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

[Pappystein]

51 minutes ago, TranceaddicT said:

Zero Boil-Off Tank (ZBOT) Experiment

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20160010275

Thanks, I had seen slides from that presentation before but not the whole thing!

 

[Zorg]

Titan fans may be interested to know that the latest version of Tundra's space centre has made the built in tower statics on LC-19 toggleable so that it can be turned off (they're on by default) for compatibility with modular launch pads. Now you can have a fully animated GLV launch!

[CobaltWolf]

1 hour ago, Zorg said:

Titan fans may be interested to know that the latest version of Tundra's space centre has made the built in tower statics on LC-19 toggleable so that it can be turned off (they're on by default) for compatibility with modular launch pads. Now you can have a fully animated GLV launch!

Very nice! I didn't realize the extent of the issues

 

[NicolaSix]

Hi all,

Very long time lurker, but anyway; hopefully a useful contribution!

Playing through a 3.2x rescale with RealFuels I immediately noticed that the weights on the Scout's SRM pieces are... off slightly, normally <1KG or so, which obviously messes with the delta-V and TWR values quite a bit.
Tracked this down to RealFuels replacing any Monopropellant tanks with Hydrazine unless told otherwise and also reducing the weight of the engine a bit because of realisticMass being set to true by default, so spent the last two days researching the absolute heck outta the early Scout SRM's and come up with this as a result

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JEJAY-MwEXvam10oA3hPiSNA0qHiTyJPiBOCGOm4EiI/edit#gid=0

What started as just fixing the hydrazine conversion sorta became a "what if I use ModuleEnginesRF as well"

so: https://gist.github.com/LambdaSix/f43aac45632f0069555209db4df14d15

I haven't tested it in anything but 3.2x yet, but with tweaking on the fuel levels in the tanks and careful flying, those configs roughly get a four stage Scout X-3 LV into about a 200x200 orbit with a 125KG payload with a little bit of delta-V left over.
While testing I noticed.
Basically as per the spreadsheet this (sorta) turns the 4 SRM's for the Scout into nearly all variants (where there was a meaningful difference) required to make up most variants of the Scout launch vehicle, I only really tested the X-3 configuration which is below, not every variant is is included since I just couldn't find any useful information for some of them.

Type	Stage 1	Stage 2	Stage 3	Stage 4
X-3	UTC Algol 2A	Thiokol Castor 1	Hercules Antares 2A	UTC Altair 1A

As probably expected when running with RealFuels + Rescale, there's a good amount of tweaking needed on the specific fuel levels to ensure TWR's and dV match what's expected, so this isn't really a lego kit.
 

Predominantly the real fix is "if realfuels is installed, put some appropriate RCS tanks into the engine or :FINAL override it" -- so this affects parts like the Athena's 'Paxus-MGL/S4-PSBS "Orestes" Post Boost Vehicle' (bluedog_Peacekeeper_PostBoostVehicle) since it replaces the monoprop tank with a hydrazine tank then replaces the RCS thruster resources with Hydrazine, which kinda breaks the main OAMS engine a little. So my TODO list does include other parts where they include some kind of RCS system that RealFuels is breaking.
Also on my TODO list is probably putting all my collected flight & assembly notes into the wiki page for the Scout, since it currently lacks info about what stages it's even using.

[CobaltWolf]

Oooh! I will have to reread that later, I'm running out the door now.

 

But first, a small thing...

 

 

[Jso]

@NicolaSix our Scout is a bit oversize and more of a Scout XL. The second stage is equal to a Castor 4. The Agena engine configs should give an example of how to deal with the engine + rcs situation.

Welcome to the forums!

[CobaltWolf]

20 minutes ago, Jso said:

@NicolaSix our Scout is a bit oversize and more of a Scout XL. The second stage is equal to a Castor 4. The Agena engine configs should give an example of how to deal with the engine + rcs situation.

Welcome to the forums!

I think proportionally its correct though because the first stage represents the wider Algol 2 from the later Scouts

[NicolaSix]

10 hours ago, Jso said:

@NicolaSix our Scout is a bit oversize and more of a Scout XL. The second stage is equal to a Castor 4. The Agena engine configs should give an example of how to deal with the engine + rcs situation.

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks!
I realised the scout is a little oversize and it's honestly not my intent to 'rebalance' it in any meaningful way, it works perfectly in stock + 3.2x in my experience, just the thing with the fuel tanks threw me, I intend to throw a patch into the RealFuels that only fixes the RCS tanks and doesn't touch the engine configurations/mass otherwise. I tried to balance engine thrust values and mass around the original parts definitions, just with the ability to tweak the specifics; the patch provided atm is more for the "I want to play RO+RP-0 but don't want to learn a degree in rocket engineering first" tbh.

It also just bugged me that the description said "Cold gas control system" and then real fuels goes and throws in a hydrazine RCS system, afaik the CG-RCS is only ther on the Antares to spin up the Altair prior to orbital insertion anyway, so I figure it only needs a dozen or so m/s of RCS at most.

10 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

I think proportionally its correct though because the first stage represents the wider Algol 2 from the later Scouts

That sounds about right, I couldn't really find specific information about the scout variants physical sizing apart from the occasional diameter or length of an individual SRM; weird given how the Scout was active for a good 30 years

 

Also if anyone has a better idea on how to balance for different scalings other than "Put more fuel in it" I'm all ears, I'd considered just leaving the tank's volume at a reasonable amount of propellant for a 6.4x, then setting the default tank usage to a scaled value for the system size so it's roughly "gets to orbit" out of the box, then let the player tweak it; I'm guessing beyond 3.2x though one would be required to bump up the actual thrust output of the stages.

Edited April 17, 2019 by NicolaSix

[Jso]

1 hour ago, NicolaSix said:

Also if anyone has a better idea on how to balance for different scalings other than "Put more fuel in it" I'm all ears

2.5x to 3.2x is the sweet spot for this mod, but up to 6.4x reduce the dry mass and your payload expectations, beyond that you'll need a bigger rocket (moar fuel). We have a patch in place that will read your rescale value and make the adjustments for you, look in Compatability/Rescale. I'm not sure how all that will interact with Real Fuels though.

 

1 hour ago, NicolaSix said:

I'm guessing beyond 3.2x though one would be required to bump up the actual thrust output of the stages.

You'll have plenty of thrust since masses go down a bit.

[NicolaSix]

4 hours ago, Jso said:

2.5x to 3.2x is the sweet spot for this mod, but up to 6.4x reduce the dry mass and your payload expectations, beyond that you'll need a bigger rocket (moar fuel). We have a patch in place that will read your rescale value and make the adjustments for you, look in Compatability/Rescale. I'm not sure how all that will interact with Real Fuels though.

You'll have plenty of thrust since masses go down a bit.

Hmm, I'm not sure the scout stages can really lose any more mass, the Antares is only ~70kg dry (which is far lighter than the real Antares (even scaled..), except the Antares-3 -- that ones weird..*) currently, in 3.2x it puts a 90kg payload into a 200km orbit after a little tweaking so it 'feels' like it's about right, RSS you'd need about 4x the delta-V per stage, which is basically 'moar fuel' as far as I can guess via my spreadsheet

I kinda just wanted to avoid having the Scout being capable of TLI of probes, since that's kinda what the Agena/Centaur is there for; the upside is switching to the X-1's engine configurations makes a pretty good sub-orbital rocket too

I also noticed that during ascent, if you have the Castor's RCS system on to provide stability; the sep event of the Algol 1 will cause the COM to change wildly and normally the Castor+Antares immediately flips itself over, I'm not sure if this is just a case of KSP's sometimes wonky RCS PID controllers over-compensating or if the thruster power of the Castor could do with a tweak downwards so it doesn't apply as strong a corrective force. I'm working around it in my kOS scripts by disabling the lower RCS systems ~0.5s before sep then re-enabling it about a second later, the rocket still has a good wobble in it's pitch but at least doesn't pitch over. I'm guessing this is mostly just KSP's own soupy atmosphere and flight characteristics.

*The Antares-3 is  98kg dry compared to the ~350kg of the others, I think this is because it's basically HTPB wrapped in kevlar then set on fire, I'm guessing it lacks the attitude control system of the Antares-2 or 4, but couldn't find any pictures or technical drawings to confirm that, I considered excluding it entirely from the engine configurations but it almost balances against the other engines in the end, so I left it in, it just gets a 0.33 massMultiplier when used, making the Antares stage about 22kg dry.

Edited April 17, 2019 by NicolaSix

[Pappystein]

9 hours ago, NicolaSix said:

Thanks!
That sounds about right, I couldn't really find specific information about the scout variants physical sizing apart from the occasional diameter or length of an individual SRM; weird given how the Scout was active for a good 30 years

Actually given what much of Scout was derived from (Technology from Polaris SLBM + Sergeant SRBM)   Since both of those were Nuclear.... Yeah it is tough.  It is really only because of NASA involvement with the development of the Titan IIIE as well as the Commercial Titan III that we have as much information on Titan as we do.   Heck, with a lot of these rockets that have a military background, we (as historical enthusiasts) have to use a scale and measure the stage sizes on our own.  The real world information is too in-exact or just plain missing as you have attested to.   Now you compare that to Saturn, which while it was an ARMY and then DARPA/ARPA/DARPA/ARPA/DARPA (can it stop switching it's name please!) Rocket, it was never intended to carry Nuclear weapons and was taken over completely and singularly by NASA.  We can find so MUCH information that it is almost too much at times.   Further as a Civilian Agency NASA does not enforce strict naming conventions like the Military DID..... (They stopped being Strict with the Hornet and the Harrier and straight off the reservation with the Super Hornet.... now the US is almost as bad as Russia with out of sequence/nonsensical designations.)

Ok a bit off track there but because it is a Standardized item that was originally developed to carry Nuclear weapons (abet in a different configuration) Scout will be HARD to find good data on.    I checked my meger collection of Rocketry books and none had any data you have not already presented.   I couldn't even confirm anything about Antares stage.

 

[DeltaDizzy]

On 4/7/2019 at 9:24 PM, Pappystein said:

For clarity sake before I post a response... Did you tweakscale down atlas parts or did you tweakscale UP titan I parts? 

 

I assume Restock is the reason I do not recognize several parts on the Vega upper stage?

Sorry its been so long but the answer is that the launcher first stage is left the same scale, while the second-stage engine is tweakscaled up. Beyond that I cant quite remember but its probably not scaled.

[CobaltWolf]

Some new parts I modeled while away from my main PC, looking for thoughts...

1.875m generic fairing base, how do y'all like it?

Very WIP 1.875m generic decoupler... Really not sure what else to do with it.

Titan 3/4 Avionics Truss Core... uh... thing. Not the most useful KSP part, but necessary for getting the later Titans to be the right length. It will have beefy SAS and that middle area will be hollow.

The real avionics truss, for reference

[Pappystein]

50 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Titan 3/4 Avionics Truss Core... uh... thing. Not the most useful KSP part, but necessary for getting the later Titans to be the right length. It will have beefy SAS and that middle area will be hollow.

The real avionics truss, for reference

@CobaltWolf, you asked for feedback here is mine:

1. The PLF is awesome looking I love the web center.  Makes it look "Light"   QUESTION: Will the Collider/CFG allow for placement anywhere or will we be restricted to nodal placement inside the PLF?   It seems some of the BDB PLFs allow surface attach and others do not.
2. the new decoupler is unique with those external protuberances.   I think it will be a heavy use item for me.  It looks like someone took a normally recessed stage retention strap and appropriate detonation cord to sunder said straps from a real rocket and made it bigger so it is actually large enough to be usable in KSP.... Job well done!... and any other sizes like this you want to make (1.5, 2.5, and 3.125/3.75) would be welcome but by no means an instant need.
3. The Avionics Truss....   QUESTION: Is the center going to have a hollow collider?   If so then I think you are WAAYYYY underselling it's usefulness....  Um, Mini mono-tanks, Batteries, Fuel cells and RTG options rejoice... an internal space to be placed!     As far as the look I think the trusses are a tiny bit too big (not enough space in between) but as it won't be seen after assembly who cares? 

Followup for the rest of the forum.  I am totally guessing here, but the hollow area in the IRL picture above looks to be the bottom portion of the Titan IV Centaur fairing, and hence why it is not modeled on the Avionics truss.   My little bit of proof is those tabs,  they seem to line up with the boxes on the Centaur PLF.  

I may have some ideas for further uses of the Avionics truss.... I will have to think on it

 

Final result   Feedback:  Texture them so they are go for launch!  Like last month! *I AM JOKEING about the last month part* but seriously they are great set of parts I will try to wait patently for their release....   PS love the four power/data cable bundles in the Avionics truss between the two Truss parts!   Not many modders would catch a need for something like that (or use the minimum correct amount of cable bundles!)  

 

[Kerbal01]

On 4/15/2019 at 9:41 AM, CobaltWolf said:

How is it the Titan family of all things has the fewest number of variants out of these sheets so far?

 

sauce?

[TimothyC]

1 hour ago, Kerbal01 said:

sauce?

Just to be clear, all shipbucket work is protected by a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commerical 4.0 License (IE, if you remix, you must retain credits)

That said, BB1987 has drawn/corrected all of the flown Titan, Atlas, Delta, Japanese H Series, Falcon, & SLS Rockets in shipbucket scale. He's also done the Unbuilt Thor/Deltas, Unbuilt H series, and exploded view Atlas. It's all very impressive detective work and artistry.

Edited April 18, 2019 by TimothyC
Stupid formating

[CobaltWolf]

Wanted to do a little bump / reminder that there's going to be another Titan dev stream tomorrow (essentially ending a 2-week real life induced hiatus) starting at around 9 AM Eastern time. We'll see how much more we can get done.

[CobaltWolf]

Sorry for the delay - woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. While that means I won't have as much time as I wanted, we can still definitely get some stuff done over on Twitch

[Pappystein]

On 4/15/2019 at 9:41 AM, CobaltWolf said:

How is it the Titan family of all things has the fewest number of variants out of these sheets so far?

 

So.  I didn't respond to this earlier because *reasons*  

I think there are THREE reasons WHY Titan was more standardized with less variants.  

First I want to exclude the slab sided Deltas as while they are based on Thor... They have very little (part for part) in common with Thor or the early Delta rockets. but even eliminating all the nested 2nd stage Deltas from the list, Thor/Delta still has the most launched variants.   Followed closely by Atlas (again excluding Atlas V)

SO:

1. In part because both the USAF and Martin Marietta saw the chaos and confusions of early Atlas and Thor launches.... (remember Titan was delayed due to all the POGO failures... Initial Production didn't happen until DURING the Gemini launches. almost 5 years after Atlas and Thor were flying space probes.  The USAF got Smart and Martin Marietta also was smart about how they handled Titan.  
2. NASA was already gaining momentum when Titan II and Titan III were begun.   While NASA is one of the WORST organizations in the US Government for Type standardization, they realized early on that they could rely on the USAF for a lot of that... Therefor even the Civilian Titans were standardized in accordance with Military standards...   Notes on this to follow.
3. Payload end users stopped designing their own upper stages for their particular payload.....

I will add there is a less important reason as well: With the exception of the late 1980s/1990s Titan 23G, no Titan, built and deployed as an ICBM was used for satellite launching.   A lot of Atlas rockets and Thor rockets ACTUALLY served in the "field" before they were converted to space launchers.    Martin Marietta set up two production lines, One for Gemini/Space probe launches, and one for the Ballistic missiles.   This kept some of the inter-department fighting commonly talked about with Upper stages (Vega anyone?!)  from creating nebulous 1 off versions.   I think there are 8 or 9 Delta variants that flew less than 3 times.   There is only one Titan Variant  that flew 3 or less times....  

Your Historical explanation for comment 2 above:
 

Spoiler

NASA and type standardization:   NASA when it was formed was receiving systems from the USAF, US Army and US Navy programs.  Each of these programs were designated in a different an unique way (the Joint Military Designation system went into effect in 1962 (aka DOD 4120.15L... 2.5 years after NASA started.)  Prior to the activation of the 4120.15L standards, each service used their own devices (names) for everything...  In fact even under the over all DOD 4120 program, the US Army (partially shared with the USMC) shares some "non standard" designations... specifically the M series of vehicles and fire-arms.   What did this mean for NASA?   One huge headache that still lingers today.  For example, each company thrust onto NASA their own Model designations and Names... It is one reason you hear the Spaz Shuttle's engines being called both SSME and RS-25.   RS-25 is the name/designation as denoted by Rocketdyne.   SSME is the designation used by NASA to denote ANY engine that would power the Space Shuttle.   When the RS-25 was selected, NASA KEPT using the SSME moniker.  This has lead to a lot of issues with the Constellation (for the RS-25 5 engine proposal for Ares V) and SLS programs when discussing the engines powering it.  NASA has FINALLY decried that the engine will only be know as RS-25 from now on (with an appropriate letter for engine version.)

Ok but what does that mean for me the player?  

Well it points out just how easy it is to have two things that are 100% identical with 2 different names.  

 

Edited April 21, 2019 by Pappystein

[NicolaSix]

On 4/17/2019 at 8:08 PM, Pappystein said:

Actually given what much of Scout was derived from (Technology from Polaris SLBM + Sergeant SRBM)   Since both of those were Nuclear.... Yeah it is tough.  It is really only because of NASA involvement with the development of the Titan IIIE as well as the Commercial Titan III that we have as much information on Titan as we do.   Heck, with a lot of these rockets that have a military background, we (as historical enthusiasts) have to use a scale and measure the stage sizes on our own.  The real world information is too in-exact or just plain missing as you have attested to.   Now you compare that to Saturn, which while it was an ARMY and then DARPA/ARPA/DARPA/ARPA/DARPA (can it stop switching it's name please!) Rocket, it was never intended to carry Nuclear weapons and was taken over completely and singularly by NASA.  We can find so MUCH information that it is almost too much at times.   Further as a Civilian Agency NASA does not enforce strict naming conventions like the Military DID..... (They stopped being Strict with the Hornet and the Harrier and straight off the reservation with the Super Hornet.... now the US is almost as bad as Russia with out of sequence/nonsensical designations.)

Ok a bit off track there but because it is a Standardized item that was originally developed to carry Nuclear weapons (abet in a different configuration) Scout will be HARD to find good data on.    I checked my meger collection of Rocketry books and none had any data you have not already presented.   I couldn't even confirm anything about Antares stage.

 

I did actually sit down properly for a day and flexed my research skills, so I now have way more information, including the flight operations manual and the elusive CR-165-950. I adjusted all my configurations to be in line with those, since they're gross weights for the SRM's + aerodynamic casing/piping, rather than just the SRM's and have spent since about Friday last week trying to replicate the avionics/pitch programs used by the scout in kOS, trying to get to a consistent orbital capability from it.
Which I managed, but only for sub-100kg payloads (currently a Explorer I sitting on a baby sargeant with a kOS module MM'ed into it, totals 88kg with ballast) which contradicts the claimed 210kg to a 1.0x scale 100km orbit in the wiki, maybe my ascent paths are wrong, once I have it all working I'll publish my work + results somewhere.

I started condensing the information into a document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1niZLGEaxYqfpwqxksiyeOFs-ZxXIYFdhxlVGr80G_hI/edit?usp=sharing
Document Index: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ktPAMmWWIQOKl4x83g8htmVoEwqBkZ1elxi03etU04w/edit?usp=sharing
There are some files I've yet to index and catalogue, I'll eventually go through the index and add relevant content notes about what's in the documents.

On an actual mod note, I have noticed that the Castor stage tends to have a bit of a wonky aerodynamic profile and will happily flip itself over immediately unless it's basically in upper atmosphere; I ended up having to both reduce the effective thrust to 50% on the Algol for a longer burn time to put the castor stage higher in the atmosphere and also add some 40% scale Algol fins to the bottom of the Castor stage to get it to fly without pitching over wildly, amusingly the Antares is either light enough or has enough RCS control to recover from any amount of over steering from the Castor. That's with the stock configuration patch I made, just changes the RCS to HTP and adds solid fuel with resource tanks (thus avoiding the *4 factor applied to all stock SRM's solid fuel levels by RealFuels*)

I'm hoping once I've smoothed out the ascent/orbital-insert programs for stock, I'll apply the more in depth configuration to the parts and test it as Scout variants , since all the documentation seems to claim that the X-n/A/B/C and D/E/F/G were basically the same in construction, only using upgraded SRM's and in some cases changing diameter slightly to accommodate larger stage 2 and 3 SRM's, and any adjustments to pitch program were based on payload and orbital insertion requirements.

I'm doing an in-depth career game with kOS, so next on my list for careful inspection is probably the Juno I/Jupiter program

* Which is very amusing because when applied to the Algol and Altair in stock scale it means you can easily hit 125km apo with a single burn from the algol, and have more than enough dV in the Castor+Antares to circularise without ever touching the 40 solid fuel in the altair.

Edited April 23, 2019 by NicolaSix

[Pappystein]

9 hours ago, NicolaSix said:

On an actual mod note, I have noticed that the Castor stage tends to have a bit of a wonky aerodynamic profile and will happily flip itself over immediately unless it's basically in upper atmosphere; I ended up having to both reduce the effective thrust to 50% on the Algol for a longer burn time to put the castor stage higher in the atmosphere and also add some 40% scale Algol fins to the bottom of the Castor stage to get it to fly without pitching over wildly, amusingly the Antares is either light enough or has enough RCS control to recover from any amount of over steering from the Castor. That's with the stock configuration patch I made, just changes the RCS to HTP and adds solid fuel with resource tanks (thus avoiding the *4 factor applied to all stock SRM's solid fuel levels by RealFuels*)

I look forward to looking at your research later this/next week... First week back to work after injury... Paperwork like crazy    But I am back to work!  YAY!

Re the bad wobble:   several suggestions if you haven't already tried them:

• Hot stage the Castor... Many of the solids don't do well staging from a coast at low altitude (control issues.)  
• Given you are playing with the CFGs verify that Gimbal is turned down/or set to 0.    You have RCS on that Castor to continue your aerodynamic turn.
• Remember that if you are giving a Turn command WHILE staging the huge and sudden loss of dead-mass will cause the upper stages to over-control   <-- Mostly likely issue in my opinion.  

 

 

[boylesmason113]

I don’t see the Muo engine for the 1st stage of the Atlas V replica, I’d like to have it so I can use the Atlas V but I don’t know what the problem is.

[CobaltWolf]

9 hours ago, boylesmason113 said:

I don’t see the Muo engine for the 1st stage of the Atlas V replica, I’d like to have it so I can use the Atlas V but I don’t know what the problem is.

Hmm, like, it's not showing up in the tech tree? (If so does it not show up in sandbox?)

The new version is shown without the shroud in the VAB list.

Do you have all the dependencies? It uses B9 part switch extensively and I don't know if not having that would break it.

[Jso]

@NicolaSix you've got something screwed up. The Scout we provide does 500kg+ in 2.5x. Nice job on the research.

[boylesmason113]

6 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Hmm, like, it's not showing up in the tech tree? (If so does it not show up in sandbox?)

The new version is shown without the shroud in the VAB list.

Do you have all the dependencies? It uses B9 part switch extensively and I don't know if not having that would break it.

I do I have it, I was just looking for one with a shroud. Thanks for helping!