[1.12.5] Bluedog Design Bureau - Stockalike Saturn, Apollo, and more! (v1.14.0 "металл" 30/Sep/2024)

[Rory Yammomoto]

On 8/31/2016 at 4:10 PM, VenomousRequiem said:

Let's get an answer from someone who isn't Cxg

I'm kidding I'm sorry 

I second Lime green. (I know it is old)

[TimothyC]

I'd prefer blue to keep the pattern (of blue for cryo) going.

[Wahgineer]

@CobaltWolf, the only problem with @Angel-125 's Sklab is that it isn't a lab, which kind of defeats its purpose. @Z3R0_0NL1N3, I'd recommend RLS Capsuldyne, since it has a 3.75m lab that you can use to build your own Skylab.

[CobaltWolf]

7 minutes ago, awsumindyman said:

@CobaltWolf, the only problem with @Angel-125 's Sklab is that it isn't a lab, which kind of defeats its purpose. @Z3R0_0NL1N3, I'd recommend RLS Capsuldyne, since it has a 3.75m lab that you can use to build your own Skylab.

Pretty sure it can be configured as a lab. Moreover, it is set up to run internal experiments using his science system, no? That's what Skylab did.

EDIT: Also, on the topic of the coloration - I decided on blue about 20 minutes after I told Venom to ask y'all. Sorry for not updating everyone.

Edited September 2, 2016 by CobaltWolf

[Angelo Kerman]

14 hours ago, awsumindyman said:

@CobaltWolf, the only problem with @Angel-125 's Sklab is that it isn't a lab, which kind of defeats its purpose. @Z3R0_0NL1N3, I'd recommend RLS Capsuldyne, since it has a 3.75m lab that you can use to build your own Skylab.

Next update, due when KSP 1.2 is released, this weekend, will actually have a large lab configuration.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Angel-125

[Abrecan]

1 hour ago, Angel-125 said:

Next update, due when KSP 1.2 is released, will actually have a large lab configuration.

And Skylab will be compatible with BDB, and could you possibly make Skylab as a standalone config for this also? I've been researching many different lab concepts throughout the early US space era and stumbled upon a few which I think would great in this mod. I will say the Apollo LMAL would still make a great addition to this mod, as it bridges Gemini and Apollo quite nicely:

Another interesting one I found bridged Mercury and Gemini, The Mercury Space Station. In 1960, McDonnell suggested building a secondary, cylindrical capsule with the main Mercury capsule mounted to one end, and then sticking the whole thing on top of an Atlas LV-3B to fire it into space for a 14 day science lab. Since it would be too heavy for that rocket to lift, the new capsule would have an Agena motor attached to its other end, which would finish pushing the spaceship into orbit. There were two variants as to the challenge of designing such a station (more so imo with the mechanics game-wise): The Mercury Station never got built and likely the kicker was that the Mercury was pretty much an experimental craft. It was never intended to be upgraded and so McDonnell had to resort to a remarkable kludge just to let the astronaut onboard climb between the two pressurized volumes. Ideally there would have been a tunnel directly between the two when they were docked normally, but the Mercury’s retrorockets were in the way. So as designed, this craft would have had to take one of two approaches. Either the Mercury would stay in place and an inflatable half-toroid would join the hatch on the side of the capsule with the hatch on the secondary module, or else the Mercury would bend backwards on a hinge until its side hatch actually touched the side of the new capsule. Only then would the astronaut be able to clamber from one to the other.

This concept is particularly interesting and would love to see the inflatable toroid version myself  Sorry for the big post and large pics, but I have been working a lot and haven't had a chance to post. One more thing, looking over  the Mercury capsule, I noticed in that it had a drogue chute in the top cone that did detach for the primary chute to deploy. This would be a nice perspective, as a watch the goo science either explode, or fall to it's demise down below me

 

 

 

[DiscoSlelge]

6 hours ago, Abrecan said:

Mercury station

Check the roadmap

[CobaltWolf]

7 hours ago, Abrecan said:

And Skylab will be compatible with BDB, and could you possibly make Skylab as a standalone config for this also? I've been researching many different lab concepts throughout the early US space era and stumbled upon a few which I think would great in this mod. I will say the Apollo LMAL would still make a great addition to this mod, as it bridges Gemini and Apollo quite nicely:

~snip~

Another interesting one I found bridged Mercury and Gemini, The Mercury Space Station. In 1960, McDonnell suggested building a secondary, cylindrical capsule with the main Mercury capsule mounted to one end, and then sticking the whole thing on top of an Atlas LV-3B to fire it into space for a 14 day science lab. Since it would be too heavy for that rocket to lift, the new capsule would have an Agena motor attached to its other end, which would finish pushing the spaceship into orbit. There were two variants as to the challenge of designing such a station (more so imo with the mechanics game-wise): The Mercury Station never got built and likely the kicker was that the Mercury was pretty much an experimental craft. It was never intended to be upgraded and so McDonnell had to resort to a remarkable kludge just to let the astronaut onboard climb between the two pressurized volumes. Ideally there would have been a tunnel directly between the two when they were docked normally, but the Mercury’s retrorockets were in the way. So as designed, this craft would have had to take one of two approaches. Either the Mercury would stay in place and an inflatable half-toroid would join the hatch on the side of the capsule with the hatch on the secondary module, or else the Mercury would bend backwards on a hinge until its side hatch actually touched the side of the new capsule. Only then would the astronaut be able to clamber from one to the other.

~snip~

This concept is particularly interesting and would love to see the inflatable toroid version myself  Sorry for the big post and large pics, but I have been working a lot and haven't had a chance to post. One more thing, looking over  the Mercury capsule, I noticed in that it had a drogue chute in the top cone that did detach for the primary chute to deploy. This would be a nice perspective, as a watch the goo science either explode, or fall to it's demise down below me

I don't understand the LMAL fascination, since I still don't understand what the heck it is, how it goes together, and what it would look like. The two graphics on the Astronautix page raise more questions than they answer.

I actually have the Mercury Lab modeled, but there's no way to do either of the mechanisms. It would simply be EVA from the Hermes > climb into the little lab. That would also mean that you'd have to fly without a pilot... As you said, the idea was pretty much a non-starter because the Mercury was very inflexible and over complicated in terms of construction. Gemini had far more potential for being used outside the historical flights, but those were simply proposals - everyone knew that it was pointless to try and convince NASA or Congress to divert funding from Apollo at that point. And once you have Apollo, Gemini (which couldn't carry as many astronauts) fell by the wayside as well.

The real question is - what purpose would such a part serve in game? Would it be sent up with a mystery goo or something, to try and extra some more science out of it? I'm not sure. At that point in the tech tree, there isn't much purpose for such a part. That's not to say that I don't want one, I just am not sure what a player would do with it. What sort of activities would have been planned for such a 'station' (it's more like the size of one of those Japanese tube hotels) while it was in orbit? Likely some earth observation, I don't know what else.

[Wahgineer]

@CobaltWolf, maybe use it as a tier 1 science lab? That would be EXTREMLEY useful. Sending up a non-pilot kerbal shouldn't be too much of a problem, since A) BDB gives us decent probe cores early on and B) 1.2 may allow non-pilot kerbals to fly ships as long as they have a connection to Kerbin

 

[CobaltWolf]

41 minutes ago, awsumindyman said:

@CobaltWolf, maybe use it as a tier 1 science lab? That would be EXTREMLEY useful. Sending up a non-pilot kerbal shouldn't be too much of a problem, since A) BDB gives us decent probe cores early on and B) 1.2 may allow non-pilot kerbals to fly ships as long as they have a connection to Kerbin

Yeah but what sort of science would you be able to do for it? How would it be balanced compared to the stock lab.

@TheRedTom we usually say that BDB is balanced for a 2x or 3x (I can never remember) solar system - that is, STOCK is balanced for a 2x or 3x solar system. By balancing against stock, we don't become underpowered compared to other part mods, and the user can use a rescale or SMURFF to adjust the balance.

[Wahgineer]

@CobaltWolf, make it half as powerful as the MPL, available at the last set of nodes in the tier 1 R&D Building. Just lef it work like a regular lab: getting crap tons of science just by chilling in orbit.

 

[CobaltWolf]

NOTICE

Yes, this is up on GitHub now. PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT. The textures are *very* unfinished, and @Jso needs to balance it. In fact, that's the reason I dropped the texturing work and pushed the parts through Unity. I need to give Jso and our testers time to balance the parts properly. Right now, a Sarnus 1B can not get off the pad due to TWR. Tomorrow is my 11 hour bus trip, and I hope to get the S-IC and the S-II pushed through into the game, untextured, for the same reason. If you're trying to download the current dev build to play with pretty Saturn parts, you'll have to wait at least another two weeks. I still plan on being able to call this 'done' by the end of September, if possible.

 

[Rory Yammomoto]

17 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

NOTICE

Yes, this is up on GitHub now. PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT. The textures are *very* unfinished, and @Jso needs to balance it. In fact, that's the reason I dropped the texturing work and pushed the parts through Unity. I need to give Jso and our testers time to balance the parts properly. Right now, a Sarnus 1B can not get off the pad due to TWR. Tomorrow is my 11 hour bus trip, and I hope to get the S-IC and the S-II pushed through into the game, untextured, for the same reason. If you're trying to download the current dev build to play with pretty Saturn parts, you'll have to wait at least another two weeks. I still plan on being able to call this 'done' by the end of September, if possible.

 

Do you think that this is going to work? There have probably been a couple of dozen downloads already.

[CobaltWolf]

Just now, Rory Yammomoto said:

Do you think that this is going to work? There have probably been a couple of dozen downloads already.

Not my problem. I'll just block anyone that has a non-helpful complaint regarding anything that is put on Github in the next week or two

[Rory Yammomoto]

Just now, CobaltWolf said:

Not my problem. I'll just block anyone that has a non-helpful complaint regarding anything that is put on Github in the next week or two

I like your style...

[Angelo Kerman]

11 hours ago, Abrecan said:

And Skylab will be compatible with BDB, and could you possibly make Skylab as a standalone config for this also?

So long as you have the MOLE mod installed, you'll be able to use the configurations from the Bigby Orbital Workshop in a BDB skylab, yes. You'd just have to copy the BOW.cfg file, make changes to use the BDB model, give it a new part name, and you're good to go. I should have the update this weekend, the new lab config lets you have an experiment lab and MPL in one part.

[CobaltWolf]

1 minute ago, Angel-125 said:

So long as you have the MOLE mod installed, you'll be able to use the configurations from the Bigby Orbital Workshop in a BDB skylab, yes. You'd just have to copy the BOW.cfg file, make changes to use the BDB model, give it a new part name, and you're good to go. I should have the update this weekend, the new lab config lets you have an experiment lab and MPL in one part.

I think... someone... idk who, but I assigned someone to add compatibility for your MOLE stuff to the BDB MOS parts. I assume we'd try and add the same functionality to the Skylab parts.

Also, that first Saturn 1B screenshot I posted, the profile/silhouette of the rocket makes me think of this

[Abrecan]

'The company listed as One-Man Space Station research projects the study of human adaptation to 14-day weightless spaceflights; study of “long-time equipment performance” on spacecraft; “lunar probe navigation equipment” testing; radiation exposure, geophysical, and astrophysical measurements; and development of space rendezvous techniques, presumably using the restartable Agena B rocket motor. ' This was the actual experiments considered, as well as others.

I would say to make the science rates lower than the MOL science lab, as to the amount (or lack of) space to fit science into that cramped space, or half of the MPL as suggested.

4 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

So long as you have the MOLE mod installed, you'll be able to use the configurations from the Bigby Orbital Workshop in a BDB skylab, yes. You'd just have to copy the BOW.cfg file, make changes to use the BDB model, give it a new part name, and you're good to go. I should have the update this weekend, the new lab config lets you have an experiment lab and MPL in one part.

I will try this out this weekend!

4 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

I don't understand the LMAL fascination, since I still don't understand what the heck it is, how it goes together, and what it would look like. The two graphics on the Astronautix page raise more questions than they answer.

It was basically a science lab and habitat all in the enclosed SLA, the 'building block' concept could be trashed as one whole part could easily be done. This concept was also turned to lunar missions where the SLA would act as a base on the lunar surface which "In comparison to the LM Shelter concept, this provided a lunar mini-base of superior capacity and capability. The SM was used for lunar orbit insertion and the first portion of descent to the lunar surface. The LM descent stage was used for final touchdown." This was based on an unmanned 1st launch with a Saturn V, and a LM Taxi would bring the crew to the surface on the next launch opportunity.

[komodo]

20 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I think... someone... idk who, but I assigned someone to add compatibility for your MOLE stuff to the BDB MOS parts. I assume we'd try and add the same functionality to the Skylab parts.

Also, that first Saturn 1B screenshot I posted, the profile/silhouette of the rocket makes me think of this

That was me. I had to put it on hold a bit due to a (now fixed) bug in the MOLE code. I intend to get back to it soon. 

[CobaltWolf]

17 minutes ago, Abrecan said:

It was basically a science lab and habitat all in the enclosed SLA, the 'building block' concept could be trashed as one whole part could easily be done. This concept was also turned to lunar missions where the SLA would act as a base on the lunar surface which "In comparison to the LM Shelter concept, this provided a lunar mini-base of superior capacity and capability. The SM was used for lunar orbit insertion and the first portion of descent to the lunar surface. The LM descent stage was used for final touchdown." This was based on an unmanned 1st launch with a Saturn V, and a LM Taxi would bring the crew to the surface on the next launch opportunity.

Smart. I wonder what sort of increased station size could be achieved with a dry workshop that made use of the full SLA volume (rather than the fraction of it that the Skylab MDA used). Additionally, I also have this image saved in my reference folder. From what I can tell, it utilizes most of the volume of the S-IVB>S-II interstage adapter, filling it with hardware. Combined with full SLA utilization, you could easily get a 50% increase in habitable volume, while gaining a large amount of hardware on the bottom of the station. I wonder if that would start to push the abilities of the Saturn V though.

[Abrecan]

21 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Smart. I wonder what sort of increased station size could be achieved with a dry workshop that made use of the full SLA volume (rather than the fraction of it that the Skylab MDA used). Additionally, I also have this image saved in my reference folder. From what I can tell, it utilizes most of the volume of the S-IVB>S-II interstage adapter, filling it with hardware. Combined with full SLA utilization, you could easily get a 50% increase in habitable volume, while gaining a large amount of hardware on the bottom of the station. I wonder if that would start to push the abilities of the Saturn V though.

 

I like the way you think! I believe the SLA had a volume of about 200 cubic meters, which would be plenty room for accommodations with the dry workshop 

Edited September 2, 2016 by Abrecan

[Abrecan]

22 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I wonder if that would start to push the abilities of the Saturn V though.

Wasn't that the case for the Apollo Applications Project? In any extreme cases logistics launches could be accommodated to fulfill this role instead of an "all-up" single launch (if specs would show this too be too difficult for said single launch), but take in mind that the other Saturn variants would be able to perform this and more

[CobaltWolf]

9 minutes ago, Abrecan said:

Wasn't that the case for the Apollo Applications Project? In any extreme cases logistics launches could be accommodated to fulfill this role instead of an "all-up" single launch (if specs would show this too be too difficult for said single launch), but take in mind that the other Saturn variants would be able to perform this and more

I suppose. I'm not very good at thinking 'big'.

[Sgt.Shutesie]

X-20 Shots yo!

[Rory Yammomoto]

beautiful.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Rory Yammomoto