RocketBoy1641

Oh for those simple and carefree days. Enjoy them. And what ever you do, non't abuse your joints. It will catch up to you and you will wish that you could undo twenty or thirty years of not taking care of them.

You aren't allowed real life. But then again, real life has happened with me, thus a hiatus in playing for many months. I seriously need to get back to this hobby though. My home computer looks at me and my work computer like the two girls and the distracted boyfriend meme- only I don't oh la la at my work pc

That atlas is almost as chunky as I am! No spin stabilizing? Staging issue?

I will take twelve! Yes, six times as many as we sent.

Love the Twitter pic! Oh, and launch adapters matter. They really make it believable and less explode ring is attached to the engine bell.

On the matter of shutdown; some SRBs have a thrust termination system where they dump thrust either equally for and aft (net 0 thrust) or dump through side vents in a way that ends forward thrust. The later seems more reasonable with PAMs/kickstanges and similar things that you can't burn toward the top of the stack. I don't think they are all that common b/c it is cheaper to have less working pieces and push less mass (unspent fuel). Restart options would take a lot of extra weight and complexity unless you use a solid/liquid hybrid. Those are an interesting lot. You have fuel or oxidizer as the solid and the liquid is the other. Cut the liquid and the reaction dies. Restart with hypergol or Tea-Teb.

Historical accurate look? My guess is something to do with gimbal of the engine. But, I'm just guessing.

@Brainpop14 Didn't get them all b/c of working quotes on my phone Insert Cobolt saying the other guy who did the lander part is pretty busy,IRL Insert Cobolt saying it would take several Months (circa April/May). Insert me going nuts seeing post about Viking III rover and going nuts for it. My guess is we should be thrilled if we get it for Christmas. If sooner: Insert gif of guy handing Cobalt buckets of cash!

Here are a few captures from a quick test run of the Lunar Mapping & Site Survey Mission (LM&SS) configuration. NASA actually still owns the hardware for two KH-8 Keyhole satellites. For this versioning of what it looks like we use pure BDB parts. It has the KH-8, a AARDVRK cone and a LM docking port. I used a Apollo 17 CSM in the test. If you look carefully, you can see the SIMs cover AND the S-IVB in at least one image. The S-IVB is on a line parallel to the KH and in line with the SIMs bay cover. If you look for the quad panels (attached) forming a bit of a cross, you found it. In the alternate that I am working up the LM&SS will most likely fly as Apollo 15 on the 28 day marathon to get better 'site truth' imaging before the K missions on 16 to at least 20 (have yet to determine when the "L" non-historic follow on missions will be started).

The first couple are where I added a battery and fuel cell to do prolonged stage control. IMHO, the battery is unneeded; but it is small mass in the big picture, and is a safety massive safety margin adding 2x the electric charge storage. This moves on including stuff to make it a relay. In theory after your fourth third (edit) moon landing with one of these you have uninterrupted communication back to Earth/Kerbin. I didn't strip the relay stuff off of this; but it shows how the XR-600s fit nicely on the Timberwind-75. Back to some more of the relay.

Here is my go at Apollo 13 CSM using the SIM bay for the module that blows. Based on photos that is the correct one (note antenna in historical pic). I rotated the two fuel cells up to mimic what the crew described. At least portions of all tanks appear in the historical references, so I didn't omit any. I skipped the debris of insulation etc as that would be difficult to accomplish. Latest from a mission: We have a J Series mission with an Apollo 15/16 SIM bay and J class lander. I did embellish the lander a bit with a couple small round mono tanks and a battery in the leg quadrants. Also, while not in this morning's screenshots, I verified a fuel cell powered S-IVB stage able to have post separation maneuvers done to facilitate Lunar impact or sending out into heliocentric orbit. With some conservative fuel consumption and the Skylab roll out solar panels and a relay antenna they could also be used as relays around Luna/Mun. Those images will come tonight. There were plans considered to do relays during the flyby into heliocentric orbit to facilitate far side landing or to just eliminate the communications blackout. This wasn't actually done though. On an interesting note for delta-V there was only 44 MPH difference between TLI burn and setting up for Lunar impact and only 88 MPH difference between TLI burn and heliocentric injection of the spent stage.

Thank you both for the feedback. Will check both of them; but was most likely the SpaceY ones that I was thinking of.

Really feeling silly right now. I used to know all my parts mods frontwards and backwards; for the life of me, right now I can't remember the one that has the half ring surface mounting 3.5m and 5m reaction control wheels. Stretched tanks are acting a little wobbly on this behemoth. Anyone recall what mod that is?

I fixed my high temp loop question. It turns out the Timberwind 75 has a really tall core. Tall enough that a wink and a nudge says that the engineers designed it to hang a pair of XR-600 High temp radiators off of. And they don't ruin the tank asthetic that way

Yes, was planning with a hot loop and cold. Loop. Just ran into frustration of not wanting to have to use tons of radiators (both for asthmatics and power consumption demands). I know the theory; but trying to apply in a pretty way and also avoid the weight creep that is run into by needing solar or other power supply, I am starting to see just how much of a challenge NTR can be to make weight efficient and also the complexity that it can add back in.