DaveyJ576

My kitbash of the platform obviously has some significant differences from the proposed configuration. It is hard to create triangular truss structures, so I kept it to square ones using Stock parts. The pressurized section is just a Mercury pod with a LM docking port! All in all I think it is a reasonable recreation. The Saturn IB uses my patches that lower the weight of the S-1 tanks and the engine mount. Even with that it struggled to get the stack to a 85x105 orbit at a 33 deg inclination. I circularized at 105 km using the SM SPS.

I recently completed a completely new build of KSP, including the latest versions of KSRSS and Parallax. The visuals involved are nothing less than fantastic. I flew my AAP-1A mission again and was amazed by how great Earth looks. I am also now using Katniss Cape Canaveral because it is compatible with KSRSS Reborn. In the past I used the Cape Kanaveral mod but it is not compatible with the most recent KSRSS. One note... with the new PBR shaders the pre-launch scenes on the launch pads are VERY bright. I tried several different TUFX profiles and it goes from completely washed out to tolerable. These were all taken with the Default settings on TUFX as it seemed to be the best. Is there a way of adjusting the brightness? The coast of California looking north. Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Vandenberg, and the Channel Islands can clearly be seen. I overflew the launch site while conducting my orbital survey. Pretty amazing detail. The spoiler has some details of the AAP-1A scanning platform. Yes it was a real thing... almost! It was a proposal that never flew

As always, superlative work. You are bordering on photo realism, and that is a good thing!

Fun fact: the Mercury spacecraft went uphill on its booster upside down. The tapered section that led to the parachute canister was called the “afterbody”, and the blunt end with the heatshield was the “forebody”. That is why on nearly all of the flights the spacecraft performed a flip maneuver immediately after separation from the booster. As I understand it, the avionics and control systems were set up to control the spacecraft with the blunt end facing the direction of flight. That design rationale changed quickly with Gemini, as the craft needed to be able to dock with the narrow end, and that was also the best location for radar.

So, one thing that I am not entirely clear on... what mods (if any) do we need to have installed in order to take full advantage of the new PBR textures that @Zorg and @Invaderchaos and others have been working so diligently on?

Hello! I am new to KSRSS Reborn and I have a question: when you have Reborn with Parallax, which mod generates the rocks on the Moon's surface, KSRSS or Parallax? 1. If it is KSRSS, is it possible to reduce the amount of non-collider rocks on the surface and if so how? 2. If it is Parallax I will ask in that thread. Thanks!

MAN IN SPACE SOONEST It is 1958, and President Dwight Eisenhower is very alarmed at the recent Soviet space successes. He feels that we have been made to look like fools and genuinely fears the seemingly ever growing technological gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He succumbs to pressure exerted by the Department of Defense and orders them to "put a man into space at the earliest possible date. I don't care what it takes, just get it done NOW!" The Air Force's Project 7969, aka Man In Space Soonest (MISS) is put into full swing. Fully funded and with the full backing of every resource available in the United States, the project rapidly moves forward. With the DoD leading the way, very little about the project was released to the public, with many details classified. Wanting to keep it as simple as possible, the Goodyear Aircraft Company was chosen as the prime contractor for the spacecraft. Goodyear's design was a simple spherical ball with an RCS module and parachute canister on top. To help slow the spacecraft after reentry four air brakes would deploy to slow and stabilize until the spacecraft reached the lower atmosphere, where a parachute would safely lower it to a splashdown in the ocean. After a rancorous debate, the Air Force's still-in-development Titan ICBM was chosen as the launch vehicle. This would prove to be the long pole in the program's development, with delays in the booster resulting in the program missing its early 1960 launch date by several months. Meanwhile, Goodyear surged forward with spacecraft development and enjoyed a comparatively benign build and test regimen. On July 4, 1960 President Eisenhower ordered a name change for the program, always of the mind that MISS was a tad on the silly side. The whole effort was now known as Project Liberty. On September 28, 1960 they were finally ready. A Titan I missile with a mysterious fairing at the top had been erected at LC-19 at Cape Canaveral. It was all very hush-hush, with no announcements or information made public. At dawn on the 28th the weather from Hurricane Donna had finally cleared. The gantry was lowered and the countdown entered into its final phase. Unbeknownst to everyone outside the program, young Air Force Lieutenant Michael Alfred Robert Sampson was strapped into his seat inside Liberty 3, itself hidden from view by the fairing. Liberty 3 launched exactly on time, with the climb out and ride uphill going quite smoothly. For once, the mighty Titan flew straight as an arrow. Sampson and his brand new spacecraft made it to a 30 degree, 120x105 km orbit in fine shape. He deployed antennas and made his first report to a Navy tracking ship in the southeastern Atlantic, just as he crossed the coast of Africa. His first of two orbits took him nearly directly over the Cape Canaveral launch site. Several hundred miles west of Baja California, the three solid retro motors lighted in succession to lower the orbit back into the atmosphere. The maneuver was successful and at 90 km he jettisoned his battery and retro pack. His firey ride through the atmosphere brought on a heavy 6 G's, but Sampson took it well and opened the air brakes at 40 km. Stabilized and rapidly slowing, the parachute deployed at 3000 meters and he gracefully dropped into the Atlantic Ocean 350 km northwest of Puerto Rico. The mission was a complete success. The President could now trumpet that the United States was the first nation on Earth to send a man into space! This was a long and sometimes tedious kitbash. The Tweakscaled down KV-1 "Onion" Stock pod had to be patched to add basic functionality to it like additional ablator and EC, reaction wheels, and monoprop (thanks @Rodger for your assistance with the patch!) I went through several versions before I got something light enough to be put into a stable orbit by a BDB Titan I. I was inspired by the image below of the Goodyear proposal for Project 7969. It struck me as cool looking and a fun KSP kitbash so I dove into it. The air brakes work rather well, but it is not as stable as I thought. I had to leave SAS on the whole time in order to keep it flying properly retrograde. As it slowed down it had the tendency to go heavy end first, i.e. with the parachute canister facing down and the air brakes pointed the wrong way. The RCS unit at the top is the BDB Athena module (Tweakscaled). Please, do not refer to it as an "American Vostok". Rather, I prefer to think of the Soviet craft as a "Russian MISS"! LOL By the way, this is the first manned mission of my new KSP build, incorporating KSRSS Reborn. The views of Earth are nothing short of amazing! Very realistic.

Is anyone else suddenly having trouble with Imgur? Within the past week I can no longer access any of my KSP albums. They show up, but I can view the album. I also can not post any new images. I can upload images, but when I go to make the post I get a "share post failed" message. Is this a problem with my browser (I use either Edge or Firefox) or is it a Imgur problem? Thank you.

For the newer players of Bluedog Design Bureau, you should take into account that BDB is one of the most highly tested and developed mods for KSP. The development team is quite professional and has been working on this mod for over nine (9) years! While there certainly is a possibility that you might stumble across a previously unknown bug, it is actually far more likely that your unfamiliarity with the mod and with KSP in general is much more the likely culprit of your issue(s). Installation problems being the next most likely. Everyone here is more than happy to help. I have been playing for five years and I am still learning things all the time. It would pay you large dividends to make sure that your installation is good, and that you understand the basic mechanics of the game first. There are other forums on this site that can answer those questions. Another big help is searching within this thread before you post. You may very well be able to answer your question before having to make a new post. So do some research first, read through the other threads, check out the various Wiki's available, and if you are still stumped then ask away! The dev team and the other experienced players will bend over backwards to assist. This is one of the best mods available for KSP. Enjoy!

Most of the BDB rockets (if assembled correctly), will fly to orbit just fine on KSRSS on MJ Classic Ascent profile. It is somewhat inaccurate historically as it puts in a coast phase and engine restart. Some rockets (Saturn I, Saturn IB) work better with PVG. It has been my experience that MJ does not play well with solid motors as upper stages. You have to manually ignite them by tapping the space bar.

I was using them on Gemini B. I had built a version that would fly military missions independent of the MOL, and with only the reentry RCS your options are limited. I can use the Hexagon RCS block instead. I found out that indeed the Gemini B that was to fly with MOL did not have any OAMS/RCS thrusters in the adapter section, only the reentry RCS near the nose. Apparently, once undocked from the lab reentry was fairly quick, so a lot of maneuverability was not needed and the reentry RCS that Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott so famously used to recover from their wild ride on Gemini 8 was sufficient for the mission.

There used to be (recently) two separate Gemini RCS blocks. One for roll control and the other for pitch and yaw. Did those get deleted or have they had a B9PS merge with another part?

Is that Saturn SLC-37B or the Delta 37B? Would love to have the historic version. Kitbashing it is possible, but I don't have statics to make it look right.

@Zorg, could you take a look at the Titan SRB recovery parachute? The parachutes themselves are transparent when deployed on the dev version that I downloaded on August 5. Thanks.

Very well done. What part did you use for the RV?