Pappystein

Thanks for A) clarifying you understand about color calibration and B) for not leaving me alone in the world of Calibrated displays Ok since I have calibrated close to 5000 displays I know I am not alone but it is a sharp minority! I have a photo somewhere of an Apollo Capsule on a test stand with an un-used intact heat shield. The lighting isn't great in it but as I remember (and yes I know visual memory is a whopping 7 seconds) I would say it was slightly yellow (as in the red color in it was ever so slightly closer to Yellow or Orange more appropriately on the CIE chart than what you are showcasing) than yours but not near the Honey tan color as you described Shadowmage's coloration. Now if I could just find the photo again.... Ah never-mind Wikipedia to the rescue! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCOAT#/media/File:Avcoat.jpg The right one is listed as 5026-39 which is the final formulation of AVCOAT used on Apollo. The Left one was the earlier formulation used that was not used by NASA for manned capsules. I am unsure about the name for the Formulation for Orion but the Formaldehyde needs to be removed so the modern AVCOAT might not be related to the previous versions except that they started there when developing the Orion's heat-shield. Given NASA took these images for testing purposes I would be willing to bet that the cameras were properly white balanced and dialed in in for the most "life like" reproduction they could do with wet film.

One thing you need to keep in mind. The video you are watching is of VERY poor picture quality (I mean the guy is somewhere between green and orange with brick red shadows for skin color in the thumbnail scene!) That is not a great environment to judge color... in fact it is a down right rotten one. While the above video is bit of a marketing educational video, it clearly explains in plain American English why I am making this point. And other than the fact that I have used some of this companies software in the past I have no affiliation with them. It was just the shortest most concise video I could find to explain this. The above video does not even touch on the fact that the camera operator likely didn't adjust their camera to the environment it was working in (White balance, Luminosity tests at the lens and at the subject et al.)

Thanks for that but I have to apologize. I meant in the ETS time line not Real World.

So Comments and then a question Cobalt, LOVE LOVE LOVE the new Spacelab parts. But is it heresy if I use CA Buran and LCA Energia to launch the add on parts to the core Spacelab station? Ok, Joking aside and this is an ETS question more than not, Was there ever an upgraded F-1 proposed after F-1A?

Yeah,.... KJR can cause a lot of issues with a lot of other mods that use DLL files in them. Not an issue, I just have to "Auto Strut" and then re-save the craft files. Thanks for that info! Stock has some real-ish fuels too Community Resource Kit gives you hundreds of choices of fuel loads. But that is your Choice and I stand by it.... Ok so I am not following what you are saying here. Are you saying that the Separation motors was a Single Rocket on each of the Blok-A parts? If so that is easy-ish to solve. MOARdV created the decoupler to make it easier to mount Block-A boosters to the Central Tank of Energia. Just further modify the Decoupler so that it has a large rocket motor of extremely short thrust (SpaceY has some great examples of this) Set the Attachment node on Blok-A to that of the COM for a complete Blok-A Booster. Viola! when you stage the boosters they will now thrust evenly away from the central tank. And yes it is a Headache to do it right. BTW this is the best LOOKing Energia I have seen in the ~4 years I have been playing this. Mind you that might require a new model to be made of a low profile Decoupler for the Blok-A boosters.... But it is a thought!

You might want to check out REALCHUTE by stupid_chris Not only does it add new chutes almost all parachutes can be adjusted after installation of this mod. IE material, Altitude vs pressure deployment, what altitude you deploy at etc. Designed so parachutes will function close to real life.

Another good alternative. I also had need for AZ50/IRFNA-IV and NTO tanks for Titans and other Hypergolic rockets so B9 makes it easier for me but both work great.

@Alcentar I just flew Energia for the first time today. It was mostly awesome! I launched the Space plane you built in your ship files that came with the mod. I haven't unlocked your parts in my career yet so I wanted to play with it in the sandbox to get a feel for it. I have done two launches of the same craft file (Energia_LSH) I have only swapped out the cargo fuel tank for a Life support module of the same mass and size (no changes to the CofG) A few questions/comments/feedback I assume you are Using Kerbal Joint Reinforcement? I ask because I can not do so and parts of the rocket and space plane were flopping around like a fish out of water are there plans to convert the tanks to Liquid Hydrogen (and then the RD-0120 likewise to Liquid Hydrogen.) ? I am making a MM file for the engines as I type this but I use B9 Part switch for tanks so I won't be doing any tanks personally. The Zenit-Energia (Blok-A?) first stage boosters need more separation power on the prebuilt craft files (they immediately collide with each other in the wake of the main rocket.) So far only 1 of 4 boosters has survived separation because of this. it appears that there is something wrong with RealChute/Safechute and your craft files. The parachutes will not deploy at all. I am rebuilding the chutes and relaunching (so I can actually recover the boosters!) Are you using FAR?

Oh thank you! While the 1.22 version works in 1.31 I was worried about upcoming mods and changes that could have affected this! Thanks again! PS best Docking alignment tool I have ever seen except for Mechjebs autopilot!

I wasn't here when you started the whole Apollo setup so I am guessing but could it be you already had the capsule at 0.9375 and also had Agena at 0.9375? And It is not like I use the SSTU mod for just the docking-ports. I was just stating that was my solution to solve the issue I have. Un-related question (except for the fact it is about Saturn) I love the new variable size adapters you have been making for the Excelsior for yours and Beal's Commonwealth Rocket pack. Will we see the Saturn parts updated with similar geometry switches? I was thinking about the Saturn-V decouplers vs the Re-scaling in the BDB extra folders .... Is it possible to have a variable sized part with a decoupler(s) on board that work?

I was referring to the coloring of the engine extension not the exhaust gas for that. Also a Test engine COULD matter if they didn't use the same materials as the final engine. After all, lots of F-1 engines were built before they settled on the FINAL design in both shape, performance and materials. I was pointing out that the engine you were seeing in the test burn was not necessarily how they would look as they would fly. It dose not help that the upper half of the original picture has ablative coatings on it still and the lower half appears to not have any (either not installed or already burnt off.) As an aside, if anyone could correct me I would appreciate it but arn't those blankets Asbestos? Also THANKS for showing me I have been using my FASA launch clamps in the WRONG spots on Saturn V

Shadowmage. I don't know how accurate this is (I am going from a 15+ year old memory.) But I was at a Rocketdyne historical symposium and someone said the F-1 was painted in Lockheed Iron Ball paint due to it's heat dissipation/Transfer abilities. AKA the same darn paint the SR-71 Blackbird wore. Mind you this was right after the location I was at received the word that they were receiving a Blackbird from the USAF. Lockheed Skunkworks Iron ball paint (the first designed RAM coating applied for stealth BTW,) freshly painted it would look blue-black (almost like Firearms blueing but DARKER) and as it aged the Reds and the greys from oxidation of the metallic components would start to blend into the basic Blueish-Black color. That is why you see such a variation in the color from one Blackbird to the next... Age since painted = how dark and colorless the paint is. Also the photo Vossiewulf posted shows a engine DURING a test burn so coloration might (wasn't) exactly the same. I am not certain but IIRC that is a test engine and not a flight ready F-1... I think. But I will second their comment about wishing for THAT kind of Rocket exhaust plume

Wot! More Excuses! Seriously congratulations on the new job. Like Drakenex said RL must come first. I will put my two cents in on the docking port issue mentioned by notjebkerman. I had to go outside of BDB for docking ports I liked at the 1m/1.25m size. I mentioned this a few months ago but the included CMB/APAS style ports like to NOT DOCK in my builds. Or worse... EXPLOSIVELY UN-DOCK if I DO get them to dock. I think it has something to do with the coliders and how the ring moves but I can't prove it and I wasn't willing to explore the problem further. I am To be clear I have no issues with the original Probe/Drogue Apollo ports or any of the ports for the various parts of Gemini. I ended up using SSTU's docking ports with my own little moddlet (via MM file) to give me various sizes from 0.9375m (For Apollo) up-to 1.875 (for MOL.)

Actually there IS a Buran that is 1.3.1 compliant. Cormorant Technologies has a Buran analog in it's catalog. It is not 100% accurate but much of that appears to be due to scaling it to match with the Mk3 fuselage. @Alcentar Nice work on these parts. They look AWESOME! I will TRY to wait patently for you to finish Energa. But since I am mid career and not downloading new mods yet, I have a question. The the R-0120 Hydrolox main engines 1 part or are each of the 4 engines separate? Also if you are having issues with your landing gears have you looked into KSPWheel by Shadowmage? Per several other mod authors I have seen they state using that mod fixes or at least makes it easier make functional landing gears in KSP.

I both agree with this and DISAGREE with this. Here is why: Agree that Parts working together is the whole point of playing in KSP. DISAGREE because if you make enough parts at say... 1.5m then who cares! You have enough parts to play with (BDB Thor, Juno-II, Titan-I and Delta-I/II anyone?) Honestly you run into two problems in KSP that affect scaling. The Size of the VAB/SPH (Not using Hanger extender) and amount of work you may be willing to do to make your parts. I have now flown 4 different mods takes of Saturn/Apollo. The closest to scale (not counting the various permutations in RO... since I play stock scale) was RealScale Boosters (Stock Scale) by Necrobones, Followed by BlueDog Design Bureau from CobaltWolf et al, and then DennyTX's Apollo mod as updated by Frizzank in FASA. my current workhorse is BlueDog's in-part due to the awesome stock-alike look and feel, and 2nd because it is a real good platform to build other variants both MLV and Saturn INT family as well as Earth To the Sky derived parts.

Or WAIT to upgrade the game until your mods are up to date (Like I am) You can do that one of two ways. Go into Steam, Right Click on Kerbal Space Program and select properties. Click on the BETA tab and select PREVIOUS 1.3.0. Viola you are running 1.3.0 again and can play BDB in it's glorious detail! Alternatively COPY your Kerbal Space Program folder out of Steam.... See my post further up the column for what I did. If you submit a Pull Request on the Github, I am certain JSO and Cobalt Wolf will look into adding your patch data into the game.

Or alternatively, you could just copy your 1.3.0 folder OUT of steam and not have to worry about the auto update... I have 4 copies on my PC (Testing, BDB Centric Testing, Galileo and Seam 1.3.1)

No outcry from me. I have seen comments on this and have been playing Galileo slowly until you "fixed" this. As one of the original people to point out the Docking port issues I can attest to the amount of work you HAVE put into trying to solve all these problems associated with built in Docking ports. So let me say thank you man!

I missed this yesterday but I would add that you need to shave weight off of the Ablator if you wish to see it land in one piece too. I had a perfect low speed re-entry with minimal ablator wear (I think I was down 12 points from maximum.) but I had a landing on land. Landing speed was 6.6m/s with just the Apollo CSM + Apollo chutes. Ablator blew up on landing. I reduced the Ablator value to 1/3rd and flew the exact same profile. The CSM lands with an intact Ablator. This was in stock Scale Galileo solar system.

no-no-no-no... Your fist stage should have been the S-II to S-IV Decoupler, S-II tank-age, S-II engine mount with 5x J-2SL Sea Levels... Then 4 x Radial decouplers with 4x UA-1207s.... The upper stage is right though And yes I am both Joking and providing the prescription to make a Saturn II Rocket (INT 18) :GRIN: Cause if you want to launch station parts into orbit, you can get a higher sustained orbit out of a Saturn II INT 18 rocket than you can out of the ETS rockets. Not that Multi-body isn't an awesome concept... I use it for Crew only Gemini-BigG launches tho.... since it is significantly less weight than the station parts themselves. Seriously Build the rocket your way and fly it your way. No one here to ACTUALLY say Build X or Y isn't right. It is all about what is right for YOU My upper stage almost always starts with the S-IVB IMU, TOPPED with a heat shield. And either the S-IVB or S-IVC tank-age with a B or C engine mount (I mix and match depending on the mission) I put for LARGE sized air brakes on the sides just above the RCS and a few parachutes near the nose (the Rocket flips 180 degrees after getting into thicker atmo anyway. Then I RECOVER my S-IVB/C Stage..... Saved Funds

Back in the day FASA was using a Reflection plugin to make the Atlas shiny. There were ram hits but the effect was beautiful. I want to say it took Frizzank at-least 6 or 8 public betas before Quality vs RAM was hammered down enough to include it in a release. Even today I would rate that Atlas (with Reflections working!) as the 2nd best looking Atlas in KSP. I think @CobaltWolf now has the best looking atlas (well it his Github master... it isn't fully released yet) in game but he is not using reflections. That being said, Shadowmage, I am assuming you would be using Reflections for more than one material. This could exponentially (each reflection having it's own additional channel yes?) pop up RAM usage... But I am MORE than willing to try!

And sorry if my original question to you sounded accusatory I was attempting to showcase the difference in RW vs KSP. I absolutely HATE docking ships, but I have a blast flying the rendezvous Seat of my pants style. And that is what is neat about MechJeb... use it as much or as little as you wish. Because of the inclination of my launch site in Galileo I almost always use Land at Target function to get me lined up with my KSC. But once I am in my ballistic flight in my Ship or Spaceplane I take over because I don't like how MJ tends to undershoot.... ever so slightly. I have a Closer CEP than Mechjeb does by overiding some of the "safety' features of MechJeb....

I still use BluedogDB for a lot... But SSTU has a lot of things that I use as well.... I would say my mix is 60/40 in favor of Bluedog. Mostly because I actually like the Stock alike look more than not. Conversely I absolutely LOVE the DOS style station parts and 100% of the Solar panels in SSTU. I do not launch a Space station that is not mostly made up of either SSTU COS or SSTU DOS parts. So I end up launching BDB based ships with SSTU parts on it... And SSTU payloads in the case of tinker-toy ships to other planets or space stations. Right and that is in part why NASA didn't want "Normal" Food to end up in space... so when a sandwich ended up in space on one of the Gemini flights.. weelll NASA and the US Congress went ape because a crumb could have 'destroyed the ship.' And yes that was an ACTUAL FEAR that a Rocket could be destroyed by a piece of debris caused by FOOD! I have Psoriasis... back in the early days it would have prevented me from flying with NASA due to the excess skin particles shed by my skin on a daily basis. Sure, NASA would have told me it was something else much more ominous... One of my EE Professors in College was tasked with designing part of the avionics for Apollo much earlier in his career. He stated the fear of most of the Electrical/Electronic Engineers in Apollo was a stray hair or other form of Biological contamination caused by but not limited to just Astronauts, could somehow cripple the entire spaceship and that would require the backup (the Human Pilot) to actually try to fly complex maneuvers and return the Capsule back to earth. Or worse leave the craft lost in space..... And that was for Apollo... Now imagine how it was when we hadn't gotten our feet "wet" yet as it were.

Nope that would be McDees... Mc-D was the abbreviation often used in the early days of McDonnell Douglas Aircraft/Aerospace company at the time of merger... With the Onset of McDonnalds on the world they changed theirs to MDC (Circa 1980 IIRC.) Or use FRMS (I think I have the letters in the right order.) Fly to orbit then go BACK and land your stages. It is.... cantankerous but between that and Staged Recovery I am recovering 80-90% of my un-fueled rocket by mass ever launch with the exception of the few times it has glitched or I screwed up and did too long of an orbital burn. I tend to loose service modules and obviously (I hope) any fairings I have on the Launch bird. Incidentally.... MOST rockets are flown by computer and have been since the dawn of space flight. Why aren't you @tater? The Pilots are on board if the computer (or for a component) failure.... IE Apollo 13... and even in the movie we can see just how hard it was for a Human to fly in space (mind you the ship wasn't optimized to fly that way but still!) To my knowledge the only space ship that was "flown" at NASA was actually the Shuttle orbiter. I am not trying to diminish the importance of Pilots... Because they ARE important. My example above (Apollo 13) would have never made it back to earth if a computer was the only pilot. But rather point out that at-least at NASA Space flight is run by computer (mostly).... Not Human (minimally.) Or to paraphrase a rather poor movie.... the Pilots roll is to be a monkey and flip the switch

@Shadowmage Didn't see any followup by you to your post asking for opinions on what is next. I will rank em with some thoughts on each/most of the choice by my preference: Most important: LC tanks. Like @tater the I like the LC tanks. They are awesome for their intended use... and SOO usable in other situations (small looking tanks of large volume for space station comes to mind. I just love them. Truth be told, they are probably the 2nd most used part from SSTU in my campaigns (the first being your awesome looking but not broken docking-ports.) Second most important.: Dragon. However a request. I assume the folding docking port cover would be used. While real life has a 90 degree opening. ASSUMING you model the part, could it be made to open 90 and then with a second click open to what ever the maximum angle to JUST clear the Dragon capsule (to allow more flexibility in docking.) If that is to be a jettisoned part than please move along from these comments... as these comments are not the comments you are looking for.... *HAN SHOT FIRST!* Third most important would be the Boeing CTS... Although, admittedly, this is almost an ancillary/dark horse type of capsule since most "Commercial" ventures are leaning towards Dragon (besides DRAGON-RIDER sounds soo much more cooler than CTS mission pilot! ) Bottom of the barrel in my opinion is the Mc-D ships. 3 reasons. Of all of the real world produced space ships, Mercury and Gemini are in 3rd and 4th place across many mods for being built by my count. Apollo is in 1st place. Soyuz appears to be second Of all these capsules mentioned Mercury and Gemini are only useful in a total conversion of the game as much as I love the Mc-D space craft, you have already mentioned in earlier posts that bringing them to full fruition (Gemini family) might be a bridge too far other than basic capsule that flew the R/W Gemini missions.... this also reduces effectiveness of the capsule. I will be honest here. I don't share your opinion on Stock-alike textures. BUT I understand your view on this subject. You already mentioned re-skinning existing models via patch and additional texture files as being an option. Might I suggest grabbing onto an existing mod that is UNDER DEVELOPMENT (please not a nearly dead necro mod for this.) for said re-texturing to your standard for textures on the Mc-D birds?