tater

I'm not using another mod. MFT-A tank. How can you possibly get it to a diameter of neither 1.25m or 1.875m? OMG, you can click inside the field...

But there is no 1.4735m tank, is there? The rest of the Soyuz upper stage parts are 1.875m... my white/green 1.875m tank on the next stage engines shown is perfectly flush with the SSTU soyuz orbiter parts and LES.

The core stage (center, first stage) needs to be 1.25m, which makes the adapter at the top a little smaller than the 1.875m size that I have all the upper stages set to. This is clear in the image above where what is called the soyuz adapter in SSTU ups the size to the next stage. Clearly all the upper stages are the same size as the orbital vehicle with side panels and LES on top, right? That's 1.875m. That then necks DOWN to the engines at the bottom of the core. In the real image I posted you can see that the core steps up in size to what would be 1.875 in KSP. Regardless the orange engine mount in SSTU (forgot the mount name, sorry) is neither 1.25 m, OR 1.875m. The green tank above is 1.25m. In the real image of an R-7 above, you can see that the orange and green are basically flush. If the green tank is set to 1.875m, the orange/yellow engine part is much smaller than the tank, and the soyuz adapter on top is much larger than 1.875m. The soyuz adapter on the top of my 1.25m tank: You can see that the 1.875m decoupler is larger than the adapter. It is not 1.25m, however, it is only a little smaller than 1.875m. If you scale the tank to 1.875, the adapter on top is much bigger than the upper stages, which is also not right. All the upper stages need to be 1.875m, as they are all the same diameter on Soyuz. The core must be 1.25m, IMO, or you're building something else. On the solar panels... I had not commented on textures, as they were all unfinished parts, but the white between the black panels looks odd on my computer. It might just be me, and the setting I have it set to, though I tried at full res textures and everything else maxed out, and it still looks jarring to me. Up close, they look awesome, but at a more "usual" viewing range... it's hard to describe, it has a jarring optical illusion sort of look. They look fine on the white background as Shadowmage posted them up the thread, bit in orbit, lit in game... they look weird at certain distances. The same of the cross pattern on the station parts. I'll take a screenshot tonight and post what I mean (and again, maybe it's just my meh graphics). You can see in the upper stage image (real) that the entire thing needs to be 1.875m in kip (spot on in SSTU). The Soyuz adapter then must be set at the nose of a 1.25m tank. The engine mount is slightly larger than 1.25m, and the soyuz adapter on a 1.25m tank is slightly smaller than 1.875m. Seems like the engine mount (yellow/orange color) needs to be closer to 1.25m, and the adapter on a 1.25m tank need to be slightly larger... Unless I am doing something grossly wrong.

BTW, seeing the Soyuz gets me thinking, as I have built rather a lot of them lately in SSTU. The core and conical boosters are pretty straightforward, using the soyuz adapter on the Nose of the core (set to 1.25m). The engine diameter is larger than 1.25m, but smaller than 1.875, though, and looks flush on the real thing. Ditto the adapter, which is in between diameters.

Yeah, Glenn is a BA-330 launcher as I see it. When the Chinese land on the moon in however many years, Bezos will have dim sum and tee shirts to sell them... "My dad/mom went to the Moon, and all I got was this lousy BO t-shirt."

I'm thinking we need a Be-4 engine... Could use it for Vulcan... or other things:

The chances of anything useful coming from "fan" video from many kms away seems pretty desperate, frankly. I think they need to start a crash program of testing Stage 2s to destruction, but they also need a replica GSE setup, too. Maybe a use for a landed F9 might be to stack a 2d stage on it, instrument the heck out of it, and see what data they can get past their usual telemetry.

Wow. See, Bezos is a sleeper... As I said here, or another thread about Bezos turning down a Russian offer of a lunar trip for a couple hundred million $... why pay retail?

I'll try and do more welding tests for you. I tested them a couple times, and haven't really pushed the use.

Not according to the guy who named it. (this has the potential to go very, off topic, however) Suffice it to say that when it was a novel, new way to get graphical content over the net, I never heard anyone use the hard G. On the subject of actual KSP stuff... I had a rescue contract and the target turned out to be an LC2. Since it had EC and RCS, I decided to dock it. Oddly enough, it won't dock. I do not think this is an SSTU issue, per se, since the game does't know that rescue pod can have a docking port. It did make me wonder how the initial pod is created such that it cannot dock, but like an idiot, I derogated it instead of checking the save file and looking at the craft. I'll go hunting for another SSTU pod, I'm curious now.

If they have a bunch of data, then the tweet is just this notion of what, trying to make their fan base feel included? If they don't have a bunch of data, and they actually need camera data from many km away---they are pretty desperate. I'm not saying anything one way or another, but I am certainly saying that the implication of the tweet is basically a coin flip between those 2 choices, so it's a bad idea from a PR standpoint (because it can certainly be reasonably interpreted as "desperation.")

No, I'd assume they have high framerate, HD cameras covering every angle such that nothing useful could possibly be learned from a camera several km away (any possible camera held by anyone other than them, in other words)

There could not be a less serious medium than Twitter. As such, it's aimed at the kind of people who follow actors. I doubt many had HD cameras trained on a static test. Its entirely plausible to read it as desperation, and it even being plausible gives a possible appearance of desperation. That's bad PR. I heard Columbia break up over my house, and there was a call to keep an eye out for possible debris in the mountains. That's vastly different than what was a TEST under controlled conditions that should have been observered better that spacex obviously did. I guarantee that future tests will have more data collection than this one obviously did---they certainly had many better cameras trained on it than the video we have all seen, right? They should presumably have cameras where we could pinpoint rivets, right? If not... Wow. Cameras are dirt cheap.

No, that's exactly what they are saying. That it's even a possible reading would make it a terrible PR move.

Why would they want the publicity of effectively saying "we have no clue, do any of you have a video we can look at?"

I was gonna say the same thing... tweeting it seems desperate, they've already asked for help privately within those communities. Tweeting it is by definition asking Joe Blow to help out, frankly.

I agree that they clearly are at a loss right now, which is a really bad thing for any return to flight attempts. If they cannot isolate it to a specific GSE issue, then future launches are just a dice roll, other than perhaps being extra vigilant about GSE risks in the future, and adding far more data collection in case of a failure. Maybe they should replicate the strong back as it was, and test second stages to destruction on it (meaning do launch loading cycles on it until something breaks). It's important to also note that all US LVs do a "static test" before liftoff---they spool up the engines with the hold-down clamps, then launch. If they detect a problem, they can shut down before releasing the hold-downs. The static tests are a bit odd, frankly, and including the payload as they have recently done is just, well, dumb.

Alternately, they could just make it so that 99% of the contracts weren't awful, then we'd not need a shortcut.

http://bfy.tw/7d7i

I thought this was gonna be about my 1963 Series II 109.

So rocket parts should look like a spaceplane mod's take on rocket parts? How about rocket parts look like rocket parts... Unlike spaceplanes (with my definition caveat above!), we have actual rocket parts to look at. My ideal aesthetic would be a sort of retro-future look, but making sure that every single part fit kerbals, including all hatches. (with helmets, otherwise the hatches should not be allowed to open in space, ever). Of the engines, I actually like the 1.25m ones the best... before I stopped using all of them altogether (I have), I never used the poodle, for example, even when there was not another choice... it was simply too ugly.

Yeah, I know they generally consider gliders spaceplanes, but I don't. By that definition Gemini with the parasail would have been a spaceplane. I don;t require SSTO for it to be a spaceplane, I think I require HTHL, or at the least VTHL under it's own power. I would consider early Shuttle concepts where the orbiter was on the back of another aircraft a spaceplane, for example. There's another thread about this issue. In the KSP world, spaceplanes are magic, however. I agree that to the extent there is any aesthetic that is coherent in KSP it's planes now.

@Andem Could I not complain that spaceplane parts don't look good stuck to my oil barrel looking rockets, then ask for those parts to be changed to match, so that when I use a plane part stuck to the oil barrel, it doesn't look jarring? That's the problem, spaceplanes are taken as THE style, and rockets must conform so that planes look OK with rocket parts, but the converse is not true (you said the parts should fit with the others, so shouldn't the (new) spaceplane parts ft with the old, crappy parts). What if I think the spaceplane parts are in fact too futuristic? I actually think this, but then again, spaceplanes are magic anyway (I don't see any spaceplane launch dates on the schedule right now).

It never had a coherent style anywhere until the spaceplane parts, all the parts seemed independent from each other. Then the PJ spaceplane parts came. The spaceplane parts are coherent, nothing else. You keep saying I twisted your words, when I have not twisted them at all (nor even really used them). I am taking the implication of your words, explicitly. You claim there is a kerbal look/style/aesthetic. I claim there is not, with the exception of spaceplanes, which look awesome. If you think there is a kerbal style that includes both, then that style is by definition awesome looking planes, and terrible looking rockets. If you want to abandon the notion of a kerbal style, that's great, we agree! Then we can talk about what the nonexistent kerbal style should be. I argued above that I think it should evolve from a "first rockets" look, to the spaceplane parts as an endpoint. Yes, that means I don't care at all if the lv-30 looks wrong stuck on a spaceplane. If everything needs to look spaceplane like... might as well add warp nacelles. (sorry, but I'm not a spaceplane fan until something like skylon actually flies). On the plus side, my "evolution" idea would have early plane parts added at some point that don't look like sci-fi, and those would work just fine with older looking 1.25m parts. How's the 2.5m oil barrel look on a spaceplane? I get what you are saying, but I suppose I don't care what rocket parts look like on spaceplanes. What has happened is that the PJ spaceplane parts are now basically defining "kerbal." Any part that would look wrong on a spaceplane won't work? Of the engines, is it only the redstone looking one that you dislike because of the bell shape? That's the only one that looks "old" to me (because I can see the V-2 and Redstone in it). Myself, I'm only concerned with rockets (a bias I freely admit). That's why adding some new parts, along with a revamp is good. Have the starter 1.25m parts, then throw in some newer looking engines that work with both kinds of craft better, and some old looking plane parts (Bell X-1 type things). They fit because they are the same color, that's about it. mk2 is the same form factor as mk1, but bigger. If there was a non-replica mindset for the mk3, it would have continued that trend. As it is, kerbals go in time from super streamlined, sci-fi looking plane parts that are 100 years in the future to 40 year old looking shuttle parts.

You absolutely implied that. You have stated that the new parts show are not "kerbal." Kerbal is what we have now, and that means ugly rocket parts, and sleek spaceplane parts. As I said numerous ways, there is no kerbal aesthetic anyone can point at, because the difference between spaceplanes and rockets is so incredibly stark. You certainly implied it. You don't like the "realistic" look of the PJ parts shown above. The mk3 parts are "realistic" in the sense that they copy a real craft, Then every part needs to look sleek, and modern, no exceptions. They should probably ditch the fixed landing gear with the spats, they look "old fashioned" and we don't have prop planes. The mk3 is a copy of shuttle. If it followed the rest of the spaceplane aesthetic, it would merely look like a bigger part sent for the mk1-2 series. That it doesn't underlines the lack of a kerbal aesthetic. Having the same color texture doesn't make the aesthetic the same. This is my point in a nutshell.