Invaderchaos

You just had to post this, didn't you??

I've been looking forward to this! Can't wait to play around w/ these parts!

I gotta say, every time I check the Tantares forums I will never cease to be surprised and wowed. Really looking forward to these station part revamps!

Smol little part: OSCAR-1! First amateur radio satellite, first piggyback payload, first non-government satellite. OSCAR-1 is certainly a satellite of firsts! A super tiny, extremely primitive radio transmitter. Designed to be launched on the aft engine shroud of the Agena-B. The texture file it uses will later house the KH-8 solar panel textures.

I might be heavily biased for the vintage bluish green, but probably the white or the cream. It would be nice though to have the vintage green and/or other colors in an extras folder or something though.

It’s from coatl as I’m definitely not finished with Pioneer 10/11 yet. I also hate to say it but I’ve been side-tracked with Pioneer 10/11 and have also started working on other parts concurrently with pioneer. However, I think they are a much needed addition to BDB’s set of probes. Since we already have Mariner 1-2 and Mariner 10, it feels weird to have this large gap in interplanetary probes. That’s why I decided doing more Mariner probes would be a fun addition! I plan on doing the Mariner 3-4, 5, and 6-7 type probes. Mariner 8-9 I’m not so sure about. Also doing Mariner might eventually open the door for Galileo, since they utilize the same bus. Between these three types of Mariner probes I have planned, the first two are both agena-based probes, and the last is the slightly larger centaur-based probes. Additionally, if anyone has any obscure proposals for further applications of Mariner hardware (not including Viking, we’re not gonna do that), let me know and I’ll see what I can do as I’ve always been a fan of unflown proposals for probes.

Guess you could also say I'm doing Pioneer 12 as well, as that would've been the designation to any pioneer 10/11 follow-on mission (before those were cancelled). One of those missions was the Pioneer Outer Planets Orbiter. It would've added a propulsion module as well as an additional science bay with a line scan imaging system (in place of the micrometeoroid detector). Here's a couple images of it:

Another sneak peak... By now I hope it might be more apparent what the probe I was hinting at doing is. I'm actually modelling it a lot faster than I thought I would.

Yea, it's not the most lego-able thing by design, but I plan to make it as lego-able as possible. All experiments will be separate parts, most parts will have a switch for foil, the main bus will be separate from the experiment section , etc. The only thing that makes the bus less lego-able will be the fact it's propellant tank pokes out of the bus, but sadly that's just how it is irl. Thanks for the compliments though! Although the fact that you say it's "the best KSP level of sculpt of those parts yet" is probably due to the fact that these parts haven't been made for KSP in years to my knowledge, so it's not like there's much competition lol

I am a little hesitant of a wrap around solar panel idea, as it would have to be specifically molded around the agena equipment bus making it's reuse applications pretty limited, as well as probably being a part that would need some offset and fiddling to get perfect. One of my issues with the Strawman solar panels were that they are solar panels that are quite specific to the craft and have to be offset in a certain way to be most effective, which I tried the best I could to avoid, but there wasn't too much I could do without straying too far from what the panels were irl. That's why I wanted to do the SERT-2 and KH-8 solar panels, as they are much simpler in design and much more generic, allowing it to be easily attached without fuss, and allowing them to be used more effectively with non-agena spacecraft. Making another panel specifically tailored to the equipment rack would defeat the purpose of having a more generic panel unfortunately. However, maybe if I have enough leftover space I would think about it. As for tracking, I probably could make a variant for the SERT-2 and KH-8 panels to have them be sun-tracking. However, I think that my work on those panels might be postponed for a little bit, as I have a different project that my attention and motivation has been captured by. I am not 100% sure if the final product will be BDB-worthy, nor do I have any idea how long it will take, but I do have a tiny sneak peak of it...

At the moment, I do not have any current plans to add any other SIGINT parts. I have considered doing SAMOS (and the SIGINT stuff that comes with it) but I don't have many ref's of it, and if I do ever want to do SAMOS it will probably have to wait for a little while. In terms of other SIGINT stuff, probably the most notable Heavy Ferret spacecraft I can think of that's similar to Strawman is Multigroup. I don't think Multigroup would be very feasible to make with the large fairing bulge that it flew with, so there are no plans for those parts, and I find it unlikely that there ever will be. However, if it is any consolation, Multigroup flew with what was supposed to be one of MOL's deployable antennas (if I recall correctly) , which BDB has as a part, so it probably can be loosely kit bashed. At the moment, BDB has four types of SIGINT craft: SOLRAD/GRAB, the P-11/Hitch-Hiker subsat, Strawman 1-3, and Strawman 4 w/ Harvester (listed in an increasing order of science output). After Strawman, larger SIGINT are still very classified with little to no reference images even with spacecrafts as old as Canyon/Rhyolite, meaning that they would not really be able to be produced nicely in BDB with what's currently available. So I think what BDB has now in terms of SIGINT will suffice, but maybe down the road I might consider looking into SAMOS, I am not sure if that is too likely.

I am not sure if the KH-8 solar panel is actually a warp-around curved panel like that, as most of the references I've seen have shown them flat. Additionally, the single extremely grainy and blurry (sort of irl) pic of the KH-8 solar panels I have seems to also suggest that they are flat. Addtionally, I also do not believe the panel is tracking. However, if you have doc's that mention the specifics of the solar panel, as I also could be totally wrong given the lack of info I can find on them, that would be greatly appreciated. To answer your question though, yes, I do plan on making the KH-8 solar panel. My goals are to make both the KH-8 panel, and the solar panel from SERT 2. Speaking of that project, I know I would have a little space left over on the texture sheet for the solar panels I will be making that I just mentioned, so I decided to go ahead and make a tiny little agena-related part on the sheet. I decided to make Oscar 1, the world's first amateur radio satellite, and also technically the first spacecraft ever made by non-governmental civilians. Oscar 1 was a piggyback payload designed to be tucked into the Agena-B's aft engine shroud. I think it was launched with a KH mission, but I can't remember for sure. Here is an IRL picture of it, as well as what I have made so far.

Yea I’m happy it turned out well. As for agena solar panels... I might make just a couple more that will be a somewhat more generic then Strawman.

Strawman is finished, (apart from the fairing) and is all up on github. For anyone who doesn't know, Strawman was a signals intelligence reconnaissance satellite from the late 60's/early 70's that was agena-based. These strawman parts add a new 0.9375m to 1.25m bus/fairing for the agena, a solar panel designed to fit in the agena aft rack, some sigint experiment parts, and a few antennas. Here are some pics: Some more pics:

Strawman's coming together!

The bus will have an SAF module for a fairing

BDBNIC works with BDB and BDB Extras, yes.

Here's a sneak peak of some of the stuff that I've been doing lately. I've been working on Strawman, an agena-based signals intelligence reconnaissance satellite. Here are some illustrations below: It's quite a strange looking satellite, but definitely one of my favorite agena-based satellites. So far I've completed the models and textures of the bus and one of the SIGINT payloads, thresher. Thresher also has a pair of two small deployable antennas, which will be separate parts. These are still WIP, and a couple minor changes have been made to the thresher payload and the main bus since these pictures. The plan is 3 switches for the bus's top; capped, truss, and bare. I'm still also figuring out how the signals intelligence experiment will work. It will probably function as a multi-part experiment similar to the ranger electrostatic experiment, or some of the nimbus experiments. For the sake of reusability, most of the antennas will function as normal antennas, so they can be used on other spacecraft like communications satellites and such. The remaining parts I have to do are the reaper payload, the two thresher antennas, the harvester antenna, and the solar panels.

Transit 2A and SOLRAD are now up on the github!

Looks like Transit 2A and SOLRAD are close to completion. If I am not too busy, I will probably be able to get them (properly) in game over the next couple days! After that, I will probably get back to working on TIROS-N, but I might consider doing later Transit satellites.

Funny you mention that, I'm actually working on TIROS-N/DMSP/NOAA parts right now, but it's probably going to take me a while to finish them. However at the moment, I don't have any specific plans to do N-ROSS/LANDSAT specific parts.

Some WIP images of the Transit 2A and SOLRAD/GRAB probes that I've been working on: Here they are IRL: I can't wait to start putting that swirl on Transit 2A!

KH-9 is also probably one of my all time favorite satellites! Even though it wasn't released with the current stuff, KH-9 is in the works right now. There's still quite a bit of work to do with it, but we hope to add it in a point release between updates. Here's a sneak peak at a silver/gold foil variant stuff I was working on for the update: https://twitter.com/Invaderchaos915/status/1316612053927440385?s=20

I think I got it working with TR. I will have to look over it more though

Hexagon update: I've been working on making gold/silver MLI variants for KH-9. Here's the progress that's been made: