TrooperCooper

The UNSA is reaching out to the Moon. Click here for details.

Episode 3: Reaching out to the Moon After setting up a ruidimentary low altitude relay network, the UNSA intended to deploy a number of high altitude communication satellites for improved remote control capabilities. These satellites would feature two new key technologies: large scale solar panels and dish-based RT antennas for long range coms. However, delivering these heavier probes to high altitudes would have required a bigger lifter than the one that was used for the low level relay sats. At the same time the Russians faced a severe problem with their radial attached booster setup for the heavy RX 4 rocket. Thus, a new launch vessel had to be designed, which would only consist of a single powerfull lane. Based on the RX 3 the engineers developed the RX 5. It is a 3-stage rocket with four times the engine power of the RX 3 in the first stage and a newly developed Mainsail engine on the second stage. The last lifter stage is basically the RX 4's top stage with two XLR50 boosters. As an upgrade it received an integrated attitude control system to maneuver its payload into different orbits. As a start, three RX 5s with Com Sats were launched into Earth Orbit. The sats moved into their high orbits and established a first test network. The system was working. However, the Agency had to realize that the new dish antennas did not have the range that they had been hoping for. It was planned to send a Moon fly by probe on its way, remote-controled through the new com sats. Unfortunately, that was not an option anymore. The probe was already built though, and thus it was decided to send it blind on its course, just to demonstrate that mankind had begun to reach out to its natural satellite. Luna Visitor was based on the com sats that had just been brought into orbits. It had additional scientific instruments and an increased ammount of fuel, which was easy to add, since the central body of the com sats was mostly an empty base for the large solar panels. The engine section was also improved with four thrusters to be able to move the bigger mass. As lifter served the RX 5 which had just proven its reliability with the com sats. As expected, it put the probe flawlessly into orbit. Mission control set up a first flight plan with a Moon-rendezvousz in just under three days... TMI burn and seperation from the lifter top stage on the Earth dark side... Luna Visitor was on its way... ...setting new world records for speed and altitude and sending back the first scientific data from high Earth orbit. The com network arround the Earth held connection with the probe up to its mid flight correction burn. Mission control had come up with an alternative flight plan in order to return the results of the automated Moon fly-by experiments back into com-range of the Earth. And thus the mid-course correction burn ensured that Luna Visitor would pass by the Moon in a retrograde orbit. Shortly after the maneuver, contact with the probe was lost. It did however silently continue on its path and reached its target. The automatic science instruments began to record data. Zooming down to an altitude of 35 km, the first manmade object rushed over the jagged Moon landscape... Then climbed back up on an escape trajectory that would bring it close to the Earth again. Five and a half days after the launch, mission control cheered as Luna Visitor came into range again and transmitted loads of data. Another milestone reached.

Yeah, nothing in the soviet engine packs file seems to be newer than february 2015.

Bobcats old soviet engines pack is supposed to work still. I have it installed and the game loads fine with it, though I have not put any of those engines on a craft of mine yet. I am not that far in the techtree yet. You can still download hist stuff from mediafire. The community is not allowed to post links for that provider anymore due to adult ads on their site or so. But Bobcats stuff is still there. See the incomplete URLs in his thread and just add mediafire . com at the beginning after www. and the links should work.

Oh, NVIDIA is the producer of my video card. Not sure what you got but maybe make sure your video card drivers are up to date. I know this is usually just a standard answer. But it worked for me. ( EDIT: tag @Belerafon since I forgot to quote )

Ahoy @NathanKell ! A bug keeps plaguing me in my current RSS / RO / RP-0 game. Since it regularly locks up my creations, I am pretty much grounded at the moment. I looked at the logs and forked through my installed mods, trying to figure out which one is causing it. In the end I could only try to reproduce it with a fresh KSP install and a CKAN RSS + RO + required mods install. My system is a Windows 7 Pro and I am running the regular KSP 64 bit exe. Here is a an imgur album that shows and explains how to reproduce the bug. The log section that I think is related to the bug: It then just continues to spam the red marked part. I am still unsure if this is related to RF, RO or procedural parts or something else. If it doesnt belong here and you got an idea, please let me know. As always, thanks for your outstanding work for this game.

I had that as well... untill I updated my NVIDIA drivers.

Continuing with my RSS/RO game, ship crews in the Pacific were reporting "Fire in the Sky!". Click here for details.

Episode 2: Fire in the Sky Planned manned space flights by the UNSA required them to learn the techniques of re-entry. In order to figure this out, a 4-ton test-dummy was designed. It included parachutes, scientific equipment, heatshield and enough fuel and engines to be able to maneuver in space. Delivering four tons of payload into orbit however posed quite some difficulties for the young space program. At the end the involved parties split the work of designing the setup: the Americans designed the payload itself, based on the early version of the AJ10 engine with a pressurized fuel tank and attitude control thrusters. Along with that they also created the lifters top stage with payload fairings and based on two XLR50 Boosters which were originally designed for the Vanguard missiles. The Russians came up with an innovative design for the lower lifter sections. Instead of sticking those on top of each other, they decided to attach radial boosters to a central stage, something they already had in mind for their own R-7 rocket before the UNSA was formed... In total the new RX 4 weighted 260 tons when it was rolled out to the launchpad... The rocket cleared the pad and boosted skywards... Flawless booster seperation, central section keeps pushing the rocket... Then it was time for the last lifter section to take over. Payload fairings were seperated as well... And at last, over Papua New Guinea the test-dummy was released into space. Looking carefully, you might notice a little design flaw that could have an impact later on... The dummy made use of its RCS thrusters. This new technology allows for attitude control in space... It swung arround to initiate its re-entry burn. Mission control tried to figure out wether or not the last lifter stage was still to close but figured the chances of a collision at this distance would be acceptable already... And of course during the burn the dummy did collide with the lifter stage. Luckily no real damage was done, but the probe was put into a wild spin that forced mission control to use quite some fuel to stabilize... Then everything was set and mission control was expecting to continue with an easy descent. But it went downhill from there... Suddenly all controls were locked up. The black spot in the ground-based com network over the central pacific had been overlooked by mission control. And the lower section of the unmanned spacecraft had not been decoupled yet. The heat-shield was not free. That might be all right, some engineer said. The lower section could burn up and then the freed shield would come in to protect the test-dummy. "All right, did we arm the parachute?" some american controler asked. "Errrrrm.... nope!" The old sattelite that was put into orbit by RX-3 on the earlier mission was slightly ahead of the return-dummy. A direct connection between the two vessels was active, but even for the RX-3 sattelite it was unlikely that he would get a link to a ground station in time to act as a relay before the dummy would impact. Soon enough the vessel dipped into the atmosphere and began to heat up... Ship crews in the Pacific reported "Fire in the Sky" and then followed by explosions. Bits and pieces flew everywhere... Finally the lower side of the heat shield was freed and it kept the hope up that a com link could be established in time to arm the parachute... Wouldnt it have been for the long com antennas, that sticked out over the heatshield and popped up one by one... Now all was lost and the dummy crashed hard into the calm Pacific water... After this failure, the engineers went back to the drawing board to re-design the return unit and mission control took excercises in standard operation procedures. It payed off and the repeat of the mission went successfull, though financially with the prior failure the agency barely brooke even... Realizing that a faulty com network would pose a threat to almost all further upcoming missions, the UNSA decided to fix that problem. A couple cheap lifters were launched... ...which carried a set of five ultra-light relay probes each... They were scattered out in low orbits and are now forming the backbone of the UNSAs early relay network...

Thanks! Yeah, and it seems like it is continuing just like it began...

Learn something new every day. Looks complex. I might dig into it. Thanks for that.

Wow! That thing looks nice. You might get me back into the aviation part of the game. TBH: I was thinking of the Tornado at first...

Okay.

Unfortunately, I dont think so. At least not that I know of. Emphasising "desperate".

Tracking station => spaceport symbols on planet Earth => clicky

I started my 1.1 RSS/RP-0 image based play-through. Click here to see more.

With the mods Real Solar System, Realism Overhaul and Realistic Progression Zero along with many others (like KCT, FAR, KER, RT just to name a few) finally beeing updated to 1.1 I am now starting a new serious RSS career game. And this will be the image-based play-through thread where I will keep track of my achievements. Comments and questions are of course welcome. The main mods have been mentioned. I might change the mod configuration during the campaign in case i stumble across intresting additions. Realism adjustments are deactivated ullage and unlimited ignitions. I am also using various non-RO engines as long as they are supported by RP-0 and have been set for RO/RF with the stockalike RF Engine configs. [ Stopped using those in Episode 5 already. To many bugs and conflicts with the RP-0 setup. ] The career is set in an alternative history, beginning after Wolrd War II with the Russians, Americans and Europeans... basically the whole world cooperating in the endeavour of reaching out into space. Wether or not an actual desire to go into space would have manifested under such conditions is a question I am not going to dig into here. The United Nations Space Administration (UNSA) is running the international space program with Kourou in French Guayana as their main launch site. Their first milestone was set in stone right away: use the german military technology to learn the basics of rocket flying and put an artificial satellite into orbit arround the Earth. Without further ado, here is Episode 1: Pushing into orbit. ========================================================================================= The first launch of the international space program: the RX 1, basicly an old A-4 rocket (also known as V-2) taking off from Kourou. It went straight up into the atmosphere. The engineers had predicted it would reach space. But the launch crew had not much experience with this new technology yet and thus messed up the fuel configuration. The rocket had way to much oxidizer loaded and thus burned much shorter than expected. It reached 41 km altitude... Then tumbled over and fell back down towards the surface... Everybody at Kourou ran for the bunkers as mission control realized its super-sonic trajectory... Thankfully the Earth had rotated a little while the rocket was zooming up, and thus the V-2 impacted a few hundred meters west of the KSC. Next up the RX 1b was launched. The same design but with a fixed fuel setup and additional scientific equipment. It proceeded through the atmosphere... ...and into space, up to an altitude of 234 kilometers. The re-entry was spectacular but due to the prolonged flight there was no danger for the KSC. After this first success, the engineers proceeded with an idea that the germans already had for attacking America: putting a second rocket on top of the first one as another stage. The result was the RX 2. Even though it had newly developed engines, the similarities to the A-4 are obvious. The fins were kept and most importantly the flight control system of the old V-2 was used as well. A piece of technology that the UNSA had not yet surpassed. The RX 2 taking off from Kourou... ...pushed through the clouds... ...and released its upper stage. The top stage zoomed into space to altitudes never seen before. With its improved science- and coms equipment, it sent astonishing data back to the control center. To the surprise of mission control, it even survived its re-entry and was able to send even more data all along the way back down to the surface. After proving the viability of multi-staged rockets, the engineers took the idea one step further and designed an enormous three-stage rocket, weighting 60 tons. The task of the RX 3: to put the first satellite into orbit. Once it was finnished, the RX 3 was rolled out to the launchpad... ...and took off. ...climbing into the cloudy sky over Kourou... ... into Max-Q... ...levelled out and accelerating horizontally... Stage seperation for the launcher... Pushing the Apo further out over the Atlantic... Top stage ignition... ...and then the task was fulfilled: a stable orbit was reached. With 200 million $ in their budget and an upgraded launch pad, the UNSA is now beginning to pave the way for the first human in space...

Yesterday I continued with my RSS / RO game by throwing a 1.0.5 RP-0 install into it. It was a buggy mess, but good enough for some training untill RP-0 is updated to 1.1. A refurbished and updgraded german V-2 rocket beeing the virst vessel launched... It was followed by the RX-2 and several more high alt science rockets that were fired into the sky over French Guayana... Those early rockets eventually all saw the same fate one way or the other... Untill the RX-6 brought the first scientific payload with chutes and a heatshield into space that was able to return sample data intact to the surface... The RX-5 was the first rocket that put a sattelite into orbit. And now the improved and much cheaper RX-7 has become the standard carrier for the early com sat network... And when I got up this morning, I noticed that RP-0 was updated to 1.1. So I can start a real career with it. I will probably do a play-through thread for that. So I dont spam this thread here to much.

Yep, its automatic. Those parts will be automaticly used in your next constructions (if they match) to speed up the building process and reduce costs... unless of course you deactivate inventory use...

I had the exact same problem and fixed it by updating my NVIDIA drivers from 361.something to 365.1. Still having some minor problems (texture gap between 100 km and 140 km or so) but nothing to bad...

I am running the 1.0.5 version on my 1.1.2 KPS install. But its pretty much a mess. It is playable, but overall the ballance is out of the window and bugs here and there... I consider it just as a training for myself in RSS/RO untill the real RP-0 career starts again with an official 1.1 update from the devs.

If you are desperate, you can add custom bodies into AlexMoons website. Pull the data from KER in target mode or so. See the "add body" buttons on the webpage.

If you are into recovering and reusing stuff, making it worthwile and also giving you tools to develop and test, I highly recommend the Kerbal Construction Time mod together with Stage Recovery.

Ooooh, I see. Yeah, used to play with that to much I guess. Thx

Hmmm... anyone else able to build crafts unrestricted by avionics? My cores also have no avionics stats in their data in the VAB...