Subasean

Heart = Broken. My latest series episodes have essentially been "Ode to dtobi's Magic Engines". Thank you, and best of luck! I started from Day One wanting a real Space Shuttle for KSP that I don't just snap together from a kit (KSO is awesome, and back in the day the old Buran was all we had, but I'm a tinkerer at heart) and that I could tune for FAR and Deadly Reentry flight. Your mods made this a reality and I want to give the most sincere thanks. My latest Shuttle that my series has started revolving around lately is the culmination of about a year's worth of development and testing, but it would have never got to orbit without these wonderful engines.

Had a technical glitch that prevented my Cacteye Telescope from transmitting, and tracked it down to a bad .cfg for an antenna. Could have fixed everything from Notepad, but decided to fly a service mission as an STS-061 homage. **And it's a Special Episode *FROM* my series... Argh typos...**

Saved it! Screenshots are terrible, the Science UI is still jacked, but it collects and transmits science, so I'm happy until it or something else trashes this series for good.

I'm more worried about the UI at this stage. Screenshots are nice, but nonfunctional. Gonna give up trying to fix graphics artifacts. I sent a service mission up and swapped antenna for a known good one and I can at least transmit science, which is what I was most worried about. The UI is still janky, and that's the bothersome part. ^and aethergoddess: It is WinX64. I've been running this series since .24 came out now and have rebuilt the file about 6-7 times (each episode has, somewhere in the VO, me saying: "I think I've got it now, smooth sailing ahead!"). What I'll probably end up doing is making a clean x64 install and trying the mod on its own to isolate the issue to a conflict with other mods. I'm hoping to at least finish an ISS, capture an asteroid, put my VentureStar into operation, and send a Constellation mission to Duna before moving into .25, and going back to 32-bit. It's been interesting to be a guinea pig, but I'd like to get back to not holding my breath between scene transitions =)

So I've reinstalled AND tried the VDS fix. Anyone else had this issue? I just made a whole episode for my Youtube series about deploying this behemoth with my Shuttle and I can't seem to fix it. (Version 24.2) I AM running 64-bit, and I'm leaning more toward it being a conflict with some other mod I've got buried in the background, rather than the mod itself. I made an demo video where I did the exact same thing while the Shuttle was in testing phase, and it worked perfectly. I'm afraid I just wasted that effort. (Though a Telescope having an imaging problem right after deployment from a Space Shuttle... I seem to remember hearing something similar a few decades back... =)) **Edit** Those hexes... I'm thinking Kethane conflict, now.

All I tweaked were the engines, and if the colliders aren't being changed for FAR's calculations, I think they're hidden well enough behind the body so it makes no difference.

Latest creation, courtesy of Klockheed Martian, B9 Aerospace, Tweakscale, and FAR: Tweakscale allowed me to size the engines down to get the aerospike redundancy they planned for VentureStar. Apart from an inauspicious landing, test flight went pretty well. Design changed between the album and the video, and now the canards are gone again.

I've been playing with building a Venturestar SSTO more in concept than form, (IE: Flies like, does not look like) and have run into some fascinating lifting body effects. First off, the ship: (That was a quick screenshot taken while toying with wing positions. The final Procedural Wing design and position put the CoL behind the CoM, as it should be)At low angles of attack, it lawn-darts mercilessly, but once a certain threshold is breached, it tumbles tail first. I pulled the wings off and flew just the body and as I suspected, the CoL is forward of the CoM due to the wide, flat body, however, small stabilizer wings lose their effectiveness once the body presents its lower surface to the air stream, and the body aerodynamics dominate the flight characteristics. I'm trying to find a solution, but I am aware that there's a reason Lockheed Skunk Works were designing the X-33, and my abilities/tools may not be up to the task. This would be a lot simpler if I weren't hung up on a glider return, but that's part of the fun of the challenge. My gut is telling me the CoL marker isn't going to be a lot of help here, less so than my Shuttle and most of the design is going to have to be sorted with the graphs. Anyone here pulled off a Venturestar-ish ship with B9 and Ferram? Any advice on taming a lifting body? **Edit** I spend a few days fighting this, finally break down and ask for help, then go back to the game and get it pretty much fixed. Argh. Ditched the Procedural wings and fancy designs, grabbed a B9 delta wing part and then just reallocate the mass of the ship when empty and voila! All is solved.

Played with the prerelease HL cockpit. Am dying for the release version. ::rubs hands together:: Yes, it will do nicely...

Thanks! As a Shuttle nerd, both the US Orbiter and Buran (RIP, the world is poorer for your loss), this is easily my favorite mod of all time. I used to use a plugin written by (or just shared, was never entire clear) a forum user named Endless Waves and hacking stock engines to make my shuttles. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90427-Dauntless-Space-Shuttles ^Here's where you can find the .craft files, and here: is a recreation of a rather famous Shuttle video (with link to the original in the description)

Before I junked my FRAPS recordings for my latest Shuttle videos, I noticed a few clips that were cool, but left "on the floor" so to speak. Shot a bit more footage, spliced it together, and this is what I had: And the far less lame version: Gonna cool it with the Shuttle videos for a while

And for the final piece: Heavy payload delivery at the extreme end of the shuttle's flight envelope.

Off topic, but I wanted to say: Blizzy, your ambient light mod is one of my all-time favorites. Simple, but oh-so useful. I'm NOT using it for my current series, since I'm trying to be all NASA-y and realistic, I've left it up to myself to make sure my ports are lit, and landing sites are correctly chosen for day-side landings. With that said, if a moderator would like to shut down this thread, be my guest.

That's fair. That's what made me a little uneasy about the request, and especially since they're not technically "my" files to share, I settled on giving a little of what I've learned keeping x64 together with popsicle sticks and tape.

I have the list published. It seems they're having some issues getting everything to play nicely. I added a bit to my list explaining some of the steps I've had to take to make it stable, (Where I've skipped experimental x64 builds, for example) Most mod licenses are pretty permissive, I just don't want to step on anyone's toes, while also being helpful, but I've got over 2.24G of mods in that folder, so I'm not surprised there are some conflicts.

Required Mods: B9, updated for .24 KW Rocketry (for SRBs) Klockheed Martian Space Shuttle Engines (Because, Duh) Procedural Wings Ferram Aerospace (I don't think she'll even fly in Vanilla, and I know NEAR is out due to PWings) TAC Fuel Balancer. Video explains all The shuttles are oriented in the VAB so that to go heads down on 090 you just have to pitch the nose over. If you want to do a roll-program, shift-click and rotate 180 degrees in the VAB. Image Album: The Files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ovf5tu9u8flzyp8/AACwbFYF4LprO93FnoZgOM1Ha Optional Flag-Based ILS System Concept: (Ignore the math, the landscape is flat enough to make no difference. 4Km from the end of the runway, there's only 1 meter variance between actual and linear distance. Is useful to use a little trig to figure an approach angle though...)

Today I got a request to share my GameData folder for my Youtube series, and while I would love to help my viewer get a somewhat stable build, I'm pretty sure that counts as a violation of many of my mods' authors' licenses, since it would essentially be like me issuing "SubaSean's One-Stop RAM-Puddle Mod Pack!" I'll share .craft packs, no problem, but I don't want to go redistributing other peoples' works, especially because I'm just an idiot with a FRAPS install and a Google account, and the people making my mods are true content creators. I'm fairly new to the Internets Vidya Makin' world, so I want to make sure I'm crystal clear. Is that pretty much the long and short of it?

Made a video of my latest creation with this mod. Took pains to make it as hardcore realistic as possible and still operate right. I'll post a simplified .craft file (mainly deleting extraneous mods and replacing mod parts with stock where possible)

Made a video of my latest creation with this mod. Took pains to make it as hardcore realistic as possible and still operate right. I'll post a simplified .craft file (mainly deleting extraneous mods and replacing mod parts with stock where possible)

**edit** Found a thread about this further upstream. Strongly swept wing and CoL issue. My wing base has severe rake. Disregard below. Anyone seen weird control surface issues with CoL? Built a B9 replishuttle and my CoL/CoM was close, attached Pcontrol surfaces and the CoL dropped to the very back of the ship. With B9 CS though it looks about perfect. Here's the weird thing, though: It flew more or less like I was planning. If it's just an indicator display issue I can just work around/ignore it.

I can see both points. I'm an engineering major with a huge nerd crush on NASA and flight testing, and in the latest episode of my "Realish" youtube series that I'm going to try to VO and publish tonight I've got a lot of testing footage. However, I wholeheartedly agree, it's probably not going to be that interesting to watch for a lot of people, so I may begin only recording interesting tests in the future. Thankfully, I'm out of Mercury and into Gemini type flights, so I can rationalize that away as just the program maturing. That said, I've built a wonderful little F-86/MiG-15 looking aircraft for flight testing and Kerbin biome data that I've had a blast using (it's awesome for p-chute testing. I just make something up about spin-recovery/shock line tension testing) for in-flight testing. I think early parts testing contracts phasing out with rising prestige for things more along the lines of Steampunked's suggestion would eliminate the tedium, and give the general sense of "We've crawled, we've taken unsteady first steps, we've learned to run, now let's go to the pro leagues!" On the flip side, the engineer nerd in me would like to see a mod with parts development. "Hold this finicky prototype nuclear engine at a specified ennvelope on the test stand for a certain number of tests without blowing up, and you can use it in flight." I would in no way wish that on the core game, because I can hear eyelids shuttering from people reading that from here, but it'd be kind of cool to me to be able to invest say science points and funds, or, through repeated testing, to raise the stability and efficiency of parts.

I think my Youtube channel stands as a pretty resounding "Yes!", but it wasn't always like that. However, the more I use FAR and try to keep things to where they would fit in a KW fairing, I've gone back and redesigned some of my more outlandish designs to be more realistic. In particular I'm currently re-engineering a heavy Kethane drilling rover to break up into 3 pieces for orbital assemble, because those ultra-heavy rover wheels are darn near impossible to get into orbit under a fairing. And I fly Apollo style just to give me more to do. There's no great practical reason to do it, but to me it looks cool, gives me some design challenge, and allows for learning some new and interesting flight techniques. Münar-orbit rendezvous practice has made my direct ascent docking launches from Kerbin a piece of cake, plus it keeps docking skills sharp. That said, I do phase them out the longer I play, reasoning science marches on and better machines are developed. However, when I have my SSTO münar landing and return uber craft operational, I still have a sense of history in my spent descent stages scattered about the Mün as monuments to a bygone age. Which is totally pointless but to my nerdy self, entirely worth it. And I'll never defend the practicality of my Shuttle, but I'm not gonna quit using them, either.

Be very aware of CoM shifts at hypersonic speeds. I have the payware SR-71 for FSX and like the real aircraft Angle of Attack past 7 degrees at Mach 3 is a VERY sketchy proposition, and fuel balance is completely manual on that one. I play exclusively with FAR and my SSTO spaceplanes exhibit the same behavior. For giggles I made basically an "SR-71+" as an SSTO, two turbojets in the wings and an aerospike in the tail (no RAPIERs for this guy!) and once I engaged the aerospke the fuel consumption shifted my CoM so violently, the tail sank, had a left engine unstart followed very rapidly by the starboard wing shearing off. As suggested before, make every effort to place fuel tanks where, empty or dry, the Center of Mass doesn't shift much, if at all. TAC fuel balancer can be a huge help, but it sometimes takes some experimentation to memorize which fuel tank is where and when to shift things around. (On the other hand, uber-nerd that I am, I do enjoy writing down basic flight manuals for my planes and doing test flights to find their absolute flight envelopes so I don't forget. None of this is necessary, just makes me feel like I'm practising for when I get my degree. =P)

Thanks! Added credit to Xrave and Whaa in my video.

Quick demo in 64x. Works great so far! Universal Storage here I come!