pTrevTrevs

Altair 1 and Orion 2 docked in orbit for an LKO test of Altair and the rendezvous and docking techniques, like Apollo 9. After the miserable failure that was my first munar landing attempt, I decided to take it slow and call in the intelligence agencies to cover any indication that the first flight was flown at all. Those gold tanks you see on Altair's underside are drop tanks meant to provide a little extra DelatV for Altair, since it seems that its descent engine is to be used for course corrections and the burn to slow into Munar orbit. Once they are empty (and they are supposed to drain out first), they detach, and the spacecraft's own tanks can be used for the landing itself. Man, look at that Earth Departure Stage, isn't she sleek? New fixed solar panels + Vector + awesome.

I would send six, but keeping up with that many while on EVA and with three or four other ships to cycle through will be a pain. Also, when I tried to make a small duna ascent vehicle a while back, I had lots of trouble finding a way to fit so many crew into a smal enough ship to fit in the lander. I think three will work, and I'm definitely not sending more than 5

How many crew members is best for the Mars portion of the mission? I was considering bringing only three to make it easier to manage during the surface activity portions and to not have to put as many crew capsules in smaller areas of the ships, like Orion, the Ascent Vehicle, and the transfer vehicle, but I think that only sending three to Mars seems a little... off... to me, like if NASA were sending people out into space on an extremely prestigious mission that could probably only be flown once due to time and budgetary constraints, you think they would send more than that.

Pro-tip: use either the 2.5 meter separator or the 0.625 meter decoupler for rocket stages. The big decoupler is thick and ugly, but the separator is thin and doesn't ruin the shape. The 0.625 decoupler a can be hidden with some fairings or strategic use of the offset tool and the fact that they are smaller can be negated by adding a few struts between the lower and upper stages.

Delicious stuff, isn't it? I think it was actually Star Trek that first got me hooked on Earl Grey. Picard would always request Earl Grey Tea from the replicator, so I decided that I should try it and see why he liked it so much. The logo looks good, are the ships going to be replaced with the actual craft used or is that the final version?

I'm almost done building Altair, but I'm not sure how to build the airlock. does anyone have any ideas that don't require too many parts? EDIT: Nevermind, I found a way, but it's only there for show, Kerbals can't actually enter it. EDIT2: Nevermind again... the airlock started to suffer a kraken attack when I tried to land on the Mun, making it impossible for me to control the lander's attitude and forcing me to abort the landing and jettison the descent stage. Then I found out that the ascent stage only has about half the DeltaV required to reach orbit, even if it uses its RCS. This is a lot harder than I thought.

I think I've worked out all the kinks for the Swordfish, so I'm going to put the craft file here for you to take a look at and see if you want anything changed. Be aware that the struts on the wings and torpedo sight will disconnect themselves at the slightest excuse (Ctrl+Z, moving the ship, looking at them funny, etc.). Sometimes reloading the craft (if you haven't saved it) will work, sometimes it doesn't. When taking off don't apply any pitch until you see the tail wheel lift off the ground and only use the rudder sparingly to keep the plane straight, otherwise you might scrape the torpedo on the ground. Recommended torpedo drop height is around 70 m ASL (it's not like I need to specify ASL anyway) Once it's in the water you will have to switch to it to point it towards its target and start the engine, but it should run by itself after that. If i remember correctly, AG1 toggles the landing flaps, although you may want to remove them since I realized just as I was typing this that I don't know if the real Swordfish even had flaps. I think the plane can run on two thirds throttle at cruising speed, but you may want to keep it on full just because of how slow it is. CRAFT FILE

That part would just be in the battle itself, would it not? I'm not sure you should bring in a completely different track to see the ship that doesn't get sunk get fired upon. Of course, it's your movie, not mine, if you want I can do some more looking this afternoon.

I've made a pallet of structural plates are radially attached ore tanks stacked on top of each other. I usually put them on target ships for testing torpedoes or missiles, but they might work here. I'll see if I can post some pictures this afternoon.

I hope I can get KerbPaint working on my computer so I can paint the plane red (or black like Joseph Jacobs's plane). I could also get a decal mod for the Maltese crosses on the wings and tail.

Wouldn't you run into the same problems if you used music from War Thunder or Battlestations Pacific? I doubt those tracks are open source, although I can't say for sure. EDIT: Here are a few tracks from SH3 I think would work. They've survived on YouTube since 2009, so I guess that there wouldn't be any trouble with copyright. Probably best for the opening stages of the battle itself This one sounds good for when the British task force is shadowing the Germans. This one possibly for when the German ships first set sail or stop in Norway? For when the Hood get sunk. There's a whole playlist of these if you don't like the ones I selected, but these are the ones I think would fit best. After all, most of these are meant to be played during the tension of stalking a convoy, the chaos of a torpedo attack, or the sheer terror of being depth charged.

The soundtracks from Silent Hunter may work, but I'm not reallysure. The one I'm thinking of is from SH4, but it's more suited for a Pacific Ocean setting. SH5's music is more quiet, although more tense. It's probably better for a scene where you see the different aspects of the fight converging, like a brewing storm. I haven't listen to SH3's track in detail yet.

I'm thinking that now that BD Armory has a fixed .50 caliber machine gun, I might make a version of this with two of those instead of the landing legs. I should also probably revise this to use no offset limits, because I didn't have that mod installed when I first built this.

For all the ones I have bad luck there are loads of replicas I've had good luck with, like the Fokker Dr.I (only had to test fly that thing once), the P-26, and my U-Boat. I've always thought my biggest trouble is that they never seem to get much attention. Besides, working out all the problems and refining a design is what engineering is all about. it wouldn;t be fun if everything I built worked perfectly the first time. Well, maybe it would be a little more fun...

Alright, I removed CAL and NAS and BD Armory works fine now. I swear, if you pull another Back to the Future particle acceleration "impact" again, I'm gonna send you to the foundry and have you melted down for scrap! Well, I guess that'll do the trick. I added a Browning .50 cal to the fuselage too, but it fires really, really slowly. It also looks like the plane can take off from carriers just fine- Oh... never mind. The carrier seems to have eaten the back half of our torpedo.

Yep, two full sized chutes is actually enough to allow low altitude drops, so now the torpedo can be dropped from 70 meters (maybe less, I haven't had the courage to check yet). I'm testing the torpedo against a quickly thrown together test ship made out of stock parts. It runs at something like 30 or 40 m/s in the water, and thanks to the reaction wheels (go ahead and crucify me for making a guided torpedo on a WWII craft), it's easy to control during its run. Don't mind if I do, Mr. Dummy Ship! MAGNIFICENT! Wait... Why didn't any parts of the actual ship explode? You have got to be kidding me... So where did the explosion come from if none of the parts even exploded? Oh yeah, I crashed it again while trying to land and brake the craft within 200 meters to prove that it can land on a carrier about the size of HMS Ark Royal. Also, the guns don;t fire even when they have the correct type of ammo on the plane ( I did try using a regular BD .50 caliber ammo box, it didn't work either) Well, there are a few more bugs to squash, but I'm getting closer!

I loaded up the forums to download your other carrier for testing my Swordfish from the deck of a ship, but I found this one instead! Can't wait to try it out! EDIT: Oh wait, it's almost 900 parts. Sorry, it looks cool, but I think I'll use your other carrier so I can get a higher frame rate.

I think something like jay might work, I'll take a look later today when I have time. The problem right now is that the two chutes it has aren't enough to slow it down. When I dropped it from several hundred meters, it was traveling at 27m/s, not slow enough for it to survive impact.

Swordfish is fixed. All it needed was a bigger engine and better wheels (the ones i use can retract, but nothing forces you to, so I decided that I had no reason to not use them) I revised the tail too. It's cruising speed is something like 100m/s in level flight, and is fairly maneuverable for its size and intended role. Looks like I nailed the old Stringbag's performance right on the head this time! The torpedo releases with no problems, looks pretty nice, except that most airborne torpedoes didn't have parachutes. Well, I guess a low altitude drop doesn't give it enough time to slow... Maybe if I drop it from higher up? Nope, still drowns. I'll have to either add more of those parachutes or replace them with full size ones. After that I need to check to make sure the fish runs alright in the water. I'll also add on a BD Armory explosive warhead eventually and probably replace that .30 caliber landing leg with a BD weapon as well. It's... fairly easy to maneuver, although if someone's never flown a plane in KSP before and is trying to use a keyboard they might have some trouble. I'm going to add a probe core for control, since it seems that when you quicload the Kerbals spawn in some weird orientation in their seats, and since the navball is based on them and not the seat, you get a completely worthless artificial horizon and must fly by the seat of your pants, like I was here. Textbook! No? Well, it's the best I could do with a navball that was off balance in at least two axes (axises?) and an already somewhat jittery aircraft that barely looks like it can fly. Once I sort out the torpedo and adjust a few other things I'll hand it off to you. Carrier based capability not guaranteed.

I have a few ideas I want to try on it first (replaced e two Juno engines with a Wheesely, remove the rover wheels and let it use the real landing gear). If they don't work you can take a look.

Alright, thanks. I'll make sure to check it out.

The Swordfish is pretty much done, there's only one small problem. Well... two small problems that combine to form a very big one; the engine isn't powerful enough and the wheels don't work. Even if this thing did take off without slamming its torpedo onto the runway or spinning widly out of control and smashing its wings, it would never take off in a short enough distance to be launched from a carrier of any size. That's not good, considering the real Swordfish was flown off escort carriers. Hey, at least it looks nice. At the very least you have a nice prop for the film. I guess you can set up some sort of device to hang it from a string and make it look like it's actually flying in to attack the Bismarck.

While reading through the Wikipedia articles for the Ares rockets, I found a concept for an "Ares IV", which would have combined an Ares V core stage and SRBs with an Ares I second stage. My guess is that it would have been used to launch an Orion to orbit the Moon, like Apollo 8. So I decided that in order to make a complete Constellation lunar mission pack, I would need an Ares IV. Mission album

Sorry I'm only replying to this now, but i was wondering what mod those pipes on the wall and the door come from. I remember seeing them in Felbourn's Project Odyssey but I can't figure out where they come from.

1.1.2 and whichever version of EEX is available from the forum thread. I reinstalled it so I could build Altair more efficiently and haven't had a problem yet, but if i do I'll let you know. Ares V is largely complete, just a few kinks to iron out and bells and whistles to adjust, so I've begun work on Altair. It looks pretty good and it looks different enough from MJ's and MRS's that it can't be counted as plagiarism while utilizing the best design aspects of each one. This is the only picture I have to show currently, and it's really just a complaint about how I spent ten minutes perfecting the struts on the descent stage and then had them all lose their connections when i either rotated it or pressed CTRL+Z. Kill me now.