DaveyJ576

I found an interesting article that I think would make a great addition to BDB for some alt-history scenarios: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4390/1 I am not sure if @CobaltWolfand the dev team are up for more Apollo modding, but it would be pretty cool. "Barnstorming the Moon" has a great ring to it!

Yours look great, but I will stick with mine. Thank you for the offer. If you will forgive the cheeky paraphrase, “This looks like a job for @Invaderchaos!”

Midas or Samos? I have my own versions…

Has anyone flight tested the new LM Truck thruster quads? They are lacking plumes, but I know they are working because my monoprop tank levels are getting lower... @CobaltWolf

Does anyone know what might be causing this? I just loaded the most recent dev branch file yesterday and upon boot up I was getting this message in the VAB on most, but not all, of my already existing builds. No other mods have been loaded since I downloaded the last dev branch update. And my current mod list. Thanks! I appreciate the help.

Hey, thanks for the tip. I honestly didn't know that despite running KSP for over two years. Once I changed it to SAS only it drives like a dream. You still have to be careful in the turns, but that is true with any rover. Last question... the last problem I am having is that I can not get an astro to make an EVA. It says all exits are blocked. It must be because it is too close to the ground because it works when the Shelter is used with the descent stage. The obvious solution is to raise it by using a thicker base and I have tried that but it is raising the center of gravity and throwing the aesthetics off. Is there any other way to correct this? @Forked Camphor, @CobaltWolf

Excellent! I didn’t think of that.

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried them out. The Rover Autopilot at least kept it upright and moving forward with no wheelies. However, it seems as if the speed control doesn't work. Even at its lowest setting the vehicle still accelerates to its highest speed. I will have to look into editing down the power of the wheels. Heading control works, but I haven't figured out how to use it yet. Weird thing... as soon as I clicked on Stability Control in the Rover Autopilot, the vehicle flipped upside down and started to do some wild gyrations. Puzzled, it suddenly dawned on me that the LM Ascent Stage model has a thrust/stability/movement vector built into it that goes vertical, i.e. through the overhead hatch. With a rocket engine normally mounted underneath the stage this would be the correct way to model this vector. However, I am asking my vehicle to accelerate 90 deg off of this axis (through the front hatch), thus it wants to flip when I tap the WASD controls. Enabling any sort of stability controls will cause it to do the same thing. I might be wrong here, but unfortunately, the only way I can see to correct this is for @CobaltWolfto create a variant of the LM Shelter ascent stage that has the thrust vector rotated 90 degrees to face forward. This part would become specialized only for the MOLEM. I am not sure if he would want to do that. By the way, for those of you who may not know, MOLEM was an actual NASA concept. It looks weird, but it was a pretty good compromise that would have gotten a pressurized rover with a minimum of new R&D and money. If anyone has any other suggestions I would appreciate it! Thanks.

Yes. No joy. Did that. Still mega wheelies even with just the front wheels driving.

So I have also been playing around with some MOLEM concepts. I am pretty satisfied with it, but it would be great if @CobaltWolfwould create a B9 switch to eliminate the RCS thrusters. They are obviously not needed since you have them on the LM Truck. I have one major head-scratching problem though... it is undriveable! Any application of power will result in massive wheelies or nosedives. Any turn to the left or right, even when standing still, will result in a flipover. It seems as if the steering and drive torque is waaay over done. These are the Squad Expansion RoveMax M1-F wheels, scaled up to 140%. I like them because they closely resemble the real LRV wheels. The weird thing is that I use these same wheels on my smaller LRV-style rover and I have only minor issues that can be overcome with careful driving. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? This is too cool a concept to pass up. Thanks

So I am ahead of the dev team! Nice!

I may be getting ahead of the Dev Team here, but with the new LM parts I kitbashed this ATM... You have to rotate the solar panels inward for them to fit in the SLA.

There was a proposal for a SLA based lunar orbit lab. The "leftover" crew would spend 14-30 days orbiting the moon doing science while the rest were down on the surface. In BDB terms, it would be similar to the upper portion of the VFB lab. I saw a document with pictures on this SLA lab some time ago, but I can't find it now.

@Stone Blue, @OrbitalManeuvers, thanks for the reply. The Landvermesser/ Surveyor is one of my favorite spacecraft and I thought it would be cool to snap pics from the moon. Hopefully @akron will take up the task, but if not no biggie. This is a fantastic mod even without NC compatibility.

Here it is. This is the entire file. The patch is at the very end. It is probably something simple.

Has anyone successfully inserted the Neptune Camera patch in the Landvermesser/Surveyor camera cfg file? I put it in, and the function menu shows up when you right click the camera, but it won’t take a picture and save it. Any suggestions?

I continued to tinker with the idea of adding a launch site at White Sands, NM. I studied the launchsites.cfg file and realized that it wouldn't be that hard. I cloned the Wallops portion, changed the latitude & longitude, and edited the description. I copied and pasted my patch into the launchsites.cfg file right at the end just under the Wallops portion. It worked perfectly! I now have a launch site in New Mexico to launch the early sounding rockets and the Little Joe 2 from. I haven't yet figured out how to match the grass color with the yellowish sand color of New Mexico, but I will continue to tinker with that too. The patch is in the spolier: I learned one important lesson: make a backup copy of the launchsites.cfg file BEFORE you start to tinker with it. If you screw it up you can reload the original and reset everything. I have one other question: Given the rather primitive state of White Sands in the late 1940's and into the 50's, the fully developed KSC seems a little out of place. Is there a way of converting just this launch site to the Level 1 facilities while leaving the others at Level 3? I play in Sandbox mode. Thanks!

@Zorg, I figured the pitch rate out. It is definitely NOT 4 deg/s. I tried it and the results were… well, “unfortunate”.

A question for clarity's sake... did you mean 0.4 deg/s pitch rate or 4 deg/s pitch rate?

@Zorg, thank you for sticking with this extremely vexing problem. I am not a coder, but having taken a look at a few .cfg files I have an appreciation for what a pain in the neck this must have been. You and the entire dev team have my thanks for enabling my enjoyment of this sim.

About a month ago I found that I had a problem with the new ALSEP experiments. I can't deploy them from the astronauts. I tap the white arrow in the inventory, the experiment appears in front of the astronaut, but when I tap the space bar to drop the experiment and finish the deploy nothing happens. The experiment just hangs there. If I tap the escape key it goes back into the astronaut's inventory, and I can rotate it, but I just can't finish the deploy sequence. I can get the experiment to drop to the ground if I use the BG engineer function, but since it wasn't properly deployed from the inventory I can't use the experiment. The initial find of the problem was before the recent release while I was playing the dev branch, so I waited for the release and tried again. No joy. Same lack of result. It is obvious that one of my mods is interfering, or I have a broken install of something. I would like to ask again to see if anyone has seen this in the interim, or it anyone has any further suggestions. I am to the point of beginning to uninstall specific mods to find the culprit, but I would appreciate any insight as to what you think is the likely culprit so I can target the offender better. See below for my GameData file and the log. By the way, I can deploy and use the BG experiments without a problem.

Thanks. I wasn't sure if that branch was still active or not.

@CobaltWolf, @Invaderchaos, I know there is a lot of work underway on Atlas V, but do you still have plans for a revamp of the other Atlas parts? I think they look pretty good now, but I have found some minor tweaks and additions that could be made. Thanks!

I don't want to move the KSC, I want to establish a new one so that the new base at WSMR is just like the ones at Canaveral, Vandenberg, Kodiak, and Wallops. At the end of the day it isn't that big of a deal. If I have to I will launch the WSMR flights out of Wallops. A deviation from history, but not huge. Thanks for taking a stab at it!

Thank you for your response. It is distinctly possible that I am asking this in the wrong forum. It could be a KK or a KSC Switcher function. I was aware of the procedure you described above. In fact, I have added many new launch pads at my Florida KSC with it. What I want to do is add is a whole new base(?) to the area in New Mexico that corresponds to WSMR. I then want to be able to switch back and forth from Cape Canaveral to Vandenberg to WSMR, etc., to launch rockets. Is this possible?