Invaderchaos

Did some more PBR conversions! (WIP, but on github) Pioneer 10/11, Ranger, and TACSAT/Syncom:

Playing with deferred PBR on some other partsets. Highly WIP, but some neat results!

Just a placeholder, for now

My first part in forever, it's not like its 2 years late. The Atlas V 4xx adapter for my Centaur revamp is now on github! Includes an earlier stringer version and the newer composite version. LH2 pipe cover also toggleable so it can be used with other 1.875m upper stages. (last pic is an attempt at Agena 2000 lol)

Working on the long overdue Atlas V 4xx adapters. These are super WIP, not finished texturing yet. Hopefully I'll finish them this weekend.

The names are purposely separated as the old atlas and atlas v are pretty different rockets in terms of gameplay and part-sets. A large motivator of kerbalized names was to separate rockets that share names irl but are actually quite different from one another (like giving separate names for the delta/thor, delta 2, and delta 4 part sets) as it makes it less confusing to people who aren’t familiar with space history. The names Bossart and Muos hold significance to Atlas and Atlas V individually, and it wouldn’t make sense to call Atlas Muos or Atlas V Bossart.

New Early STS Oxygen Vent Hood now on github along with some minor texture fixes.

Yes, I believe there will be cutouts sized for Apollo and Orion. WIP early STS Oxygen Vent Hood. This oxygen vent hood has two little "flaps" that extend below the oxygen vents on the ET's ogive nose. This type of oxygen vent hood was first used on STS-6 in 1983 all the way up until STS-90 in 1998.

Shuttle-C is gonna be pretty hard to control no matter how I balance it. How old is your install? Yesterday I updated its lifting surfaces. It’s still hard to control but if you use mechjeb’s SAS it is a lot more stable.

Think I just fixed it

Oh I will look into Konstellation’s 5.5 segment RSRM. I’ll also look into the shuttle C issue. Which engine part, the one with the OPM?

I also haven’t mentioned it here, but the ET should be balanced now. The big discrepancy was that using the way BDB balances tanks, the ET should be very light, about 22 tons dry. On the other hand, reDIRECT’s tank is pretty heavy, around 39 tons dry iirc. Part of this seems due to SOCK’s shuttle being scaled at quarter mass, but the issue is scaling the dry mass that high might impact the balancing of non-shuttle SDLV, which was particularly evident with Shuttle-C. To strike a happy medium, I implemented a switch for dry tank mass. IRL, there were three ET designs with each subsequent ET having less dry mass. Including the decouplers attached, the dry ET mass now ranges from 26.5-35 tons. Unfortunately, Shuttle-C balancing is getting tricky. IRL Shuttle-C was supposed to bring 65 tons to LEO. But since the ET is balanced around SOCK which assumes a reduced mass shuttle and payload, it’s impossible to get Shuttle-C to bring that mass to LEO in KSRSS Reborn, even with a super light Shuttle-C. ORANGES’ Shuttle-C is able to bring a little over 50 tons to LEO. Considering SOCK’s shuttle uses reduced mass scaling on its payloads I think this should be optimal enough. Lifting surfaces and reaction wheels were also added to Shuttle-C to make it easier to launch. OMS fuel was also added.

Good news! There is a new ORANGES wiki (that is highly WIP). So far there’s only a home page and a STS ET Variant guide, but by completion it will detail how to make all the SDLVs that ORANGES features, along with some extra stuff for SOCK and ACK. The wiki can be found here: https://github.com/EStreetRockets/ORANGES/wiki Ares 1 will have some choices. There will be a longer length switch for ESAS. There will also be a separate switch to make Ares 1 use an intertank instead of common bulkhead, which will also make it a little longer. I’m focusing on one diameter of Ares V EDS, where both Ares V and EDS are 10m in diameter (or 6.25m in KSP scale). I’m not going to make a 5m (KSP scale) EDS. As for Ares V configurations, the goal there will be the 5 RS-68 w/ 5 seg RSRM config along with the 6 RS-68 w/ 5.5 seg RSRM. However, the later will depend on Photon Corp for a 5.5 seg RSRM, which it currently does not have. This variant also stretches the Ares V core stage ever so slightly. I’m also debating whether or not to add length switches to the Ares V core stage, but these would be purely fictional switches. Refer to above in this post. Unfortunately I’m not gonna make a 5m EDS. You can kitbash by using one of our stages or ACK’s EDS but there are so many variations of Ares stuff and it’s not going to be productive to get into the weeds of every proposal. Plus having two upper stage parts that look almost identical aside from their diameter would contribute to part bloat and be confusing to look at in the VAB. Unrelated, but EDS is going to be a super cool part. It’s not really known to many, but the white/black skin of EDS is actually jettisonable insulation/micrometeorite protection panels, similar to Centaur D. It has SOFI underneath and will be set up similar to BDB’s Centaur D. We will be including the J-2X from Cryoengines in ORANGES via patch. It will likely be slightly downscaled to have more accurate dimensions but this is TBD. We’ll also have BDB’s RS-68B patched in for Ares V. I’m pretty sure Photoncorp’s balancing is fine. If anything reDIRECT’s RSRMs were overpowered IIRC. Photoncorp also has an update on the works for some point.

Not sure how compatible it is but the NLS boat tail has sunken nodes. You should be able to fit any sort of engine in there as long as it isn’t too big. Not sure if I’ve posted it here, but I’ve been working on Ares 1! It’s been a little tricky to find the time to mod with work, but I’m committed to finishing this as my next project. The Ares 1 and Jupiter partset should be the last major sets of parts before we release 1.0! This is because at that point, ORANGES will fully cover the reDIRECT partset and more, minus the Shuttle boosters, which are covered by PhotonCorp. But there’s still a lot of work to be done, in terms of configs, balancing (especially the ET and Shuttle C), and other misc stuff. After Ares 1 I probably should finish Mariner 6/7 for BDB, but after that I might move on to Ares V! ULV/Jarvis is one of the coolest things ever. the shortest tank version is one of my favorite dinky SDLV ever.

Balancing on the ET/Inline ET is still WIP. The dry mass will likely increase just as an FYI.