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

[davidy12]

51 minutes ago, Zorg said:

Important update to the subsatellite dispenser which will now feature a decouple animation  

Dear God, love a little Kerbal Goofiness in the mix.

PS: The Ullage motors on the S-IVB is supposed to jettison

[DaveyJ576]

Okay, I need a little help. After two years of playing a Stock sized game, I finally moved up to KSRSS. So far the visuals have been blowing me away, but the learning curve on launching rockets is steep, and I knew that was going to be the case. BDB was waaay overpowered on the Stock system, but now I have having trouble getting to orbit, particularly with the Saturn IB. I just can't seem to get enough horizontal velocity. I use MechJeb on the Classic Ascent Profile. No matter what combination of parameters that I try, I can't get an Apoapsis of over 92 km and I really struggled with that. The S-IVB is still burning but it can't build up speed fast enough to get up to a usable orbit. Once I hit apoapsis the stack takes a dip and gets pulled back into the atmosphere.

After some fiddling with the MechJeb settings, I was successful with Mercury Atlas, Gemini Titan, and the ETS Saturn IC Apollo, but no joy with the Saturn IB Apollo. What am I doing wrong? First and second stages are full of fuel, all engines are upgraded, and I cut down the SM to mimimal prop and monoprop. I even tried to upgrade the first stage to four E-1 engines, but even that failed. I must be missing something very obvious. 

[Jacktical]

1 minute ago, DaveyJ576 said:

Okay, I need a little help. After two years of playing a Stock sized game, I finally moved up to KSRSS. So far the visuals have been blowing me away, but the learning curve on launching rockets is steep, and I knew that was going to be the case. BDB was waaay overpowered on the Stock system, but now I have having trouble getting to orbit, particularly with the Saturn IB. I just can't seem to get enough horizontal velocity. I use MechJeb on the Classic Ascent Profile. No matter what combination of parameters that I try, I can't get an Apoapsis of over 92 km and I really struggled with that. The S-IVB is still burning but it can't build up speed fast enough to get up to a usable orbit. Once I hit apoapsis the stack takes a dip and gets pulled back into the atmosphere.

After some fiddling with the MechJeb settings, I was successful with Mercury Atlas, Gemini Titan, and the ETS Saturn IC Apollo, but no joy with the Saturn IB Apollo. What am I doing wrong? First and second stages are full of fuel, all engines are upgraded, and I cut down the SM to mimimal prop and monoprop. I even tried to upgrade the first stage to four E-1 engines, but even that failed. I must be missing something very obvious. 

https://github.com/friznit/Unofficial-BDB-Wiki/wiki/Launching-and-Trajectories

Scroll down to lofted trajectories

[KeaKaka]

28 minutes ago, DaveyJ576 said:

Okay, I need a little help. After two years of playing a Stock sized game, I finally moved up to KSRSS. So far the visuals have been blowing me away, but the learning curve on launching rockets is steep, and I knew that was going to be the case. BDB was waaay overpowered on the Stock system, but now I have having trouble getting to orbit, particularly with the Saturn IB. I just can't seem to get enough horizontal velocity. I use MechJeb on the Classic Ascent Profile. No matter what combination of parameters that I try, I can't get an Apoapsis of over 92 km and I really struggled with that. The S-IVB is still burning but it can't build up speed fast enough to get up to a usable orbit. Once I hit apoapsis the stack takes a dip and gets pulled back into the atmosphere.

After some fiddling with the MechJeb settings, I was successful with Mercury Atlas, Gemini Titan, and the ETS Saturn IC Apollo, but no joy with the Saturn IB Apollo. What am I doing wrong? First and second stages are full of fuel, all engines are upgraded, and I cut down the SM to mimimal prop and monoprop. I even tried to upgrade the first stage to four E-1 engines, but even that failed. I must be missing something very obvious. 

Do you have BDB Now In Colours installed by any chance? Because that screws around with the mass of the old Apollo parachutes.

[biohazard15]

31 minutes ago, DaveyJ576 said:

Okay, I need a little help. After two years of playing a Stock sized game, I finally moved up to KSRSS. So far the visuals have been blowing me away, but the learning curve on launching rockets is steep, and I knew that was going to be the case. BDB was waaay overpowered on the Stock system, but now I have having trouble getting to orbit, particularly with the Saturn IB. I just can't seem to get enough horizontal velocity. I use MechJeb on the Classic Ascent Profile. No matter what combination of parameters that I try, I can't get an Apoapsis of over 92 km and I really struggled with that. The S-IVB is still burning but it can't build up speed fast enough to get up to a usable orbit. Once I hit apoapsis the stack takes a dip and gets pulled back into the atmosphere.

After some fiddling with the MechJeb settings, I was successful with Mercury Atlas, Gemini Titan, and the ETS Saturn IC Apollo, but no joy with the Saturn IB Apollo. What am I doing wrong? First and second stages are full of fuel, all engines are upgraded, and I cut down the SM to mimimal prop and monoprop. I even tried to upgrade the first stage to four E-1 engines, but even that failed. I must be missing something very obvious.

Yeah, IB tends to be hard. The secret is to use PVG and highly lofted trajectory, as detailed in wiki. Even then you're in for a long and slow ascent. Also, check Apollo for any extra mass - some mods add extra resources (like Snacks of Dangit), which you may not need on that launch.

[TruthfulGnome]

1 hour ago, davidy12 said:

PS: The Ullage motors on the S-IVB is supposed to jettison

pretty sure that theyre going to work on a way to implement that 

[Kass__XAP]

1 hour ago, davidy12 said:

Dear God, love a little Kerbal Goofiness in the mix.

PS: The Ullage motors on the S-IVB is supposed to jettison

You mean the covers on the S-IVB's Ullage Motors?

[Adam-Kerman]

5 hours ago, Zorg said:

Complete Apollo 17 (left) and Apollo 15/16 (right) configurations. Still need to do foil toggles for a couple of experiments and some tweaks to the bay itself. 

my curiosity is, is Sim Bay a separate part that can put the experiments in or is it a SM with the Sim Bay already in it?

(does that even make sense?)

[KeaKaka]

1 hour ago, Pioneer_Steve said:

You mean the covers on the S-IVB's Ullage Motors?

No, the motors themselves.

They were designed to separate from the S-IVB after they had expended their propellant and usefulness as a ullage motor.

[Zorg]

1 hour ago, Adam-Kerman said:

my curiosity is, is Sim Bay a separate part that can put the experiments in or is it a SM with the Sim Bay already in it?

(does that even make sense?)

The bay is part of the SM. But the shelves are a toggle.

[DaveyJ576]

4 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

Do you have BDB Now In Colours installed by any chance? Because that screws around with the mass of the old Apollo parachutes.

Nope. That screwed me up in my stock game so I uninstalled it. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[DaveyJ576]

5 hours ago, Hatattack said:

https://github.com/friznit/Unofficial-BDB-Wiki/wiki/Launching-and-Trajectories

Scroll down to lofted trajectories

Thanks for the link. I will take a look at it. Believe it or not I actually missed that part of the Wiki, even though I have read through it dozens of times.

This brings up an observation. This is not meant to be criticism of an otherwise outstanding mod, but is the performance of the BDB Saturn IB realistic on a 2.5 scale world? I was under the impression that the IB was a bit overweight due to the tank structure, but the real life IB put five manned CSMs into orbit on a full size Earth rather well. One even carried a docking module in the SLA. I am fully aware that the CSM was short fueled amongst other things to make it lighter, but was the IB performance really that marginal in real life? Perhaps this is a complicated programming code issue that can't be overcome so @CobaltWolfand the dev team did the best they could with a mess.

Thanks for the help. 

[birdog357]

I am pleased to announce that this https://drive.google.com/file/d/10VpXhbsT8MRxVUdg4SlbblVZ1g7fbUap/view?usp=sharing magnificently Kerbal, RL proposal works with BDB in a 2.5x stock system. Barely. I expended nearly every last ounce of fuel to get it done.  And that's by cutting a real cute Kerbin orbit rendezvous on the very first orbit at launch AP for the Gemini. I ran out of fuel in the Centaur about 200 m/s short of injection and had to finish on MP from the Lunar Gemini. I used the Agena to brake the stack into a 50k orbit, then expended the rest of the Agena as a crasher. Landed, and returned to a 25k orbit with just enough fuel to do it. Had to bring the Gemini down to meet and used the MP from the lander to match velocities. After trans-Kerbin injection, I had only the capsule MP left and maybe 5 m/s left in the SM. That was a close run thing.  

[davidy12]

On 1.11.2 so IDK if this applies on 1.12.2 but for one (and this is more of a nitpick), the SLA panels kinda jettison in a weird way.

More important bug, the IVA of the LM is backwards.

Also, don't have any pics but the F-1 engines with insulation clip through the fairings. IDK if this is impossible to fix. 

PS: Speaking of IVAs, @CobaltWolfor @Zorg I know IVAs aren't really on your agenda but aside from fixing this, is it possible to put the Stock Mk1 pod in place for the Mercury capsule?

Edited September 2, 2021 by davidy12

[Jso]

3 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

but was the IB performance really that marginal in real life?

Yes. The first stage flew a fairly standard zero angle of attack gravity turn focused on gaining altitude. The second stage clawed it's way up under low acceleration, pitching up and holding a +10 to +20 degree angle of attack for most of it's flight.

[Starhelperdude]

does the new Saturn 5 still corrupt saves?

[Cdodders]

Lotsa pics of my recent Saturn V test flight. I don't want to have to go through each individual pic and post them here one by one, there is a lot
 

https://imgur.com/gallery/i19fapF

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Cdodders

[CobaltWolf]

21 hours ago, davidy12 said:

PS: The Ullage motors on the S-IVB is supposed to jettison

It will happen, but we need to make a custom module. The existing BDB "decouple after burnout" module doesn't work with radial decouplers, since those work completely differently that stack decouplers code/module wise.

 

5 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

does the new Saturn 5 still corrupt saves?

All that and more!

 

Also, as a small reminder, I will not be streaming (or making progress on this stuff) the next two weekends due to IRL stuff.

 

[MajorLeaugeRocketScience]

7 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

does the new Saturn 5 still corrupt saves?

It broke every solar panel in the game for me, including modded solar panels (I was careful about what I was doing with them, I'm ~80% sure it was the Saturn somehow, I didn't have this issue when I was just using the Skylab the other day)

[DeadJohn]

16 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

was the IB performance really that marginal in real life?

The "official" 2nd cryo stage for some Saturn configurations has low TWR, sometimes too low to handle a regular gravity turn, while the 1st stage has high TWR. It can reach orbit but it's challenging and unforgiving.

I often take liberties when building Saturn derivatives to get more usable thrust-weight-ratios. Switch the 2nd stage to conventional LFO instead of the "official" LH2 cryo, and of course pick a new engine, to get more TWR. The extra mass of that 2nd stage uses some of the "extra" TWR of the 1st stage.

[AlphaMensae]

On 8/30/2021 at 12:27 AM, pTrevTrevs said:

And yeah, I modified the launch tower; I love Modular Launch Pads but its standard Agena tower looks way too different from the real thing for me.

The Agena/Centaur tower is a simple one because by the the time I got around to it, I was sick of making Atlas parts and did not want to spend even more time making all the various towers that Atlas used over the decades.   So I said "screw it" and made the basic mini-modular type for Atlas-Agena/Centaur.  

I was going to make the Agena arm usuable with the general towers as well, but it would have been even more work to add the switchable front wall those  tower sections, so I nixed that idea too.

[Pappystein]

1 hour ago, DeadJohn said:

The "official" 2nd cryo stage for some Saturn configurations has low TWR, sometimes too low to handle a regular gravity turn, while the 1st stage has high TWR. It can reach orbit but it's challenging and unforgiving.

I often take liberties when building Saturn derivatives to get more usable thrust-weight-ratios. Switch the 2nd stage to conventional LFO instead of the "official" LH2 cryo, and of course pick a new engine, to get more TWR. The extra mass of that 2nd stage uses some of the "extra" TWR of the 1st stage.

I just made the pre1960 version of the Saturn C-2 with the old parts.    Take the S-IVC extension tank and the twin J-2 mount... combined together with 2 new J-2 engines that is the S-III stage (or a close approximation)   Stack it between your S-I/S-IB/E-1-SI stage and the S-IVB stage.   Viola, enough thrust and dV to easily attain orbit.

yes you end up using 2x of the S-I to S-IVB interstage but so what

11 minutes ago, AlphaMensae said:

The Agena/Centaur tower is a simple one because by the the time I got around to it, I was sick of making Atlas parts and did not want to spend even more time making all the various towers that Atlas used over the decades.   So I said "screw it" and made the basic mini-modular type for Atlas-Agena/Centaur.  

I was going to make the Agena arm usuable with the general towers as well, but it would have been even more work to add the switchable front wall those  tower sections, so I nixed that idea too.

Curiosity question,   Any chance of an update to the Gemini elevator to support SRBs up to UA-1208 in size?  IE remove the side skirt below the "cabin" at the top/ make a cabin extension?    That way I can use an elongated elevator to support manned launches off of latter Titans....   (no issue if it isn't in the cards!)     I just like the look of it.... (looks for screenie with the setup I am using ATM...)

My super-Mun flyby (JNSQ) from Sunday.

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Pappystein

[AlphaMensae]

28 minutes ago, Pappystein said:

Curiosity question,   Any chance of an update to the Gemini elevator to support SRBs up to UA-1208 in size?  IE remove the side skirt below the "cabin" at the top/ make a cabin extension?    That way I can use an elongated elevator to support manned launches off of latter Titans....   (no issue if it isn't in the cards!)     I just like the look of it.... (looks for screenie with the setup I am using ATM...)

It does have two extra height variants, but otherwise it's the Titan II GLV erector/elevator and not meant for the Titan III. Titan III was stacked atop its mobile launch platform in those various buildings of the ITL complex; if a crewed Titan III was ever launched, most likely a separate crew elevator would have been added to one of the pads....much like how one was added to SLC-41 for Atlas V-Starliner  

[OrbitalManeuvers]

I put a Not-a-Hubble into space:

Spoiler

 

[Jcking]

Some artwork for SLC-6 (MOL configuration) seem to suggest that the angled concrete structure might be used for crew access (alternatively it might have been the mobile service tower that provided crew access like Atlas). Personally I just use the X-Large crew elevator and one of the mini crew arms in place of the Titan III service structure to act as a crew access point.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Jcking