Toaster355

Good choice! The IRL CEV didn't have black windows I'm sure, but it looks better in-game and I can do it so who cares. A good choice again. And you're right, man! I can do whatever I want! Yeah, I love the shiny Orion but a white Orion would look great too. And Jay already uses a silver Orion, and I don't want to copy him too much, so I have the perfect excuse! Ooh okay, everyone seems to want a white and black CEV! Fantastic choices! Today I blew all of my rep on @Misguided Kerbal's fantastic Starbound thread, so no rep for you all yet. I'll wait for another day or two in case others want to share too. Also Mr. @Kerballlistic07, I read your signature, and if you want you can fix it on this thread here. However, you can only change it once!

Hello, Kerbonauts! No CEV Flight Test-1 just yet. I am trying to decide what Orion will look like, so I decided to ask you all! ____________________ Orion Models Capsule and Window Textures

Thanks man, me too! Me too, I'm going to miss the Shuttle. I can't wait to continue working too! Yeah, I'm going to miss her too. Even though she never got any character development and never grew too close to any of us, there's still a great sense of loss and sorrow when losing a Kerbal (unless you are Danny2462, lmao). Sweet, another DIRECT appreciator!!! You will (hopefully) not be disappointed; I've got some great things planned.

Oof... You should absolutely get a new PC once you have the money. But even with these specs, you should definitely give TUFX a try. I've heard mixed answers on how heavy of a performance impact it gives; some say it has little-to-none, and others say it has a very large one. I recommend giving it a go with one of my profiles. I can help you tamper with it to your needs too. Nah, it's all good. Congratulations, Felix!!!

That's alright, I answered after you asked on my Freedom thread after I posted the update of me toying with volumetric clouds in my stock install. In my KSRSS install, I use Kabram's White, High Quality sunflare. As for my stock installs, I use the Spectra sunflare.

Goodbye, 'Deavor. January 6th, 2011 | STS-132 5 days after watching the Jupiter-120-X test flight on New Years Day, Endeavor prepares for her final Endeavor. ____________________ Crew: Commander Carbert Kline Pilot Neilbald Baker EVA Specialist Calbart Campbell Flight Engineer Jesdas Dunn Payload Commander Digee Gavino Scientist Kirk Rogers ____________________ Endeavor waits on her mobile launcher at Launch Complex-39B, awaiting the launch window tonight. The Shuttles have only been allowed to launch downrange into water, so no SRBs are dropped on mainland US, and the only window for that is tonight. T-08:12:37 | The crew pose in front of the Shuttle stack. They will soon become the final Kerbals in history to ride on Endeavor. After Sol goes to sleep, preparations for liftoff are well underway. T-00:00:23 | The Intertank Access, Crew Access, and LOX Vent arms all retract. T-00:00:10 | The Hydrogen Burnoff Ignitors are lit, igniting excess hydrogen to keep the orbiter safe. T-00:00:06 | the 3 RM-69s (formally referred to as RS-25s, but will from now on be known as RM-69s) are lit. The 6 Kerbals look out the windows of the Orbiter, into the infinite void of blackness they will soon dwell in. They brace theirselves for the violent sound, vibrations, and gees they are about to hear and feel. "T-0:00:00 | "Booster ignition and LIFTOFF! Liftoff of Endeavor for the final time, nourishing the orbital station she helped put together." T+00:00:11 | Footage from the EFT Hullcam, looking down at the coast. T+00:01:06 | "And we confirm the Solid Rocket Boosters have separated from the vehicle." (The Navcam was placed between the 4 jettison motors of the SRBs. Nobody really anticipated that the image would look terrible like this.) The EFT Hullcam looks back at Florida, illuminated by many city lights. Endeavor continues riding into space. Andromeda watches the launch about 685.7 thousand light-years away. T+00:04:38 | "And we have reached Main Engine Cutoff." T+00:04:48 | Endeavor stays attached to the External Tank for about 10 seconds, before it is finally jettisoned. Luna also watches the final launch of Endeavor, only about 0.35 light-seconds from Earth. Upon reaching daylight, Endeavor deploys her payload bay, along with something never seen on a shuttle before: A solar panel! The solar array generates the large amount of power needed to keeps the snacks cold until docked; the Orbiter's fuel cells are not enough. And to avoid confusion, I imagine snacks are the Kerbal equivalent of food, I will call it that from now on. Endeavor burns to correct her inclination. Endeavor makes another burn; this time to intercept Freedom. Upon approaching the Freedom, the solar panel will be ditched, as the giant solar panels on the station will keep the snacks cool. The batteries and fuel cells in the orbiter will keep the snacks cold, but for only for the next couple of minutes. Once docked, power will then be shared with the station. Endeavor pitches over, using her Reaction Control System. Jesdas: "Control, we confirm a good jettison! Running purely off Endeavor's 3 on-board fuel cells now. Sorry for not turning on the lights for this shot ^ Jesdas: "Soft capture confirmed. Pulling her in now." Jesdas: "Hard capture confirmed! Great to be home again." The Trusscams point at the Orbiter's payload, illuminating and keeping an eye on it as Cupola-1 opens. Renaming it to something that isn't Cupola-1 would be a good idea, right? (I really wanted ALL the extras, but they broke my game when I tried installing them and nobody has given me a fix yet.) Snack transferring begins! (^ I apologize for bad antialiasing here; there's a weird bug that after every scene switch, it looks like anti-aliasing is automatically reduced to none. I have to manually change it back to 8x every time, and can sometimes forget or not notice it.) Endeavor will stay in orbit for 6 months, as it always has when visiting Freedom. _________________________ Over the vast emptiness of Russia(?), Endeavor and the crew prepare to return to the Cape. Cupolas close up, to keep the windows from being scratched and damaged by micrometeorites. Jesdas: "Undocking confirmed. See you soon, Freedom." Endeavor slows down with her RCS to bring the perigee down into the atmosphere. Her OMS fuel had been drained before it got to the station, because I was an idiot and was too busy taking screenshots of the launch so my inclination was very far off when the burn was finished as they heavy payload demanded it. Though the External Tank had plenty of fuel left, it was not used, as debris that large is banned from orbiting Earth. This is a tradition Kerbals have had since they first set foot out into the universe; to keep space pristine. Smaller objects like the solar panel are okay to leave in orbit. Anything larger than 10 meters is not. This rung some alarm bells for Kerbals, as the last time an orbiter ran out of fuel, it was lost. But the remaining RCS fuel is more than enough to slow into the atmosphere, and they had undocked at a safe time. They could even head back to Freedom if they needed to, but that will hopefully not be necessary. Right? Endeavor hits the first traces of the atmosphere high above the Great Lakes in Canada. She routinely loses communication, and continues heading down the "Neon Tube" to the home planet of the crew below. As the orbiter is nearly slowed down enough for communication, her inclination had been corrected via aerobraking. The Orbiter then attempts to rotate her nose back up to avoid veering off to the west any further. But as she tries... Gene: "ENDEAVOR ?!?! ENDEAVOR, DO YOU COPY?!?!" The radios continue reading static. _______________________ Carbart: "Houston? Houston, do you read?" The mission control room in Houston erupts into a brief cheer; the crew was alive, for now. Gene: "Roger Endeavor, we copy! Now what on Earth happened up there!?" Carbart: "It seems that an FCS computer for one of the elevons failed." Gene: "Copy that. Now get the F out of there as soon as you can!!" The Mid-Fuselage creaks and bends before finally breaking lose from the Forward-Fuselage. Endeavor, or, what's left of it, continues to tumble through the thick atmosphere of Earth. Carbert manually uses the remaining RCS to slow the shuttle's rotation. As Endeavor plunges through the atmosphere, Carbert and Neilbald pull the handles on their seats to eject about 4 kilometers above the surface. The seats in the shuttle flightdeck are F-16C ejection seats, modified for spaceflight. They eject in synchronization, with an intentional 0.25 second delay. Calbart and Tedlas eject 0.5 seconds after Neil does. However, there are 2 crew on the middeck who do not have an ejection seat; Kirk and Digee. The Forward Fuselage plunges toward the surface. Digee is free from her seat first, where she then desperately tries to free Kirk. She lets Kirk leave first, where he bails out only half a kilometer above the surface. He desperately waits to see her leave and open her chute too. Only to see... ...Her chute did not open in time. _______________________________ In loving memory of Digee Gavino. She gave her life to save Kirk. The space program will ensure her sacrifice was not in vain. ____________________ Shortly after an investigation was started, it was quick to tell what went wrong. One of the FCS computers, flight computers, in the shuttle had failed, so instead of obeying it's command, it violently rotated up, causing the entire shuttle to completely lose control. This was due to poor maintenance on the shuttle, continuing to earn refurbishable spacecraft n already bad reputation. This, as you could have imagined, has left the Shuttle program in shambles. Only 3 missions after Atlantis's ill fated final flight, another orbiter had been lost, let alone the life of a Kerbal. The program has been long, expensive, and unsafe since it's very first flight in 1985. It no joke when engineers say it was a miracle that no Shuttles had been lost until STS-126. Not only is the shuttle stack itself unsafe, but the crew are very much in danger too. There is no abort system, other than the ejection seats on the flightdeck. The 2 astronauts on the middeck have none, and must climb their way out. Crew cannot bail out until they are under 6 kilometers, or under 100 meters per second. This is partially due to fears that the suits would be ripped apart be the aerodynamic forces. F-16C pilots IRL can somewhat-safely eject over 686 meters-per-second, but that's because there is much more room for the seat to fly out. Because of the large walls around the crew, there were fears that the crew would hit them on the way out. The crew on the middeck would have more ease bailing out on a lower altitude and speed. As a result of all this, The Shuttle Program has been cancelled. ____________________ For 26 years, from 1985 to 2011, the Space Shuttle was THE spacecraft of the world; an extremely iconic spacecraft, taking hundreds of people and payloads into Low Earth Orbit and beyond. However, the Space Shuttle's legacy will live on, in a new program... ____________________ If you wish, you can enjoy some bonuses. Do NOT read, unless you have finished reading everything else and are willing to have some things ruined! Skybox: Post-Death American Flag on the Orbiter ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ Wow, what a post! I hope it was worth the wait! I'm trying a new style; everything is centered, there is no longer a huge spoiler with the entire mission in it, and there were many, many screenshots in portrait. Heavily inspired by @AmateurAstronaut1969 and @Jacktical's Artemis thread; I hope you liked it! And if you want, if it's too much of a pain to scroll, I can keep them in huge spoilers. But when it's in a spoiler, pics look slightly smaller and everything is in an ugly gray background, and I don't like that. There may also be many minor mistakes, as it is getting late and I have been eager to release this for several days. It's gonna be pretty sad seeing the Shuttle finally go. But don't worry too much; I have some bonus missions planned for the shuttle. You can still look forward to those if you are gonna miss the Shuttle! And Kerbonauts; thank you for liking posts, leaving comments, and giving me support. Goodnight.

Patience... you will soon see why it has taken so long. I will (hopefully) finish today!

Nice, mate! I liked the post so fast after it was posted, ha (definitely not because I have been typing out my next Freedom post for several hours today) If you want, I will give you some tips to make your updates look light-years more cinematic.

Yeah, it looked cool and I have an excuse to do it. I love the wormball too, it honestly looks much better than the plain meatball. Man, you have good eyes. Thanks for catching that!

I did more work on an upcoming mission; I could have FINISHED it if it weren't for the game crashing twice and making me give up for the day. ________ Here's a peek:

old meme, hopefully some will still find it funny

Thanks! In the "Edit Profiles" tab in TUFX, you can change... pretty much everything. Chromatic Aberration is near the middle. I recommend only changing the Intensity slider. Grain is near the end, next to Motion Blur. It's pretty simple, with only 3 sliders. Toy around with these, and I promise your screenshots will look muchhhh better.

The RS-68 is in the Delta folder, I believe. I am on vacation, so I do not have access to my PC but I can verify once I am home this evening.

This mod contains the engine mounts, inline External Tanks, and instrument ring and fairings, interstage, and upper stage for DIRECT launchers. DylanSemrau's PhotonCorp provides fantastic 2, 3, 4, and 5 segment Solid Rocket Boosters and their decouplers/nosecones. Benjee's Artemis Construction Kit provides you with the greatest looking and most accurate Orion/SLS than any other mod. EStreetRockets also made Rocket Motor Menagerie, which provides you with a great RS-25 which the ORANGES engine mounts are designed for. Nertea's Cryoengines provides the best J-2X you're gonna find. Bluedog Design Bureau's (I'm not even gonna bother listing the devs) RS-68 and RL10B-2 are the best you're gonna get for this game, and S-II engine mount also included in the mod is the best for mounting your upper stage engines on. I understand the mod contains basically a trillion parts, so you can go to the Parts folder for the mod and delete the folders containing parts you do not want. And finally, Alpha's Modular Launch Pads gives you some really nice looking pads to put your rockets on.

I'm just gonna yoink those screenshots and use them as wallpapers for my phone... That was an incredible mission report, to say the least!!! I'm glad you made an Artemis thread instead of me, because you did it infinitely better than I could have. I think what carries it is the portrait screenshots, and of course, TUFX. The screenies themselves aren't actually too different than mine; you use a similar (not really) TUFX profile to me, but the use of portrait screenshots makes them look larger and more epic. Fantastic work mates! Super excited for Starship Integrated Flight Test-1

Thanks man! I made these threads so users like you could enjoy my stories and screenshots, so I'm happy I succeeded. Me too man, these rockets had so much potential. DIRECT has always been a, absolutely criminally underrated proposal, so I really want to try changing that. SPOILERS FOR THE THREAD:

Yep! STS-132 waiting on the pad will **spoiler** resupply Freedom's snacks and other life support. It will be the final flight of Endeavor. Yeah, it really was a shame. I'm still very glad the legacy of the shuttle is being continued through Artemis, though Huh, what was STS2? I've never heard of it. When I try searching it up, all that comes up is the STS-2 mission of Columbia. Thanks mate, me too! I am very excited for what I'm going to do with these vehicles Most likely, yes. I will definitely expand to Freedom, build a Lunar station, and a Mars transfer vehicle in Low Earth Orbit or even Lunar orbit which NASA and Lockheed Martin are planning IRL for taking humans to Mars.

In November of 2022, a Space Launch System Block I took to the night sky of Florida. But... what if a very similar vehicle flew much, much earlier? What if Orbital ATK didn't demand no less than 5 segments for Solid Rocket Boosters? What if Constellation was much less considered than another option? A proposal going by the name of... "DIRECT" Space Transportation System Derivative ____________________ Common Core Stage Every rocket in the series would utilize a Common Core Stage. This would take the External Tank from the Space Shuttle, remove the feedlines on top for the orbiter, attach a thrust structure to the bottom, remove the nose cone LOX tank, and attach a liquid oxygen tank extension and cap with a forward skirt for mounting instrument rings/payload fairings or interstages. This new core stage would be common to every flight of the vehicle. I will refer to it as the CCS. Naming The name given to each Jupiter launch vehicle had three digits; the first digit being how many stages the rocket has, the second being how many engines are on the Core Stage, and the third being how many upper stage engines it has. For example, the Jupiter-246 has 2 cryogenic stages, 4 main engines, and 6 upper stage engines. Jupiter-130 The Jupiter-130 was the first variant of the v3 family. A new thrust structure would allow for the mounting of RS-25s straight onto the CCS, which this variant would use 3 of. The instrument ring and payload fairing would be mounted straight to the top of the CCS. This medium-lift vehicle could lift about 50 tons into LEO, and was designed as a replacement for the space shuttle servicing and rotating crew on the International Space Station Freedom using CEVs. There was no ISS in my timeline. Instead, Space Station Freedom will be the "ISS" of this thread. Jupiter-246 The Jupiter-246 is very similar to the Jupiter-130, but includes a forth RS-25, and most significantly, the Jupiter Upper Stage; a very large hydrolox tank powered by the existing RL10B-2s used on the Delta IV. The instrument ring and payload fairing would sit on top as they would on the CCS of the Jupiter-130. This launch vehicle could put over 100 tons into Low Earth Orbit, which would allow for a crewed return to the Moon and eventually flights to Mars. These two rockets would be the backbone of crewed spaceflight, for decades to come; allowing for continued and much safer servicing of Freedom, a return to the Lunar surface, rides to Near Earth Objects, eventual flights to Mars, and much more... ____________________ On January 1st, 2011, a Jupiter-120 prototype roars into the morning sky of Florida. The age of Jupiter has begun.

My main KSRSS install can be quite a pain most of the time... Over 120 mods installed makes for very long load times (and if I even have more than 2 Opera tabs open, my entire PC will freeze nearing the end of the loading and will not recover), many bugs, and it's very easy to completely break the game. This, as you can imagine, can cause a lot of burnout. However, something that really helps with the burnout and keeps me in a Kerbal mood is a semi-stock install with much less part mods. The lower amount of mods boosts the load times, reduces the amount of bugs, and the ease of breaking the game. I started a save in science mode. Loosly inspired by @Kerbalsaurus's Beyond thread.

Just in time for my final two shuttle flights! But dammit, I can't add any reactions

Ohhh whoops Can I get a link to the mod or something? Nothing really comes up when I search for this.

Modular Launch Pads

Shoot!!! I did not mean to type Atlantis; I was going to type Columbia and Endeavor, but while I was making the post I accidently typed out Atlantis instead because I was listening to this at the same time (I love this channel so much, go sub to them): The post has been fixed.

IT WORKED!!! Thank you so much Fox! I can now continue my thread

I'd prefer the Soviet names. Not too different from their English names, and adds to the Soviet immersion. Awesome thread too!