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

[Friznit]

Are you on KSP 1.8.1?  B9 may not be fully functional on early versions.  Also if you're in career mode you need to research and purchase the upgrades in the tech tree (Belle D is in Advanced Rocketry).

The adapter is in Engineering 101 - it's definitely there in my game (I did a fresh pull from github this morning).

[Cheesecake]

35 minutes ago, Friznit said:

Are you on KSP 1.8.1?  B9 may not be fully functional on early versions.  Also if you're in career mode you need to research and purchase the upgrades in the tech tree (Belle D is in Advanced Rocketry).

The adapter is in Engineering 101 - it's definitely there in my game (I did a fresh pull from github this morning).

Im blind or an idiot. You are right, the adapter is there now and yes, i`m playing career and didn`t unlock AdvRocketry yet. Sorry, my fault.

Edit:

Found a little issue: Switch for Dioscuri-1 to Dioscuri-2 --> title is not changing to Dioscuri-2. 

SUBTYPE
	  {
	    name = CastorII
	    title =  Dioscuri-1 Solid Rocket Booster <-- here should be Dioscuri-2 Solid Rocket Booster
	    descriptionSummary = The upgraded Discouri 2 give more performance and packs in a little more solid fuel too. Was used on Daleth L, M, N etc onwards through to Daleth 2000. Regressive thrust curve 100% to 86%.
			real_title = Castor II

 

Edited February 9, 2020 by Cheesecake

[Morphisor]

On 2/8/2020 at 1:23 PM, sslaptnhablhat said:

Well, like Pappy mentioned, those are the old and soon-to-be depreciated Juno/Jupiter parts, so I'd guess there's probably some issues with them, though I'm personally not familiar with the LV family and never used those parts in-game, so I might be wrong. You can download the latest version of the development branch for completely revamped Juno/Jupiter parts (still WIP) which fly pretty good, I can get to JNSQ orbit easily with them.

Ah I wasn't aware they were currently under development. Is it safe to start building stuff from the development branch in career or is it better to wait for an official release (long term compatibility etc.)?

On 2/8/2020 at 2:11 PM, Zorg said:

So the 3 stage vehicle you have there is a Juno IV-B. Ed Kyle's Spacelaunch report is one of our more trusted sources for information and it seems the Juno IV concept was in fact not capable of launching with a full propellant load on all 3 stages. If you run full on the upper stages, you reduce on the lower and vice versa. Friznit will update the wiki with a note on that. The new Juno IV in development with all 3 tanks full can get off the pad barely but with an LR79-NA13 instead of the S3D (in the new update the S3D, Lr79, RS27 and various configs will be a single part with upgradable and switcheable configs). Still adjusted propellant loads will be the optimal way to build it. or strap some castors to it.

"A three-stage Juno IV would weigh up to 62.41 tonnes (137,600 lbs) at liftoff.  Its Jupiter first stage would be loaded with up to 44.5 tonnes (98,100 lbs) of propellant.  The second stage would carry up to 11.14 tonnes (24,550 lbs) of propellant.  The third stage would be loaded with up to 3.4 tonnes (7,500 lbs) of propellant.  Propellant loading would vary depending on the mission type, with maximum upper stage loading for LEO missions and reduced loading for lunar or escape missions.  Reduced upper stage propellant loads would be offset by increased first stage propellant loads, and vice-versa."

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/jupiter7.html

Thanks for taking the time to explain this - it is indeed a Juno IV-B, dunno how I missed that error in naming it. I will try to match the figures you found and see what happens.

It's interesting to me that it is in fact historical to leave it partially empty. Any idea why that is? Were the parts also used for other systems or are they genuinely partially empty fuel tanks in the real thing as well? Did the Chrysler engines turn out to be less powerful than they were hoping for or something similar?

[golkaidakhaana]

3 minutes ago, Morphisor said:

Ah I wasn't aware they were currently under development. Is it safe to start building stuff from the development branch in career or is it better to wait for an official release (long term compatibility etc.)?

I only play in sandbox mode so I have no idea, might be better to wait for the official release. Be careful to remove any depreciated parts from crafts when updating, though.

[biohazard15]

8 minutes ago, Morphisor said:

Ah I wasn't aware they were currently under development. Is it safe to start building stuff from the development branch in career or is it better to wait for an official release (long term compatibility etc.)?

Better wait for release. New parts aren't yet balanced for career (costs, tech tree nodes etc).

[Zorg]

Just now, Morphisor said:

Ah I wasn't aware they were currently under development. Is it safe to start building stuff from the development branch in career or is it better to wait for an official release (long term compatibility etc.)?

So we would generally advise most users not to use the dev branch in a career save you really care about. Not that it stops a lot of people  In general you usually don't get save destroying issues but things are being added all the time and things like tech tree positioning can change regularly. There will also likely be a significant rebalancing of science instruments in terms of how much science they can transmit and or return coming in the next few weeks.

If you like to live dangerously the majority of new parts intended for this update are in game and most of the tech tree balancing is also done. And we do appreciate feedback from people playing with the dev branch. But yeah it is very much an at your own risk type situation  

3 minutes ago, Morphisor said:

Ah I wasn't aware they were currently under development. Is it safe to start building stuff from the development branch in career or is it better to wait for an official release (long term compatibility etc.)?

Thanks for taking the time to explain this - it is indeed a Juno IV-B, dunno how I missed that error in naming it. I will try to match the figures you found and see what happens.

It's interesting to me that it is in fact historical to leave it partially empty. Any idea why that is? Were the parts also used for other systems or are they genuinely partially empty fuel tanks in the real thing as well? Did the Chrysler engines turn out to be less powerful than they were hoping for or something similar?

So you posted the other day just as I started flying some Juno IV missions with the new stuff. Juno IV-A seems to be just fine but even with upgraded engines and reduced fuel loads even the new Juno IV-B has some trouble (it can get to space but with considerable difficulty and a lot of gravity losses). A careful fuel loading and mass rebalancing of Juno IV tanks is therefore in order. The Juno IV tanks actually were quite inefficient and wasteful of space. The 6k stage for instance is two spheres inside the conical tank so it would actually carry much less fuel than you would think compared to other stages of similar size. And thats before we talk about reduced propellant loading. So yeah we're still working on Juno IV-B. 

About your other point I'm not too familiar with the history of Juno IV apart from the basics such as outlined in the spacelaunch report page, maybe someone else can chime in. The reason the tanks were partially empty is indeed because the S3-D engine brought over from the Juno II was not powerful enough to lift the three stage Juno IV-B with all stages full. Juno IV wasn't a great idea IRL either and it was cancelled before it could be built. But we do want to be able to match the theoretical performance even so. The quote I posted earlier is with respect to the real world concept.

[redmonddkgamer]

What is the MOCA satellite system based on?

[golkaidakhaana]

1 minute ago, redmonddkgamer said:

What is the MOCA satellite system based on?

IDCSP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Satellite_Communications_System#IDCSP

[Morphisor]

Thanks again @Zorg, really enjoyable to get to know all this.

I think I may chance using the latest dev branch for a bit and see what happens and who knows, maybe even be of some use. It's only the start of a new career anyhow, no tears for lost Kerbals yet...

Oh and I'll put in a small donation as thanks for all the incredible work so far, haven't seen anything quite as extensive as this mod yet, especially with all the research put into it.

[redmonddkgamer]

What about Sonne? @sslaptnhablhat

[Zorg]

Just now, redmonddkgamer said:

What about Sonne? @sslaptnhablhat

Sonne is Helios. Btw there is a patch in BDB_Extras that switches everything to use their real world names. Just copy the folder BDB_Realnames into your game data.

[golkaidakhaana]

Just now, redmonddkgamer said:

What about Sonne? @sslaptnhablhat

Helios-A and -B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_(spacecraft)

[CobaltWolf]

8 hours ago, AlphaMensae said:

Still have to remake (or rebuild, actually) the integrated service pole (as I call it), but the new Redstone Launch Stand I made, designed for the remade BDB Redstone. The hold-down bolts line up exactly with the mounting points on the bottom of the fins, and there are also optional hold-down bolts for standard 1.25m and 1.5m tanks.

 That looks great! I wonder if it's worth adding the cable connectors too?

 

15 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

Which adapter-part is this below the Belle-Interstage?

I know this was answered but I just wanted to chime in with a fun fact - as I understand it, in real life it was a common adapter! Only the straight part of the interstage was different between the Thor Agenas and Deltas.

 

4 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

Im blind or an idiot. You are right, the adapter is there now and yes, i`m playing career and didn`t unlock AdvRocketry yet. Sorry, my fault.

Edit:

Found a little issue: Switch for Dioscuri-1 to Dioscuri-2 --> title is not changing to Dioscuri-2. 

SUBTYPE
	  {
	    name = CastorII
	    title =  Dioscuri-1 Solid Rocket Booster <-- here should be Dioscuri-2 Solid Rocket Booster
	    descriptionSummary = The upgraded Discouri 2 give more performance and packs in a little more solid fuel too. Was used on Daleth L, M, N etc onwards through to Daleth 2000. Regressive thrust curve 100% to 86%.
			real_title = Castor II

 

Darn, I noticed that the other day too and didn't think to fix it. That's the kind of white glove type issue we can easily miss so if you see more don't hesitate to call them out.

 

54 minutes ago, Morphisor said:

Ah I wasn't aware they were currently under development. Is it safe to start building stuff from the development branch in career or is it better to wait for an official release (long term compatibility etc.)?

Thanks for taking the time to explain this - it is indeed a Juno IV-B, dunno how I missed that error in naming it. I will try to match the figures you found and see what happens.

It's interesting to me that it is in fact historical to leave it partially empty. Any idea why that is? Were the parts also used for other systems or are they genuinely partially empty fuel tanks in the real thing as well? Did the Chrysler engines turn out to be less powerful than they were hoping for or something similar?

32 minutes ago, Zorg said:

So we would generally advise most users not to use the dev branch in a career save you really care about. Not that it stops a lot of people  In general you usually don't get save destroying issues but things are being added all the time and things like tech tree positioning can change regularly. There will also likely be a significant rebalancing of science instruments in terms of how much science they can transmit and or return coming in the next few weeks.

If you like to live dangerously the majority of new parts intended for this update are in game and most of the tech tree balancing is also done. And we do appreciate feedback from people playing with the dev branch. But yeah it is very much an at your own risk type situation  

So you posted the other day just as I started flying some Juno IV missions with the new stuff. Juno IV-A seems to be just fine but even with upgraded engines and reduced fuel loads even the new Juno IV-B has some trouble (it can get to space but with considerable difficulty and a lot of gravity losses). A careful fuel loading and mass rebalancing of Juno IV tanks is therefore in order. The Juno IV tanks actually were quite inefficient and wasteful of space. The 6k stage for instance is two spheres inside the conical tank so it would actually carry much less fuel than you would think compared to other stages of similar size. And thats before we talk about reduced propellant loading. So yeah we're still working on Juno IV-B. 

About your other point I'm not too familiar with the history of Juno IV apart from the basics such as outlined in the spacelaunch report page, maybe someone else can chime in. The reason the tanks were partially empty is indeed because the S3-D engine brought over from the Juno II was not powerful enough to lift the three stage Juno IV-B with all stages full. Juno IV wasn't a great idea IRL either and it was cancelled before it could be built. But we do want to be able to match the theoretical performance even so. The quote I posted earlier is with respect to the real world concept.

It's also worth noting that Juno IV, many ways, never even got TO the drawing board. The Juno IVB was never anything more than notional when the program ended. If you want to know more, the sum total of all information available on the Juno IV is present in this document. The drawing and photoshop'd image on Ed Kyle's site aren't really based on anything real besides the fact that both upper stages would be 70 inches in diameter. There's an interesting table near the beginning showing the relative fuel loadings for different mission profiles.

I believe another factor is they assumed that the S-3D could be upthrusted as much as 100% - see also the Saturn C-2 proposal that was a mainstay of early NASA planning. I dunno about you, but sticking a bigger-than-S-IVB stage in the middle of a Saturn C-1 seems like you'd run into TWR issues unless you've got quite a bit of confidence in Rocketdyne...

Something else worth pointing out, that I think is being overlooked - the Jupiter stage in BDB is very underscaled. It should sit about exactly between 1.5m and 1.875m but I didn't want to add another size. As a result the Juno IV is out of proportion - it should have upper stages more like 0.9375m but I decided that was already overly full with the Deltas and Agenas. So I decided to make them 1.25m because BDB doesn't have enough parts in that size.

 

RE: remaining stuff... I have OGO and Pioneer 6 to finish remaking. GATV and a bunch of misc Agena stuff. KH-9 Hexagon. After that... well, I want to remake Vega and Centaur and finish a couple Centaur payloads - Mariner 10, Pioneer Venus... I think in another month or two when the main chunk of this update is done we'll see if that should be broken off into BDB 1.8 but personally I'd rather finish remaking everything so we don't break saves every couple of months.

 

 

[Cheesecake]

11 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Darn, I noticed that the other day too and didn't think to fix it. That's the kind of white glove type issue we can easily miss so if you see more don't hesitate to call them out.

OK, next question.
Is it intended that the Agena-D secondary Engine is hidden?

[Friznit]

3 minutes ago, Cheesecake said:

OK, next question.
Is it intended that the Agena-D secondary Engine is hidden?

Yes, it's part of the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle (GATV), which is getting redone

[Zorg]

Meanwhile putting our Juno IV troubles behind us for the moment by launching a much more sensible launch vehicle  Atlas Agena B.

With a Ranger Block 1 of course. 

EDIT: Looks  like I forgot the antenna  

Edited February 9, 2020 by Zorg

[Friznit]

23 minutes ago, Zorg said:

EDIT: Looks  like I forgot the antenna  

[Zorg]

Just now, Friznit said:

 

In my defense it wasnt in the part list because it was later in the tech tree than it should have been, which I just fixed 

[Invaderchaos]

It gives me great joy and great terror to see how far I can shove together probe parts that historically were never intended to be together.

The Mariner-Ranger-Nimbus-Lunar Orbiter combo on a Burner II.

[Foxxonius Augustus]

48 minutes ago, Invaderchaos said:

It gives me great joy and great terror to see how far I can shove together probe parts that historically were never intended to be together.

The Mariner-Ranger-Nimbus-Lunar Orbiter combo on a Burner II.

~Epic Pic Snip~

This makes my so freaking happy that I wish I could like your post twice!

[Pappystein]

10 hours ago, Morphisor said:

Ah I wasn't aware they were currently under development. Is it safe to start building stuff from the development branch in career or is it better to wait for an official release (long term compatibility etc.)?

 

I play in career with the Dev branch.    Others have stated, you *COULD* have problems but I haven't ever run into any insurmountable ones.

9 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

OK, next question.
Is it intended that the Agena-D secondary Engine is hidden?

I think the USAF launched the Secondary Engine system a grand total of TWICE... as part of an experimental ENLINT system(electronic Signals intelligence.)   And both of these payloads needed precise orbital parameters.   But the engines, as others have stated, were actually DESIGNED for the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle and not the Spysat Agenas.   Therefor since GATV has not been started yet...... no you shouldn't have them.

10 hours ago, Zorg said:

So we would generally advise most users not to use the dev branch in a career save you really care about. Not that it stops a lot of people  In general you usually don't get save destroying issues but things are being added all the time and things like tech tree positioning can change regularly. There will also likely be a significant rebalancing of science instruments in terms of how much science they can transmit and or return coming in the next few weeks.

If you like to live dangerously the majority of new parts intended for this update are in game and most of the tech tree balancing is also done. And we do appreciate feedback from people playing with the dev branch. But yeah it is very much an at your own risk type situation  

So you posted the other day just as I started flying some Juno IV missions with the new stuff. Juno IV-A seems to be just fine but even with upgraded engines and reduced fuel loads even the new Juno IV-B has some trouble (it can get to space but with considerable difficulty and a lot of gravity losses). A careful fuel loading and mass rebalancing of Juno IV tanks is therefore in order. The Juno IV tanks actually were quite inefficient and wasteful of space. The 6k stage for instance is two spheres inside the conical tank so it would actually carry much less fuel than you would think compared to other stages of similar size. And thats before we talk about reduced propellant loading. So yeah we're still working on Juno IV-B. 

About your other point I'm not too familiar with the history of Juno IV apart from the basics such as outlined in the spacelaunch report page, maybe someone else can chime in. The reason the tanks were partially empty is indeed because the S3-D engine brought over from the Juno II was not powerful enough to lift the three stage Juno IV-B with all stages full. Juno IV wasn't a great idea IRL either and it was cancelled before it could be built. But we do want to be able to match the theoretical performance even so. The quote I posted earlier is with respect to the real world concept.

Cobalt has already covered a bunch of this.  BUT most of what I understand about the 6K stage (per some description work on the JPL Vega document) it was to be a truss and tank type construction, meaning that the skin we are getting shouldn't be there (it would have been covered by a Fairing on either Juno or Atlas-Vega)  

That alone should save significant amounts of mass.     An All up 6K IRL should mass 2803.17kg (based on converting from Imperial 6181lbs)  (Joe Powell's Vega Document)    That is Tank, GCU and Engine.   Joe Powell cites a Ranger document that talks at length about the 6K stage and using Vega instead of the 45K stage on Juno IV and based on his cites it has perspective performance info.     If you want to read the original material (I haven't yet at is is 600 pages long)   here is the link.   

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710029215.pdf

 

 

[Morphisor]

Finally applying the pointers given by @Zorg, I adjusted my Juno II IV-B rocket by unloading the 2nd and 3rd stage fuel tanks by half. The result was a beautiful and successful launch to orbit, with almost 3.000 Delta-v to spare!

 

Spoiler

Initial ascent

Gravity turn

Straight to Kerbol!

Orbit achieved

Fixed!

 

From here I will be doing stuff using the latest dev branch.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Morphisor
Images

[Zorg]

2 minutes ago, Morphisor said:

Finally applying the pointers given by @Zorg, I adjusted my Juno II IV-B rocket by unloading the 2nd and 3rd stage fuel tanks by half. The result was a beautiful and successful launch to orbit, with almost 3.000 Delta-v to spare!

https://imgur.com/a/tpywPfi

(sadly it seems I'm not allowed to directly post images yet )

 

From here I will be doing stuff using the latest dev branch.

Ah cool! But yeah the dev branch version of the Juno IV-B is still problematic (IV-A works), i haven't gotten round to working on it yet and there are scaling issues that need to be taken into account when balancing as Cobalt pointed out (I totally forgot about that).

Imgur album embeds are broken on the forum. But you can post individual pictures using the BB code embed.

[CobaltWolf]

5 hours ago, Morphisor said:

Finally applying the pointers given by @Zorg, I adjusted my Juno II IV-B rocket by unloading the 2nd and 3rd stage fuel tanks by half. The result was a beautiful and successful launch to orbit, with almost 3.000 Delta-v to spare!

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Initial ascent

Gravity turn

Straight to Kerbol!

Orbit achieved

Fixed!

From here I will be doing stuff using the latest dev branch.

5 hours ago, Zorg said:

Ah cool! But yeah the dev branch version of the Juno IV-B is still problematic (IV-A works), i haven't gotten round to working on it yet and there are scaling issues that need to be taken into account when balancing as Cobalt pointed out (I totally forgot about that).

Imgur album embeds are broken on the forum. But you can post individual pictures using the BB code embed.

Well I'd hope you'd have thousands of delta V to spare... the Pioneer 4 is a pretty undersized payload for that LV. @Friznit you gotta make sure your Juno IV stuff doesn't use the Pioneer 4 or the sergeant clusters. I'll have to see what payloads were tapped for it... I think the predecessor to Ranger was going to use it before switching to Atlas-Vega and then Atlas-Agena.

 

12 hours ago, Pappystein said:

I play in career with the Dev branch.    Others have stated, you *COULD* have problems but I haven't ever run into any insurmountable ones.

I think the USAF launched the Secondary Engine system a grand total of TWICE... as part of an experimental ENLINT system(electronic Signals intelligence.)   And both of these payloads needed precise orbital parameters.   But the engines, as others have stated, were actually DESIGNED for the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle and not the Spysat Agenas.   Therefor since GATV has not been started yet...... no you shouldn't have them.

Cobalt has already covered a bunch of this.  BUT most of what I understand about the 6K stage (per some description work on the JPL Vega document) it was to be a truss and tank type construction, meaning that the skin we are getting shouldn't be there (it would have been covered by a Fairing on either Juno or Atlas-Vega)  

That alone should save significant amounts of mass.     An All up 6K IRL should mass 2803.17kg (based on converting from Imperial 6181lbs)  (Joe Powell's Vega Document)    That is Tank, GCU and Engine.   Joe Powell cites a Ranger document that talks at length about the 6K stage and using Vega instead of the 45K stage on Juno IV and based on his cites it has perspective performance info.     If you want to read the original material (I haven't yet at is is 600 pages long)   here is the link.   

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710029215.pdf

re: GATV, in my defense, I didn't expect it to be deprecated for three months without replacement.  I've never seen anything about them being used outside GATV other than vague implications that GATV wasn't the only use of them... if you have a link that would be very helpful.

I just haven't felt motivated to finish GATV... at least partially because I struggled to get an accurate model of the interior beneath the docking cone. That kind of killed my motivation for it...

I asked Zorg to take a look at reducing the fuel and structural mass loadings of the Juno IV upper stages. I think it'll probably reduce total performance slightly, but in flight it will probably be nicer due to overall shorter burn times and better TWR.

The Juno IV 6K stage and the Atlas-Vega third stage are very different, Pappy. The Vega third stage would have been exposed tanks and trusses encapsulated in the Vega's 10ft fairing, but the Juno IV 6K stage would have been a normal tank-with-skirt construction ala, say, the Titan 1 second stage. Exposed tank walls and intertanks/skirts connecting them.

RE: the "Vega instead of 45K" - that's not quite a correct way of stating it. More accurately, since they had decided the 6K and 45K would be developed "in serial" due to the limited resources at JPL, they decided the much lower thrust (34K? can't remember) X-405H would be used temporarily for three launches before the 45K came online.

Also worth noting that supposedly, the Juno IVA's second stage was larger than the IVB's third stage would be - that also probably contributes to the performance issues.

[Morphisor]

Playing with dev build (version from earlier today) a bit, starting with Vanguard in career again:

With a slightly reduced final stage fuel load, 2 stages to orbit - if barely.

I assume the small amount of monoprop in the new Easton 100 fuel tank (2nd stage) is for the new Easton control module? It's not mounted in this version - doesn't seem to be needed?

The ill-fitting clamp was needed because otherwise the thing just falls over on the launch pad.

My inner autism is struggling to handle the fact that the protruding side structure of the new Eaton fuel tanks is not aligned with the engine 

I'll leave now...