pTrevTrevs

delete this

Nah, I’m totally making it up. If there really is a lunar Mercury design out there I hope I never have to see it.

Literally the same reason people simp for Sea Dragon ”hehe big rocket go boom” If you’re gonna demand a crackpot fantasy setup, it should at least be a good suggestion. Speaking of, @CobaltWolf when are we getting lunar-capable reusable Mercury parts?

Got tired of waiting for a white SM to put on Apollo 6, ended up flying the mission anyway.

Apollo 5: Final Saturn I Flight:

Ah okay, that’s understandable.

I don’t mean to sound impatient or whatever, but I’m wondering if those service module texture variants that were teased the other day have hit GitHub yet. No worries if they aren’t ready yet, I’m just wondering.

Sounds like there’s an interesting story that I have yet to hear. Where can I find more about the Apollo boilerplates and their fates?

Apollo 4: All-Up Really been anticipating the chance to fly the new Saturn as part of my current KSRSS campaign, and I'm happy to say I didn't experience any problems except with the Mobile Launcher, which isn't related to the mod. Not much to say other than that, because this mission was just a typical Apollo 4 flight profile.

I was able to do this with Mercury and Gemini a few months ago, but recently it stopped working for me and I reverted to the standard IVAs. It reminds me though, it would be nice to have a version of BDB that has the FASA IVAs as standard. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful we even have IVAs, but for parts like Gemini and the LEM the ones BDB offers just can’t hold a candle to what’s already been made.

Saturn at Sunrise Been fighting a lot of CTDs lately (issue with my RAM, not BDB), but hopefully I'll be able to fly Apollo 4 before the night is out.

Weren't there plans for shuttles to launch KH-9 Hexagons with the mapping camera removed to fit into the payload bay?

I believe the original ETS thread mentions them having airbags.

Apollo missions to LEO didn’t need the S-band because they were still low enough to use the scimitar antennas on the sides of the service module. The only ones I’m not sure about are ASTP and Apollo 9, since those missions involved communicating across multiple spacecraft and might have required the HGA.

Did the ASTP spacecraft carry the S-band antenna? I know Apollo 7 and Skylab spacecraft didn’t. The windows aren’t boarded up; absolutely immersion-breaking. Seriously though, if texture variants for the LEM ever become a thing, I hope we’ll see a “boilerplate” variant modeled after LM-1 with plates over the windows and such.

I don’t know if this speaks more to my bad eyes or your excellent photography, but I legitimately thought these were actual photos of Skylab at first. Not even joking.

This ought to be illegal.

Oh wow, this is pretty great. Do you know if anyone has made a patch to allow this to be used in KSRSS, like Katniss's Cape Canaveral?

Honestly, if you could get permission to adapt the model from SpaceDust, it's already perfect for this mod.

Wouldn’t a Saturn-Shuttle’s SSMEs have been air-started?

Centaur-Derived MOL and the Final Flight of Gemini [Disclaimer: Fictional Story] With eight manned Gemini missions planned in total, flight planners looked hard for a feat to end the program on a high note. Every flight so far had surpassed the one before it, and Gemini had proven new feats such as EVA, rendezvous and docking, and orbital satellite repair. Taking inspiration from the Air Force's abandoned Manned Orbiting Laboratory, NASA soon drew up plans to convert a Centaur-D rocket stage into an orbital dry workshop which could be used by the crew of a Gemini flight to test the limits of all the program's new techniques over the period of one month in space, over twice the length of the previous endurance record. In addition to perfecting the procedures which would be required for upcoming Apollo flights, Gemini 10 MOL would provide valuable physiological data on the effects of long-term spaceflight and, for the military, offer an opportunity to demonstrate the feasibility of man-controlled orbital reconnaissance with a plausible cover story. The mass of the new orbital outpost once again required the hardy but aging Saturn I to launch it to orbit; the improved Saturn-IB was still nearly a year away from operational status and the Air Force was unable to allocate a Titan-IIIC away from the many military payloads to be launched in 1966 and 1967. Saturn-Centaur serial number SA-8 was chosen as the launch vehicle, and its S-V third stage was flown to MSFC for conversion to MOL. The two RL-10 engines were removed, the oxygen tank refitted as a pressurized equipment section, and the LH2 tank built into a two-story living compartment and workshop. Although primitive compared to the later Skylab workshop, MOL offered its crew much more comfort than their cramped spacecraft. Work on the station was completed by March 1966, and it was soon flown to the Cape and readied for a late summer launch. Oh yeah, in other news I also flew AS-203 or something, but that's boring:

I’ve noticed that the animations for the MESA pallet (as well as a couple other science instruments like the Agena materials bay and the Gemini spectrometer) don’t work when I have Kerbalism installed. I guess I can’t call this an “issue” since BDB doesn’t officially support Kerbalism anyway, but I was wondering if anyone has run into the same problem and developed a workaround.

Gemini IX Visits Pegasus 1 If I'm not mistaken, this was one of the alternative mission proposals for Gemini 11 instead of the high apogee boost. The mission would have involved using the Agena to facilitate a rendezvous with one of the (now derelict) Pegasus satellites. Unfortunately my Agena had a launch failure (Kerbalism threw in a critical engine failure on the GATV), so I'm forced to fly the mission without an Agena and without docking. As you can see in the second photo I tried to fly the AMU again, hoping it would give me more mobility near the Pegasus. Unfortunately I had the same krakenesque bug as before, where upon releasing it from Gemini's trunk the jetpack freezes in place and starts ascending directly upward like it's been raptured. Oh well, at least I enjoyed this less-than-common Gemini mission profile, and the next one I fly promises to be even more unorthodox.

There used to be a submod for KAS called Surface Experiment Package (I think Cobalt was even involved with its development). It was abandoned long before Breaking Ground was released, but even so it was in my opinion a way better representation of the ALSEP than the BG science stations. Unfortunately there’s almost no chance it would still work in modern KSP. Pretty sure the mod developers specifically said they’d prefer the mod to remain derelict, but I’d still love to see something like it come out today with BG compatibility.

The OG Saturn V SA-500F was a test article Saturn V used for fit checks and procedures rehearsals at Kennedy Space Center during the summer of 1966. The S-IVB was originally developed as a 200-series test article and was used to check out LC-34 and LC-37 before being adapted for SA-500F, hence the out of place markings on the aft skirt. The iconic markings on the S-IC were originally intended to be the standard for all flightworthy Saturn Vs, but during testing at LC-39, technicians realized that the black roll stripes on the intertank structure caused excessive heat in the oppressive Florida weather, threatening to damage or warp interior components. Because of this, all flightworthy S-ICs only featured black roll stripes on the O2 tank structure. By the time this issue was discovered the S-ICs for Apollo 4-10 had already been painted with the 500F pattern and had to be repainted to the new standard when they arrived at the Cape. As a matter of fact, if you look closely at photos of the earlier Saturn V launches you can still see where the roll stripes were painted over with a fresh coat of white. Starting with Apollo 11's Saturn V the new pattern was painted on at Michoud where the S-IC was produced. After work concluded on SA-500F it was rolled back to the VAB and destacked. The S-IC is believed to have been scrapped shortly after, while the S-IVB was put into storage and later converted into an engineering mockup for Skylab, before it too was scrapped sometime after 1980. The S-II was sent to Huntsville, where it was reassigned to replace the original S-II on SA-500D, MSFC's dynamic test article, and today it survives along with the other two original 500D stages as the US Space and Rocket Center's restored Saturn V. I was really hoping to recreate this image of the Gemini 11 launch with SA-500F in the distant background, but it looks like LC-39 and LC-19 are too far apart for the Saturn to load in. Oh well...