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

[DeadJohn]

15 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

As far as Big G, I may do Gemini Direct at some point? Which includes some 4.25m stages that are pretty perfect for that.

But, what about this for a shortened S-IVB? It's actually stupidly cute the more I look at it...

[image snipped for brevity]

Pretty! I assume that's a separate tank and mount, not both in a single part.

More Gemini Direct and Big G are welcome. I like BDB Gemini because it's more amenable to kitbashing than Apollo, simply because the capsule is smaller and already has so many parts to adapt it to larger diameters and more crew.

If you're taking Gemini requests, a modified capsule with a 0.9 or 1.25m upper node to accept existing BDB docking ports (CAD and the other name I forget) would be awesome. It might also need a BDB-ified radial chute unless you think a chute+port belong in a single part.

[Beccab]

17 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Best I can do without breaking the model/UVs, any more and we need to start figuring out the ISP of corrugated metal...

Oh god, I love it

[TheLoneOne]

Just now, Beccab said:

Oh god, I love it

i love it more

[Friznit]

I love lamp

[MikoYurei]

Also, i saw white texture for Apollo SM in block 2 version, i wonder, maybe we could get this white texture or something more modern-like for block 3 SM? It would be awesom with modern texture of Apollo command module and advanced heat shield

[Jcking]

46 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

If you're taking Gemini requests, a modified capsule with a 0.9 or 1.25m upper node to accept existing BDB docking ports (CAD and the other name I forget) would be awesome. It might also need a BDB-ified radial chute unless you think a chute+port belong in a single part.

Gemini can't transfer crew through the front. you'll have to go through the back or out the hatch, and there are several parts to accommodate rear docking. Mercury has an escape hatch in the front, but you have to remove part of the instrument panel, and main and drogue chutes (plus containers) to get through it, and then squeeze through a space that's barely big enough for one to crawl out of.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Jcking

[DeadJohn]

7 minutes ago, Jcking said:

Gemini can't transfer crew through the front. you'll have to go through the back or out the hatch, and there are several parts to accommodate rear docking. Mercury has an escape hatch in the front, but you have to remove part of the instrument panel, and main and drogue chutes (plus containers) to get through it, and then squeeze through a space that's barely big enough for one to crawl out of.

I know that real life Gemini can't fit crew out the front as-built, and generally avoid doing so in-game even though the game doesn't stop it. However, if the 0.6m nose was widened in a variant that fits a 0.9m nose docking port, we can hand-wave the imaginary nose equipment sideways into that extra volume, and nose transfer becomes plausible.

[Entr8899]

24 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

I know that real life Gemini can't fit crew out the front as-built, and generally avoid doing so in-game even though the game doesn't stop it. However, if the 0.6m nose was widened in a variant that fits a 0.9m nose docking port, we can hand-wave the imaginary nose equipment sideways into that extra volume, and nose transfer becomes plausible.

Something I'd love to see is a 1.5m to 1.25m parachute cover to go on the front of Big G, where the normal-sized Gemini would normally go, to make an entirely new crew vehicle. Sort of like a cursed Orion.

[akron]

On 6/13/2022 at 1:14 AM, Entr8899 said:

Or team up with @akron to complete his Viking lander?

Ok, you got it

Edited June 15, 2022 by akron

[KeaKaka]

4 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Saturn kickstage anyone?

[TaintedLion]

Just now, KeaKaka said:

Saturn kickstage anyone?

step by step guide on how to make a kickstage

step 1: take rocket stage

step 2: chop half it off

step 3: ???

step 4: profit

[RocketBoy1641]

Several quotes here because I have been extremely busy and while I have kept watching and drooling over the developments, I didn't have my pc handy to do comments and I hate to do such with my phone.

RE: Pioneer and "Ranger" landers.   I think the addition of Viking would be a great round out of the landers of that era.  There used to be a mod for it; but it was abandoned years ago.  If IRC it was a Lonesome Robot mod.

 

On 6/8/2022 at 10:13 PM, CobaltWolf said:

Yes, we're going to provide radiators for interplanetary chemical rockets.

 

In other news, a quick extra LM part: The J-series Q3 cargo module. I figured you'd all need more cargo room at some point. For what? We'll see...

Thank you GREATLY!!!! Oh, while I have no idea what you are planning, I already have loadouts in use from the dev thread of it.

On 6/11/2022 at 11:24 AM, CobaltWolf said:

Speak of the devil...

  Hide contents

Big stuff happening on stream today https://www.twitch.tv/cobaltwolfy

  Hide contents

 

 

Watching with much anticipation.  Far nicer than the part bashing I have done since asking about it.

On 6/13/2022 at 11:04 PM, septemberWaves said:

Looking very nice. But of course the real question is "when are we getting the lunar worm?"

(In case it's not apparent, this is a joke.)

Respects; but "Just say NO!" We already have a whole tribe to Krakens.... we don't need ship or base eating space worms.

10 hours ago, Shlyopa said:

LM lab but to moon

I also want to suggest hydrogen only switch to VFB lab ( for using it with nuclear engines) and stretched variant (S IV C) for ETS saturn.

+1.  This is the only reason I haven't stuck a nuke on the back of the Wetlab.  S-IV stages would be wonderful too though

[Alpha512]

9 hours ago, Beccab said:

On that note, is shortening the S-IVB doable too? There's a few proposals that try to do that, and atm the only way to replicate those is tweakscaling NFLV

Also a shortened S-IC please? Would be nice for C-3/C-4 (late versions) and other "medium" Saturns

[Pappystein]

On 6/14/2022 at 11:29 AM, CobaltWolf said:

 

****REAL S-IVC NOISES!****

 

Also @CobaltWolf   Might have a Simple solution for the Slush Hydrogen that is part of this stage... Just bump LH2 up to a 16: or 17: ratio instead of the normal 15: ratio.    Gives longer time on orbit before boiloff... No need for additional engine switches on the LH2 engines

 

5 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Best I can do without breaking the model/UVs, any more and we need to start figuring out the ISP of corrugated metal...

Also this would be about the perfect length to work with the S-IV mount and RL10s...   As an Alternative to the real S-IV

 

[GoldForest]

34 minutes ago, Pappystein said:

****REAL S-IVC NOISES!****

 

Also @CobaltWolf   Might have a Simple solution for the Slush Hydrogen that is part of this stage... Just bump LH2 up to a 16: or 17: ratio instead of the normal 15: ratio.    Gives longer time on orbit before boiloff... No need for additional engine switches on the LH2 engines

 

Also this would be about the perfect length to work with the S-IV mount and RL10s...   As an Alternative to the real S-IV

 

Going to need like 8 RL10s. Possibly more. 

[Joontry]

On 5/24/2022 at 12:33 PM, Entr8899 said:

Downgrade to BDB version 1.11 and remove all Saturn related parts from your crafts.

Hi, I don't see a version 1.11. The latest version on CKAN is 1.10.2. I spent around a hundred hours designing all those crafts and it would be great if they were not all lost because of the latest BDB update. Please let me know if there is a solution. It takes a long time for me to start the game so it's hard to test a lot of stab-in-the-dark solutions.

Problem: "I recently updated BDB and a bunch of crafts that I designed late last year are no longer opening. Most say they have locked or invalid parts, and that part is usually bluedog.Saturn.S4.Tankage or bluedog.Saturn.S4B.WideInterstage. Is there a fix so I can still use these crafts with the latest version of BDB? Or does anyone know which version I need to revert to to use my craft files again? Thanks for the great mod and thanks in advance for any assistance.

Best regards,

Joontry

[pTrevTrevs]

Nothing much to share tonight, just a couple stills of the launch coverage of Skylab 5. Will share more once the mission has progressed a ways:

 

Bonus non-BDB-related screenshot:

Spoiler

Dollar-store F-104 flying over Edwards AFB, because I recently finished Ace Combat 7 and realized how cool the Starfighter is. Used this craft as an excuse to configure the Edwards launch site in preparation for my upcoming shuttle missions. Will probably showcase them either in the SOCK thread or the Shuttle Adventures thread in Mission Reports.

 

[Joontry]

1 hour ago, Joontry said:

Hi, I don't see a version 1.11. The latest version on CKAN is 1.10.2. I spent around a hundred hours designing all those crafts and it would be great if they were not all lost because of the latest BDB update. Please let me know if there is a solution. It takes a long time for me to start the game so it's hard to test a lot of stab-in-the-dark solutions.

Problem: "I recently updated BDB and a bunch of crafts that I designed late last year are no longer opening. Most say they have locked or invalid parts, and that part is usually bluedog.Saturn.S4.Tankage or bluedog.Saturn.S4B.WideInterstage. Is there a fix so I can still use these crafts with the latest version of BDB? Or does anyone know which version I need to revert to to use my craft files again? Thanks for the great mod and thanks in advance for any assistance.

Best regards,

Joontry

So I downgraded to Version 1.9.0 and now I am able to open all my craft files again. Yay! I guess I'd have to remove all the Sarnus parts before updating in order to not lose my crafts?

[CobaltWolf]

18 minutes ago, Joontry said:

So I downgraded to Version 1.9.0 and now I am able to open all my craft files again. Yay! I guess I'd have to remove all the Sarnus parts before updating in order to not lose my crafts?

I'd finish that save and start a new one with the new parts. They're quite an improvement.

[Joontry]

5 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I'd finish that save and start a new one with the new parts. They're quite an improvement.

Thanks for your work on this great mod! Sorry, ditching this save is not really an option for me with the amount time invested. I'm still curious if deleting all Sarnus parts will allow me to open my craft files after updating from 1.9, if anyone knows the answer to that question? That would be more practical for me, as it's mostly just my reuseable lifters and launch vehicles that use the sarnus parts and replacing those parts with place-holders while I update and redesign the lifters would be way less time consuming than starting my whole save over from scratch.

[dababykerman]

Hello there, I was trying to load up KSP with BDB and a few other mods and now it's stuck on loading the Mercury RCS. I was wondering if there were any mods that could cause that to happen or if it's just a weird glitch and I should restart KSP?

[GoldForest]

44 minutes ago, dababykerman said:

Hello there, I was trying to load up KSP with BDB and a few other mods and now it's stuck on loading the Mercury RCS. I was wondering if there were any mods that could cause that to happen or if it's just a weird glitch and I should restart KSP?

It's most likely a mod conflict or an outdated mod. Check your KSP.log file.

[biohazard15]

17 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Best I can do without breaking the model/UVs, any more and we need to start figuring out the ISP of corrugated metal...

YES!!!

This is exactly what I need for that Ariane-sque Saturn-I I've shown a couple pages ago. And for S-IVB in general.

Hmm, I wonder how this would behave with 4x RL-10 instead of J-2...

[GoldForest]

1 hour ago, biohazard15 said:

YES!!!

This is exactly what I need for that Ariane-sque Saturn-I I've shown a couple pages ago. And for S-IVB in general.

Hmm, I wonder how this would behave with 4x RL-10 instead of J-2...

Has a 1+ Twr by itself and around 6000+ in DV. Though, that's by itself. No payload or apollo.

Edited June 16, 2022 by GoldForest

[CobaltWolf]

11 hours ago, Joontry said:

Thanks for your work on this great mod! Sorry, ditching this save is not really an option for me with the amount time invested. I'm still curious if deleting all Sarnus parts will allow me to open my craft files after updating from 1.9, if anyone knows the answer to that question? That would be more practical for me, as it's mostly just my reuseable lifters and launch vehicles that use the sarnus parts and replacing those parts with place-holders while I update and redesign the lifters would be way less time consuming than starting my whole save over from scratch.

Ok, thought about this a bit on the drive in to my office. I'd just stick to BDB v1.9 if things are working well for you now - BDB v1.10 was almost entirely focused on updating the Saturn and Apollo parts, so if you're already happily using the existing versions of those, there isn't a lot to get from the update. My chief concern, if you were to try and 'merge' 1.9 and 1.10, is that stuff like the compatibility files, things like that, are all updated and pointing at the new part names, not the old one. So I think if you tried to use BDB v1.10, but with the v1.9 Saturn folder, those Saturn parts would have issues.

 

14 hours ago, Pappystein said:

Also this would be about the perfect length to work with the S-IV mount and RL10s...   As an Alternative to the real S-IV

I actually did briefly look into that while I was making the shortened S-IVB. I wanted to take the green 'cone', and everything that attached to it, and stick it on the tankbutt in the S-IVB mount. Zorg did the same thing, in reverse, for the single engine S-IV mount. I didn't work well, but I think I can make it work with a bit of elbow grease.

 

19 hours ago, DeadJohn said:

If you're taking Gemini requests, a modified capsule with a 0.9 or 1.25m upper node to accept existing BDB docking ports (CAD and the other name I forget) would be awesome. It might also need a BDB-ified radial chute unless you think a chute+port belong in a single part.

19 hours ago, Jcking said:

Gemini can't transfer crew through the front. you'll have to go through the back or out the hatch, and there are several parts to accommodate rear docking. Mercury has an escape hatch in the front, but you have to remove part of the instrument panel, and main and drogue chutes (plus containers) to get through it, and then squeeze through a space that's barely big enough for one to crawl out of.

18 hours ago, DeadJohn said:

I know that real life Gemini can't fit crew out the front as-built, and generally avoid doing so in-game even though the game doesn't stop it. However, if the 0.6m nose was widened in a variant that fits a 0.9m nose docking port, we can hand-wave the imaginary nose equipment sideways into that extra volume, and nose transfer becomes plausible.

First off - I'm really not taking Gemini requests right now. I've got a pretty long to-do list at the moment.

Regarding "wide nose" Gemini, and this pretty much all applies to the Apollo as well, it's actually a pretty big ask. From a real-life hardware perspective, once you start changing the shape of the capsule like that, you're suddenly designing an entirely new spacecraft. So it's a somewhat unrealistic solution. With the Gemini, you also rapidly lose visibility out the forward windows.

Then there's what it would actually take me, the modder, to do such a thing. I'm going to try and illustrate this, so people understand the problem with doing something like this.
Here's just a normal cylinder, ring of vertices on the top and bottom. It's easy to change the diameter of one end by grabbing them and scaling them.

 

Here's the Gemini capsule. As you can see, the geometry is much more complex (to a fault, almost), and selecting the top to change the diameter just results in a really jacked up model. Properly changing the slope would take an extensive amount of time moving all those vertices by hand - and the end result probably wouldn't be that good.

 

 

19 hours ago, MikoYurei said:

Also, i saw white texture for Apollo SM in block 2 version, i wonder, maybe we could get this white texture or something more modern-like for block 3 SM? It would be awesom with modern texture of Apollo command module and advanced heat shield

Yeah it's been on my to-do list for a bit now.

 

14 hours ago, Alpha512 said:

Also a shortened S-IC please? Would be nice for C-3/C-4 (late versions) and other "medium" Saturns

I don't see why not, I suppose?

Edited June 16, 2022 by CobaltWolf