CobaltWolf

Couldn't an F-1A be throttled to 70%? Anything after the initial order of Saturns would've used those engines instead.

The four points of the AAP-1a truss would connect to the LM attach points (the top of the legs)

Wasn't quite up to streaming, but I've added a copper texture to the S-1E tank as well as two H-2 versions (250k and 300k thrust) as variants on the H-1D. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

yeah it's pretty aight

I'm given to understanding that changing the entire powerpack of the engine is more likely to make it considered new hardware, as compared to modifications to the injector, combustion chamber or nozzle. Yeah we can look into that. In unrelated news, y'all may have noticed I haven't had anything to share for a couple weeks. It's been a mix of traveling, the new HoI4 update, and the new Minecraft update. I'm planning on doing some work, probably a stream, this weekend. Looking to take care of the Multibody textures and get a start on AARDV Block II.

That appears to be the source for the comment in Stages to Saturn, I think? It occurs to me, one thing somewhat missing from this conversation - there's a VERY big difference between what they could propose in the late 50s, vs what could be proposed in the late 60s. In the study you linked, things are still up in the air, and it's still several years before Kennedy's speech. By the late 60s (which are the docs I referred to), the S-1 had been flying for years. There would be a lot of inertia to overcome if you wanted to substantially redesign the stage at that point. On another note, this reminded me that I *had* put together something like an H-2 engine a while back. Basically just a small edit to the H-1, but it might be digging up and finishing?

Yeah but any engines you add are going to increase your TWR, not lower it. Otherwise they're very bad engines Also worth noting that dry masses/mass ratios in KSP are far higher than they are IRL. My understanding is that was less of an issue with the Saturn 1B, and more that they wanted to cut down on the number of stages (and production facilities) they had to pay to keep open. Being able to fill some of the gap in payload between Saturn 1B and Saturn V was also a prime motivation, as you noted. I'm not a rocket engineer, but I think y'all might be getting a bit too caught up on S-1 being "unoptimized". Lots of things aren't optimized. Everything is a compromise between performance, development cost, time, how easy it is to manufacture, etc. So the S-1's issues, I think, have been blown out of proportion as time has gone on. The S-1 was doing what it was meant to, and trying to switch to something like a monolithic tank would mean essentially starting over from scratch. I've seen a lot of stuff talking about upgrading the S-1 with stretches, boosters, etc. As @DaveyJ576 mentioned the S-1 uprating reports were all done by Chrysler. Fair enough, though as I understand it that's because NASA would have asked them to perform trade studies on their stage, same as they did for the contractors/stages in the Saturn V stack. I have NEVER seen a proposal for replacing it with a monolithic tank, nor giving it an F-1 past the "F-1 + 4xH-1" arrangement mentioned in passing in Stages to Saturn. Remember that ETS is fairly unrealistic in that regard (frankly, the standards of writing and the sources available were just not the same back when it was written). Another thing worth considering - (and this is my understanding) - the Saturns were set to see their prices drop DRAMATICALLY in any subsequent production runs. The facilities are all bought and paid for. The Instrument Unit in particular, originally a substantial fraction of a Saturn 1B's cost, would have been made significantly cheaper to fly. With that said - yes, by the time you reach the "Shuttle Decision" as I call it, the Saturn 1B isn't even in the running anymore. It was basically between the Shuttle, some variant of Titan, or INT-20 for how to move forward. INT-20 would preserve more of the Saturn V manufacturing capability, had far higher payload, and didn't cost thaaaaaat much more.

If I may dispel any rumors - SEP's development ending was entirely my own decision. I had already privately stopped maintaining it, and the reveal of Breaking Ground's own surface experiments motivated me to make it official.

Yeah, Saturn 1 is kind of weird? It feels like more of an engineering demonstration/test vehicle than a real rocket. I feel like if was shifted into being used operationally, there'd be some changes to optimize the TWR/burn times of the stages.

I believe the gimbal actuators+mountings were also different. I'm inferring that from the Delta/HOSS proposal, which specifically notes that hardware being shared with the S-IV but not Centaur. What about a modest stretch to both stages? Does that help or cause TWR issues?

The S-IVC Docking structure is definitely coming at some point, probably along with some sort of radiator system to control the boil off (if only to make planning easier. If I remember it's from one of the Shuttle Agena or Reusable Agena papers. If I remember, they literally took the Vega mockup and attached an RL-10 to it.

We've locked them away until Invader finishes the probe update I don't know if Burner 1 is "officially" supported, so to speak. I don't think I've ever tested it, personally. I don't think it was spin stabilized (that's what the Burner 1 attitude control kit was for). You're using the highest performing Altair, I assume? Scaling issues between the parts prevented a proper Burner 2 fairing from being made. I know the Star-37 was rescaled, I don't know if the Burner 2 kit was as well. It may be possible to make a proper fairing for it now.

Nah, too much on the FM side of AM/FM. It's kind of a joke to me, tbh. It seems like less of a genuine proposal, and more an idea being taken to it's ridiculous, if logical, conclusion (big, dumb, cheap rocket).

The longer I look, the worse it gets lol. That's wild.

Ah, easy fix. I forgot to change the material in Unity (since the yellow/white throttle glow material only lives in there). Can you tell which camera angle I was using when I pushed those two parts in game?

I use the Engine Ignitor, Mandatory RCS and Persistent Rotation to achieve exactly that.

I honestly have no idea what's going on with it, the imported animation plays fine in the little preview window, but not in the main Unity editor or in KSP. I wound up having to redo the animation in Unity itself. Should be working now. Been going through a lot of bugfixes and issues from Github today. I did just add one little part, a standalone version of the VHF antenna on the LM.

Centaur adapter, fits everything from LDC to INT-21.

Had a really crummy week, idk what I'm going to work on but I'm going live on Twitch.

Forgot to post yesterday, but there is now a mesh switch for the SLA to have payload adapters for the AARDV Block 1, Block III+ and Block IV mission modules.

"finished", that's cute

And we have clean LRB separation... the Saturn MLV vehicle is proceeding to orbit.

We're looking into it.

INT-21 and straight wall S-IV instrument units are now available. They're a simple B9 mesh switch on the S-IVB IU; I figured it wouldn't be helpful having 3 nearly identical looking parts in the list. Also, if anyone hasn't heard the whole spiel, the green/pink discoloration on the textures should be much better on release. The current textures look bad for <complex technical reasons>.

I'm not sure there's much we can do about it. Paint patterns like that are more a function of how the model was unwrapped for textures, rather than the texture themselves. I don't think the part was unwrapped in such a way to make an asymmetric pattern possible.