[1.0.5ish] The 0.35m SSR MicroSat and Airlaunch Vehicle [v0.9.6 out! last updated 01/03/2016]

[Squiggsy]

Hello all, we at Squiggsy Space Research are proud to announce our first product, the SSR MicroSat!:

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Basically this is an aeroplane launched rocket containing a 0.35m Satellite that I designed for uses such as a Remote Tech communications sat, Temperature Scan sat and what I like to refer to as a Contractual Obligation Sat (the "put a satellite in this orbit" contracts)

I was inspired by the Boeing/DARPA venture to do exactly this, as well as the brillaint and tiny CubeSats.

I have basically finished this, but I thought I would put out a Dev page before I actually completed it, and will probably release a version that people can have a play around with and offer suggestions on ballancing and tech placement if they want to.

there are a few mods which are strongly recommended for this pack (but are in no way dependencies):

 

• FMRS (Flight Manager for Reuseable Stages) -allows you to jump back to the moment of separation and pilot your plane back to the runway before returning to the main mission, offering pretty close to complete reusability from your launch vehicle (only the SRB and upper stage are ditched, and they are small and cheap)
• Procedural Fairings - there is now a fairing base using the stock ModuleProceduralFairings so this is not necessary, but if you are like me and aren't a fan of confetti, i would still recommend this
• Remote Tech - this is not at all necessary but it is very much supported!
• Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - makes the planes a bit more solid, stops the rockets wobbling on the underside.
• Antenna Range all antenna are compatible
• HotRockets will add FX to the Ion Engine

 

The things I still need to do are:

 

1. Improve some textures.
2. Go through the configs and make sure everything is sorted
3. Make a few more parts (resource scanner, science experiments, maybe a better radial decoupler specifically for the rocket)

 

I hope you all like what you see this is the first mod I have actually got to a stage I am happy with and am going to release and I have not been modelling or texturing for long, so this has been a real learning experience for me, but with that said, I hope you enjoy this once it's released!

Also I will be including the launch vehicle as a .CRAFT, it is completely stock and I am pretty happy with it. it'll take off without having to do anything other than throttle up, and reaches 30km at 1100m/s within about 2 1/2 minutes!

Oh and if you have any questions feel free to ask, and if I have missed anything important that I need to add please tell me!

A VERSION-0.96 HAS BEEN PUT UP ON SPACE DOCK FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT!

Please feel free to download and have a play around with it, tell me what you think, suggest some improvements, things still need to be done with some textures but everything is fully functioning both in stock and with RT

Edited March 1, 2016 by Squiggsy

[Mecripp]

Looks pretty neat will keep a eye on this

[Squiggsy]

Looks pretty neat will keep a eye on this

Thanks for your response! I should be putting up a sort of alpha version tomorrow evening (GMT) to see what people think of it and get some suggestions, I've reached a point where I feel like there's probably stuff I'm forgetting but I can't think of anything else to do, so I may as well release it and see if someone can help me along the way realising what it is that is needed.

[KillAshley]

very nice work! I'm a sucker for probes & satellites so will be watching this one:D

whats the range on the omni-antenna in this? Same as RT's Reflectron DP-10?

[Squiggsy]

very nice work! I'm a sucker for probes & satellites so will be watching this one:D

whats the range on the omni-antenna in this? Same as RT's Reflectron DP-10?

thanks a bunch! and it's slightly less, currently 400km instead of 500 but might change that based on suggestions, i dont actually play with RT so I don't really know too well.

the dish is incoming though, I made one over the space of today but i really wasnt happy with the design in general so i scrapped it and am starting on a new one that I am much happier with.

I'd like to just be lazy and make a fixed-dish antenna but making one small enough to fit on this is a lil bit unrealistic, although now I think about it it only needs to fit inside 0.625m fairings which could be possible... we shall see in the morning i guess! chances are I will make both eventually

Edit: Got inspired and couldn't sleep and a fixed dish antenna is coming along nicely, actually really pleased with how this model is turning out!

Edited May 11, 2015 by Squiggsy

[Astrofox]

@Squiggsy, how about a resource scanner for the probe pack? Also some low power Ion RCS thrusters. I love the idea of this mod.

[Squiggsy]

@Squiggsy, how about a resource scanner for the probe pack? Also some low power Ion RCS thrusters. I love the idea of this mod.

yes and yes! thank you for the suggestions they are both good'uns, i was considering the resource scanner already, just kinda worried it will be seriously OP since it will be smaller and lighter than all the others in game, but this probe would be perfect as a resource scanner so I might just do it anyway. the Ion RCS is a brilliant idea since the thing is Xenon powered anyway, I had avoided normal RCS since fitting monoprop onto it as well would likely weigh it down as well as take up too much space.

the only problem would be if someone wanted ALL the things on one probe they'd have a hard time getting it to fit it is hard to show in pictures just how small the thing is, although the comparison with the capsule in the second photo album does a pretty good job.

also little bonus, finished the dish off so here is a MicroSat Communications version in its full glory:

really happy with how the dish turned out in the end!

(Full Res image here)

Edit: Just realised I definitely do want to be doing a resource scanner because they are one of the few modules I know ties in with ModuleAnimationGroup which means I can make a scanner that deploys and then spins around while it is deployed or something similar been wanting to test that module out since I saw it

Edited May 11, 2015 by Squiggsy

[Astrofox]

@Squiggsy, is the launcher optional (I really don't like having to install a flight manager)?

Anyway, I still may have ideas, I just haven't recalled them in a while.

[Squiggsy]

@Squiggsy, is the launcher optional (I really don't like having to install a flight manager)?

Anyway, I still may have ideas, I just haven't recalled them in a while.

Yes the plan was to have two folders in the folder that will go in GameData, one of the satellite and one of the launch vehicle, so people can remove the launch vehicle if they don't want it, and then another folder outside of that in the main .RAR that will be the .CRAFT of the plane with rocket attached that people can also choose whether to have.

I should say that flight manager for reusable stages isn't an auto pilot flight manager, it just allows you to jump back to a save state at the point of stage separation and pilot the plane back to the launchpad, before returning to the main mission

Edited May 11, 2015 by Squiggsy

[Mecripp]

The dish looks great nice job

[MainSailor]

I'm loving what you posted so far. I love the tiny probe core and associated parts. One of my biggest complaints about building sats for ScanSat/Kethane/Karbonite/etc is that they quickly become so heavy that building on 1.25m LFO tanks with 48-7 engines is the only way to have a decent range and burn time. You quickly build beyond what an ion engine can accommodate.

In terms of being OP, if you decide to support ScanSat, the cool thing is that the parts in that pack are tiered in the tech tree already. The first scanner you have access to is the low res, black and white altimetry scanner, and I always thought could be made smaller to build onto an early-game probe.

[Squiggsy]

The dish looks great nice job

thanks! think im going to do a resource scanner and then stop making more parts for it and just start sorting out a couple of the textures that I am not so happy with, I have been learning a lot to do with texturing as I go and some of the first parts I made really need some improvement!

I'm loving what you posted so far. I love the tiny probe core and associated parts. One of my biggest complaints about building sats for ScanSat/Kethane/Karbonite/etc is that they quickly become so heavy that building on 1.25m LFO tanks with 48-7 engines is the only way to have a decent range and burn time. You quickly build beyond what an ion engine can accommodate.

In terms of being OP, if you decide to support ScanSat, the cool thing is that the parts in that pack are tiered in the tech tree already. The first scanner you have access to is the low res, black and white altimetry scanner, and I always thought could be made smaller to build onto an early-game probe.

thanks for your suggestions, yeah i have actually found that a lot of the scanners (both the new ones from stock and the ones from mods) are very large especially considering almost every stock probe core is 0.625m (and really resource scanning is the kind of thing i'd expect to be left to a probe), I don't currently have plans for Kethane or Karbonite having never had anything to do with them, but I used ScanSat in a game a while back and was considering that, I'll redownload it in the next couple of days and have a look at the parts and how everything fits into the tech tree and figure out where to go with adding support for it. That probably won't be for the initial release however but probably the first update I do instead.

[Squiggsy]

V0.1 has been released onto Kerbal Stuff!!!!!

please go check it out, I will create an actual release thread once I have sorted a few more things out, for now this is just a pre-release for people to test things out

[Astrofox]

WAY TO GO! It's been released today! I will definitely download and play this afternoon (or lunch period...).

[Squiggsy]

WAY TO GO! It's been released today! I will definitely download and play this afternoon (or lunch period...).

THANK YOU! yeah please offer suggestions to tweaks when you come across them, typically within an hour of putting the release up on KerbalStuff I found a couple of minor things I forgot to change (RTG doesnt allow surface attach and I didn't put custom FX on the upper stage engine) but I am making good progress on a deployable comms dish (currently while it is RT compatable it won't work as a relay since the dish is the only thing with the range to work and you'd struggle to put more than one on) and once I've finished that, hopefully this evening, I will make a new version with the comms dish and tweaks and changes as a V0.2 or something

[Mecripp]

O boy O boy new kerbal toys thanks Squiggsy will give it a try looks great.

[Squiggsy]

O boy O boy new kerbal toys thanks Squiggsy will give it a try looks great.

no worries! got more toys on the way!

Having looked at them in game I think the new dishes need a bit of texture work before I'll put them into a release, they are a bit bland I need to think of something to add to them.

still on track to put together V0.2 by this evening though, kinda think I should have waited on the release until I'd made these changes but I got impatient

[Squiggsy]

Wow 200 downloads in just over 12 hours, guess I'm doing something right! V0.2 is up, got custom particle FX for the upper stage engine, retractable antenna for RT and a load of little tweaks and changes.

next thing I need to do is make a resource scanner and improve a few textures, I think I will add a module manager config to add Antenna Range support too, and by the time I've done that I probably will have found a whole load of other things that need doing

[_Augustus_]

If you make a stock procedural fairing base for 0.625m sizes you can remove the Procedural Fairings dependency.

As for the actual parts, this is just awesome (Though I am not trying it until there is no more need for PF). A satellite launching from a MISSILE ATTACHED TO THE BOTTOM OF A PLANE is something that needs to be made more often.

[Squiggsy]

If you make a stock procedural fairing base for 0.625m sizes you can remove the Procedural Fairings dependency.

yeah I tried this and I think I'm not fully understanding all the variables in the moduleproceduralfairings because the base scales down but the side bits stay at 1.25m sizes and overlap, I will go back and try again though because one of the aims of this was to have little or no dependencies so it was as accessible as possible to people. (UPDATE: I figured out that I can get it to work perfectly up until I rescale the model to 0.5, so I'll just have to make my own model for the base that is 0.625m and then everything should work perfectly! tbh thats an advantage because I can slip a decoupler module in there too I think, unless two staging icons from one part aren't allowed, i'll have a play around. I'll plan to get this done in time for the next update which should be in a couple of days-ish)

and thanks for the support! yes it is really quite fun launching a missle from an plane, the main reason i made this was because endless rocket launches putting satellites up started to get boring and I thought there should be more choice in launch types. especially since while spaceplanes are more fun, sometimes they take ages to get up to speed, whereas (I think) this combines the entertainment and reusability of a spaceplane with the speed of a rocket launch

EDIT: tested the fairing base and yes it all works perfectly so that is good not really a huge fan of the confetti style fairings but since they are what we have in stock I'll go with it!

hahaha making the fairing base a decoupler doesn't though.. it decouples when the fairings come off and ejects the payload at some speed rather glitchily...

EDIT again: Stock Procedural Fairings base is up and running Augustus!:

Edited May 13, 2015 by Squiggsy

[Wavechaser]

Looks great. Can you make a option for us HotRockets! users to add/change some FX to the ion engine, and the two other ones? I'm currently modifying the MM Patch that came with HotRockets! to do so. It'll be great if you can write some MM Patches for that.

[Squiggsy]

Looks great. Can you make a option for us HotRockets! users to add/change some FX to the ion engine, and the two other ones? I'm currently modifying the MM Patch that came with HotRockets! to do so. It'll be great if you can write some MM Patches for that.

thanks for the support! yes that is a good suggestion, should be easy enough and I wanted particle FX on the Ion Engine anyway I just couldn't make any I actually liked the look of so I gave up for the time being, I'll download hotrockets and take a look at their configs for other mods to see what needs to be written should be added to next update

edit: spoke too soon, i've only just woken up so I wasn't thinking straight, I'll have to mess around with the settings in the config a lot and there's a chance I won't be able to get it looking right because of the size difference, but I'll see

edit again: hmmm Hotrockets doesn't appear to be working on the stock Ion engine or my one, no idea whats going on there

Edited May 14, 2015 by Squiggsy

[Wavechaser]

thanks for the support! yes that is a good suggestion, should be easy enough and I wanted particle FX on the Ion Engine anyway I just couldn't make any I actually liked the look of so I gave up for the time being, I'll download hotrockets and take a look at their configs for other mods to see what needs to be written should be added to next update

edit: spoke too soon, i've only just woken up so I wasn't thinking straight, I'll have to mess around with the settings in the config a lot and there's a chance I won't be able to get it looking right because of the size difference, but I'll see

edit again: hmmm Hotrockets doesn't appear to be working on the stock Ion engine or my one, no idea whats going on there

You might be missing some components there for your HotRockets!, as it works fine on mine.

[Squiggsy]

You might be missing some components there for your HotRockets!, as it works fine on mine.

Just downloaded the new version fresh (and then tried redownloading from a different source and tried that too), all the components are there I've checked the folders, not got a clue what's going on, the config seems like it should be fine, tried removing my MM config to see if it was conflicting and re-added HotRockets and still no FX, I've left a comment on their forum post and I'll continue to try and get it resolved but in the meantime I'm just going to leave it for a bit and work on improving some textures because right now I'm at a loss as to what is going on with it!

[Mecripp]

Great parts nice job indeed

EDIT- And unless , I missed something you don't have any FX on your ION on the cfg or a FX cfg for that part but made one.

@PART[microIon]:FOR[HotRockets]  
{
	EFFECTS
	{
		powerflame
		{
			MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE_PERSIST
			{
				name = flameion1
				modelName = MP_Nazari/FX/flameion
				transformName = thrustTransform
				emission = 0.0 0.0
				emission = 0.10 0.00
				emission = 0.15 0.45
				emission = 1.0 0.75
				speed = 0.0 0.75
				speed = 1.0 0.97
				energy = 0.0 0.33 // Same for energy
				energy = 1.0 0.99 // Same for energy
				fixedEmissions = false
			}
		}
	}
	@MODULE[ModuleEngines]
	{
		@name = ModuleEnginesFX
		//engineID = rocketengine

		%powerEffectName = powerflame

	}
	@MODULE[ModuleEngineConfigs]
	{
		%type = ModuleEnginesFX
	}
}

EDIT-

Edited May 15, 2015 by Mecripp2