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

[dbandy13]

55 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

 Who actually uses the various solid motors (besides the radial Titan SRBs)? Does anybody in the community actually bother dealing with solid kick stages? Does anybody use 1.5m or 1.875m launchers that primarily use the existing BDB solids like the Castor-120?

I use them regularly, both the lowers and uppers.

I have a massive love for your upper stage motors especially with the shutdown. I often use smart parts AG timer for an auto-shutoff or even preplanned manoeuvres (I have excel spreadsheets dedicated to transfer calcs  ) I also love using solids to lower the dV requirements for small probe landers and the STAR series both fits well and has historical precedence in this role (surveyor).

I find the solid based LVs quite a fun challenge and make lots of use of Athena and Scout launchers and one of my own design consisting of a centaur atop a UA1205/7S

[Tiankay]

@CobaltWolf

IIRC Star-13 and Star-26 for Thor-Burner II A and B variants are missing for example. BDB "only" has Star-20, 31, 37 and 48 according to the config files. Have to boot up the game later to check, but unless you hid a star in another config file thats it^^

http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_2/United_States_4/Thor/Description/Frame.htm

 

ATK Solids Datasheet:

http://www.ltas-vis.ulg.ac.be/cmsms/uploads/File/DataSheetSolidATK.pdf

 

Also what has been already said, the Star-37 lacks guidance, thus not making it a true Burner 2 stage.

 

Peace

TK

Edited August 7, 2018 by Tiankay

[WuphonsReach]

(running BDDB master branch in 1.4.5) 

I don't use the kicker SRBs because I find it easier to just use LF/Ox engines that have more control.  Even when I'm low in the tech tree I have not used the kicker SRBs.  I do heavily use the 0.935/1.875 radial SRBs along with a 1.5-1.8m central core LF/Ox tank.  Seems like I have enough LF/Ox engines unlocked (even in CTT).

I'm not one for building replicas though, so it's a mix/match of Tantares, stock, MRS, SpaceY, BDDB.

[Jso]

9 hours ago, RaiderMan said:

I myself use srbs in the strap on role, for the same reason of a complete lack of throttle control and inability to shut down and restart an srb. srbs have a tendency when the larger core stage sized ones are used, to push a stack fast enough that if I didnt have kerbal joint reenforcement..I'd see a complete loss of the vehicle.

Throttle them in the VAB before launch to cut down on the G's.

[Norcalplanner]

1 hour ago, Jso said:

Throttle them in the VAB before launch to cut down on the G's.

And/or give them a thrust curve.

[Dutchbook]

I use the small SRB's (like Castor-120) combined with the Taerobee and Agena to launch my contractual small probes. On the contrary, I just usually don't bother with small liquid fueled engines below AJ-10 size. That includes vernier thrusters (why bother when you have unlimited reaction wheel inertia, with 100% reliability?).

I am pretty bummed out that pruning them through Janitor's Closet keeps me from building replica's, but with only 4GB of RAM you gotta do what you gotta do

[CobaltWolf]

On 8/7/2018 at 12:40 PM, dbandy13 said:

I use them regularly, both the lowers and uppers.

I have a massive love for your upper stage motors especially with the shutdown. I often use smart parts AG timer for an auto-shutoff or even preplanned manoeuvres (I have excel spreadsheets dedicated to transfer calcs  ) I also love using solids to lower the dV requirements for small probe landers and the STAR series both fits well and has historical precedence in this role (surveyor).

I find the solid based LVs quite a fun challenge and make lots of use of Athena and Scout launchers and one of my own design consisting of a centaur atop a UA1205/7S

It's cool to know that people put that much thought into using this stuff! I'd love to see some of the stuff you've made.

 

On 8/7/2018 at 12:47 PM, Tiankay said:

IIRC Star-13 and Star-26 for Thor-Burner II A and B variants are missing for example. BDB "only" has Star-20, 31, 37 and 48 according to the config files. Have to boot up the game later to check, but unless you hid a star in another config file thats it^^

http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_2/United_States_4/Thor/Description/Frame.htm

ATK Solids Datasheet:

http://www.ltas-vis.ulg.ac.be/cmsms/uploads/File/DataSheetSolidATK.pdf

Also what has been already said, the Star-37 lacks guidance, thus not making it a true Burner 2 stage.

I'll think about those, I'm not sure the Star 13 is meaningfully different than the BE-3 that is already in the mod. STAR-26 would be hard to pin into a size class (also, I just realized my Star-20 is too small).

 

19 hours ago, WuphonsReach said:

(running BDDB master branch in 1.4.5) 

I don't use the kicker SRBs because I find it easier to just use LF/Ox engines that have more control.  Even when I'm low in the tech tree I have not used the kicker SRBs.  I do heavily use the 0.935/1.875 radial SRBs along with a 1.5-1.8m central core LF/Ox tank.  Seems like I have enough LF/Ox engines unlocked (even in CTT).

I'm not one for building replicas though, so it's a mix/match of Tantares, stock, MRS, SpaceY, BDDB.

That's what I thought the response would be, I didn't expect to hear so many people do go through the stress of using the kickers.

 

16 hours ago, Jso said:

Throttle them in the VAB before launch to cut down on the G's.

14 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

And/or give them a thrust curve.

The SRBs in BDB should have something approximating the IRL thrust curves, thanks to @Jso. I wish they were customizable using a GUI on the fly to help give more control.

 

5 hours ago, Dutchbook said:

I use the small SRB's (like Castor-120) combined with the Taerobee and Agena to launch my contractual small probes. On the contrary, I just usually don't bother with small liquid fueled engines below AJ-10 size. That includes vernier thrusters (why bother when you have unlimited reaction wheel inertia, with 100% reliability?).

I am pretty bummed out that pruning them through Janitor's Closet keeps me from building replica's, but with only 4GB of RAM you gotta do what you gotta do

Meh, I don't like using reaction wheels for that reason (they make a lot of the cool IRL RCS and verniers pointless).

Stinks about the RAM, I'm sure I'm not helping the issue with how big the mod is

[Drakenex]

On 4/16/2018 at 12:42 AM, HooHungLow said:

I would love too, but you will end up making a much better version than mine. And then it will be another build off. Lol.

Hey, what happened with @HooHungLow??

in his honor:

 

 

 

 

[CobaltWolf]

33 minutes ago, Drakenex said:

Hey, what happened with @HooHungLow??

I don't know, they were cool :S

[vossiewulf]

FYI, the Hokulani-OWS Orbital Workshop is not recognized as a valid workshop by Wild Blue and therefore can't run the experiments and functions it was designed to run. I'm having to replace it in orbit now as even adding it to the Wild Blue configs doesn't seem to fix it.

From Wild Blue Industries/MOLE/ExperimentResults/BaseandStationBuilding.cfg:

	//Percent chance that an experiment will be successful.
	//The dice are rolled after all other conditions are met.
//	chanceOfSuccess = 65

	//Cost of the experiment (does not include resource costs)
//	cost = 

	//Parts required to run the experiment
	requiredPart = Mark One Habitat
	requiredPart = Mark One Botany Lab
	requiredPart = Ponderosa IHM
	requiredPart = Casa IHM
	requiredPart = Chuckwagon IMW
	requiredPart = M.O.L.E.
	requiredPart = LDEF Science Processor
	requiredPart = Bigby Orbital Workshop
	requiredPart = D2 Centrifuge
	requiredPart = D2 Science Module
	requiredPart = GondoLab
	requiredPart = Doc Science Lab
	requiredPart = Tranquility Mk2 Habitat

 

[CobaltWolf]

[Saltshaker]

15 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Bröther, I ręquire bööst

[Daishi]

OMG that upper stage is adorable 

[CobaltWolf]

9 hours ago, Saltshaker said:

Bröther, I ręquire bööst

8 hours ago, Daishi said:

OMG that upper stage is adorable 

Yup, when you need just a little boost... still need the BE-3, which is another 0.3125m SRB but half as long! Before serving as an occasional kick stage for launchers like Scout E-1 and Redstone-Sparta, this stage was originally used for the first American attempts to soft land something on the Moon, the Ranger Block 2 series. What do my users think they would use it for?  Note, this would replace that tiny 0.3125m gray sphere-ish SRB that is in the mod. I didn't have any good reference when I originally made it.

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by CobaltWolf

[Daishi]

14 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Yup, when you need just a little boost... still need the BE-3, which is another 0.3125m SRB but half as long! Before serving as an occasional kick stage for launchers like Scout E-1 and Redstone-Sparta, this stage was originally used for the first American attempts to soft land something on the Moon, the Ranger Block 2 series. What do my users think they would use it for? 

Aaand it's from another cool set of historical space hardware i never knew existed. You should be writing the KSP Weekly! 

Edited August 9, 2018 by Daishi

[CobaltWolf]

44 minutes ago, Daishi said:

Aaand it's from another cool set of historical space hardware i never knew existed. You should be writing the KSP Weekly! 

Speaking of things people have never heard of, here's another series of missions that used some of the motors mentioned here (Including @Tiankay's STAR-13)

 

Quote

Back during the days of the Apollo lunar missions, young budding space enthusiasts like myself were all aware of the trio of unmanned lunar programs which had paved the way to the Moon during the 1960s: the Ranger impact missions, the Surveyor missions to soft land on the Moon and the Lunar Orbiter missions to map possible landing sites. It was not until the early 1980s when I was a budding space historian interested in the technical details of spaceflight that I became aware of another, lesser known program to orbit the Moon: NASA’s Anchored Interplanetary Monitoring Platforms (AIMP) launched as part of the Explorer program in 1966 and 1967. Although not as well known as NASA’s “big three” lunar programs, the data returned by these spacecraft as well as the other spacecraft of the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP) program were nonetheless vital to the success of Apollo.

Full article on Drew Ex Machina

[draqsko]

On ‎8‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 11:22 AM, CobaltWolf said:

Who actually uses the various solid motors (besides the radial Titan SRBs)? Does anybody in the community actually bother dealing with solid kick stages? Does anybody use 1.5m or 1.875m launchers that primarily use the existing BDB solids like the Castor-120? 

I use them a lot, basically for any payload that just had to make it to space within a certain min/max altitude requirement. Also in 2.5x you'll need them for the early rockets to even get a payload into space (specifically Vanguard which is even borderline at that, if you don't use the 0.25 lever on SMURF or BDB's own SMURF configuration it won't make the historic orbital height in 2.5x). Yes, on the second question as well, since they are used in the Athena, Antares, Minotaur and others and those are very nice low cost to orbit disposable rockets (one half to one third the cost of an LFO rocket with comparable delta V).

Basically anyone doing historic builds will be using those solids, doubly so if you are using KCT where construction costs can increase with needing multiple launch pads to launch simultaneous missions due to pad refurbishing, or using BARIS where the incremental changes between the early rockets can really help your finances since test benching and static firing can get expensive when starting a whole new rocket design.  That's primarily how I play KSP, running a somewhat realistic space program, and your mod with the upper and lower stage solids allows me to leverage the other mods I use to fully realize that.

[CobaltWolf]

Sketched out a model for the Athena 2 Orbital Adjustment Module. 1.5m monoprop course correction / kick stage, for fixing your orbit after your solids have finished firing. Not this isn't textured, I just set some basic materials and rendered it with AO to make the details stand out a bit. It has 4 MR-107 thrusters (the current HAPS has 4 I think, new HAPS will have have the more accurate 3) as well as 6 RCS thrusters for attitude control. If this isn't big enough for you, there will also be the Peacemaker Post Boost Vehicle (PBV), which is also 1.5m but will have a small LFO engine and tanks.

[draqsko]

On ‎8‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 12:47 PM, Tiankay said:

Also what has been already said, the Star-37 lacks guidance, thus not making it a true Burner 2 stage.

Put the micro RCS booms with built-in MP tanks that BDB includes. All the Staara motors will easily accommodate them and that will give you guidance all the way to payload separation. You technically won't even need electric charge to use them other than the lack of probe control with the lack of EC. Also if you are OCD as myself, you can line up the thruster outlets with the slots on the engine shroud so when you lose your fairing you don't have MP blowing through a shroud (since KSP doesn't treat shrouds as shielding a component, soon as you eject the fairing, they'll start working).

 

3 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

What do my users think they would use it for? 

Same thing I'm currently using the Staara 10 LYC motor for, could you deprecate the old motor so it doesn't break subassemblies? That one particular motor is quite heavily used with tweaks to thrust and fuel load as an approximation of all the upper stage solids in early rocket launches. I use it as a placeholder for the X-242, X-248, X-258, FW-4D, TE-M-516, so it's quite a lot of rockets that actually have that part. 

Edited August 9, 2018 by draqsko

[CobaltWolf]

11 minutes ago, draqsko said:

Same thing I'm currently using the Staara 10 LYC motor for, could you deprecate the old motor so it doesn't break subassemblies? That one particular motor is quite heavily used with tweaks to thrust and fuel load as an approximation of all the upper stage solids in early rocket launches. I use it as a placeholder for the X-242, X-248, X-258, FW-4D, TE-M-516, so it's quite a lot of rockets that actually have that part. 

This is the motor that the Staara-10-LYC motor is supposed to represent, but yeah I'll keep that in mind. Though, it's interesting that you bring up those other solids since the X-248, X-258, and FW-4D are represented by the Staara-20 (New model for which is shown about halfway up this page) and not the Staara-10.

[draqsko]

1 minute ago, CobaltWolf said:

This is the motor that the Staara-10-LYC motor is supposed to represent, but yeah I'll keep that in mind. Though, it's interesting that you bring up those other solids since the X-248, X-258, and FW-4D are represented by the Staara-20 (New model for which is shown about halfway up this page) and not the Staara-10.

The Staara 20 is way too big for the X-242, X-248, the Staara 10 is closer to the actual fuel load, thrust and burn times. The Staara 20 can be used for the X-258 and FW-4D but with those rocket designs, you get much more out of it than historical rockets did and the Staara 10 feels like a better fit for trying historical launch profiles. I know you can drive yourself nuts on the early rocket designs and have a million parts to actually build them all to historical accuracy so I'm not expecting you to make every single engine. Either way, deprecating the old model would be helpful so it doesn't instantly obliterate assemblies before they can be updated.

[CobaltWolf]

7 minutes ago, draqsko said:

The Staara 20 is way too big for the X-242, X-248, the Staara 10 is closer to the actual fuel load, thrust and burn times. The Staara 20 can be used for the X-258 and FW-4D but with those rocket designs, you get much more out of it than historical rockets did and the Staara 10 feels like a better fit for trying historical launch profiles. I know you can drive yourself nuts on the early rocket designs and have a million parts to actually build them all to historical accuracy so I'm not expecting you to make every single engine. Either way, deprecating the old model would be helpful so it doesn't instantly obliterate assemblies before they can be updated.

I think I see the issue; X-248 and X-258 are both referred to as 'Altair' so I assumed they were the same. In any case, that feeds into my hold up with adding more of these small solids - the 0.3125m size probably has enough flexibility between the Staara-10 and Staara-20, and I don't want to add another diameter.

[draqsko]

38 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I think I see the issue; X-248 and X-258 are both referred to as 'Altair' so I assumed they were the same. In any case, that feeds into my hold up with adding more of these small solids - the 0.3125m size probably has enough flexibility between the Staara-10 and Staara-20, and I don't want to add another diameter.

They would all be about the same diameter, the only difference is length and dead mass/instrument space really. And that difference is incredibly small for stock or 2.5x scale, using real life numbers:

X-242 (which is what I think you based the original model on since it's a Vanguard apogee kick) total mass is 0.217 t, propellant weight is 0.193 t, thrust is 11.6 kN

X-248 total mass is 0.239 t, propellant weight is 0.211 t, thrust is 13.8 kN

X-258 total mass is 0.275 t, propellant weight is 0.235 t, thrust is 24.8 kN

FW-4D total mass is 0.299 t, propellant weight is 0.275 t, thrust is 26.4 kN

Star 13 total mass is 0.038 t, propellant weight is 0.033 t, thrust is 5.87 kN

Star 20 total mass is 0.301 t, propellant weight is 0.273 t, thrust is 28.4 kN

If you scale all of those down, there's really not much significant difference other than aesthetics. The only outlier is the Star 13, and your really tiny solid can be used for that (the one that's the same diameter as the Vanguard 'spin up' shroud attachment on the probe core) or the Pioneer kick motor, unless you need attitude control then the Staara 10 reduced in fuel load and thrust with micro RCS booms attached for pitch and yaw control will substitute nicely.

Edited August 9, 2018 by draqsko

[CobaltWolf]

Yeah, the X-242 is the one I chose to base my models on since it looked cooler than the other versions I found (cylindrical body, conical nozzle, so boring ).

Come to think, the micro RCS booms are also due for a remake, so they are actually capable of 3 axis stabilization...

[draqsko]

On ‎8‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 4:19 PM, vossiewulf said:

FYI, the Hokulani-OWS Orbital Workshop is not recognized as a valid workshop by Wild Blue and therefore can't run the experiments and functions it was designed to run. I'm having to replace it in orbit now as even adding it to the Wild Blue configs doesn't seem to fix it.

From Wild Blue Industries/MOLE/ExperimentResults/BaseandStationBuilding.cfg:

	//Percent chance that an experiment will be successful.
	//The dice are rolled after all other conditions are met.
//	chanceOfSuccess = 65

	//Cost of the experiment (does not include resource costs)
//	cost = 

	//Parts required to run the experiment
	requiredPart = Mark One Habitat
	requiredPart = Mark One Botany Lab
	requiredPart = Ponderosa IHM
	requiredPart = Casa IHM
	requiredPart = Chuckwagon IMW
	requiredPart = M.O.L.E.
	requiredPart = LDEF Science Processor
	requiredPart = Bigby Orbital Workshop
	requiredPart = D2 Centrifuge
	requiredPart = D2 Science Module
	requiredPart = GondoLab
	requiredPart = Doc Science Lab
	requiredPart = Tranquility Mk2 Habitat

 

 

That experiment only works while landed, if you scroll down a bit past the section you were editting you will see this part:

 

Quote

//Separate these by semicolon.

//Can include one or more of: DOCKED, ESCAPING, FLYING, LANDED, PRELAUNCH, ORBITING, SPLASHED, SUB_ORBITAL

situations = LANDED

Have to be landed on a body to perform the experiment, and it only applies to

Quote

//Worlds where the experiment can be run. Separate these by semicolon

celestialBodies = Kerbin;Mun;Minmus

 

The other file in that folder, MOLEModulesExperiments is probably where you want to add in the OWS as a required part in orbital experiments. Also make sure you use the title of the part, so in the case of the Skylab OWS it would be requiredPart = Hokulani-OWS Orbital Workshop

 

Not sure that will fix it though, there could be other issues in the configs and I've never used WBI MOLE so I'm not really familiar with how it operates. But that should at least get you started in the right direction. Also delete the MM caches every time you change a configuration file so that KSP actually loads the new configuration, sometimes MM will just load from cache and that will drive you nuts trying to debug something in configuration files.

Edited August 9, 2018 by draqsko