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


CobaltWolf

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Some issues about the OGO satellite. According to this figure on NASA documentary, the experiment boom 2 and 3 on OGO should be UHF and VHF antenna. I checked the NSSDC webpage, the charged particle experiments (on boom 3 in game) was done on the forward experiment boom, and the probe does not have gravity experiment (on boom 4 in game) onboard. However, it has a trapped radiation experiment on one of the OPEP.

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/displayExperiment.action?spacecraftId=1966-049A
ogo_diagram.gif

Edited by zw_45
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  On 3/10/2024 at 9:39 PM, DaveyJ576 said:

@Zorg, outstanding work as always. The attention to detail is amazing. Thank you for all of this work.

By the way, the earliest version of the MA-1 powerplant that flew on the first three Atlas A test flights (Atlas 4A June 1957, Atlas 6A in September 1957, and Atlas 12A in December, 1957) actually had cone-shaped nozzles for the two booster engines. The first two flights ended in failure, but 12A succeeded in flying a 600nm flight. As part of the crash engineering troubleshooting process following the first two failures,  Rocketdyne shifted to bell-shaped nozzles, but they were not ready for the 12A flight. Atlas 10A flew successfully on January 10, 1958, the first with bell-shaped nozzles, establishing the standard for all further Atlas flights. This was almost a SpaceX style iterative approach to rocket design. Build it, fly it, blow it up, fix it, fly it again. In this case they were doing it because they had no choice due to limited (as compared to today) ground testing capabilities and not because it was part of the Rocketdyne/Convair corporate mantra.

Just a historical FYI for everyone, don't spend the time redoing the nozzles.

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Interesting, didn't know about this tbh. I've got a fair amount of Atlas A pics in my refs but none of the conical nozzles. But probably not worth doing even if I had though,  if as you pointed out only a handful of flights used them.

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  On 3/12/2024 at 2:43 PM, Zorg said:

Interesting, didn't know about this tbh. I've got a fair amount of Atlas A pics in my refs but none of the conical nozzles. But probably not worth doing even if I had though,  if as you pointed out only a handful of flights used them.

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Atlas 8A at the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum has conical booster nozzles, though for some reason they also stuck a sustainer engine on it for display. I agree though that it probably isn't worth doing for Atlas.

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  On 3/12/2024 at 2:54 PM, Razgriz1 said:

Atlas 8A at the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum has conical booster nozzles, though for some reason they also stuck a sustainer engine on it for display. I agree though that it probably isn't worth doing for Atlas.

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It's not even a sustainer engine, it's just... the lower half of a booster bell?

dsc44743.jpg

 

  On 3/12/2024 at 3:20 AM, zw_45 said:

Some issues about the OGO satellite. According to this figure on NASA documentary, the experiment boom 2 and 3 on OGO should be UHF and VHF antenna. I checked the NSSDC webpage, the charged particle experiments (on boom 3 in game) was done on the forward experiment boom, and the probe does not have gravity experiment (on boom 4 in game) onboard. However, it has a trapped radiation experiment on one of the OPEP.

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/displayExperiment.action?spacecraftId=1966-049A
 

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Thanks for letting us know! I'll try and take a look at that soon.

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Here’s another thing I found about probe science - the Stanford antenna on Pioneer 6 and the dipole antenna on Alouette actually function as frequency sounder to study the electron density in ionosphere. It might be appropriate to add bd_ionelec experiment to those antennas.

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=1965-105A-04
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=1962-049A-01

Edited by zw_45
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  On 3/12/2024 at 3:01 PM, CobaltWolf said:

It's not even a sustainer engine, it's just... the lower half of a booster bell?

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It could be a bell from a sustainer, the very first LR105 was not aspirated, just had the exhaust off to the side based on the illustrations I've seen. Don't have a photo of a full engine though.

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  On 3/12/2024 at 2:43 PM, Zorg said:

Interesting, didn't know about this tbh. I've got a fair amount of Atlas A pics in my refs but none of the conical nozzles. But probably not worth doing even if I had though,  if as you pointed out only a handful of flights used them.

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The only way it would be worth it is if you were doing the RZ.1 or RZ.2 for the Bluestreak as it would be the same model

 

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  On 3/11/2024 at 6:19 PM, CobaltWolf said:

Think of it as a teaser, if you will...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

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It's sad that one of the pilots of this aircraft died mid-airing into my Semi-truck.... err avatar :( 

 

  On 3/12/2024 at 6:10 PM, Zorg said:

It could be a bell from a sustainer, the very first LR105 was not aspirated, just had the exhaust off to the side based on the illustrations I've seen. Don't have a photo of a full engine though.

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I am pretty certain that if you get a picture of that from a different angle you can see that the center engine is literally some of the First gen slab sided XLR-89 bells cut and spliced together it isn't a LR-105 (telling is the flat shelf just below the skirt)

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How do you get this to work with Textures Unlimited?  I installed both, as well as the recolor depot, through CKAN.  But the Apollo command module just shows up as a semi-reflective dull grey, even with the game's reflective settings turned up.

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  On 3/12/2024 at 5:04 PM, zw_45 said:

Here’s another thing I found about probe science - the Stanford antenna on Pioneer 6 and the dipole antenna on Alouette actually function as frequency sounder to study the electron density in ionosphere. It might be appropriate to add bd_ionelec experiment to those antennas.

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=1965-105A-04
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=1962-049A-01

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Maybe you should do a pull request for this feature. It's not hard to add experiments to the config files and the BDB guys might be willing to accept this small change :D

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  On 3/9/2024 at 5:56 PM, Zorg said:

Some more Atlas updates

the chronological order is reversed here, from left to right: Atlas D, C, B and two version of Atlas A. Of course all the other core tank variants such as the derivatives of Atlas D, E/F, II, III all to be done so loads more work lol.

jFBqLKl.png

 

nTRTgcs.png

V5Z1nFs.jpeg

 

gg0DgXP.jpeg

 

 

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Man, I'm probably gonna abuse this when it releases. Don't ask how.

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  On 3/13/2024 at 1:12 AM, Ultim32 said:

I'm still trying to find a way to side-decouple superheavy boosters like the falcon heavy. Surface attach won't cooperate tho :/

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Yeah, I noticed that the Atlas tank parts don't work with side/surface attachments. I assumed it was because that they were pressurized balloon tanks IRL. I might be wrong though. Y'all feel free to correct me.

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  On 3/13/2024 at 1:12 AM, Ultim32 said:

I'm still trying to find a way to side-decouple superheavy boosters like the falcon heavy. Surface attach won't cooperate tho :/

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  On 3/13/2024 at 2:13 AM, Blufor878 said:

Yeah, I noticed that the Atlas tank parts don't work with side/surface attachments. I assumed it was because that they were pressurized balloon tanks IRL. I might be wrong though. Y'all feel free to correct me.

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The Atlas 1/2 stage skirt (I forget the exact part name) allows radial attachment. I've put small SRBs on it to increase liftoff TWR.

You can "abuse" that by putting decouplers and huge SRBs on the skirt, followed by offsetting to move the decouplers higher on the rocket. Hold shift key while offsetting to increase the maximum allowed distance. It will look like the decouplers are connected to the tank but they are really on the skirt.

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  On 3/13/2024 at 2:13 AM, Blufor878 said:

Yeah, I noticed that the Atlas tank parts don't work with side/surface attachments. I assumed it was because that they were pressurized balloon tanks IRL. I might be wrong though. Y'all feel free to correct me.

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Yes, it's intentional. It's actually a tag that you can apply to colliders in Unity that prevents radial attachment, regardless of the attach rules for the part. I discovered it around the time of the last Atlas revamp. It felt like it was an opportunity to introduce some interesting decision making for the player - in terms of 1.875m "workhorse" rockets, you had two options. You could go for maximum single-stick performance with the balloon tank Atlas, but if you needed something more than that, you'd have to move to the less efficient Titan, which allowed for multiple cores and thus scaled more at the higher performance end.

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Been making my own tech tree for a while and with the new Atlas revamp coming I guess it's time for me to split my tankage line into balloon tanks and "normal" tanks just after Thor/Jupiter tanks. If you remain in the "normal" line you'll have to work with Titan if you go Balloon then you have the chance to unlock Atlas/Centaur.

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  On 3/13/2024 at 5:58 PM, Blufor878 said:

Well, now we're all obliged to fling this into space for...science or something...

In any case this looks great!

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Ah yes ... the science ... Perhaps strapping this into a Titan will give us some of that stuff.

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