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

[BSS_Snag]

On 8/25/2024 at 8:05 PM, BSS_Snag said:

Always love playing with this mod

A Sarnus H03M on the launchpad

 

@AlphaMensae I already left a message on GitHub, but could I request for a modified rectangular hole option on the Saturn V base? The current ones have the grid on the ends which doesn't really work with this rocket. Also, potentially having some umbilicals that fit the H03 from Eyes Turned Skyward, parts of course from BDB?

[DaveyJ576]

MAN IN SPACE SOONEST

It is 1958, and President Dwight Eisenhower is very alarmed at the recent Soviet space successes. He feels that we have been made to look like fools and genuinely fears the seemingly ever growing technological gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He succumbs to pressure exerted by the Department of Defense and orders them to "put a man into space at the earliest possible date. I don't care what it takes, just get it done NOW!"

The Air Force's Project 7969, aka Man In Space Soonest (MISS) is put into full swing. Fully funded and with the full backing of every resource available in the United States, the project rapidly moves forward. With the DoD leading the way, very little about the project was released to the public, with many details classified. Wanting to keep it as simple as possible, the Goodyear Aircraft Company was chosen as the prime contractor for the spacecraft. Goodyear's design was a simple spherical ball with an RCS module and parachute canister on top. To help slow the spacecraft after reentry four air brakes would deploy to slow and stabilize until the spacecraft reached the lower atmosphere, where a parachute would safely lower it to a splashdown in the ocean.

After a rancorous debate, the Air Force's still-in-development Titan ICBM was chosen as the launch vehicle. This would prove to be the long pole in the program's development, with delays in the booster resulting in the program missing its early 1960 launch date by several months. Meanwhile, Goodyear surged forward with spacecraft development and enjoyed a comparatively benign build and test regimen. On July 4, 1960 President Eisenhower ordered a name change for the program, always of the mind that MISS was a tad on the silly side. The whole effort was now known as Project Liberty.

On September 28, 1960 they were finally ready. A Titan I missile with a mysterious fairing at the top had been erected at LC-19 at Cape Canaveral. It was all very hush-hush, with no announcements or information made public. At dawn on the 28th the weather from Hurricane Donna had finally cleared. The gantry was lowered and the countdown entered into its final phase. Unbeknownst to everyone outside the program, young Air Force Lieutenant Michael Alfred Robert Sampson was strapped into his seat inside Liberty 3, itself hidden from view by the fairing.

Liberty 3 launched exactly on time, with the climb out and ride uphill going quite smoothly. For once, the mighty Titan flew straight as an arrow.

Spoiler

Sampson and his brand new spacecraft made it to a 30 degree, 120x105 km orbit in fine shape. He deployed antennas and made his first report to a Navy tracking ship in the southeastern Atlantic, just as he crossed the coast of Africa. His first of two orbits took him nearly directly over the Cape Canaveral launch site.

Spoiler

Several hundred miles west of Baja California, the three solid retro motors lighted in succession to lower the orbit back into the atmosphere. The maneuver was successful and at 90 km he jettisoned his battery and retro pack. His firey ride through the atmosphere brought on a heavy 6 G's, but Sampson took it well and opened the air brakes at 40 km. Stabilized and rapidly slowing, the parachute deployed at 3000 meters and he gracefully dropped into the Atlantic Ocean 350 km northwest of Puerto Rico. The mission was a complete success. The President could now trumpet that the United States was the first nation on Earth to send a man into space!

Spoiler

This was a long and sometimes tedious kitbash. The Tweakscaled down KV-1 "Onion" Stock pod had to be patched to add basic functionality to it like additional ablator and EC, reaction wheels, and monoprop (thanks @Rodger for your assistance with the patch!) I went through several versions before I got something light enough to be put into a stable orbit by a BDB Titan I. I was inspired by the image below of the Goodyear proposal for Project 7969. It struck me as cool looking and a fun KSP kitbash so I dove into it.

Spoiler

The air brakes work rather well, but it is not as stable as I thought. I had to leave SAS on the whole time in order to keep it flying properly retrograde. As it slowed down it had the tendency to go heavy end first, i.e. with the parachute canister facing down and the air brakes pointed the wrong way. The RCS unit at the top is the BDB Athena module (Tweakscaled).

Please, do not refer to it as an "American Vostok". Rather, I prefer to think of the Soviet craft as a "Russian MISS"! LOL

By the way, this is the first manned mission of my new KSP build, incorporating KSRSS Reborn. The views of Earth are nothing short of amazing! Very realistic.

Edited August 28 by DaveyJ576
typo

[zakkpaz]

Would you guys be willing to turn the Surveyor Orbiter High Gain Antenna into a relay antenna? There's not much to do with the Orbiter and having them be communications satellites makes sense as an althistory cheap reuse of existing technology type deal.

Normally I'd just patch it myself but it seems like a good candidate for the part merges you've been doing and I'm not sure how that affects things.

[AlphaMensae]

New Atlas in BDB and new Atlas-Agena Service Tower in Modular Launch Pads:

[Rodger]

On 8/29/2024 at 4:25 AM, zakkpaz said:

Would you guys be willing to turn the Surveyor Orbiter High Gain Antenna into a relay antenna? There's not much to do with the Orbiter and having them be communications satellites makes sense as an althistory cheap reuse of existing technology type deal.

Normally I'd just patch it myself but it seems like a good candidate for the part merges you've been doing and I'm not sure how that affects things.

Seemed like a good idea, it's in dev now. Along with merging the Surveyor lander/orbiter cores, and all the omni antennas, into single parts. Also a slight re-balance of the Surveyor parts in general, mainly trying to lighten it up as much as possible to make the STAR 37 more effective, to have a more realistic descent profile. It still doesn't get enough dV from the STAR and requires a long burn from the (already OP) verniers, but it's slightly better than before.

Another thing to note if you aren't planning on making a new save for 1.14, is some generic science parts have the internal partnames renamed to bring them inline with the standard BDB naming scheme, so the old named versions have been soft depreciated. I mention this in particular because they're slightly more risky to remove from the OldParts folder on existing saves, as they're very likely to exist on space probes that remain in-flight long term (the Radek-716 Geiger Counter, SWD-CCCP Hemispherical Ion Trap, COS-B3N3T Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, and P1NG-0WW Micrometeoroid Detector). They'll probably remain soft-depreciated for more than one whole version due to this, but for people not making new saves in 1.14, definitely take note and be wary of removing the OldParts/Science folder in particular if you choose to trim soft depreciated parts. Existing craft with these parts will continue to be usable if you just don't trim the depreciated parts from the OldParts folder. I figured now's the best time to fix their naming though with all the other parts that are also getting soft depreciated this cycle.

Edited August 31 by Rodger

[Kellanium]

On 8/25/2024 at 4:50 PM, LoadingTimeExpert said:

oh it says kerbochrome, yea that makes sense

Anyway I made this on a whim when I recognized this habit that doesn't make any sense. I mean realistically I could leave KSP running all day long in the background if I really wanted to and it wouldn't matter cause these missions take weeks. But hey, guess I don't want to miss anything

i like to imagine there's a guy out there who insists on playing RSS x10 in real time

 

also if it's not too much to ask, in 1.15...could we get an LM Mass Simulator and SLA truss A La Apollo 8? sometimes you just wanna orbit the mun

Edited September 1 by Kellanium

[Pappystein]

On 9/1/2024 at 11:03 AM, Kellanium said:

i like to imagine there's a guy out there who insists on playing RSS x10 in real time

 

also if it's not too much to ask, in 1.15...could we get an LM Mass Simulator and SLA truss A La Apollo 8? sometimes you just wanna orbit the mun

Personally that is just a prettied up 2.5m Ore tank....

[AdrianDogmeat]

NASA/Ames Mars Transfer Vehicle [1987]

(Original Concept Art)

Spoiler

 

[Zorg]

On 8/26/2024 at 3:57 AM, LoadingTimeExpert said:

What is this supposed to be? It looks like a tin of sardines

As someone else replied, its a reference to Kodak film, But you will find canned food inside some BDB IVAs too

These ones below (plus the movie posters in the above image) are borrowed props from Tantares actually. IIRC the food cans were actually made by Well as a contribution to Tantares.

[GoldForest]

8 hours ago, AdrianDogmeat said:

NASA/Ames Mars Transfer Vehicle [1987]

(Original Concept Art)

  Hide contents

 

Aerobraking a craft that size is/would be insane.

Or is that a meteorite shield?

Edited September 4 by GoldForest

[AdrianDogmeat]

5 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Aerobraking a craft that size is/would be insane.

Or is that a meteorite shield?

Nope, aerobraking (as crazy as that sounds)

[DaveyJ576]

So, one thing that I am not entirely clear on... what mods (if any) do we need to have installed in order to take full advantage of the new PBR textures that @Zorg and @Invaderchaos and others have been working so diligently on?

[zakkpaz]

11 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Aerobraking a craft that size is/would be insane.

What makes it so crazy?

[GoldForest]

1 hour ago, DaveyJ576 said:

So, one thing that I am not entirely clear on... what mods (if any) do we need to have installed in order to take full advantage of the new PBR textures that @Zorg and @Invaderchaos and others have been working so diligently on?

The mod is still in silent development. Zorg said info will be released soonTM.

38 minutes ago, zakkpaz said:

What makes it so crazy?

I mean, imagine aerobraking something almost the length of a Saturn V and almost twice as thick.

[Zorg]

PBR conversion on Voyager Mars

[CobaltWolf]

Finally got the new cockpit variants passed through Unity...

 

And I'm also working on a 'smooth'/'clean' variant of the cockpit's belly, without the mapping camera bits. This will be available on all cockpit variants, and the only version available on the twin-seater.

[SheepDog2142]

1 hour ago, Zorg said:

PBR conversion on Voyager Mars

These PBR conversions are so nice. Will these be releasing to to main branch eventually? Are they in the dev branch now?

49 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Finally got the new cockpit variants passed through Unity...

 

And I'm also working on a 'smooth'/'clean' variant of the cockpit's belly, without the mapping camera bits. This will be available on all cockpit variants, and the only version available on the twin-seater.

Really hoping this gets a Retro CRT style IVA

[CobaltWolf]

20 minutes ago, SheepDog2142 said:

Really hoping this gets a Retro CRT style IVA

I don't make IVAs

[zakkpaz]

24 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I don't make IVAs

Who was it that did the IVA's for Skylab and the LEM?

Their work is amazing and ever since FreeIVA came out I've been hoping for more from them.

Edited September 4 by zakkpaz

[SheepDog2142]

41 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I don't make IVAs

I didn't necessarily mean you.  If I can get the parts to import into unity id do it myself and then share it.

[Zorg]

33 minutes ago, zakkpaz said:

Who was it that did the IVA's for Skylab and the LEM?

Their work is amazing and ever since FreeIVA came out I've been hoping for more from them.

I made the Skylab workshop. The remaining Skylab IVA shells were made by FreeIVA dev Jonny and I textured and added props to them. But I still have some shells he made which havent been finished, will try to get to them sometime next year I guess. Rodger made the LM IVA.

1 hour ago, SheepDog2142 said:

These PBR conversions are so nice. Will these be releasing to to main branch eventually? Are they in the dev branch now?

They are in dev right now but needs a new shader pack mod by Beale which isnt publicly released yet. He's waiting for an update to Shabby which is required to load the shaders. It should be available soon hopefully.

Edited September 4 by Zorg

[zakkpaz]

@Rodger I've got a bug report that I think might me related to the parts mergers.

I'm pretty sure it's not a problem on my end, the tech tree upgrades for the Titan III tanks, Transtage upgrade and engines are missing. I keep getting the "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error.

Sorry I can't be more specific.

[Pudgemountain]

On 9/3/2024 at 1:39 PM, Zorg said:

As someone else replied, its a reference to Kodak film, But you will find canned food inside some BDB IVAs too

These ones below (plus the movie posters in the above image) are borrowed props from Tantares actually. IIRC the food cans were actually made by Well as a contribution to Tantares.

What about Corned Beef on Rye?

[Rodger]

4 hours ago, zakkpaz said:

@Rodger I've got a bug report that I think might me related to the parts mergers.

I'm pretty sure it's not a problem on my end, the tech tree upgrades for the Titan III tanks, Transtage upgrade and engines are missing. I keep getting the "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error.

Sorry I can't be more specific.

Would probably need a log to see what's happening. Missing upgrades would pop up a B9 warning on launch too, NREs may be something else.

[zakkpaz]

11 hours ago, Rodger said:

Would probably need a log to see what's happening. Missing upgrades would pop up a B9 warning on launch too, NREs may be something else.

Here you go https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FwYslJ-uZIT1h9vqggswB4d_FiDaAJMv/view?usp=drive_link

I've had something like this happen before, it was because I had deleted to .mu file used for the icon, but even with everything still in the Titan folder the upgrades are still missing from the tech tree.