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

[Blufor878]

10 hours ago, Rodger said:

And do you have RealPlume as well?

 

5 hours ago, Zorg said:

Im not 100% sure our realplume patches are written to be resilient when someone installs Smokescreen but not RealPlume. 

Installing Realplume and smokescreen together is better. And BDB will be ok even if you install Waterfall. Our liquid engines will use Waterfall and solid motors will use RealPlume+Smokescreen in this case. 

That did the trick! Thanks everybody!

[Pappystein]

4 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Full album: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

The Solar and Storage Module is in place.  The solar panels will be augmented with more solar panels down the road.

You are challenging me to do another Space Station Build!    This looks great!

[Fredde104]

are the rover parts included in the main download or is it a separate release? got the latest version yesterday and there are no rover parts anywhere in the included gamedata folder

[GoldForest]

53 minutes ago, Pappystein said:

You are challenging me to do another Space Station Build!    This looks great!

Heh, thanks! Though, I'm not really that good at building custom stations, so this might go from looking great to looking like a kerbal abomination lol.

[Jcking]

45 minutes ago, Fredde104 said:

are the rover parts included in the main download or is it a separate release? got the latest version yesterday and there are no rover parts anywhere in the included gamedata folder

They are in the 1.11 branch on Github.

[CobaltWolf]

[DaveyJ576]

@CobaltWolf, @Zorg and the dev team, please don't cringe when I ask this, but how hard is it to make jettisonable launch shrouds for solar panels and other exterior equipment? Since there are virtually none of them in game I would imagine that it isn't easy.  For instance, when I launch the MOL the solar panels are exposed in such a way that if it was real life they would not survive the ride uphill. Are jettisonable shrouds even possible?

The LFV is pretty cool, BTW.

Thanks!

Edited August 19, 2022 by DaveyJ576

[Pudgemountain]

I was planning on to try and land on Vesta and Halley's comet but when I saw Cobaltwolf's images of that plan biome hopper like lander I will wait for that to be released lol, it will be easier to land with that than a Gemini lander.

For now I decided to give Mila Viking funeral and try to land on Venus with a Titan Lander and Gemini Phoenix. So far I only have pictures for their names.

[Alpha512]

7 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

It looks lovely, but really makes me wish for a 2-crew LESS/LRF :~/

[Socowez]

7 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Wasn't that an untextured mess just yesterday? Gosh you work fast

[Viper2]

Just a short question : shouldn't the LEM truck descent stage have any monoprop ? Was delivering a rover to my moon base and noticed the lem truck rcs thrusters were not working because of no monoprop.

[DaOPCreeper]

any chance you could add a cross feed toggle for the Saturn v couplers, so we could fuel the entire rocket/all stages instead of just the first stage? (using the modular launch pads mod of course)

[Echo11]

Well, since I've been using this awesome and beautiful mod for over three years by now, I think it's time for me to pay a tiny bit of my long overdue screenshot tax. XD

Here's an ongoing Early Lunar Shelter mission, featuring LM Taxi, LRV, as well as almost every single surface experiment in BDB (and some stock ones). I had to cheat a new rover to the surface due to original one (that came on the LM Taxi) getting Kraken'd in Munar orbit, and then self destruct during surface deployment. Despite that, the mission it still going fine as of now.

Doing this mission does reminds me, though, is it possible to make Apollo CM (both Block II and Block III+ variants) unmanned capable, instead of requiring minimum crew of one? It would be a lot more convenient not having to try and squeeze in a probe core for missions like Apollo 4/6, recreating ETS Artemis landings, etc.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Echo11

[Viper2]

For unmanned apollo operations I usually just put an aardv Probe core on top of the apollo sm, it just blends in perfectly

[Echo11]

16 minutes ago, Viper2 said:

For unmanned apollo operations I usually just put an aardv Probe core on top of the apollo sm, it just blends in perfectly

That's a pretty good solution for missions with crew. However, what I was thinking of were missions like Apollo 4, Apollo 6, or those early Block I tests, where it would be necessary for the Command Module to detach from the Service Module, going through reentry, open parachutes, and splashdown, without crew on board. An AARDV core on the SM couldn't cover those phases, while adding a probe core to the CM would either makes it look weird, or hiding the core inside (thus can't change its SAS settings, etc.).

[Pappystein]

38 minutes ago, Echo11 said:

That's a pretty good solution for missions with crew. However, what I was thinking of were missions like Apollo 4, Apollo 6, or those early Block I tests, where it would be necessary for the Command Module to detach from the Service Module, going through reentry, open parachutes, and splashdown, without crew on board. An AARDV core on the SM couldn't cover those phases, while adding a probe core to the CM would either makes it look weird, or hiding the core inside (thus can't change its SAS settings, etc.).

I usually put the AARDV core between the Heatshield and the CM... it is barely noticeable and works fine ish (certain angles of attack may result in it kabooming IE don't use offset COM even though it is more realistic!)

[Pudgemountain]

2 hours ago, Echo11 said:

Doing this mission does reminds me, though, is it possible to make Apollo CM (both Block II and Block III+ variants) unmanned capable, instead of requiring minimum crew of one? It would be a lot more convenient not having to try and squeeze in a probe core for missions like Apollo 4/6, recreating ETS Artemis landings, etc.

What I do for unmanned missions is the mod Bargain Rockets has a probe called SMRT which is a smart phone that you can attach it radially and hide it. The ship will operate like there's a crew in it but there isn't a crew though you do need electric charge and signal to use it.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Pudgemountain

[Rodger]

4 hours ago, Echo11 said:

I had to cheat a new rover to the surface due to original one (that came on the LM Taxi) getting Kraken'd in Munar orbit, and then self destruct during surface deployment. Despite that, the mission it still going fine as of now.

Doing this mission does reminds me, though, is it possible to make Apollo CM (both Block II and Block III+ variants) unmanned capable, instead of requiring minimum crew of one? It would be a lot more convenient not having to try and squeeze in a probe core for missions like Apollo 4/6, recreating ETS Artemis landings, etc.

Out of interest, what autostrut/locked servo settings did you use on the LRV, and did you have KJR:Next or the non-next version? Only KJR:Next is supported, and you don’t want to lock the fore and aft plates that the wheels attach to.

And I can probably add crewless command to the capsules with a B9 switch, I’ll look into it.

[Zorg]

On 8/19/2022 at 10:12 PM, DaveyJ576 said:

@CobaltWolf, @Zorg and the dev team, please don't cringe when I ask this, but how hard is it to make jettisonable launch shrouds for solar panels and other exterior equipment? Since there are virtually none of them in game I would imagine that it isn't easy.  For instance, when I launch the MOL the solar panels are exposed in such a way that if it was real life they would not survive the ride uphill. Are jettisonable shrouds even possible?

The LFV is pretty cool, BTW.

Thanks!

its not that its super hard but most of the panels were intended to be launched in a fairing. It is extra work and texture space. Its not really feasible to go back and add them. 

[zakkpaz]

The latest dev version of the LFV can no longer be put into cargo. I think it's because the game doesn't let you put parts with cargo space inside of a  cargo space.

[Socowez]

24 minutes ago, zakkpaz said:

The latest dev version of the LFV can no longer be put into cargo. I think it's because the game doesn't let you put parts with cargo space inside of a  cargo space.

This is intentional. There’s a toggle on the LM descent stage for J class. J class has a “hole” in the side where the LRV chassis is packed. To assemble, attach the LRV deployment hinge to the node at the bottom of the “hole “, then attach the L RV deployment slider onto that, and then attach the LRV main body to that, then the fore and aft chassis on both ends of the body, add the wheels and retract them, and put in the LRV chairs. Stuff every other L RV part into the cargo space on the descent stage and build the rover with an engineer on site. 

[Echo11]

1 hour ago, Rodger said:

Out of interest, what autostrut/locked servo settings did you use on the LRV, and did you have KJR:Next or the non-next version? Only KJR:Next is supported, and you don’t want to lock the fore and aft plates that the wheels attach to.

I do use KJR:Next, but there's nothing to worry about. It's just me setting up the rover parts wrong when designing the craft, and locking those plates during the actual flight. In fact, I did a test flight to the Mun (on a different save created for the test) after I made some changes to the design (disabling the steering and motors on all four wheels, turning off the reaction wheel on main rover body, etc.), and everything went well. I was able to deploy and assemble the LRV without issue, and it even survived multiple save-loading in its folded state, which was what destroyed the old one in the first place.

Something thats been happening to the rover deployed at the shelter, though, is that some of its parts, especially robotic parts like both forward and aft plates, does have a slight tendency of exploding when loading a save. It's a rare occurrence (like one out of ten times), however, and usually won't happen when reloading the save again.

2 hours ago, Rodger said:

And I can probably add crewless command to the capsules with a B9 switch, I’ll look into it.

Thank you very much. It would be great for those who enjoys recreating historic and ETS missions like myself. I'm curious though, would the CM still be able to carry a crew, while being unmanned capable at the same time?

[Rodger]

47 minutes ago, Echo11 said:

I do use KJR:Next, but there's nothing to worry about. It's just me setting up the rover parts wrong when designing the craft, and locking those plates during the actual flight. In fact, I did a test flight to the Mun (on a different save created for the test) after I made some changes to the design (disabling the steering and motors on all four wheels, turning off the reaction wheel on main rover body, etc.), and everything went well. I was able to deploy and assemble the LRV without issue, and it even survived multiple save-loading in its folded state, which was what destroyed the old one in the first place.

Something thats been happening to the rover deployed at the shelter, though, is that some of its parts, especially robotic parts like both forward and aft plates, does have a slight tendency of exploding when loading a save. It's a rare occurrence (like one out of ten times), however, and usually won't happen when reloading the save again.

Thank you very much. It would be great for those who enjoys recreating historic and ETS missions like myself. I'm curious though, would the CM still be able to carry a crew, while being unmanned capable at the same time?

It exploding 1/10 times makes me think there's not much that can be done about it, and is probably just a KSP thing. But I'm glad it often works after reloading!

And yeah, the uncrewed option won't change the crew capacity. (changing crew capacity isn't something that's switchable even if we wanted to lol)

1 hour ago, zakkpaz said:

The latest dev version of the LFV can no longer be put into cargo. I think it's because the game doesn't let you put parts with cargo space inside of a  cargo space.

It's using a custom module now to enable inventory stacking. You might need to do it by pinning open the cargo you want to insert the LFV into, and then when the LFV is picked up, placing it in the cargo slot manually. It doesn't seem to activate the blue-highlight auto-insertion now, but at least this way you can have a part with cargo space inside cargo.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Rodger

[pTrevTrevs]

Screenshot Tax 1980: Reaching Maximums:

 

February: The Delta 3914 has surpassed its 2000-series predecessors as the most commonly flown Delta booster on either coast. Its improved Castor 4 boosters give it the ability to launch heavier satellites than ever before, such as the Solar Maximum Mission. Abbreviated to SMM or SolarMax, this is an observatory meant to study the sun during the upcoming 1980 solar maximum. This epoch, occurring approximately once every eleven years, is a period of intense solar activity during which sunspots and flares appear much more commonly than usual. SolarMax will supplement Skylab's aging Apollo Telescope Mount with more modern instrumentation and will return findings autonomously, without the need to be periodically serviced. In spite of this, however, SolarMax uses a new bus design equipped with a Shuttle-compatible grapple fixture, allowing STS to retrieve and repair the satellite should the need ever arise. In fact, later this same year, multiple components inside the spacecraft will break down, spurring plans for a Shuttle mission to repair SolarMax in 1983 or 1984.

Quote

 

April: On the west coast, the venerable Titan IIID launches a [REDACTED] into polar orbit. This new series of satellites has been operating since [REDACTED], and although its capabilities are still highly classified, it is known to possess a marked improvement over previous military payloads of similar types. Spectators are naturally permitted to witness the launch, although knowledge of what exactly is being orbited is scarce.

Quote

 

August-September: After a 21-month journey out from Jupiter, Voyager 1 begins its Saturn observation phase. The critical objective of Voyager's encounter at Saturn is a close flyby of the sixth planet's largest moon, Titan. Observation of the mysterious, rust-colored moon is so important, in fact, that Voyager 1's trajectory has been specifically optimized for this purpose at the expense of a Grand Tour trajectory. Should Voyager 1 fail to image or take measurements of Titan, its sister probe Voyager 2 will be compelled to sacrifice its own chances for a Uranus flyby to fulfill these objectives itself.

Quote

It has been approximately eighteen months since the Pioneer 11 probe rounded the sixth planet, yet in this time the Sun has moved just enough in the sky for Saturn's rings to cast a noticeable shadow over its cloud tops.

As Voyager approaches Titan, it directs its scan platform to take images of the moon in both the visible and ultraviolet ranges. The data indicates an atmosphere made up largely of nitrogen and methane, making an incredibly cold yet humid world with surprisingly varied weather. During its approach to Titan, Voyager also observes several of Saturn's moons as they transit across its face. In the above image, Tethys is seen as a small dark speck in Saturn's southern hemisphere.

Titan is the only moon in our solar system known to have a real atmosphere, which reaches to incredible heights above the surface and casts a permanent orangish haze over the moon which inhibits direct imaging of the surface. At sea level, Titan's atmospheric pressure is approximately one and a half times that of Earth. The use of the term "sea level" is no accident. Titan is known to have large liquid lakes on its surface, roughly comparable to the Great Lakes on Earth. Unlike Earth's lakes, however, Titans are made up of methane, which evaporates, condenses, and precipitates in a remarkably similar manner to water on our own planet.

Voyager 1's findings serve only to further pique the curiosity of scientists, and will eventually lead to further exploration of the moon in the future. For now, however, Voyager drifts silently above Titan's clouds, spending a mere half-hour in its vicinity. As it passes behind the planet and into its shadow, Voyager turns its attention to Saturn itself.

Saturn's rings are unbelievably thin; with the most liberal of estimates placing them no more than a few hundred meters in thickness. They are composed mostly of water ice and carbon debris from Saturn's moons, and are kept in place by so-called Shepherd Moons which orbit inside the rings themselves and prevent them from dissipating or condensing into a new moon. The rings are believed to be relatively young, having formed perhaps no earlier than 100 million years ago. If true, this would mean that the rings formed at the same time dinosaurs were walking on Earth.

Saturn itself is made up almost entirely of hydrogen, and is estimated to be the lightest planet in the solar system in terms of density. Wind speeds within the atmosphere can reach blistering highs, leading to an intense, blender-like effect which obscures nearly all differentiation across the planet's face. Like Jupiter, Saturn experiences storms, although they are small, infrequent, and short-lived. Voyager is not lucky enough to catch one as it passes by, instead sending back images of a milky-pale orb, broken only by the rings and the shadows they cast.

When Pioneer 11 passed Saturn in 1979, it detected the existence of Saturn's F-Ring, seen in this image as a thin line tracing the outward circumference of the A-Ring. Voyager 1 discovers an even more unusual ring as it passes behind the planet. Visible only when occluded from the Sun behind Saturn, the G-Ring is a very thin, very faint ring composed almost entirely of dust between the F-Ring and the orbit of Mimas. The G-Ring appears as a subtle glow surrounding the darkened shape of Saturn as Voyager passed behind it, and it is thought that if all the matter within it were condensed into a single mass it would only form a tiny moonlet some one-hundred meters in diameter.

Voyager 2 will pass by Saturn late next year and will continue the observations begun by Voyager 1 before continuing on to Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1, meanwhile, has been flung out of the plane of the ecliptic by its Titan-focused trajectory, meaning that it will never again encounter a solar system object. With its observations of the fifth and sixth planets complete, Voyager 1 powers down its now-unnecessary instruments and begins observation of the vast nothingness of interplanetary space. Scientists predicted in 1981 that Voyager 1 might cross the heliopause into interstellar space in 1990. Surprisingly, the Sun's sphere of influence proved to be much larger than previously believed, and it was not until well into the 21st Century that Voyager 1 became the first manmade object to leave the Solar System. Voyager 1 still operates to this day, and stands as mankind's most distant pioneer, a single, isolated explorer braving the oceanic expanse of the Milky Way.

 

October: Space Shuttle Columbia launches on its fourth and final test flight. This mission has been covered in detail elsewhere, but one aspect of the flight bears relevance to this thread. In order to demonstrate STS's capability to service large payloads already in orbit, STS-4 will deliver the first Teleoperator Retrieval System to boost the orbit of Skylab. This flight will serve as a proof-of-concept for future flights which may deliver expansions to Skylab such as new solar panels, additional laboratories, or modernized docking systems, bringing the station's capabilities up to contemporary standards. Such an upgrade is sorely needed, as the aging station is already beginning to resemble an orbital rustbucket, with some astronauts privately lamenting assignment to an expedition aboard the station instead of an exciting (and brief) flight aboard the new, sleek Shuttle. Nevertheless, STS-4 will merge both programs in a demonstration of interbranch cooperation within NASA.

Quote

Columbia extracts the TRS from her payload bay with the SRMS and releases it to fly the final 200 meters to the station under remote control from the shuttle crew. TRS-1 docks to Skylab's forward port and powers down. In the weeks after STS-4's departure, the TRS will be used to raise the station's orbit by approximately ten kilometers.

Following the reboost, the TRS is repositioned to the nadir port of the Skylab Docking and Guidance Module to make space for the arrival of Skylab 10, launching in December. For a short period next year TRS will be undocked and moved to a standby orbit several kilometers away in order for an Aardvark freighter to berth at the DGM, before being reattached to the station. It will be recovered by another shuttle flight sometime in 1982 or 1983, and eventually replaced with a new model when more space on the station is available.

 

November: One of the final launches of this year is of a Delta 3910 PAM-D, carrying SBS-1 to GEO. SBS-1 is an example of the new HS-376 satellite bus which will be deployed extensively in the coming years, while the Delta makes use of the new Star 48 upper stage to perform the boost to GTO instead of the Delta P second stage, enabling a heavier and larger payload than would be possible otherwise.

Quote

The Star-48 PAM-D is planned to be flown on STS flights as well, serving as a perigee kick motor for many and various satellites bound for GEO.

The HS-376 bus features a second solid motor to circularize the spacecraft's orbit at apogee, as well as two small bipropellant maneuvering engines for trajectory corrections.

With SBS-1 in its final orbit, one final innovation is unveiled. The outer edge of the cylindrical bus extends downward, revealing additional solar panels to improve power generation, while the reflector dish atop the spacecraft unfolds and begins transmitting.

 

Uh, join me next time where I... find even more ways to sneak non-BDB craft into my screenshot tax reports...

[Echo11]

6 hours ago, Rodger said:

It exploding 1/10 times makes me think there's not much that can be done about it, and is probably just a KSP thing. But I'm glad it often works after reloading!

That's what I have in mind as well, just KSP being KSP, I guess. XD And yeah, as long as it still work after most reloadings, it all good lol.

6 hours ago, Rodger said:

And yeah, the uncrewed option won't change the crew capacity. (changing crew capacity isn't something that's switchable even if we wanted to lol)

Good to know, thanks again for doing this!