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AlphaMensae

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Everything posted by AlphaMensae

  1. AlphaMensae
    Oh, just a little Delta IV Heavy launch action.....
  2. AlphaMensae
    Third and final Delta IV swing arm is done. And a little demo, which starts in the VAB showing all the PAWs for the parts so you can see the settings. The tower got a few minor mesh changes, main one being the addition of a toggleable base extension so there will be some visible support for hanging the tower off the edge of a launch pad static, like I did here to get the sun shining on the swing arm side. Everything, plus the craft file for the demo, will be on the master branch of the Github.
  3. AlphaMensae
    First Delta IV swing arm, for the core tanks, is done. It's a modified version of the Large General Swing Arm, with only the three side umbilicals in a fixed length. One change is that each of them can be separately adjusted in length, which was needed because the arm is mounted on the tower at an angle, resulting in different distances to the core tanks of the Delta IV. The umbilical assemblies are also rotated opposite by the same mount so they would be perpendicular to the tanks, all as in IRL. The truss block spacers (as I call them) can be turned off as well, in case you want to bring the umbilicals tight against the arm, and all three umbilical assemblies can also be turned off completely for different options.
  4. AlphaMensae
    I just put the Delta IV tower onto the master branch of the Modular Launch Pads GitHub. The arms will be made next, but the tower is now available for use. Turning off the front trusswork also replaces the 3 Delta IV arm nodes with 7 general-type nodes. There is also one height variant, 6m taller than the default.
  5. AlphaMensae
    Delta IV Tower is done with the addition of the upper external trusswork, the front part of which can be turned off for a plain surface for attaching arms. The two main Delta IV arms go in those cutouts in the trusswork, while the upper arm attached to the beam structure on the tower top. Still using the General Swing Arms as a placeholders, though the Delta IV arms will just be modified versions of the Large and Medium sizes, with altered umbilicals.
  6. AlphaMensae
    This is required reading for anyone who thinks the X-20 would have been a good thing...nope, it wouldn't have been. https://www.space-travel.com/reports/Cult_spacecraft_Part_One_The_Little_Spaceplane_That_Could_Not_999.html As Pappystein said, the X-20 would have turned the Air Force and NASA completely off of the idea of a reuseable winged spacecraft, and the shuttle would not have happened.
  7. AlphaMensae
    If they don't have surface-attach enabled, then they won't. I don't know anything about how the RO proc tanks work, whether the attach values are defined in the .cfg like normal so you can make a simple MM patch to change them. If it is done in the .cfg, then look for this line in make it 4 ones and a zero: attachRules = 1,1,1,1,0 Or in MM: @attachRules = 1,1,1,1,0 In any case, I think I will try out adding node attach to the rails and if it works ok along with the surface-attach, I'll update the rails in v2.3 of MLP.
  8. AlphaMensae
    The launch rails surface attach to the rocket body, provided the tank or SRM has surface-attach enabled.
  9. AlphaMensae
    Realized the tower was a bit short, so added a half-section to the top, and now the middle arm is where it should be. Also removed the foot pads, and removed the collider from the base frame, so it can be pushed down below the VAB floor, better aligning the lower arm with the core tanks.
  10. AlphaMensae
    Progress on the Delta IV Service Tower, the core is mostly done, just to have to add the trusswork for the arm mounts. Arms shown are the large general ones as placeholders.
  11. AlphaMensae
    My plans for the Delta IV tower swing arms have changed. Originally I had planned them to have deploy limit sliders to adjust the angle amount and the retaction distance, but then remembered that Staged Animation uses a different animation than ModuleAnimateGeneric(Extra), and that the latter's deploy limit settings do not apply. So I'm going to have to set the arms in the real-life angle (or close to it) as the default and which will be used by Staged Animation to prevent problems. I'm probably going to have to eliminate the angle deploy limits, except for the upper (fairing) arm's vertical angle, which is separate from the horizontal angle and retraction animation. In short, the Delta IV arms are going to set up for a specific angle, which will limit the tower placement. The arms will still have adjustable length, that does not affect Staged Animation.
  12. AlphaMensae
    I'm actually going to make the Delta IV Fixed Service Tower (the one with the arms) from scratch after all. Looked at more images and studied the tower more closely, and realized it is not as complex as I had thought. Basically it can be boiled down to a large square core (about 6.2m I've set it as) with huge trusses, with one side fully paneled and another side half-paneled, plus the trusswork extension in the corner that mounts the arms. It's going to be a single-part tower with a few height variants, though with the tower sections being 6m high there won't be many. It's pretty much going to be Delta IV-specific with only three arm attach nodes.
  13. AlphaMensae
    Updated the stand .cfg on the GitHub to add a switch to turn off the clamp columns when the stand is rotated 90 degrees. Just forgot about it
  14. AlphaMensae
    I have a better way for stands that don't need the clamp parts visible--the meshes for them can be turned off with no effect. The Titan III stand was the first to use this, so you could have a wheels-only look. I can make a quick update to the GitHub.
  15. AlphaMensae
    The Delta IV Launch Stand is all done and now on the master branch of the Modular Launch Pads GitHub. By default it is all set up for the BDB Delta IV, and just snaps onto the added attach node (on the lower core tank) that appears below the RS-68, no adjustment is necessary. I did use the DIV-Heavy craft file included with BDB, so if you build the Heavy a little differently, some adjustment may be needed. Note, the side boosters in the craft file are slightly out of alignment, they should be exactly even with the core.
  16. AlphaMensae
    The new Delta IV Launch Stand is all done and now on the master branch of the Modular Launch Pads GitHub. A little demo video, it starts with the BDB Delta IV Heavy, which the stand just snaps right onto the extra attach node below the RS-68 and is all set up for, then shows adapting the stand for 2.5m tanks:
  17. AlphaMensae
    Yes, staging the retraction only works in the default direction; Staged Animation only works with one animation. To retract the arm(s) in the other direction, you have to use an action group.
  18. AlphaMensae
    Delta IV Launch Stand coming in v2.3 of Modular Launch Pads. Right now functional for the BDB Delta IV, just have to add the B9PS switcher for the single-triple core options, and make the animations for the umbilicals and the deploy limit sliders (for making the stand work with 2.5m cores). I'm also going to kitbash the fixed service tower and swing arms from the Large General tower and arm, giving the arms adjustable mounts and retraction limits to handle different angle setups.
  19. AlphaMensae
    With a burst of activity, the Delta IV Launch Stand is mostly done, barring any late detail tweaks, and putting in proper colliders and making the deploy limit animations. Here it is all configured for the BDB Delta IV:
  20. AlphaMensae
    After a hiatus partly caused by burnout and lack of interest, I've resumed work on the Delta IV Launch Stand. One stumbling block was the hold-down posts, but the time off let me realize a solution, partly based on the real ones, and the rest being my own invention, since they have to be adjustable. Since I can't find any images of the interior of the actual stand, I'm just doing my own thing. The same applies to the structural details of the stand; I've got the general overall shape sorta like the real one, the details will take cues from my other stands and be my own ideas. This will make the rest of the modeling much easier, as I have zero interest in making a fully accurate version, which is too complex and caused the burnout in the first place.
  21. AlphaMensae
    Probably due to the stock calculator's weirdness. Best to figure the values out before attaching the launch base.
  22. AlphaMensae
    Was this with the root part at the top of the rocket, like a command pod or probe core? If not, then the values will be missing or messed up, since the calculator works from the top down. KER is like that too. Then again, the stock one is a little weird and that may be normal.
  23. AlphaMensae
    Yeah, I saw another report of this, it's because the Soyuz gantry and solo crew elevator, as well as the general crew arms, have a crew capacity value to enable the use of the transfer airlock . That mod apparently messes up because of that.
  24. AlphaMensae
    Yeah, I can do that. Have to cut the mesh into two parts and do a B9PS switcher.
  25. AlphaMensae
    No need to remove the S-IC, just push the whole stack upward. The launcher base attaches to a size 5 node that appears below the engines, it's actually added to the engine mount.
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