The most recent version should work fine?

Appreciate it y'all, don't worry, I'm mostly better now. Just a bit tired still. I threw together the S-1C and S-II short variants last night, two of each. Got distracted before getting them in game but it's coming. A note, actually (and I'll probably repeat this when the variants are in game) - don't worry too much about using the short S-IIs for 'fat' S-IVBs. I intend on making a 6.25m S-IVB tank for FLO / Comet Saturn, just haven't gotten around to it. Oh and while I'm thinking about it, I'll also mention I need to get a 3 (2?) engine version of the S-1D booster skirt thrown together. Shouldn't be too hard I hope.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I tested positive for COVID last Wednesday and have been mostly laid up on the couch the last few days. Most of the time I've managed to sit in front of a desk, I've been slowly working on the LRV... it's turned into one of those projects that just eats time for not a lot of visible progress... the front half is entirely unwrapped, if not fully textured. The back half isn't finished being modeled yet.

That's the historical airlock and MDA. It just looks different.

More LRV progress. Planning on streaming dev work Friday night, maybe Saturday as well.

Only if you all believe hard enough

Depends on how much I'm bribed

but nobody posts the actual Dawn of the Dragon pictures...

Ok, thought about this a bit on the drive in to my office. I'd just stick to BDB v1.9 if things are working well for you now - BDB v1.10 was almost entirely focused on updating the Saturn and Apollo parts, so if you're already happily using the existing versions of those, there isn't a lot to get from the update. My chief concern, if you were to try and 'merge' 1.9 and 1.10, is that stuff like the compatibility files, things like that, are all updated and pointing at the new part names, not the old one. So I think if you tried to use BDB v1.10, but with the v1.9 Saturn folder, those Saturn parts would have issues. I actually did briefly look into that while I was making the shortened S-IVB. I wanted to take the green 'cone', and everything that attached to it, and stick it on the tankbutt in the S-IVB mount. Zorg did the same thing, in reverse, for the single engine S-IV mount. I didn't work well, but I think I can make it work with a bit of elbow grease. First off - I'm really not taking Gemini requests right now. I've got a pretty long to-do list at the moment. Regarding "wide nose" Gemini, and this pretty much all applies to the Apollo as well, it's actually a pretty big ask. From a real-life hardware perspective, once you start changing the shape of the capsule like that, you're suddenly designing an entirely new spacecraft. So it's a somewhat unrealistic solution. With the Gemini, you also rapidly lose visibility out the forward windows. Then there's what it would actually take me, the modder, to do such a thing. I'm going to try and illustrate this, so people understand the problem with doing something like this. Here's just a normal cylinder, ring of vertices on the top and bottom. It's easy to change the diameter of one end by grabbing them and scaling them. Here's the Gemini capsule. As you can see, the geometry is much more complex (to a fault, almost), and selecting the top to change the diameter just results in a really jacked up model. Properly changing the slope would take an extensive amount of time moving all those vertices by hand - and the end result probably wouldn't be that good. Yeah it's been on my to-do list for a bit now. I don't see why not, I suppose?

I'd finish that save and start a new one with the new parts. They're quite an improvement.

Best I can do without breaking the model/UVs, any more and we need to start figuring out the ISP of corrugated metal...

As far as Big G, I may do Gemini Direct at some point? Which includes some 4.25m stages that are pretty perfect for that. But, what about this for a shortened S-IVB? It's actually stupidly cute the more I look at it...

I'm a weenie and like having actual documents to refer to Uhm, good question. The stages were designed to have repeating sections added, not taken away. I don't think the base S-IVB has a section that can be removed easily, but I might be able to squeeze at least one shortened variant out of it? I also still need to do a 3 (2?) engine variant of the S-1D booster skirt. But stuff like this doesn't exactly make me excited to get home and get to work, sadly

So let me caveat this all by saying - we're still in the early stages of figuring out these parts, so the scope of what we're doing is still being defined. I think it will be Zorg and I's main focus once we finish the new station / LM parts, respectively. So - the thing I posted. That's not for nuclear shuttles. This is trying to create the IRL (not ETS) S-IVC, which would have been an earth departure stage. The idea here is you stack several S-IVC stages in orbit, and then fire them one after the other. There's a bunch of different variants of this, and the art is all a bit weird, so take it with a grain of salt. So the parts I showed, specifically the docking system - that's JUST for docking S-IVB-type stages together. I'm also working on a length-adjustable side-docking solution. re: Nuclear shuttles, at this rate I'm sure there will be dedicated parts for them, we just don't know what yet. Note that the nuclear shuttles are all S-II diameter, not S-IVB diameter. NERVA II is really too big for use with S-IVB-diameter stages. I'll just say - we're going to be putting a lot of work into make interplanetary transfer vehicles with all this stuff. Y'all need to make sure you make some big, cool missions with them when they're out, since we won't really have payloads for them. I'd totally make direct ascent Apollo and tell people to launch it on uprated Saturn Vs just to troll. But the big issue is since direct was abandoned relatively early on, the direct ascent Apollo doesn't have a lot of detailed design work so there isn't a ton to pull on. But it's something I think would be cool some day. That's doable, yeah. I don't think the labs can easily be stretched. I put a good amount of time and effort modeling, unwrapping, and texturing the Saturn stages to be stretchable. I don't believe any such work was put into the lab modules. is that even part of vanilla BDB? EDIT: Yeah the fuel cell should be using monopropellant, not sure what you mean?

Still TBD. It might be modified APS modules, it might be some sort of new APS with clustered Apollo RCS - which was mentioned in some docs as a preferable option due to their regenerative, rather than ablative, nozzles.