Pappystein

err... umm... Saturn II is JUST the S-II stage with the possibility of the S-IVB or S-IVC (the NASA one not the ETS one) well technically it is actually a MS-II-1,-2,-3B or -4S with either payload OR a MS-IVB-4(S)B, -1A/-3, or MS-IVB-2... S-IVC fits with he MS-IVB-1A or -3 (basically the same length and fuel load) Once I dig some old Saturn II pics out I will post them... But once Cobalt is done with the proper Saturn II parts (there are about 10 bespoke parts needed for a full up Saturn II) I will run the whole series. Saturn II is my adopted baby and I have worked hard to bully convince the devs into including the J-2 Sea Level engines... Now that THAT is all out of the way. That is an Interesting use of the LEGO concept on Saturn. What kind of performance did you get (Stock or 2.5, or JNSQ or what)??? Inquiring minds want to know! Better yet, I discovered a document, and shared it with Cobalt a couple days ago that show what you built WAS actually planned.... sorta..... How about a Long AJ-260 under that S-II stage!

yay new LR-101 engines! I assume the Roll Control engines are LR-101s to my un-trained eye that is all that looks like it still needs to be textured so "Soon(TM)" I guess.

Yep but no one thought about the fact that solar radiation heats our planet up. they all just assumed that the heat was caused by friction in our atmosphere (at the time.)

I ***THINK*** given what little we know and can thus infer from Centaur... That the engineers all thought "Space is cold no boiloff" Thanks, that was one of the documents I was missing. Much Appreciated. There is another one from the 70s that I was referencing earlier. Still trying to find that one

I was thinking more abrupt thrust cutoff just before MECO was planned. There was enough reserves in that state for the mission to continue. You know like a slow fuel leak that did not involved an explosion... or miss-loading the fuels and not having enough oxidizer or RP-1... or lastly. A Fuel valve suddenly shutting when it should have remained open. Does that Article cover the Eros flyby as well? IDR who did the combined Venus/Eros flyby report but it used a larger 4.25m ksp scale SM with 3 LMAE engines, and an appropriately bigger CM (not Big Apollo.) I have lost/misplaced or otherwise not saved my Eros reports I downloaded....

it was covered a few pages ago. Those weren't needed because The Saturn V stack was still in an acceleration state and thus the fuel is completely fine and fully settled. HOWEVER For the purposes of avoiding an abort I would personally keep 2 or 4 of them

So showing the diffrence from the 9M MS-IC-25(I think) stretch and the MS-IC-CB which is basically the standard S-IC but with the common bulkhead reducing length..... 3 segment SMRU for size comparison:

Nope. Welcome to the 1960s. Just look at the Turbine Powered cars from Chrysler. Amazing concept, Truly multi-fuel (no need to worry about octane, petroleum products etc... could run fully on Grain alcohol.... Heck it would run on HAIRSPRAY! But no one thought about the fact that using petroleum products was bad back then. So no one talked about fuel flexibility and instead of investing money in emissions control and reducing the cost of the turbine, Chrysler basically shelved the product never to really dust it off.... Also remember, The Largest helicopter that was FAST enough to catch something falling back then was the CH-53A/B. Didn't have the carry capacity needed. I don't even think the modern CH-53K that just entered production could do so! For Saturn V that is.

There were a lot of studies trying to save what they could from Saturn. But this was in the days when tomorrow can clean up our mess mentality (well they really didn't spend time THINKING about messes like we do today.) For S-IC recovery there were 3 primary and like 8 secondary options for recovery. 1) Crush Impact save the after portion like your pictures show. 2) Parachute lay-down with Air-brakes (what I alluded to in the OP on Saturn S-ID) 3) Flyback (Ala Space X) 3A) Fly back as an aircraft S-ID booster or full recovery were covered in these studies but S-ID was too far down the pipe to worry about it. In fact Recoverable S-IC wouldn't have worked with the Moon before 1970 deadline. Which is why it does not exist in the Real world.... sadly. Of the 3.5 options listed above. 3 and 3A are respectively the furthest away technologically speaking and the EASIEST technologically speaking. North American Aviation went so far as to design (conceptually not in detail) a scaled up B-70 Valkyrie Wing which had 4 or 5 GE J93-GE-x engines on it (each wing having 4 or 5.) So the Space X landing style would take too much effort but the flyback as an aircraft actually has potential. NOT GOOD POTENTIAL but potential. Parachute Laydown with Airbrakes probably has the best return on investment (in so far as the entire S-IC stage would be recovered... not just the expensive half of it.)

Saturn V with MS-IC-CB and J-2S engines (all other parts are standard Saturn V) This is my first flight with the new Apollo parts. I have been *busy* with another mod on another game in a behind the scenes support role and it has severly limited my time to play KSP. But after the Challenge by @CobaltWolf last night, and NO ONE pointing out the "Surprise" in his post last night.... Well I just had to get at-least one launch in. Also decided to see what would give the best "engine out" configuration for Saturn V to maintain the center engine shutdown. Smartparts really only has Drainex sensor that applies to this situation and it unfortunately becomes a WAG as you would have to adjust the fuel percentage for each and every rocket using some hefty math. Launch was a failure because I failed to disable MechJeb auto stage.... But I launched a new Saturn V! on a heading of 090!....

Has anyone found the "Surprise" Cobalt alluded to in his post about the new S-IC tanks? If not, It is the COMMON BULKHEAD for the MLV studies. It is a full Saturn V fuel load in a tank ~20% shorter.... I have a launch going right now... but my install is broken (no waterfall on the engines ) But I will post some pics latter (this is my first flight with any of the new Apollo parts!

Funny how you posted that about the same time I PMed Cobalt with a document with the dimensions (But no drawing) https://store.steampowered.com/app/358920/Star_Control_I_and_II/ The game that got me interested in Space. Star Control II. One of the alien races keeps calling you it's "Squishy friend the Hunam" And the game is still fun almost 35 years latter!

completely true. But I figure the D needs it too so therefore anything without air-brakes is not an S-ID

Air-brakes are not deployed on the Fins. THAT IS NOT S-ID

First, thanks for the compliments???? Please realize, I am a RECOVERING Know it all... There is something... some where I don't know. I just don't know what it is But I do learn at-least one thing an hour it seems... sometimes MORE. And if you didn't know before... you call a recovering know it all.... a know it most... ish Ok Joking aside... Yes I have a pretty nice memory, it allows me to crank out articles like the one I did on Solid Rocket motors that were developed for the Saturn program I posted Sunday. I don't say this to brag because... Well I have a pretty nice memory, every pain I have lived through is in full color 3D all the time. I don't say this to complain either... But hopefully bring some understanding. Everyone has their strengths, Everyone has their weakness, every strength IS a weakness and every weakness IS a strength. It is all a matter of how you look at it and apply it. Things to understand before I get back onto HG-3.... I have been doing Aerospace research since... 1983ish. Seriously starting in 1988. My personal Aerospace (heavy on the Aero side) library rivals my entire county's Library system, and it (the county Library system is touted as one of the best public systems in the country per capita.) Of course my personal Library is pretty focused, and the County's is not, so you could say I have an unfair advantage. If Wikis were accurate AND precise in their data and data handling, my Library would be pointless. That being said, I am only Hunam... I still make mistakes as well. Now on to the subject of the HG-3... I am not afraid or embarrassed (well actually I am embarrassed) that I was DEAD WRONG when it came to HG-3. Zorg is the one who brought the correct information to my/our attention. And had actual documents to back his statements! And Like a fool that I can be, I tried to disprove it. Nope, 100% believer now that I have found other documents mentioning the HG-3 as a Notional design. *PS anyone get the Video game Hunam joke?*

So I dug up an AAIA article on Solid rocket motors as well as 3 different NTRS articles and decided to do more of that History thing. Today's subject. Solid Rocket boosters for the various Saturn projects. Making MLV better-er

I had this problem when I made a "AMU" equivalent back when the Gemini updates were first released. (first round updates from 3 years ago, not the more recent rebuilds) I discovered that you have to click on the Kerbal and choose CONTROL FROM HERE... IDK if that is still a thing in the more modern versions of KSP but you described exactly what happened with me... I separated the parts and everything went spinning in 90 degree directions to what they should have. I disagree pretty strongly where the Ascent Guidance comes in the stock tree. Same with RDV Guidance and Dock Guidance... Here is a patch I have been using since like before the 1.x KSP release... It gives EngineerRedux controls as well as updates the modules for basic rocket control much earlier. I understand why the MechJeb team chose the points they did. However it isn't historical and our rockets in BDB are historical... so I bring Historical to Mechjeb with these patches. DAYUM! Been waiting for this. Surprised it is so small... Was kind of thinking we would get a 0.9375m diameter base. It looks amazing and if a SOT equipped Agena can use it to alter the orbit of an all up Skylab then I am impressed with the CFG as well. Not to nitpick (ok I am nitpicking!) your awesome tug but shouldn't the Agena extension antenna be on a 90 degree plane from the drogue docking port? As setup it is designed to poke an astronauts eye out during docking Looks like I can start my career up where I leave no boosters or expired satelites in space. there is a Claw that fits Agena! Did you by chance compare the costs in the editor for this launch vs a Titan IIIC? Cool setup and display BTW!

Don't worry, I won't ask for the 220" S-IV tank nor the 4 engine mount to go with it. And while it was fun discovering that little gem, I think there are more important things to build past the existing "As previously in the mod" parts. *Chain Yanking* S-III */Chain Yanking* But seriously there are many avenues of Saturn that you have stated you would love to visit. I hope you have the Time, patience and inclination to go down those roads. And I hope I can start playing with these sometime soon!

I assume by historical you mean as flown Historical... Cause I don't see C-3 parts anywhere Any Chance of getting a J-2 Engine mount for S-IV? For "reasons?" seems it would be mostly reductive to do a mount variant for that. (remove 5 of the 6 fuel lines on the S-IV mount, reduce nodes to 1 and remove heat shield.... Make remaining fuel line same thickness as on S-IVB.) Ok done chain yanking and trolling Seriously I wish I had not committed all my free time to a mod outside of KSP scope... I really want to play these parts.

Err... um.... I DIDN'T DO IT!

Good luck. Hope you find interesting stuff

While that isn't the picture;/drawing I saw yes this is the basic config... (was looking for the image I saw and realized I saw it on a Discord server) In the drawing I saw the interface between Atlas and S-I looked much flatter/blunter. The third drawing here includes a Cluster 2nd stage. I did not include this in my paper above because there is literally zero data in the actual NASA documents other than to say "an early upper stage concept using the cluster technique developed for the S-I stage." The early Saturn History (when it was still part of the Juno Program) is hampered as NASA, even though they are public documents will not put them on the NRTS server: eg: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19630006108

It is literally a Atlas-Centaur put right on top of a Saturn S-I stage... an almost flat blunt fairing would keep the Atlas Engines (the bottom 3) hidden, The LR-101s would be in the airflow during launch and allowed to castor. While there are drawings of it... I think the best one was posted a few pages back by someone else (it is actually what triggered me to do this one!)

So decided, after reading a couple NTRS articles today... A new Historical document. The Saturn Stages that were canceled. It is not a complete list. And the data is subjective at best. But there are interesting things. And for once... PICTURES Yes there was stupid stuff going on...

NICE another REAL Nova! Are you keeping them intentionally small due to VAB restrictions? Or is it just perspective issues between it and the Saturn V you have in the "comparison" pictures