StevieC

I have a modified version of the stock game's "Kerbal X" rocket here, and would be delighted if you could review it. Pronouncd "Kerbal X Prime", "X Prime" or simply "Prime" for short, this vehicle is intended as an improvement of the venerable X. Designers asked Kerbonauts for suggestions of things they would like to see added to the X, and then went to work seeing how many could be integrated into an enhanced version of the classic spacecraft and launch-vehicle. The result was the Prime: a vehicle boasting several amenities that were absent from its predecessor, such as deployable sun-tracking solar-panels, retractable comms antenna, RCS thruters, crew-passable docking port, ablative heat-shield, and a revolutionary "Abort and Escape Motor" from Kerbodyne which allows the crew to abort their mission even in the event of the most severe vehicular failures, AND which carries the command-capsule with crew inside a safe distance from any potential explosions, allowing the crew to escape the ailing launch-vehicle and live to fly another day. Although it sacrifices almost 400 meters per second of vacuum delta-V (the exact amount sacrificed is dependent upon the timing of when the escape-motor is jettisoned), designers guarantee that it can still reach the Mun using a fancy "free-return-trajectory" which is somehow a safer way to travel to the Mun, and to put itself into a tight circular orbit around the Mun. Once in that orbit around the Mun, the designers also guarantee that it will still have enough Delta-V either to land on the Mun or to return to Kerbin. They warn, however, that they are unsure whether it will have enough delta-V to return to Kerbin, or even get back into orbit around the Mun, after a Munar landing. When designers told Jeb they didn't know if the Prime can get home to Kerbin after a Munar landing, he simply said, "Watch me."

I've built a modified version of the stock "Kerbal X" rocket, over the past couple of weeks, that only uses stock parts. I have used some mods to build it, but made it an explicit goal to build a craft that someone could download and use in a completely stock install of KSP. This was motivated by several difficulties that have long undermined my attempts to fly missions with the stock Kerbal X, specifically: The craft's part-count is unnecessarily high. The asparagus boosters have an exasperating tendency to collide with parts of the core first-stage, especially the AV-R8 Winglets, often damaging or destroying said parts, which impairs vehicle control-authority, with increasing severity each time another booster collides with parts that previous boosters may have spared destruction Inability to dock with another spacecraft in orbit means that I can't easily conduct rescue-missions. Lack of RCS thrusters has long hindered Jeb's efforts to execute precision maneuvers whilst on-orbit. The small fixed solar panels are woefully inadequate to replenish the craft's electrical charge. nd sine they're on opposite sides of the spacecraft, there's no way to get both solar-panels into full sunlight at the same time. The spacecraft lacks communication with ground stations or other spacecraft. There is no reliable mission-abort mode with assured crew survival. There is no thermal protection for the command-capsule. The first-stage remains in orbit as debris. Seeking to address these shortcomings, I set to work on modifying the Kerbal X into a craft sporting remedies for the above issues. Thus far, I have made the following alterations: I consolidated the first-stage's upper two Rockomax X200-32 fuel-tanks into a single Rockomax X200-64 "Orange Jumbo" fuel-tank, reducing part-count by one while retaining the exact same total fuel capacity. Similarly, I consolidated each asparagus booster's lower two FL-T400 fuel-tanks into single FL-T800 fuel-tanks. resulting in asparagus-boosters that are each one part smaller in count, but still have the exact same fuel-capacity as in the stock Kerbal X. On the remaining X200-32 fuel-tank, I moved the asparagus boosters' six radial-decouplers as far forward as I could without letting them touch the "Orange Jumbo" tank, moving the asparagus boosters down so that their their engines are still in the same position relative to the first-stage's core engine as those of the stock craft. This has the benefit of pushing empty asparagus boosters slightly nose-out which generally means that aerodynamic forces will carry them clear of the first-stage core, without requiring use of a Sepratron. I installed a Clamp-o-tron docking-port to the front attachment node of the command-capsule, so that the spacecraft can dock with other spacecraft and exchange crew. I installed RCS thrusters to the upper-stage. This has the additional benefit of making the command-capsule's supply of monopropellant a useful resource, instead of merely dead-weight. To accommodate placement of the RCS-thrusters, I moved the two batteries (each with a storage capacity of 400 units of electric charge) to the dorsal and ventral sides of the uppermost stack-decoupler, so as not to clip into the upper-stages landing-struts. I replaced the two OX-STAT fixed solar-panels with a pair of OX-4W 3x2 folded solar arrays which ca be deployed in orbit and which can turn to track the sun on one axis of motion. I fitted a Communotron 16 antenna to the command-capsule, allowing crew to transmit and receive data to and from the ground or other spacecraft. I attached a Kerbodyne Launch Escape System to the docking-port, with provision to jettison the escape-system once the vehicle's apoapsis is high enough to no longer need the additional burst of velocity to pull the command-capsule clear of the vehicle behind it. I added an ablative heat-shield to the command-capsule to ensure crew-safety on higher speed re-entry profiles such as returning from either the Mün or Minmus. It can be jettisoned once the capsule has slowed down enough for air-friction heating to stop posing a threat to the capsule and crew. I installed some Sepratrons to the inside of the decoupler that jettisons the first-stage's core upon fuel-depletion. Unfortunately, some of these modifications have drawbacks, such as the position of the docking-port and escape-tower displacing the command-capsule's parachute, necessitating the use of radial parachutes attached to the capsule dorsally and ventrally. The addition of so many parts adds a lot of mass, which reduces the resulting craft's Delta-V capacity. The upper-stage alone is brought down from 2392 meters per second of vacuum Delta-V to a mere 2117 meters per second, thanks to the added mass of the ablative heat-shield, Communotron 16, Clamp-o-tron, twin-radial-chutes, and heavier folded solar-arrays. But, by strategically adding fuel-tanks nested within the decoupler that jettisons the upper-stage from the command-module and heat-shield, I managed to squeeze an octet of "Oscar-B" fuel-tanks encircling a 9th Oscar-B sandwiched betwixt twain Round-8 toroidal fuel-tanks inside that empty-space, resulting in an upper-stage that actually gives the vehicle 41 meters per second more delta-V than the stock Kerbal X gets from its upper-stage, despite my variant being heavier. The resulting extra mass added to the upper-stage unfortunately gives the law-of-diminishing-returns some extra sting which means that I can't completely eliminate the delta-V penalty that the first-stage pays by adding extra fuel, but I can cut the penalty roughly in half, and eke out an extra dozen meters per second of delta-V from each pair of asparagus-boosters by sneaking an Oscar-B fuel-tank under each asparagus booster's nose-cone, allowing me to keep the whole rocket's total Delta-V juuuust north of 6 km per second (slightly above 6049 meters per second, the exact amount above that depends on when one chooses to jettison the launch abort/escape system) which puts it within 400 meters per second of the stock Kerbal X's total Delta-V of 6428 m/s which I think is fairly respectable. The reason I've titled this thread as a request for help with testing is that I know the stock Kerbal X can return to Kerbin after landing on the Mün, but it takes a very, very skilled pilot to pull this off. What I want to determine is whether it is possible for my modified Kerbal X to get to the Mün using the Apollo-style free-return-trajectory transfer, land on the side of the Mün that faces Kerbin, and then return its crew to Kerbin, alive. Since this rocket has less total delta-V than the stock Kerbal X and the free-return-trajectory transfer consumes more fuel as the price of its increased safety for the crew, this will most-likely be harder than even making the simple round-trip in the stock Kerbal-X, but my reasoning is that the increased safety this model provides would be a major selling-point of this variant in-universe. I'm in the process of test-piloting this particular flight-profile right now but I'm not exactly the best pilot without MechJeb's aid, and I haven't got MechJeb on this KSP install. I have KER but not MJ. Now, I will admit this craft has a higher part-count than the stock Kerbal-X but I consolidated parts where possible to keep the total part-count down. You can download the craft itself here. The in-game craft description is as follows: Pronouncd "Kerbal X Prime", "X Prime" or simply "Prime" for short, this vehicle is intended as an improvement of the venerable X. Designers asked Kerbonauts for suggestions of things they would like to see added to the X, and then went to work seeing how many could be integrated into an enhanced version of the classic spacecraft and launch-vehicle. The result was the Prime: a vehicle boasting several amenities that were absent from its predecessor, such as deployable sun-tracking solar-panels, retractable comms antenna, RCS thruters, crew-passable docking port, ablative heat-shield, and a revolutionary "Abort and Escape Motor" from Kerbodyne which allows the crew to abort their mission even in the event of the most severe vehicular failures, AND which carries the command-capsule with crew inside a safe distance from any potential explosions, allowing the crew to escape the ailing launch-vehicle and live to fly another day. Although it sacrifices almost 400 meters per second of vacuum delta-V (the exact amount sacrificed is dependent upon the timing of when the escape-motor is jettisoned), designers guarantee that it can still reach the Mun using a fancy "free-return-trajectory" which is somehow a safer way to travel to the Mun, and to put itself into a tight circular orbit around the Mun. Once in that orbit around the Mun, the designers also guarantee that it will still have enough Delta-V either to land on the Mun or to return to Kerbin. They warn, however, that they are unsure whether it will have enough delta-V to return to Kerbin, or even get back into orbit around the Mun, after a Munar landing. When designers told Jeb they didn't know if the Prime can get home to Kerbin after a Munar landing, he simply said, "Watch me." I'm eager to hear what results yinz have with flying it, especially any success with the flight-profile I described above the picture.

well, they DID sortie New!JRtI once already. timestamp 13m45s

Ahh, fair point, I had failed to consider that.

@PakSo, would your new wings include the wingtip tailfins with rudders? Also, why not make the external tank just one BIG piece with the tank's "butt" and nosecone already built into it? If memory serves me, those things on the inside of the payload bay doors are actually thermal radiators for cooling, not solar panels.

Well, that depends on exactly which JRtI you're referring to. The original JRtI is indeed retired, but the new JRtI is the one for Pacific Ocean use with launches out of Vandenberg AFB so it'll most-likely see use in late September when the first satellites of Iridium NEXT are launched from SLC-4

My bad, sorry.

Can a slightly less power-hungry carbon-extractor be offered, please? One that consumes CO2 and electric-charge generating O2 and waste? (as an alternative to the Sabatier Reactor, that is, maybe have it weigh the same as the water-purifier?

Sliiiick!

Re: your current design for this part-pack's docking-port, does the opened nose-cap offset the center-of-mass to a point that would be a problem for the RCS thrusters? Also, it kind-of looks as if it would block the capsule's EVA hatch.

Just put them in the icons folder inside the "KerbalRenamer" directory and name them according to how the two already-existing flags in that directory are named. I'm working on modifying the cfg file to generate names assigned a flag by nationality

@svendii Have you considered giving the trunk and the heat-shield's shroud their own built-in ladders like the fuel-tank has?

I've simply been using the stock "Shielded" docking-port.

What are the odds of tail-clamps and tower-umbilicals for 1.875m and 5.0m rocket-sizes being added to this parts-pack?

there's already a Russian spacecraft by that model-name.

A few plausible names for additional russian space-shuttle orbiters could include: Чайка (Chaika, translates in English to "gull") Беркут (Berkut, translates in English to "golden eagle") Стриж (Strizh, translates in English to "swift", as in the type of bird) Стерх (Sterkh, translates in English to "Siberian Crane", a species of bird native to Russia) Фи́лин (Filin, translates in English to "Owl") Беринг (Bering, after Vitus Bering, the explorer who led the First Kamchatka Expedition and the Great Northern Expedition) Лазарев (Lazarev, after Mikhail Lazarev, co-leader of the expedition that first discovered the continent of Antarctica)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptichka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.01_(Buran-class_spacecraft) Also, the Russian shuttle names use a different style of font than Helvetica for their names. Looking for a font that will pass for it. Paraphrasing the relevant bits from the above Wikipedia pages, For the record, the name "Buran" means "Blizzard" in Russian. Buran was the only one of the 3 Russian shuttle orbiters to fly in space, and appropriately for its name, its one and only launch took place in the middle of a blizzard. Buran lifted off from launch-pad 37 at Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 110 (aka Pad 110L or 110 Left) in the Kazakh SSR at 9:00 AM launch-site local-time on 15 November 1988. It had no life-support systems installed. It lifted off, unmanned, went into space, made two orbits, and then re-entered the atmosphere. Exactly 206 minutes and zero seconds after liftoff, Buran's wheels made touchdown on the runway at Baikonur, rolling to a smooth stop without incident. Despite landing in a 38 mile-per-hour crosswind, Buran's wheels touched down on the runway only 3 meters laterally and 10 meters longitudinally off the target mark. Again, this flight was controlled entirely by Buran's own onboard flight-control computers, with zero help from the ground. The American space-shuttle orbiters would not gain autonomous landing capability until after the tragic loss of orbiter Columbia at the end of STS-107, and even then, only had that capability added as a contingency measure. In 1989, it was projected that Buran would make a second unmanned flight by 1993, and that its second flight would have a duration of 15 to 20 days. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union means that there were no funds to finance any further launches of the Russian shuttle. In 2002, the hangar containing the mothballed Buran collapsed, destroying the orbiter. The second of the Russian space-shuttle orbiters, Ptichka (that name translates to "birdie" or "little-bird" in English), was somewhere betwixt 95% and 97% completed when the Russian space-shuttle-program was cancelled in 1993. Like Buran before it, Ptichka was slated to make its first flights without life-support systems installed. Ptichka was initially intended to make an unmanned 1-2 day first-flight in 1991 followed in 1992 by an unmanned 7-8 day second-flight. Those plans were altered with the intention to move the unmanned second-flight from 1992 to December of 1991, and still have it be a 7-8 day unmanned flight, during which it was planned to: autonomously dock with the Kristall module of the Mir space-station Crew transfer from Mir to the shuttle to test some of its systems over a 24 hour period, including the remote-manipulator system (which was not ready in time to be installed on Buran for its maiden-flight) before closing out the shuttle and returning to Mir, Unmanned undocking from Mir, followed by autonomous flight in orbit Docking of the manned Soyuz TM-101 spacecraft with Ptichka Transfer of crew from onboard the Soyuz to the shuttle and onboard work over the course of 24 hours before closing out the shuttle and returning to the Soyuz capsule Automated undocking, deorbit, and landing of Ptichka Alas, none of those plans came to fruition. Baikal (named after Lake Baikal, in Russia, the world's deepest freshwater lake) would have been the first of the Russian space-shuttle orbiters to have its own life-support-systems installed. It was 30-50% completed when the Buran program was cancelled in 1993. It was projected in 1989 that Baikal would have its first manned space test flight in 1994, with a duration of twenty-four hours. The craft would have been equipped with a life support system and two ejection seats. Crew would have consisted of two cosmonauts — Igor Volk (commander) and Aleksandr Ivanchenko (flight engineer).

@Z3R0_0NL1N3Nice! If I may suggest a couple additional orbiter names? The prototype orbiter Enterprise originally was to be named "Constitution". A few other names that would be apt for orbiters include "Victoria", "Mayflower", "Calypso", "Endurance", "Beagle", and "Pathfinder". Perhaps you could also make flags with the Russian-flag and the names (in Cyrillic lettering, naturally) of the Russian shuttle orbiters Буран (Buran), Птичка (Ptichka), and Байкал (Baikal)

I still cannot find anything to make the Cormorant Aeronology lifting-body fit the CRG-150 payload-bay. All it has for me are 2 variants: Standard, and Blank

@MrMeeb AVC is saying that there's a version 0.12 to download but I can't seem to find it

Well, when I ask a silly question…

@MrMeeb do you think you can check with @Pak about permission to bundle a lifting-body underside fairing in your mod, that's a custom-length to match your payload-bay?

Might need to make that switchable to a few other fuels like Liquid Hydrogen (that's the one that really needs the option of fuel-pumping because if you don't use Nertea's special insulated tanks, it boils off)

@sciencepanda What would you say the chances are of adding a retractable crew-access arm with walkway and "white-room" for manned launch-vehicles? Also, any reactions to my suggestion of adding fuel-pumping to the umbilicals? Also, can you please add 1.875 and 5.0 meter umbilicals and tail-masts, please?

Sounds good to me!