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

[SpaceFace545]

29 minutes ago, Grimmas said:

Is the Pioneer 10 really supposed to have eight different parts with UV experiments on board? That seems a bit weird at first glance.

Iirc the modules are all placeholders right now.

[braxfortex]

1 hour ago, Grimmas said:

Is the Pioneer 10 really supposed to have eight different parts with UV experiments on board? That seems a bit weird at first glance.

  

1 hour ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Iirc the modules are all placeholders right now.

I copied in some reasonable sounding experiments from other parts of BDB while I was waiting for the official update.  I'm garbage at modding, so I'm not about to do a pull request or anything, but I can post the code here if I can figure out how if you want to update it yourself.

[GoldForest]

Guys, I think there's something wrong with my Saturn IB.

Ah yes, there's the problem, the engines are under performing.

BAIL!

It's still going...

Welp, guess the termination program needs some work. 

(The engines weren't underperforming, the Saturn IB is just too heavy in this configuration. Like a ~.91 TWR, and that's with the original engines, the 1973 engines get around 0.98)

Bonus Image:

Anybody got marshmallows?

Edited November 13, 2021 by GoldForest

[Starhelperdude]

7 hours ago, Taco Salad said:

 so of course I'm gonna ask the probably dumb question of when do y'all think we'll get to play with these new toys?


 

I remember that last year, while stuff like thor and the sats where beeing remade, I had no idea how to access the dev branch, but I also didn't have the courage to ask how I could access it. But since someone else asked for it I know it since then

[EvilSpace]

On 11/12/2021 at 6:02 AM, GoldForest said:

C-8 can easily made without SSTU.  Third stage from BDB, the S-IVB, second stage from BDB, use the S-IC in place of the S-II-8, and the first stage is kitbashed from the 7.5m parts from Near Future Launch Vehicles.

After my testing of the lunar direct ascent lander, the main (and unsolvable) problem was the redundancy of the launch vehicle. In the realities of the KSP (x2.5), the alternative lander lunar direct ascent turns out to be approximately the same in mass as the legendary "Eagle + Apollo", which is why the meaning in Saturn C-8 simply falls off for the lunar missions of the KSP. The only place where Saturn C-8 can come in handy is either martian missions or delivering heavier payloads to LEO.

The lander can, of course, be increased, thereby solving the Saturn C-8 redundancy problem, but this is beyond the scope of historical accuracy, since the "canon" uses the usual Apollo capsule. At the very least, I would rather not mess with it, but use the power of Saturn C-8 where it is really needed.

[Neebel]

9 hours ago, Taco Salad said:

o of course I'm gonna ask the probably dumb question of when do y'all think we'll get to play with these new toys?

I know that we can already get them in the dev branch, but I'd like to know if there's any rough ETA for the full release?

[GoldForest]

35 minutes ago, EvilSpace said:

After my testing of the lunar direct ascent lander, the main (and unsolvable) problem was the redundancy of the launch vehicle. In the realities of the KSP (x2.5), the alternative lander lunar direct ascent turns out to be approximately the same in mass as the legendary "Eagle + Apollo", which is why the meaning in Saturn C-8 simply falls off for the lunar missions of the KSP. The only place where Saturn C-8 can come in handy is either martian missions or delivering heavier payloads to LEO.

The lander can, of course, be increased, thereby solving the Saturn C-8 redundancy problem, but this is beyond the scope of historical accuracy, since the "canon" uses the usual Apollo capsule. At the very least, I would rather not mess with it, but use the power of Saturn C-8 where it is really needed.

Saturn C-8 was made to skip the circularize step that the Saturn V 3rd stage had to do. C-8 is meant to do direct ascent to the Moon/Mun with both the Apollo Module and the Lunar Lander. If you can easily direct ascent  to the Mun with the C-8, it's doing its job. For Martian/Duna missions, I'm not completely sure, but I think it was direct ascent as well. I know for a fact that C-8 was planned for Martian missions, but was never made due to many reasons. One of them being that cost of building a new launch pad and adding more height to the VAB, which couldn't be done because budget cuts. 

[Zorg]

2 hours ago, Neebel said:

I know that we can already get them in the dev branch, but I'd like to know if there's any rough ETA for the full release?

Most of the content for an initial release is in the dev branch already. This is not a firm commitment but hopefully early next year.

There's more Saturn, Skylab and Apollo derived stuff to come but once we have managed to catch up in functionality to the old parts we want to put out a release and then work on weirder more speculative stuff for a subsequent release.

[DaveyJ576]

3 hours ago, EvilSpace said:

After my testing of the lunar direct ascent lander, the main (and unsolvable) problem was the redundancy of the launch vehicle. In the realities of the KSP (x2.5), the alternative lander lunar direct ascent turns out to be approximately the same in mass as the legendary "Eagle + Apollo", which is why the meaning in Saturn C-8 simply falls off for the lunar missions of the KSP. The only place where Saturn C-8 can come in handy is either martian missions or delivering heavier payloads to LEO.

The lander can, of course, be increased, thereby solving the Saturn C-8 redundancy problem, but this is beyond the scope of historical accuracy, since the "canon" uses the usual Apollo capsule. At the very least, I would rather not mess with it, but use the power of Saturn C-8 where it is really needed.

This photo highlights one of the major considerations of landing the Apollo Direct lander on the moon. How does the pilot see down while laying on his back? The solution(?) was to provide him with two periscope-like devices sticking out to either side. Think of backing up your car while only looking in the rear view mirror. Yikes! With the primitive avionics of the day that gave everyone cause for concern while landing this multi-ton, multi-story machine. 

[Jcking]

11 hours ago, Taco Salad said:

Someone has probably already brought it up, buuuut, would a deployable wing Gemini be considered? Gliding a capsule back down to the desert runway would be fun, and I'm sure with the lego-ability most of the parts here have that I'd be sticking it onto as much stuff as I feasibly could. I'd check if this was already brought up and responded to, but I have no clue how to search just this thread.

The Gemini paraglider didn’t really work IRL.

[Grimmas]

7 hours ago, braxfortex said:

  

I copied in some reasonable sounding experiments from other parts of BDB while I was waiting for the official update.  I'm garbage at modding, so I'm not about to do a pull request or anything, but I can post the code here if I can figure out how if you want to update it yourself.

If you let me know which experiments you matched with which parts, I can take a look and prepare a pull request. No need to post the whole code, I just need to know the "name" of the parts and experiments.

[Zorg]

30 minutes ago, Grimmas said:

If you let me know which experiments you matched with which parts, I can take a look and prepare a pull request. No need to post the whole code, I just need to know the "name" of the parts and experiments.

While they havent gotten around to it yet, @Invaderchaos should have a clear idea of what experiments and what balance should be on the Pioneer parts. I would not bother with a pull request at least not without discussing with Invader

[braxfortex]

28 minutes ago, Grimmas said:

If you let me know which experiments you matched with which parts, I can take a look and prepare a pull request. No need to post the whole code, I just need to know the "name" of the parts and experiments.

Well, the bluedog_Pioneer_AMD I swiped the Infrared Telescope from the Squad CamSat Sentinel asteroid day thing.  (I figured they were both for spotting asteroids and meteoroids).
The bluedog_Pioneer_CPD I got from Bluedog_IonSensor
The bluedog_Pioneer_CRT is the bluedog_OGO_OPEP_2
bluedog_Pioneer_GeigerTube is Bluedog_Geiger
bluedog_Pioneer_InfraredRadiometer is bluedog_IRspec
bluedog_Pioneer_PlasmaAnalyzer is bd_rpws from bluedog_Helios_RPWSAntenna (the experiment is )
bluedog_Pioneer_TRD is bd_ionElec from bluedog_Explorer_Beacon_SLR 

That's the 7 that I changed.

 

 

 

[Pappystein]

8 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Guys, I think there's something wrong with my Saturn IB.

Ah yes, there's the problem, the engines are under performing.

BAIL!

It's still going...

Welp, guess the termination program needs some work. 

(The engines weren't underperforming, the Saturn IB is just too heavy in this configuration. Like a ~.91 TWR, and that's with the original engines, the 1973 engines get around 0.98)

Bonus Image:

Anybody got marshmallows?

Great attempt...  You have attempted something that Marshal SFC / ABMA never did.   You made a stage up of actual Redstone and Jupiter tanks(ish.)

Historically: MSFC/ABMA did NOT take Redstone and Jupiter tanks to make a Saturn.    They used the machine tools and jigs that were used to make those previous rockets and made ALL NEW TANKS that had nothing, other than diameter, to do with Redstone and Jupiter.  Some materials from the previous stages remained but mostly they were all new tanks.  This saved a huge amount of mass as your test flight has just shown.

By building it your way you are literally adding ~20% to the weight for useless things like inter tank fittings, separate Fuel and Oxidizer tanks within the big tanks and whatnot

yet again proof the media is dumb.   "oh they re-used the tools that made both the redstone and the Jupiter.  it MUST be actual Redstone and Jupiter tanks making up the Juno-V stage... I will report it as such"

 

Still all said and done, A) Valiant attempt, and B) safe getaway

Suggestion before you launch your rockets (this is something I do all the time) go to the action groups and make certain you shut down EVERY engine that is not part of the escape maneuver.      This won't stop a run away stage but might have saved the debris or at-least more of the rocket to recover.   I mean you can ignore this step if you are doing it for the lols

 

[tater]

@CobaltWolf

https://web.archive.org/web/20120502045607/http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Future_Expansion

In case it has anything useful for you.

 

[Grimmas]

1 hour ago, Zorg said:

While they havent gotten around to it yet, @Invaderchaos should have a clear idea of what experiments and what balance should be on the Pioneer parts. I would not bother with a pull request at least not without discussing with Invader

Sure, I'll leave it to you guys then.

1 hour ago, braxfortex said:

Well, the bluedog_Pioneer_AMD I swiped the Infrared Telescope from the Squad CamSat Sentinel asteroid day thing.  (I figured they were both for spotting asteroids and meteoroids).
The bluedog_Pioneer_CPD I got from Bluedog_IonSensor
The bluedog_Pioneer_CRT is the bluedog_OGO_OPEP_2
bluedog_Pioneer_GeigerTube is Bluedog_Geiger
bluedog_Pioneer_InfraredRadiometer is bluedog_IRspec
bluedog_Pioneer_PlasmaAnalyzer is bd_rpws from bluedog_Helios_RPWSAntenna (the experiment is )
bluedog_Pioneer_TRD is bd_ionElec from bluedog_Explorer_Beacon_SLR 

That's the 7 that I changed.

I won't do a PR as per above but still thanks for sharing! I'll probably make this change in my own game until the BDB team comes out with something official.

[Jcking]

32 minutes ago, tater said:

@CobaltWolf

https://web.archive.org/web/20120502045607/http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Future_Expansion

In case it has anything useful for you.

 

nassp is still basically the same as it is today. The links to the reports are dead, but copying and pasting them into the wayback machine can bring back almost all of them.

[Pappystein]

14 hours ago, Taco Salad said:

Tried it, far too outdated it seems. A shame.

nope works fine on 1.12.2   Mind you the aerodynamics are a bit wonky (I was gliding backwards for a bit)  

you DO have to download separately Retractable Lifting Surfaces

you also DO need some small airbreaks as this thing will rip in at 79m/s with limited controlablity (the built in Airbrakes create a huge pitch change so don't use em

 

[keidax]

I'm having trouble figuring out how the camera return capsule is supposed to work.

I have a contract to take some photos and return them to Kerbin. I've taken several photos, but there seems to be no way to transfer them into a return capsule. My vessel has 2 return capsule pods, and both say "Status: 0 experiments". What am I missing?

[Grimmas]

You need to right click on the return capsule (if you built everything correctly it will be quite a challenge to right click on it since it will be hidden by the heatshield, but you can right click on its icon in the staging list instead) and then select the menu item to move/collect all data there.  Edit: take this with a grain of salt, it's been a while since I last used that feature.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Grimmas

[Transformatron]

Just noticed that the AJ260 is added which is very pog, but will there be a version without a skirt for side mounting or no?

[Pappystein]

1 hour ago, Transformatron said:

Just noticed that the AJ260 is added which is very pog, but will there be a version without a skirt for side mounting or no?

side-mount coming soon(TM)

Just don't ask me when because I am not the dev

 

2 hours ago, keidax said:

I'm having trouble figuring out how the camera return capsule is supposed to work.

I have a contract to take some photos and return them to Kerbin. I've taken several photos, but there seems to be no way to transfer them into a return capsule. My vessel has 2 return capsule pods, and both say "Status: 0 experiments". What am I missing?

Grimmas, has it by the right.   In the future, before you apply Heat shields, I suggest you create an action group for each of your return capsules (there are 4 on Kh9 for example)   The AG should have "Gather all science" or whatever it is called for the current pod you would eject NEXT.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Pappystein

[Adam-Kerman]

Saturn HO6B

[CDSlice]

12 minutes ago, Adam-Kerman said:

Saturn HO6B

What kind of monster payload are you launching that needs that thing? Looks gorgeous though

[pTrevTrevs]

Apollo 9: Out On a Limb

So I can't believe I never noticed this before, but apparently LM-3 Spider did not actually have the RCS plume deflectors installed. As a matter of fact none of the LMs before LM-5 Eagle featured them. I have no idea why, but maybe someone more knowledgeable than I can explain more.

Anyway, here's the rest of the gallery:

Quote

I do love the new docking target on the LM; now all we need is a reticule in the command module's interior to better use it.

Apollo 9 performed pitch, yaw, and roll maneuvers with the LM attached to test the combined spacecraft's controllability. The LM descent engine was also test-fired while still docked to the command module, an experiment which would prove vital to the Apollo 13 mission the following April.

The first EVA of the Apollo era also tested the new A7L spacesuit and PLSS backpack, as well as an astronaut's ability to move between the LM and CM from the exterior, in case the docking tunnel should become blocked.

Finally, Spider is undocked for a period of free flight. This was the first time that astronauts had orbited the Earth in a spacecraft that could not safely return them home.

Some hours later, the much-lightened Spider returns to Gumdrop, and the crew transfers film and equipment out of the LM and replaces it with waste and garbage.

Spider is then jettisoned, its role in this mission complete. It will remain in space for twelve more years, a silent and vigilant relic of the golden age of spaceflight, until its orbit finally decays in October, 1981, some six months after the first flight of the Space Shuttle. RIP in Peace.

All that remains now is for the final rehearsal. In two months' time, Apollo 10 will return to the Moon, to paint a great white line in the sky for the Apollo 11 crew to triumphantly cross.