G'th

Started redesinging Space Station Freedom from ETS. Its the last of my redesigns and flight tests and some handy tricks (as well as an array of edited parts) I've learned have necessitated me redesigning the station. One, it will cut down on part count, and two, it'll look better and be more accurate to the canon art. This is the Challenger module (the core of the station) being used in testing for the robotic arm component. Here, I've found that while my initial arm was able to get the first half of the cargo out of the AARDV, it can't reach the other half, which will necessitate some extension, and possibly the addition of a telescopic arm, which will be likely as not all cargo will be at the same distances. It will also be useful if I end up needing a little extra oomph for orbital construction. You also may notice that the main volume of the Challenger is also way too small. >.< As can be noticed by this picture of what is supposed to be the relative sizes:

For anyone still having problems with assembly, what I've figured out is that the two rotating joints need to be alternated in their placement. One joint should be used for "Elbow" movement, and the other for the wrist. As far as how it should be oriented, on the joints themselves, structural ends should be paired with structural ends. So, for a finished assembly of an Elbow/Wrist joint, you'd have the copper plates carrying the regular structural arms (IE, they'd be where you want that part of the arm to rotate), and the structural ends of the joints joined together (or split by another structural part, depending on how you want to build your arm). This will ensure that they operate correctly without the model going bonkers. The model will still go bonkers in the VAB (though you can still use VAB movement to determine how the joint will move) but in flight it shouldn't. I'm going to go ahead and upload a subassembly of the arm once my KSP is back up (it crashed before I could save it). Presuming your install isn't bonkers and there isn't some phantom nonsense messing things up, the sub should give you guys a good idea on how to assemble the arm. And if anything, you can just tear out the Elbow/Wrist joints and skip trying to figure out lol.

Today, or, tonight rather, I continued in my Eyes Turned Skyward work. Now that the rockets and spacecraft are done, I'm going through the process of testing them all as well as setting up my save so that when I decide to do mission reports (starting with Skylab) I'll have a semi analogue to the Earth system ITTL. Also, some roving fun:

You're likely turning too fast and too low in the atmosphere.

Excellent! Doing a fantastic job here.

Why must you tease me so!?

Not nearly enough boosters.

Depends on how fast you came down. If it was a gentle deorbit, I could see a kerbal surviving down the surface.

Oooh, I gotta try that. Only ever did it with rockets but never with a plane.

A texture pack would likely be ideal. Never met anyone who got upset at an optional High-Res/Alternate texture pack being provided.

It looks like that integrated graphics card is likely the culprit. I really doubt it'll be able to handle AVP, even if you killed the texture sizes.

Was there ever a true Apollo CM IVA in the works? Been using the FASA version and it drives me nuts that its so plain.

Nope, though I imagine I would agree with him. I am a HUGE fan of systems that can get as in-depth as that system could be, namely because the end result after all of the work is much more glorious compared to a basic, gameplay filtered version. I can throw up any random sattelite into any orbit and be satisfied with a "communications array" I created, but RemoteTech makes me work to have a functional system, and in turn affects gameplay if I don't do the work. I'd rather have different refineries on different bodies gathering and processing different resources rather than one refinery that can do it all. Not only does it enhance gameplay in the way that I like (some call it tedium, I call it base building), but it also allows for more dedicated spacecraft that can utilize specific in-situ resources using smaller, more specific parts to accomplish it. Its the difference between one huge refinery that can get anything, and a probe that can dip into a gas giant to refuel without having to haul some gigantic weight along with it. But of course, the really nice thing about such an in-depth system is that, much like what we have now, it wouldn't need to be used to succeed.

I am someone that is no stranger to realistic physics (FAR, DREC, and other realism mods were always perma-installs for me prior to 1.0), but even I can admit that I had trouble with the new physics. Even though technically my first launch in the post 1.0 KSP was a success all the way to orbit, once I started building the rockets I was used to building (even when it was pre-mades like FASA or KW), I found myself back in my beginnings with FAR with rockets disintegrating mid-flight. The primary reason is that the physics between old stock, old FAR, and new stock and new FAR are all very, very different, and the same rockets will fly differently with all of them. Switching from one to another is going to be, essentially, a culture shock across the board. Where some players will have issues just getting into the upper atmosphere, other's such as myself will have issues with their gravity turn techniques being thrown out the window. Both situations can be and are just as frustrating. All it really takes to get through it though, is to just keep flying. I had to crash a lot of rockets before I pinned down my new standard gravity turn techniques. (and I actually have a handy tip for that) But anyway, for players having trouble, I recommend not changing much about your old rockets (other than ones that shouldn't be able to fly period. If your rocket looks like a reasonably realistic rocket, don't run off to the VAB just yet), and instead flying them intensively, experimenting with your ascent. It will definitely be important to learn the general idea behind a gravity turn, which will help you determine how to fly your rockets properly. No matter how the rocket may be designed (again presuming its at least semi-plausible), there will typically always be a way to fly them all the way to orbit. The biggest thing, first and foremost, is to learn to keep one eye on the prograde marker. If your ship marker strays too far from this marker (Which is called having a high angle of attack, or, high AOA), you rocket is going to hit a wall of air that's going to force it down. Essentially what happens is your rocket goes from sleek flying machine to blunt brick, which is evident when you rocket is trying to travel upwards but is currently sideways. Having light fingers on the controls will help ensure this doesn't happen, and what you'll come to learn with well designed rockets is that you'll be able to drag the prograde marker with your ship marker as you fly (the same phenomenon will also occur with a perfectly designed plane. Rockets are more forgiving, however) if you handle the controls in just the right way. Having this ability gives you complete control over how your rocket flies, and getting to orbit presuming your rocket should otherwise be capable simply relies on how you manage your prograde marker's movement. From there, all you need to figure out is an ascent path, which is determined by that prograde movement. To figure out which kind of ascent profile your rocket should use, experiment with how high up you let your rocket go before you begin turning eastward. Some rockets will be able to turn relatively early in the flight, other's will need to be a ways up before you can turn comfortably, and it also depends on how fast you turn. The reason for this is because of the interactions of your vertical (surface) and horizontal (orbital) speeds. If you're gaining too much horizontal speed compared to vertical, your rocket will go like a bat out of hell, but you'll never punch out of the atmosphere. Rockets are specifically designed to get the hell out of the atmosphere as quick as possible, so if you don't have enough vertical speed, it doesn't matter how well designed the rocket may be, you'll either end up with a missile or you'll waste gobs of deltaV compensating. The only time this situation is ever recommended is for SSTO spaceplanes, where the idea is to gain as much of your orbital speed as possible while also climbing out of the atmosphere, but this only works because wings and the super efficient jet engines compensate for the lack of vertical speed. The inverse is also problematic, though it is more forgiving in terms of getting out of the atmosphere but far more costly in deltaV. Gaining too much vertical speed compared to horizontal will get you out of the atmosphere fast, but you'll end up close to doubling the dV you would need to establish an orbit. The only time this is ever recommended for crafts that are going to be burning straight into low solar orbits, such as crafts meant to hit Low Orbit of the Sun or even crafts headed for Moho. Now, the other half of this problem is determining your turn rate. Typically you want to pull your prograde marker down, very, very slowly (I wouldn't recommend letting gravity do it for you at this stage) and try to keep your horizontal/vertical speeds going up at about a rate of 1:1.5 or so. (as you'll ultimately want more vertical speed during ascent. By the time you don't need it, you won't be facing any heavy aerodynamic forces, so you can start gaining pure horizontal speed) To simplify this, a handy trick I figured out if you have a mod like VOID, KER, or MechJEB, is to begin your turn when your apoapsis matches up with the remaining deltaV of your first stage. For some reason, most rockets I've flown will fly really easy if I begin turning at this altitude (which will vary with each rocket), and at this point it merely becomes a matter of how fast you turn. This depends on your rocket, but typically you want to tap very slowly. I typically tap every 2-3 seconds, increasing the frequency as I ascend about every 5km. You typically want to hit an altitude of 10km about 1/4 of the way to a 45 degree heading. By 18km or so, you want to be halfway there. From there I usually start increasing the frequency rapidly as this is around the time when I've pushed my apoapsis out of the atmosphere or am approaching it. Once your apoapsis reaches your desired altitude, make sure your rocket is oriented well into the center of the prograde marker (if you cut off your engines without doing so while also still relatively low in the atmosphere, you'll have problems unless you have something else to keep you on course) before you stage. Your rocket's performance may vary, but without the know-how to specifically design a rocket to fly a certain way (which no one should expect any average KSP player to know), all you can do is experiment. Rockets with a high TWR on the launchpad will typically be able to turn earlier in the flight, and provided the rocket has good controls (Via engine gimbal, torque, or wings), you'll be able to do it a low altitude without rapid disassembly. Low TWR rockets need to do the opposite. Gain more vertical speed and TWR before gaining horizontal. Rockets with little or poor controls will need to presume a Low TWR ascent, with a very steady and patient hand on the controls. If after accounting for all of this, and finding that your rocket still can't fly, the first thing to check in the VAB is your COM. If its not around or below the middle of your rocket, then your rocket is too top heavy and will need some very, very heavy controls to compensate for. What you need to do is reconfigure your stages so that the rocket follows a 3 > 2 > 1 power scale. Your initial stage should relatively large and powerful, and your last should be lightweight and fit only for space travel. Your mid stage(s) should fill in the gaps. However, if its your payload that's too heavy, then you'll need to simply increase the power of your stages across the board. Next thing, if that fails, is more torque to begin with. You want to have your SAS modules as close to your engines as possible on all of your stages. What this will do is allow the SAS modules to augment whatever natural gimbal your engines have, and presuming your rocket follows the 321 scale, your SAS modules will be spaced well enough that they'll give you very good control over your rocket. Next is wings. Much like adding torque, you want them as close to your engines on possible, but only on your first stage. (Possibly second. Depends on how high you get by the time you dump your first stage) And after that, your rocket should fly unless its something that won't fly period. Block-like, asymmetric, and downright odd looking rockets aren't likely to fly, and you shouldn't be upset if you can't get them to fly. There's a reason rockets in real life don't typically deviate too much from the basic cylinder with a cone on top sort of shape.

I believe it certainly has. It opens up avenues to stock players that they didn't have before, and it helps makes it more appropriate to design smaller and more efficiently when it comes to career and even science mode. And all the while it gives more purpose to some of the different things you can do in-game. Base building, sattelites, and rovers all become more useful with ISRU in stock. However, I still long for the day when this evil tome that shall not be spoken of is made into either a mod or into the stock game by some dumb stroke of dumb luck on the 30th of February. I would adore this kind of ISRU system.

In my quest to replicate the Eyes Turned Skyward US Rockets and Spacecraft, I have come, very nearly to completion. The AARDV's are now done, as are my renditions of the Artemis hardware. (Which I kitbashed using regular LM parts, as the actual Altair/Artemis type lander parts I could use bug my game like crazy atm) And, my crowning achievement, is the full design of Space Station Freedom, which considering the sheer complexity and the lack of angles, comes VERY close to being an accurate replica. Here's an album showcasing the new spacecraft, a picture of the CSM's (Too lazy to do a better picture atm), and an image of Freedom itself in almost operational state (though on Kerbin): The way I designed the station, a lot of it is going to be constructed in Orbit (mostly support bits, like antennas, extra batteries, and the like, as well as all science experiments), due mainly to part count on launch issues (from what I can gather, if I place it in a 250km orbit, I'll have little to no FPS issues, but launch is a different story), as well as the fact that'll just be cooler that way and will follow with how it was constructed in the ETS timeline. With the current module selections and no plans to add any other non-canon analogue modules to it, it could support 26 Kerbals (though in operation will carry far less) for 6 months of Kerbal time. I also made an effort to ensure the station was "boostable", as in, if I reinforced the structure in flight, I would be able to complete re-boosting missions.

Note about textures. Even lower resolution textures don't necessarily have to look as, well, poor as the CSS' currently do. The problem with CSS' textures is that they need to be cleaned up. It looks too much like it was ripped from a photo, which in turn makes the texture not look natural. While photo-realism can be nice when you have high resolution, at low resolution photo-realism isn't going to look natural.

Technically the SLS would be overkill for ISS resupply. For a newer, bigger space station or may be a Lunar base, sure, the SLS would do fine. But for an ISS sized station, the SLS is wayy overkill, namely because the Block 1 SLS is going to be capable of sending something on a circumlunar trajectory, so using the SLS for LEO missions (particularly if that ends up being what its used for mostly) would be a huge waste outside of basic testing. Even the shuttle is more appropriate for it, and it has that added benefit of being able to bring mass back down intact.

I threw ya a PM. You also may want to try reducing it to 2048x2048. The clouds still look great at that resolution. (albeit with slightly less pop)

I'll PM you with some troubleshooting ideas.

It shouldn't be too difficult. > Install E.V.E (The old one) > Install Astronomer according to how the file wants you to. > Profit. Unless of course you're crashing due to RAM issues, in which case you'll either want to use ATM or, if you can, manually reduce the texture sizes. Seeing as I have Photoshop, I can easily open up any texture (including .DDS') and manually resize and reconfigure them to have a lower footprint without sacrificing too much quality.

Today, I completed all of the Eyes Turned Skyward Apollo Derived Command and Service Modules. And here they are (two of which with their respective Mission Modules) in order: Block II (Initial lunar missions, actually flown) > Block III > Block III+ > Block IV > Block V

Ran it through a couple of flights and some things to note: The already reported non-functional RCS and the messed up node on the Docking adaptor were the first things I noticed. Next I noticed that the shuttle is still practically indestructible. Straight dive right into the ground from orbit and I just bounced on impact. Though I think its going to be cut anyway, the split up cockpit's RPM is non-functional. Some parts need some kind of indicator to show which way they need to be oriented to work properly. The body flap and the solid booster parachutes come to mind. (NOTE: as of writing this I may have just noticed there were indicators on the Booster parachutes) The deployed state on the Left control surface is inverted compared to the right. Fixable in-game, though the default should deploy correctly with the other CS. The tail CS also has an issue with how it maps to the Brakes action group by default. They'll both deploy, but once you release the breaks, one of the flaps won't collapse. This is because the group defaults to Toggle and Extend, rather than Toggle and Toggle. Again, fixable in-game but it'll be cleaner to have it default correctly. I'm not sure if it was a mod conflict or not (I probably should do another install for testing), but I did have issues going on EVA using the cockpit door. One, it wouldn't switch me to the Kerbal. Two, once I boarded, the game almost seemed like it was stuck in Kerbal mode, which meant I had no access to my navball. Also didn't show any kerbal pictures. Had to go to the tracking center and back to revert it to normal. And finally just a noted on the aerodynamics, it flies really well and I really like its speed characteristics. Its become very easy to make either a smooth, slow landing or a fast and loose, balls to the wall landing. Only thing I really noticed that was off about it is that it seems like the orbiter doesn't seem to act as it should when you try heavy turns at high altitudes. It doesn't lose any control whatsoever when it reasonably should when my AoA extends all the way to retrograde. I think this might be due to the torque, that's likely pretty powerful. Not sure how you could deal with that without making the whole thing harder to use. ------- Non bug related, but I also noticed some things that might help newer players fly it more easily right out of the box if they were made defaults. (IE, things I did to make the shuttle easy to control from launchpad to landing) The biggest problem I had during launch was maintaining a steady ascent profile. The problem was because the control surfaces of the shuttle were active, they would make the entire stack hard to turn without it going way off prograde. So what I did was turn off all of the CS's controls so that they were non-functional during launch. What this did was make it so that only the rocket engines could control the stack, which made the entire ascent much more stable and easier to do. Went from having to fight it to keep on prograde to being as easy as any regular old rocket to control. While not necessary to make them defaults, I found the shuttle easiest to control if I limited the wing CS' to pitch only, and used the Tail CS for roll and yaw. It would definitely be useful if possible to somehow enable these controls via action groups. (Should be noted that I don't know if the real shuttle ever actually used the control surfaces during ascent, so if its realistic to have them active, then idk) Another thing I did was to set the SSME gimball speed to 40 each and the OMS' to 100. This made flight smoother throughout. I also want to say that its freaking AWESOME to have different pain jobs for the ET. Having that actually makes me want recreate all the shuttle missions now. Another thing, what would it take to get some Shuttle clamps? Its so odd that no one's done them as of yet.

Now that I have two days of nothing to do, I'm going to go ahead and download and test this out. Really put it through the works you know? Ultimately I'm excited because I want to restart my Saturn-Shuttle challenge and I want to do it with replica parts

(Its only necromancy if you aren't actually contributing to the topic at hand. Just because teh topic started a year ago doesn't mean we can't pick it back up and start talking about it 6 Pages over a year and no one mentions the Saturn-Shuttle concept The basic idea being that the S-IC stage of the Saturn V replaces the ET/Booster stack of the flown Shuttle. Wouldn't be too terribly hard to convert SLS to this concept, but its ultimately something that would have had to have happened early in the Shuttle program.