DaveyJ576

Nope, seems like you have everything there. I am not aware of any other parts. Just don’t forget the SAF shroud. It will clip into the top of the tank but that’s ok.

Yeah I gooned up the AS vs SA numbering system. Apparently there was some thought to renaming 201, 202, and 203 to Apollo 1, 2, and 3, but that idea was quickly abandoned due to possible confusion with the ill-fated Apollo 1. The as-planned system pre-fire would have had Apollo 2 as a repeat of Apollo 1. It was cancelled as redundant. Apollo 3 was to have been a dual launch flight (3A and 3B ?) with a Saturn IB/CSM on one flight and a Saturn IB/LM on the second, with rendezvous, docking, and manned LM tests. Post-fire that mission became the single launch Saturn V/Apollo 9.

SATURN IB An evolutionary step up from the original Saturn I, the Saturn IB was the ultimate expression of Werner Von Braun's cluster tank/cluster engine concept. What started out as an expedient to get a large multi-engine heavy lift rocket flying as soon as possible became a handy and advanced rocket by the time it stopped flying in the early 1970's. Below are the various forms of this rocket, with real and some never flown payloads. SA-201 and 202 were early unmanned tests of the Apollo CSM. SA-203 tested modifications to the S-IVB second stage so that it could be restarted in flight as the third stage of the Saturn V. SA-204 flew as Apollo 5 and was the first test of the Lunar Module in Earth orbit. It was hard to get the SA-203 shroud to just the right shape. This was as close as I could get. A variant of the Skylab SAF shroud would be nice for this flight. Apollo 7 was the first manned Apollo mission and the last to fly from LC-34. After that, operations moved to LC-39 for the Skylab and ASTP flights. The H-1 engines on the first stage received upgrades and all of the tanks were painted white. Saturn IB Centaur was a great concept that never came to pass. It could have become NASA's workhorse launcher for deep space missions, with the large shroud that surrounded the Centaur enabling a very capable spacecraft. Finally, two great what-ifs for Saturn IB use that never came to pass. MORL was an early space station concept that never got beyond the concept stage. But, with just a little more funding and will the AAP-2 Wet Workshop could have flown in 1969 hosting several crews. It would have had a LM-based ATM that would have been launched separately on a vehicle very similar to Apollo 5. Saturn IB was at the limit of its performance with an Apollo CSM on top. Further upgrades to the H-1 (H-2!) would be needed along with upgrading the S-IVB to a J-2S. All things considered, this engineering compromise gave the U.S. a capable manned launcher with an iconic and unique look.

Great work!

Breaking Ground DLC is absolutely required. KIS and KAS don't do a thing in this case. One of your astronauts has to be an engineer. Once the rover is deployed from the LM. Drive it around to the back and pull out the remaining parts from inventory one by one. Put the engineer into build mode, and then put the parts on the rover chassis using the move tool. It is a tricky process, and you have to turn and manipulate them to just the right position to get them to go green. Once they do attach them. It requires a lot of practice, but it does work. See this link for additional info: Friznit's BDB Wiki

That is one of the most pointed, but hilarious, things I have read on these forums!

I wasn’t sure about your experience level. I was going off your forum stats. No offense intended. At this point I am stumped. When combined with what others have said, I can’t think of what it might be. Sorry. It’s weird dude, even for KSP.

@Kassler Scott, may I weigh in on this? I would suggest starting a fresh, new build of the LM/SLA from scratch. Start with the LM. When finished, move it out to a launch pad via the normal method and use the cheat menu or the Hyperedit mod to put it in an orbit, all by itself. Test ALL of the functions to ensure it is working properly. If it is, revert it back to the VAB. Add just the SLA without the panels. Once again cheat it to orbit and test the separation from the SLA. If it doesn’t work, then you know that the problem lies with how the SLA attaches to the node on the LM. If it does work, revert to VAB and add the IU to the bottom of the SLA. Test again. Keep repeating this procedure, adding one part at a time, until you find the culprit. Make sure you are following @Friznit’s Wiki build guide to the letter. It is actually easy to miss a vital part. When I am doing scratch builds of rockets or spacecraft I follow this step-by-step testing regimen to ensure that I didn’t goon something up. It makes it a lot easier to find the offending part this way. The cheat menu or Hyperedit is your best friend in this regard. It saves you A LOT of time and head scratching. Unlike real life, KSP is not friendly to “all up” testing by building the whole rocket and flying it to find bugs. One other suggestion… once you find and fix the problem and are fully operational, change how you do the transposition & docking maneuver with the CSM. Once you blow the SLA panels, fly the CSM forwards with the RCS and away from the LM/S-IVB stack about 25-30 meters. Only then do you engage MechJeb to turn the CSM around to dock. In your video you were very close to the LM when you turned around and very nearly collided with it. In real life that would have caused all sorts of bad problems. When using MechJeb for this maneuver, NEVER approach for docking faster than .5 meters per second. I always use .1 to .2 m/s for docking. Addendum: after reading all of your posts, I am convinced that you have a part clipping problem; i.e. one part interfering with or sticking to another. The problem does not lay with any of the BDB parts. I have flown BDB Apollo missions to the moon numerous times and have never experienced this problem. Please don’t take that personally. There is a steep learning curve to all of these parts, and if you are relatively new to KSP it can be daunting. Stick with it. You will figure it out.

I fixed it... I think. Imgur is getting hard to use. I had a previous account with dozens of images that I uploaded here, and now that account seems to have gotten corrupted and I can't access the images anymore. I started a new account and just uploaded those Saturn I images yesterday, but Imgur wiped everything clean today. Very weird. Can anyone recommend a different and more reliable photo sharing service? Thanks.

SATURN I All hail the Saturn I! It was built so early that there was no payload for it. When the payload came along, changes to policy and heavier payloads made it obsolete. It is still a good looking but chunky rocket. The Block 3 is my designation for a version that was originally intended but never flown. It had a third stage called the S-V, which according to several sources was "nearly identical to the Centaur." The Block 2 Apollo A was a very early Apollo proposal that used a minimal, lightweight Service Module with solid motors instead of the SPS. There was a small lab underneath the SM that could be accessed with a transposition & docking maneuver. AS-101 is what the stack would have looked like if it had ever flown an actual Apollo CSM (very light fueled). I have actually flown these two versions on a 2.7x KSRSS and got them to a 100 km circular orbit, barely. Finally, two alternate reality versions. The first is what may have transpired with Gemini if the pogo problems with Titan II could not have been overcome, or if the Air Force had refused to cooperate. The second is the General Electric Apollo D-2 proposal during the earliest Apollo discussions. The spacecraft is from the long dormant Alternate Apollo mod. It sure would be nice of someone could adopt this and bring it up to BDB standards... just sayin'. I have flown both of these and they work great!

I did some digging through the KSRSS thread and Reddit pages to find what I needed, then used some deductive reasoning. WORD OF CAUTION: it is a better strategy to write a patch for this instead of altering the .cfg file. However, I suck at writing patches so I took this calculated chance. As always, SAVE A BACKUP OF THE ORIGINAL FILE. 1. Go to GameData/KSRSS/Terrain/Scatters/03_Earth. 2. Open the 03-1_Moon.cfg file. 3. Look for a series of Scatter entries labeled TinyRocks, SmallRocks, MedRocks, etc. 4. Edit the entries for maxObjects and _PopulationMultiplier for each Scatter entry to the following values: 5. TinyRocks: 3000 & 25 6. SmallRocks: 2000 & 6 7. MedRocks: 1000 & .75 8. LargeRocks: 500 & .05 9. HugeRocks: 250 & .02 10. HugeRocks2: 500 & .05 11 HugeRocks41: 500 & .05 Take a probe core and Hyperedit or Cheat it to the Moon's surface to check how it looks. I play with Colliders on to make for a semi-realistic environment. I am not sure I am fully satisfied with the numbers yet. There are still a lot of big rocks in my landing area. Play around with the numbers to get it to what you think is acceptable. You may have to do multiple restarts of the game in order to see if you get the numbers right.

KSRSS Reborn with Parallax is my setup. The graphics are outstanding. My only critique is that they overdid it with rocks on the moon. I had to make major adjustments downwards in the .cfg file to make the landscape realistic. It is easy to do, but a bit tedious. Other than that minor nit, I really enjoy that mod set.

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t Raidernick’s mods scaled differently from BDB? I recall running into that problem with his Skylab mod about five years ago.

This really needs to be part of the mod...

Oh yeah… an adoption or an update of the Alternate Apollo mod! I hope it includes the 1962 “Bug” LEM. All of it really fits in the BDB multi-verse.

Good info. Thanks!

SURVEYOR 6 Here are some screenies from my latest mission, Surveyor 6. This was my first flight with the SLV-3C Atlas Centaur with the new PBR shaders. It looks great! The views from the moon are with KSRSS and Parallax and required a lot of manipulation to reduce the amount of rocks to a semi realistic state. All in all it looks pretty good. Landing went well, and I am impressed with how the verniers on the lander sip the fuel. I conducted two mid-course correction burns to refine my landing spot, and still had some gas left over after landing. I goofed and did not get any shots of the solid retro firing. Once I was firmly down I deployed the science and got a nice Hullcam VDS shot for good measure. I mounted the camera on top of a rotator joint so I could get a good panorama of the landing area. In the photos below it can be seen just to the left of the NASA logo. BTW, @CobaltWolf or @Zorg, is it possible to get this type of functionality in the actual Surveyor camera? If not no biggie.

Very nice screenshots! I noticed you had a single engine out on the center core while going uphill. Was that intentional? @Pappystein was that even possible in real life with the LR-87? At any rate this is a cool concept. Might try it myself!

There are some mods that provide you with these rockets. Wacapella and CNAR being two. I use them both alongside BDB and they are fun to fly. They are well done, but not quite as polished and refined as BDB. I have also kitbashed my own sounding rockets of the Viking Program (not related to the Mars lander). I used several parts mods for them and they look and fly okay, but this would be another nice BDB addition. As an aside, it would be wonderful if the BDB dev team could adopt the Alternate Apollo mod. This is an excellent mod that fits inside the BDB world quite nicely. I especially like the 1962 “Bug” LM. The original creator has been silent for some time, and it could use some BDB style tender loving care. At the end of the day, I am grateful that the BDB team has completed what they have. It is all amazing.

I see you swiped a bottle of rocket fuel and some solid propellant. Nice!

Better yet... Pioneer 3/4 with the Jupiter booster. I believe that this mission is impossible with KSP/BDB, but I would love to be proved wrong!

I finally completed a successful Ranger 5 Rough Lander mission! Your suggestions were a big help. I backed off the thrust on the BE-3 solid to 24. That gave me a much smoother burn and for a longer period. My landing velocity was just under 140 m/s with the motor burning out at about 300 m altitude. I was probably at the limits of the lander to survive, but it did. Success! Ranger 5 took seismometer readings and transmitted them back to JPL. I may have just got lucky here, but it seems like a good result. This will remain a very tough mission to accomplish.

@slyfox023, I went back and did a quick Hyperedit of a RCML with a CSM in orbit to grab some screenshots. This is just one of literally hundreds of configurations that you could do. Just add some science components. There is a node on the bottom of the RCML so you can even use it as the first component of a larger station while building in the VAB.

Right, that is the CM (Command Module) Lab that I referred to earlier. It really has the same function as the LM lab. You can do just about anything with it that you want. Attach some science parts, solar panels, sensors, the Goo Lab, etc. The possibilities are endless. Put it in the SLA adapter atop a Saturn and launch it. Do a transposition and docking maneuver with the CSM and take it out for a few trips around the planet while gathering some useful science. Note: A standard Saturn IB will probably not lift the RCML along with a CSM. You will need to use a Saturn V (huge overkill), upgrade the Saturn IB, use the Saturn INT-20, or any other of the upgraded Saturn concepts. You could also do a dual launch, with one Saturn IB launching the RCML and one launching the CSM. I have only flown the RCML once and I did not take any screenshots. For uploading pictures, you have to first upload them to a picture sharing service like Imgur. Then you use the "Insert image from URL" function in the lower right of the box when you are typing here. Go to Imgur, right click the photo and "copy image link". Paste the image link into the box that pops up on this page.

Here is another variation. This is the original design of the Apollo Telescope Mount for the early Apollo Applications Program wet workshop concept (never flown). The ATM that actually flew on Skylab was a purpose built unit that did not use any legacy LM components.