Andras

Heh, whoops. I just fired a space probe right though the 2m cargo shell nosecone and they let it slip right out and then closed up behind it like nothing happened. Got the staging a little off but it was an interesting (and non-disasterous) result

I have a escape tower, parachute, capsule, 2 vernier SAS, CSM fuel tank and small LFR at the top. I also have about 12 ullage motors and 4 strakes distributed around the beast. Using the cfg numbers I posted last page, I burn at 2/3 thrust until burn out (~21km), after separating from stage 1 begin an immediate pitch over to 0* while coasting (you can start a little early actually). You should get to 0* about 34km, and only ignite stage 2 when you hit 300m/s velocity. Burning at 100% until you hit orbital speed, you should be within seconds of running out of fuel. I hit 2340m/s at 45km with 10m/s vertical velocity left. Go ahead and ditch stage 2 since it's so slow to rotate with it attached and use stage 3 to fine tune the orbit.

Not entirely correct about the 3rd stage Frost. It burned for 142 seconds establishing the 100mi holding orbit. It was reignited for 345 seconds for the moon transfer. That said, my numbers will orbit on stage 2 alone also.

I have a legal workaround for the cargo shell. If you use Sunday\'s long 1m decoupler at the bottom of the command/pusher stage you can side attach the cargo shell to it. The shell will not have any gaps and you don\'t need the strut to hold the top together.

I've been tinkering with the numbers a little: First, you need to add Breakingforce=100000 to every stage 1-3 cfg Fuel numbers are Net Mass *250 Stage 1-2 decoupler mass 1.5 stage 2-3 decoupler mass 1.0 f-1 cluster- mass 30, thrust 6000, burn 300 stage1 tank- mass 90/dry 9; fuel 18000 j-2 cluster- mass 10, thrust 1200, burn 60 stage2 tank-mass 20, dry 2, fuel 4500 single j-2-mass 2, thrust 300, burn 12 stage 3 tank-mass 5, dry 0.5, fuel 1125. FWIW, my final command module stage weighs 4.95 Something else to consider is 'scaling' the numbers to keep them from getting so large. Divide the mass and thrust for the 3m parts by 3, and by 2 for the 2m parts. Fuel and burn can also be scaled.

IIRC it's not supported yet. It's not just a matter of editing the cfg. You can activate the SRBs first, then detach them though.

I, err, cheated a little with the cargo panels. I changed the 2m-1.75m adapter to allow side attachments. (change the attachrules to 1,0,1,1,0). There's a 1 pixel wide sweet spot that has just the small gap as seen, I also used some struts to hold them together at the top. Also these guys have custom items that won't load on your machines with just the .craft files. I posted the 1.75m SRBs in Nova's main SIDR thread. I made some retexts of the main long 1.75m tanks, short 1.75m tank, and 1.75m decoupler to kinda-sorta resemble some of the historical US rockets. Some are also posted in the SIDR thread. If you find the big boosters, only fire them in pairs. I fire the bottom two plus the main engines, then the top two, then eject the side pods when they are out. Firing all 4 at once tends to break things. You may have also noticed the big yellow ball at the bottom of the cargo section. Based on a comment by HarvesteR I added a ', 2' to the end of the attach nodes that would be 1.75 or 2m in size and a ', 3' to all the nodes that would be 3m. It changes the size and color of the attach node.

You could add stages before releasing each pair to fire their rocket engines first.

Spiffy!

Delta II, Ariane 4 and Ariane 5

My version of the Mercury Atlas. I have a small tank and small LFR for minor orbital maneuvering, but the main rocket is SSTO. The side mounted LFRs are dropped whent hey overheat or when I have 1 full tank left.

Nova's new stellar probe sitting in the cargo bay of my Titan IV launch vehicle.

Sunday- can you make some 3m nose cones, one with a detachable function, and one with the attachment point up inside the cone so cargo can stick up out of the decoupler below and still be hidden? Something that looks like the top of the Ariane 5 or STS external tank.

That happens to me too, keep it throttled down to 80-85% or so. Continuous 100% will knock it off the tank.

Put the PAM and payload on top of the command module with a decoupler under the PAM and above the 'chute. Arrange the PAM to fire before the decoupler, fire rocket, fire decoupler. If Nova could do an upside down PAM, it would be easier.

The custom 1.75m SRBs are patterned after the Titan IIIC colors. The -IV achieved a 63km orbit with 1 full 1.75m tank left. There's a command capsule and fueltank/LFR inside the cargo shell. Fixed the miss-matched paint on the boosters, and added the Space Probe as cargo. The Titan can push it to escape velocity then return the crew to the KSC.

I see it now, thanks! :-[ ETA- What I was working on: Titan IIIE and Titan IV

Nova, could you do an upside down 1.75m-2m adapter so one can mount 2m cargo sections over a 1.75m engine section?

Umm, I think an ejection force of 150 is a little excessive on the N-1 decouplers!

It looks much better when you do that with a bigger tank body Sunday's 2m tank w aero's and medium LFRs. Center motor is from the Saturn V parts pack

Saturn 1 Block 1 as best I can at the moment Nova, can you make a 1.75-2m decoupler/adapter that can hide engines? ETA- the detachable nose cones need to have a (-) negative sign before the ejection force number to make them eject forwards.

Hey Nova, if you could whip up a 8 nozzle 2m plate motor it could serve double duty with the N1 2nd stage and the Saturn 1 Block1 first stage (8x H-1s). The 1.75m-2m coupler with Sunday's 2m Tank would work beautifully for a S1B1. Pretty please!

Did you have the micro tank and micro engine in separate folders in Parts (good)? Or in the same folder (bad)?

The cone shaped adapter/decoupler is in Nova's SIDR parts package, you need the 1m to 1.75m Decoupler. ETA- you'll also want the small or medium LFR from Sunday Punch's parts pack.

Did you add all the individual parts folders, or one folder with all the part folders inside it? It won't load if you have parts inside other folders.