CobaltWolf

Gorgeous parts!

Those are from 2017, Pappy...

@Zorg or @Invaderchaos any thoughts? I was never happy with the truss interstage, though I might be able to redo it in the style of the one I made for Saturn Centaur. As for the fairing base, what do you mean @Entr8899? I specifically built the Centaur (Centaur D, at least) with the fairing base accounted for in the length/construction. I don't know, I don't think I even finished that part enough to place it. Very. Here's some WIP shots of the X-15-SERJ. You'll note we were having some heating issues in air breathing mode. Textures are still unfinished for the engine and the intake. This engine is going to be pretty complex to sort out and make work properly/accurately, so I'd hold off on messing around with it for now. The visual effects also need a lot of work, but I think once we have proper Waterfall configs for it, it will be a very visually unique engine with the double-plug-nozzle and rocket/jet modes.

I caught them. I caught all the fish.

suh

They shouldn't still be in game... their textures aren't (shouldn't) even be in the mod anymore. Gonna have to summon @Pappystein on this one, but I'm pretty sure that's actually the "advanced" Big G, the one that would share little to no hardware with the Gemini or the "min mod" Big G. But I'm sure he can expand on that. In other news, I'm out fishin. See you all in June.

It's incredible how none of those parts are in the mod anymore

I think I need to toss out my SERJ model and redo it... I finally found some cross sections, and this thing is way weirder than I thought...

Probably not? Honestly I really cheaped out on the XLR-11 and didn't model anything besides the nozzle tips. That's pretty much it. I wasn't going to do much based on that one illustration, at least not the bottom craft. I've tried adapting the cockpit to dual-seat but it came out rather poorly. I'm open to giving it a whack again. I will be out of town all next week though. lol ur good. Speaking of the SERJ intake... I don't think I'll be able to get it all working in game before I leave, but we can dream!

No, though I appreciate the boldness of asking for it in the next update and not just "in the future". As I said before, paint variants won't come until I'm 100% finished with a texture sheet, otherwise I'd be trying to make changes on multiple versions at once... Not even joking, I will specifically not work on it now just because you said this. Modified ventral fin and dummy scramjet for X-15A-2. These are some of the last historical parts for the X-15. The only parts left after that are the science experiments for the little cargo bay, and then the ahistorical SERJ parts.

I thought a Delta II core on it's own didn't even have positive TWR..?

That's... weird. That's what it looks like when I export broken normal maps from Unity, but I've never seen it go away when you zoom in. Almost like it's caching the broken mipmaps or something... but I don't think you'd have mipmaps for a .png texture?

That looks great!! The drawings I've seen show a modification to the spine of the XB-70 so that the X-15 rests in a bit of a 'cradle'. I don't think that's easily doable without dedicated parts though. To be fair, I didn't expect the X-15 to take up an entire season and counting...

Oh, it worked? I've been getting reports that launching with the X-15 mounted under a wing breaks the drag on those parts...

Thank you very much! It's supporters like you that pay for the various expenses for BDB, such as software, cloud storage, and reference materials! Didn't get much done last week - my buddy finally started Fallout 76 after I've been bugging him for months - but we're back on track now. Here's some (very WIP) tailboxes. Several of these were made, and were usually modified for each experiment. They flew on X-15-1 and X-15-3. I don't know if they ever flew on -2 prior to its crash, but after it was rebuilt the helium tank occupied this space. First, we have the Langley Horizon Definition Experiment. This was meant to determine the stability of the horizon in space (or if it would be broken up by clouds, terrain, atmospheric effects etc). It was indeed a stable reference point, and aided in the development of the attitude sensors for Apollo. Second, we have the... Apollo Horizon Photometer. Huh. I actually didn't realize how similar they were until typing this, just now. The first version of this experiment actually rotated that spherical cover to expose the instruments inside. The later flights had a fixed dome, as the wavelengths of the later experiments could pass through the cover. Additionally, the wingtip pods have made it into the game, but they're not very functional yet.

Mercury needed an Atlas and could survive re-entry. X-15 (apparently) needed a Saturn C-8 and could not survive re-entry. I wonder why we went with Mercury?

We are aware, but all it does is (effectively) delete the parachute, so it's not really a solution. I'm not sure what to do at this point, seeing as putting the ventral on at all makes the whole thing way less stable (just like real life!)

I was not planning on making a custom IVA, but I must say that Blue Steel one fits pretty well, all things considered. If you haven't seen updates on something, assume that it hasn't been touched or looked at. I am working on X-15, Zorg is working on Atlas, that's it for the time being. If I remember, I tried doing an all-white one and it looked weird because of how I'd unwrapped the part. I can try taking a look.

*whimpers* I made it since it was an easy edit after being inspired by this image; I don't know any more context than that Yes, I don't think I can change that. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the required orientations for lifting/control surfaces and wheels are hard coded and can't be changed. So all the aero surfaces need to start in the "wing" orientation, even if they're meant to be vertical tail surfaces. And the nose gear needs to be oriented such that the deployed wheel is Y-down. When I made the X-15, I made it at 1.25m (actually, 1.27m on accident). I didn't check the real scale. It never occurred to me that a KSP X-15 wouldn't be 1.25m. But 1.25m X-15 is nearly real-scale. If I kept it that size, it would seriously throw off any potential carrier aircraft, and I just didn't want to cause a cascade of issues leading from that one lazy decision. I haven't rebalanced any of the aero after making the scaling change. In my defense - my tummy hurt a bit last night. I think the rescaleFactor is messing with it, I will have to look. Fine. EDIT: Pic unrelated, brought to you by the X-15 gang member @LoadingTimeExpert

Yes, last night we discovered that having open/missing endcaps on the parts really messed up the drag forces. I put placeholder endcaps in the missing areas and everything is behaving much better now. I never would have guessed that was the issue - I'd assumed it generated the drag cubes based on the colliders. Huge thanks to @CashnipLeaf for holding my hand through the whole process and figuring this all out! There's still a lot of work to be done, especially with that pesky ventral fin, not to mention finishing the uprated versions of the plane. I'll have to get a GitHub issue together for tracking everything.

We are working the issues with the ventral fin, and many others besides. In the meantime:

I have no idea why the ventral isn't loading. I've seen several other people playing with it in game (and not just duplicating the dorsal fin) and have no idea what the difference would be. My guess is it has something to do with drag cubes? But I don't know anything about them besides being named "drag cubes"...

Update - My copy of Hypersonic has arrived and it is INCREDIBLE. I only got to flip through it for a moment but I don't think I've ever bought a reference this dense, with this much detail and this many beautiful images. But that's not all - a friend ( @Sgt.Shutesie) was able to send a copy of the Photo Scrapbook as well and it should be here soon.

As far as I know, there's nothing different from the stock heatshield. Here's what I've managed to get in game for the X-15 so far. It looks a lot more complete than it is - this is sort of the bare minimum to get this stuff in game and snapped together. A lot of the parts don't have some or all of their functionality, the aerodynamics are a wreck, etc. What I'm saying is, don't expect a GitHub upload in the next few days. Another variant I think I'm going to do is X-15/SERJ, which is... a fascinating engine. Combine a ramjet and a rocket engine, and then a supercharging fan. It would work like a SABRE/RAPIER engine as a dual-cycle engine. Modifications to the in-game craft would essentially just be a different ventral fin combined with an air scoop, and a different engine on the back.