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

[dave1904]

8 hours ago, Pappystein said:

For some people, Building a game is more fun than playing it.    I personally think they are KRAZY but hey,  I do the same thing (Just on a much smaller and not really released [aka my use only] level)  

So, A)  Never be afraid of people who like to build stuff.

and B) never look down on a gifted builder like CobaltWolf.      Cause if it isn't fun for them then no free expansion for us!  

 

Oh and to be clear I am not saying you are or anyone else is looking down at Cobalt... we except for those people taller than him... But that is another story.    I am just saying we are blessed to have someone who LIKES to build this stuff and seems to have fun in our community.    My "paid hobby" has me in lots of peoples homes and any that have even a remote interest in Space/Science how the world works... Well I recommend them to KSP and BDB in KSP!    Simply because Cobalt has a relatively quickly growing to HIGHLY (for KSP) realistic set of US Rockets (were all my clients live) and between the discussions on this forum and how helpful this community tries to be.   It is a good place to learn and grow.     I really love when client's email me at my work e-mail address about KSP questions instead of the questions I get paid to answer!  Oops forgot my Supervisor is one of the people I gave this recomendation to.... You don't see that boss!

 

Seriously though I know I have said it before and I don't ever want to Sound like a broke Record.  Thank you Cobalt, for your work, and your blood, sweat and tears you have put into this game (not to mention the effort!)

I'm not complaining. Just extremely surprised by it. I always assumed he added stuff he wanted to see in game. Considering the details and quality of the mod it is more than just wanting better than stock ksp so it must be a passion. 

The only thing I wish this mod had was fairings that were fixed. I love being forced to build craft inside a certain fairing sizes especially now that robotic parts are in stock ksp. I do make sure that I keep within the fairing base size however. 

[CobaltWolf]

12 hours ago, Pappystein said:

For some people, Building a game is more fun than playing it.    I personally think they are KRAZY but hey,  I do the same thing (Just on a much smaller and not really released [aka my use only] level)  

So, A)  Never be afraid of people who like to build stuff.

and B) never look down on a gifted builder like CobaltWolf.      Cause if it isn't fun for them then no free expansion for us! 

Oh and to be clear I am not saying you are or anyone else is looking down at Cobalt... we except for those people taller than him... But that is another story.    I am just saying we are blessed to have someone who LIKES to build this stuff and seems to have fun in our community.    My "paid hobby" has me in lots of peoples homes and any that have even a remote interest in Space/Science how the world works... Well I recommend them to KSP and BDB in KSP!    Simply because Cobalt has a relatively quickly growing to HIGHLY (for KSP) realistic set of US Rockets (were all my clients live) and between the discussions on this forum and how helpful this community tries to be.   It is a good place to learn and grow.     I really love when client's email me at my work e-mail address about KSP questions instead of the questions I get paid to answer!  Oops forgot my Supervisor is one of the people I gave this recomendation to.... You don't see that boss!

Seriously though I know I have said it before and I don't ever want to Sound like a broke Record.  Thank you Cobalt, for your work, and your blood, sweat and tears you have put into this game (not to mention the effort!)

3 hours ago, dave1904 said:

I'm not complaining. Just extremely surprised by it. I always assumed he added stuff he wanted to see in game. Considering the details and quality of the mod it is more than just wanting better than stock ksp so it must be a passion. 

The only thing I wish this mod had was fairings that were fixed. I love being forced to build craft inside a certain fairing sizes especially now that robotic parts are in stock ksp. I do make sure that I keep within the fairing base size however. 

My problem is for the last 4 years any time I've thought about playing KSP, I go "man I wish I had that new part I was working on..." and then work on that. And the thing is, I have way more parts I'd like to make than I can get through at a reasonable pace. At the end of the day it's fun and satisfying to make more parts, and I get to vicariously see it getting used through other people. That's why screenshots, especially of nice/aesthetic non-historical builds (ie legoing the parts) are always so nice to see on the thread.

I wish we had hard fairings too. The thing is they would add a lot of time and RAM overhead for something not all players want to use. Who knows, maybe KSP2?

 

12 hours ago, Gremillion said:

@CobaltWolf Thank you for your tremendous hard work from everybody at SH. I am finally using your excellent new Titan models, and I have a bit of feedback. Ed Kyle at SpaceLaunchReport suggests the Barbarian was not just a warmed over LDC Titan, but actually used a new core size (19 feet, equivalent to 3.475 Kerbal Meters) and 5x dual nozzle LR-87-AJ-11s. I've been able to make a version with 4x LR-87-AJ-11s, but TweakScale isn't playing well at scaling the 3.125 (Kb) m parts to 3.475 m. In fact, the model doesn't snap properly and when you hit "launch" there are large gaps. How easy would it be to simply scale these parts according to the Barbarian drawing composited by Kyle?
 

Well... first off: I'll reiterate the design goals for the LDC/Barbarian parts. First, they were meant to fill out and expand the 3.125m size that already existed in BDB, secondly they were meant to bridge the Saturn and Titan parts and art styles, and third came trying to make historical recreations with them. The details on any sort of "big Titan" are so vague that even Ed Kyle's page are essentially just guesswork.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you got 3.475m. Or 19 feet, for that matter. According to Ed Kyle the Barbarian was 200 inches / 5.08m. Scaling that by 62.5% makes it 3.175m which is well within the norm for being rounded to a standard size. The engines are also single nozzle LR-87s - check the thrust numbers compared to a Titan 34D for instance. So I think you can get a lot closer to Barbarian than you think. The only thing is I'm not sure there's a good engine mount option that allows 5 engines and 5 solids.

 

Going back through and responding to some stuff I missed (sorry y'all, sometimes I don't have energy to respond to everything as well as I'd like so I hold off, and then forget...)

 

  

On 1/18/2020 at 11:05 PM, CDSlice said:

I actually wasn't 100% sure if those two tanks went together, but for this rocket the extra fuel wasn't needed. What was needed was a different antenna because that one from Restock+ doesn't have close to enough power to get a connection from JNSQ Duna. What's weird is that the stock version of that antenna has a significantly higher range, so IDK why the Restock+ antennas are so weak with JNSQ.

I guess I'll need to send a relay sat out to Duna at the next transfer window if I want to get any of that science because that probe doesn't have anywhere close to enough dV to come back to Kerbin.

My Eve version though uses a different BDB antenna that has plenty of range.

BDB ion engines with Real Plume are so beautiful.

Those probes are super nice! Always cool to see the ion parts getting used. What was powering them? Surely it can't be those little panels (which are overdue for being remade, I think...)

 

On 1/19/2020 at 1:30 AM, Cedric Feldmann - Bear said:

One of them had the BUS-1 thing and I remember how it was proposed to be used on Space Station Alpha.

The bus-what thing for space station what? Please, do tell

 

On 1/19/2020 at 3:36 PM, biohazard15 said:

Apollo Structural Adapter:

  Reveal hidden contents

The "big" node is bugged - it's higher (or lower, depending on orientation) than it should be, which results in what you see on screenshots.

Also, it is named "Apollo Structural Adapter", despite the fact that I don't use real names patch.

Well, I certainly see the issue in the config for the names. The fields for "real_title", "real_manufacturer" etc were missing the "real_" in front of them. I have no idea what's going on with the attach nodes though... And of course it's a bug on a part whose model and attach nodes haven't been touched in about two years...

[Darkherring]

On 1/20/2020 at 8:29 AM, Zorg said:

Hmm unfortunately I wasnt able to identify the problem from this. Could you try launching a craft with one of those problem engines, try to use it, then quit and send me your outputlog.txt (player.log if on 1.8). Just in case there is something useful there.

However the easiest way to solve your problem would probably be for you to eliminate mods one by one (starting with the mods more likely to mess around with engines and stuff) until it starts working. Then we can see what and how the engines are being affected and if there is a solution.

Here are the links for output_log and for KSP.log

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12fxp6CCczcKAGKg-dJNfzetpHtPiR56j/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cEh1FNX6CeTLGlzFyBXv1t4phKrL9V3e/view?usp=sharing

I'm really grateful for your help

 

EDIT: Damn... I got it! It was a small MM Patch making engines spool up. Those engine have their own spooling mechanism, so that made a problem.
Patch source - 

Thank you once again for your engagement!

Edited January 21, 2020 by Darkherring
Problem solved

[CobaltWolf]

1 hour ago, Darkherring said:

Here are the links for output_log and for KSP.log

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12fxp6CCczcKAGKg-dJNfzetpHtPiR56j/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cEh1FNX6CeTLGlzFyBXv1t4phKrL9V3e/view?usp=sharing

I'm really grateful for your help

EDIT: Damn... I got it! It was a small MM Patch making engines spool up. Those engine have their own spooling mechanism, so that made a problem.
Patch source - 

Thank you once again for your engagement!

Ha! I was just about to ask about that folder.   My second guess was ThrottleLimitExtended. Glad you sorted it out!

That's super annoying too - I just poured through your output log and, since I guess it wasn't actually triggering a plugin error, it wasn't reporting anything. I'm glad you figured it out since yeah, it was definitely going to be a "remove mods until it works" type thing.

EDIT: Now that things are working, I'd love to see what the rocket you were building with them looks like

Edited January 21, 2020 by CobaltWolf

[biohazard15]

3 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Well, I certainly see the issue in the config for the names. The fields for "real_title", "real_manufacturer" etc were missing the "real_" in front of them. I have no idea what's going on with the attach nodes though... And of course it's a bug on a part whose model and attach nodes haven't been touched in about two years...

Tried to guess some numbers experiment with attach nodes in cfg, and made this fix:

node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.044, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0
node_stack_bottom = 0.0, 0.1355, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2
	

It also fixes the node "priority" (or whatever it called), so now it attaches according to part orientation (previously, it tended to use wrong nodes).

Also, SR-120 SRB (MX 3rd stage) is advertised as SafeSolid (TM), while in fact it is not. But that's an easy fix.

 

Edited January 21, 2020 by biohazard15

[CobaltWolf]

15 minutes ago, biohazard15 said:

Tried to guess some numbers experiment with attach nodes in cfg, and made this fix:

node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.044, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0
node_stack_bottom = 0.0, 0.1355, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2
	

It also fixes the node "priority" (or whatever it called), so now it attaches according to part orientation (previously, it tended to use wrong nodes).

Also, SR-120 SRB (MX 3rd stage) is advertised as SafeSolid (TM), while in fact it is not. But that's an easy fix.

Well... what you've done there is make the top node face down and make the bottom node... 1) above the top node and b) face upwards. KSP made "strict part attachment" standard... man, many updates ago. So that shouldn't be a problem. Moreover I'm just sort of annoyed if this has been  in the mod for that long, as I said it the model hasn't been edited for over two years.

You can't fix the SR-120 because for some reason making it so an engine can be shut down, and not restarted, breaks the BDB deployable engine module. I think by the time the bug was confirmed @Jso was already on leave and hasn't had a chance to look into it.

Edited January 21, 2020 by CobaltWolf

[CDSlice]

3 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Those probes are super nice! Always cool to see the ion parts getting used. What was powering them? Surely it can't be those little panels (which are overdue for being remade, I think...)

Thanks! It actually was those little panels but I had a massive amount of batteries and couple of the capacitors from Near Future Electrical that I used for actually performing the burns. The panels just had to recharge everything. For leaving Kerbin I was able to split the escape burns into two burns that could each be done on a full charge. For capturing at the destination I just pointed retrograde, burned until I ran out of juice, waited for it to recharge burned again. Repeat until captured. Then I was able to do a few more burns to circularize at the right altitude. Not the most efficient way to do the burns but both probes had just enough dV to pull it off.

 

Also, thank you so much for these awesome parts. You, Nertea, and Team Galileo (with JNSQ) have completely reinvigorated my love for KSP and made it fresh and challenging again.

[Zorg]

18 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Damn... I got it! It was a small MM Patch making engines spool up. Those engine have their own spooling mechanism, so that made a problem.

Oof. Glad you caught it in the end. It was actually visible in the configcache now that I go back to it. I didnt spot the duplicated values. These things can kind of make your eyes glaze over

 

[Darkherring]

15 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Ha! I was just about to ask about that folder.   My second guess was ThrottleLimitExtended. Glad you sorted it out!

That's super annoying too - I just poured through your output log and, since I guess it wasn't actually triggering a plugin error, it wasn't reporting anything. I'm glad you figured it out since yeah, it was definitely going to be a "remove mods until it works" type thing.

EDIT: Now that things are working, I'd love to see what the rocket you were building with them looks like

The rocket is nothing remarkable - just bunch of random parts that kind of work together . And it also changed a bit already. Here are the pictures of the latest iteration.
 

Spoiler

 

[biohazard15]

8 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Well... what you've done there is make the top node face down and make the bottom node... 1) above the top node and b) face upwards. KSP made "strict part attachment" standard... man, many updates ago. So that shouldn't be a problem. Moreover I'm just sort of annoyed if this has been  in the mod for that long, as I said it the model hasn't been edited for over two years.

No idea what half of that means, tbh  Would it break my crafts in some horrible way if I use my fix until a proper one comes out (which, I guess, involves model editing)?

13 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

You can't fix the SR-120 because for some reason making it so an engine can be shut down, and not restarted, breaks the BDB deployable engine module. I think by the time the bug was confirmed @Jso was already on medical leave and hasn't had a chance to look into it.

That's sad

[CobaltWolf]

1 minute ago, biohazard15 said:

No idea what half of that means, tbh  Would it break my crafts in some horrible way if I use my fix until a proper one comes out (which, I guess, involves model editing)?

I don't think so? I think I just have to find it in Unity and double check the node positions... basically same thing you did but the benefit of being able to snap a transform to the bottom+top and see exactly what the offsets need to be.

3 minutes ago, Darkherring said:

The rocket is nothing remarkable - just bunch of random parts that kind of work together . And it also changed a bit already. Here are the pictures of the latest iteration.

Neat! Always love a nice clean design.

[Darkherring]

6 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Neat! Always love a nice clean design.

Yep, me too

I had also one version with nice, asymmetric, single SRB. I'll post some pictures when I'll launch it next time.

[Pappystein]

18 hours ago, Gremillion said:

@CobaltWolf Thank you for your tremendous hard work from everybody at SH. I am finally using your excellent new Titan models, and I have a bit of feedback. Ed Kyle at SpaceLaunchReport suggests the Barbarian was not just a warmed over LDC Titan, but actually used a new core size (19 feet, equivalent to 3.475 Kerbal Meters) and 5x dual nozzle LR-87-AJ-11s. I've been able to make a version with 4x LR-87-AJ-11s, but TweakScale isn't playing well at scaling the 3.125 (Kb) m parts to 3.475 m. In fact, the model doesn't snap properly and when you hit "launch" there are large gaps. How easy would it be to simply scale these parts according to the Barbarian drawing composited by Kyle?

 

Cobalt has mostly covered it... But Barbarian is Martin Marietta's equivalent in number of completely different designs with the same name) to NASA's Nova.     AKA there IS NO RIGHT NOR NO WRONG configuration!    In my reccords I have something like 16 DISTINCTLY different descriptions of Barbarian.   Barbarian was the name applied to *EVERY* pipe dream proposal for a large Diameter rocket to replace Titan at M.M. it seems.    

"Hey lets make a 36ft diameter rocket.   We should name it Barbarian"

"Hey I have this neat Idea for a new rocket;  It shall be called Barbarian"

"Oh Gosh, Martin's latest rocket proposal.  It is called Barbarian."

Basically you might as well call the Theoretical/Hypothetical Rocket division at Martin Marietta, the Barbarian Division.    Because it seems that EVERY rocket idea they proposed was named Barbarian!

 

 

[Guest]

Actually, I think "Barbarian" was a codename for "LV for Zenith Star", for which there were several proposals. All Barbarians had one thing in common: they launched the Zenith Star.

[CobaltWolf]

40 minutes ago, Pappystein said:

Cobalt has mostly covered it... But Barbarian is Martin Marietta's equivalent in number of completely different designs with the same name) to NASA's Nova.     AKA there IS NO RIGHT NOR NO WRONG configuration!    In my reccords I have something like 16 DISTINCTLY different descriptions of Barbarian.   Barbarian was the name applied to *EVERY* pipe dream proposal for a large Diameter rocket to replace Titan at M.M. it seems.    

"Hey lets make a 36ft diameter rocket.   We should name it Barbarian"

"Hey I have this neat Idea for a new rocket;  It shall be called Barbarian"

"Oh Gosh, Martin's latest rocket proposal.  It is called Barbarian."

Basically you might as well call the Theoretical/Hypothetical Rocket division at Martin Marietta, the Barbarian Division.    Because it seems that EVERY rocket idea they proposed was named Barbarian!

14 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Actually, I think "Barbarian" was a codename for "LV for Zenith Star", for which there were several proposals. All Barbarians had one thing in common: they launched the Zenith Star.

Yeah, uh, as far as I'm aware there were only ever two rockets called Barbarian. The Martin Marietta one and the McDonnell Douglas one.

Just for the sake of having something visually interesting in my response, have a pic of the MM Barbarian model.

[golkaidakhaana]

Wait, if those are both barbarian, what was the proposal of clustering 7 Delta II cores and 3 STS SRBs called?

[Machinique]

The McDonnell Douglas Barbarian, as opposed to the Titan Barbarian.

[Hay]

13 minutes ago, sslaptnhablhat said:

Wait, if those are both barbarian, what was the proposal of clustering 7 Delta II cores and 3 STS SRBs called?

Crazy

[Pappystein]

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

Actually, I think "Barbarian" was a codename for "LV for Zenith Star", for which there were several proposals. All Barbarians had one thing in common: they launched the Zenith Star.

 

55 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Yeah, uh, as far as I'm aware there were only ever two rockets called Barbarian. The Martin Marietta one and the McDonnell Douglas one.

Yeah,  I just went away for a few minutes and was coming back to correct my post.    I have several "Barbarian" Configurations and you are both right... The Payload is all "Classified payload" or "Zenith Star."   I am going to assume Classified Payload *IS* Zenith Star.    I should have said any Large Rocket That Martin Proposed went by the name LDC (Excepting some of their Nova Proposals which are called Nova.)    My bad and I apologize.   But hey we got to see a good new picture eh?    Thanks Cobalt for that picture.    That is the 5x UA1207 Rocket (I think 1208 was finally ignored/canceled/forgotten/whatever prior to that model being built/conceptualized.) 

 

 

[Gremillion]

8 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Well... first off: I'll reiterate the design goals for the LDC/Barbarian parts. First, they were meant to fill out and expand the 3.125m size that already existed in BDB, secondly they were meant to bridge the Saturn and Titan parts and art styles, and third came trying to make historical recreations with them. The details on any sort of "big Titan" are so vague that even Ed Kyle's page are essentially just guesswork.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you got 3.475m. Or 19 feet, for that matter. According to Ed Kyle the Barbarian was 200 inches / 5.08m. Scaling that by 62.5% makes it 3.175m which is well within the norm for being rounded to a standard size. The engines are also single nozzle LR-87s - check the thrust numbers compared to a Titan 34D for instance. So I think you can get a lot closer to Barbarian than you think. The only thing is I'm not sure there's a good engine mount option that allows 5 engines and 5 solids.

 

Going back through and responding to some stuff I missed (sorry y'all, sometimes I don't have energy to respond to everything as well as I'd like so I hold off, and then forget...)

 

Thanks for the correction, my mistake!

2 hours ago, Pappystein said:

Cobalt has mostly covered it... But Barbarian is Martin Marietta's equivalent in number of completely different designs with the same name) to NASA's Nova.     AKA there IS NO RIGHT NOR NO WRONG configuration!    In my reccords I have something like 16 DISTINCTLY different descriptions of Barbarian.   Barbarian was the name applied to *EVERY* pipe dream proposal for a large Diameter rocket to replace Titan at M.M. it seems.    

"Hey lets make a 36ft diameter rocket.   We should name it Barbarian"

"Hey I have this neat Idea for a new rocket;  It shall be called Barbarian"

"Oh Gosh, Martin's latest rocket proposal.  It is called Barbarian."

Basically you might as well call the Theoretical/Hypothetical Rocket division at Martin Marietta, the Barbarian Division.    Because it seems that EVERY rocket idea they proposed was named Barbarian!

 

 

I love it lmao

[Cedric Feldmann - Bear]

11 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

My problem is for the last 4 years any time I've thought about playing KSP, I go "man I wish I had that new part I was working on..." and then work on that. And the thing is, I have way more parts I'd like to make than I can get through at a reasonable pace. At the end of the day it's fun and satisfying to make more parts, and I get to vicariously see it getting used through other people. That's why screenshots, especially of nice/aesthetic non-historical builds (ie legoing the parts) are always so nice to see on the thread.

I wish we had hard fairings too. The thing is they would add a lot of time and RAM overhead for something not all players want to use. Who knows, maybe KSP2?

 

Well... first off: I'll reiterate the design goals for the LDC/Barbarian parts. First, they were meant to fill out and expand the 3.125m size that already existed in BDB, secondly they were meant to bridge the Saturn and Titan parts and art styles, and third came trying to make historical recreations with them. The details on any sort of "big Titan" are so vague that even Ed Kyle's page are essentially just guesswork.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you got 3.475m. Or 19 feet, for that matter. According to Ed Kyle the Barbarian was 200 inches / 5.08m. Scaling that by 62.5% makes it 3.175m which is well within the norm for being rounded to a standard size. The engines are also single nozzle LR-87s - check the thrust numbers compared to a Titan 34D for instance. So I think you can get a lot closer to Barbarian than you think. The only thing is I'm not sure there's a good engine mount option that allows 5 engines and 5 solids.

 

Going back through and responding to some stuff I missed (sorry y'all, sometimes I don't have energy to respond to everything as well as I'd like so I hold off, and then forget...)

 

 

  

Those probes are super nice! Always cool to see the ion parts getting used. What was powering them? Surely it can't be those little panels (which are overdue for being remade, I think...)

 

The bus-what thing for space station what? Please, do tell

 

Well, I certainly see the issue in the config for the names. The fields for "real_title", "real_manufacturer" etc were missing the "real_" in front of them. I have no idea what's going on with the attach nodes though... And of course it's a bug on a part whose model and attach nodes haven't been touched in about two years...

 

So Bus-1 was a satellite bus for the KH-12 satellites and was used for propulsion and navigation. The Space Station Alpha concept back in 1993 proposed that NASA Use Bus-1 to eliminate some of the truss segments and use Bus-1 for Navigation/Propulsion.

Edited January 22, 2020 by Cedric Feldmann - Bear

[Guest]

Interestingly, this bus is a derivative of Lockheed Satellite Support Bus, which in turns derives from the KH-9 propulsion module. I don't know just how similar the two of them are, but dimensions, at least, seem to be pretty close for KH-9 and KH-11 buses. 

[CobaltWolf]

19 hours ago, sslaptnhablhat said:

Wait, if those are both barbarian, what was the proposal of clustering 7 Delta II cores and 3 STS SRBs called?

19 hours ago, Machinique said:

The McDonnell Douglas Barbarian, as opposed to the Titan Barbarian.

19 hours ago, Hay said:

Crazy

 

19 hours ago, Pappystein said:

Yeah,  I just went away for a few minutes and was coming back to correct my post.    I have several "Barbarian" Configurations and you are both right... The Payload is all "Classified payload" or "Zenith Star."   I am going to assume Classified Payload *IS* Zenith Star.    I should have said any Large Rocket That Martin Proposed went by the name LDC (Excepting some of their Nova Proposals which are called Nova.)    My bad and I apologize.   But hey we got to see a good new picture eh?    Thanks Cobalt for that picture.    That is the 5x UA1207 Rocket (I think 1208 was finally ignored/canceled/forgotten/whatever prior to that model being built/conceptualized.) 

As far as I know the UA1208 existed only in one or two early Shuttle studies.

It's hard to tell how much the "LDC" name was actually used at the time. I know of one design for sure that used the "Titan LDC" name ... or rather, only one study I suppose, which was related to MOL. Granted, there were several designs for it (different combinations of tankage, engines, solids). If I remember I have seen the study for this first-hand but I don't recall saving it... I think I was frantically digging for something else at the time.

Other names I've seen over the years include "Titan IIIG", which I'd only ever seen very vague references to in other documents - a number of which pertain to Big G. Titan 3L2 / 3L4 is referred to as a Titan LDC by Ed Kyle but again, idk if LDC was ever used in relation to those designs at the time or if that's something that Ed Kyle used to refer to the series of proposals MM made over decades... It's hard to be conclusive just because so many of the sources he uses are from like, old editions of magazines that I have no idea how to get. I've simply ran into so many issues over the years where something that I thought was authoritative turned out to not be.

There's also something that Scott Lowther refers to as "heavy lift titan" that is a fat core with 3 Shuttle SRMs on it... no idea what that is or where it came from apart from that one painting.

I think back when LDC was under active development here, I shared something I'd learned, but I'll share it again: This 'classic' picture from Astronautix, claiming to be a Barbarian first stage mockup.

 

If you've been following these LDC/Barbarian discussions, two things might immediately jump out to you: 1) that's far too small a diameter judging by the engines, and 2) that's quite an old photo for something that would be from the late 80s. What's going on? Well, to quote Ed Kyle's description of the LDC Titan study (and I'm fairly certain I confirmed this somehow from a primary source last time we had this discussion):

Quote

8.  TITAN LDC

While it was working on Titan 3M for MOL, Martin Company put a good deal of effort into studies of "Large Diameter Core" (LDC) Titans to handle heavier MOL payloads in the future. These would have used four engines on a 180 inch (15 foot) diameter first stage. Martin went as far as building an LDC fuel tank with four LR87-AJ11 engines for transport testing during 1966-67 (oxidizer and fuel tanks would have shipped separately to the launch site).

At least two core engines would have ignited at liftoff. All four would have burned during the mid-point of the stage's flight, when the SRMs would have jettisoned, before reverting to two engines before staging. In early 1967, Martin briefly lobbied for an LDC with five segment boosters ("Titan 3M/LDC-5") as an alternative to Titan 3M. The company also studied an ultimate LDC-3 version with 156 inch boosters that could have lifted more than 36 tonnes to near-polar orbit.

LDC was never picked up by the MOL program, though VAFB SLC 6 was set up to accept it if needed. LDC died with MOL's 1969 demise, but the 15 foot diameter Titan idea kept reappearing in Martin proposals for at least two decades.

So yeah... that's the fuel tank and engines of a real-life Titan LDC!

If anyone hasn't thumbed through the various pages in Ed Kyle's library, I can't recommend them enough.

 

15 hours ago, Cedric Feldmann - Bear said:

So Bus-1 was a satellite bus for the KH-12 satellites and was used for propulsion and navigation. The Space Station Alpha concept back in 1993 proposed that NASA Use Bus-1 to eliminate some of the truss segments and use Bus-1 for Navigation/Propulsion.

15 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Interestingly, this bus is a derivative of Lockheed Satellite Support Bus, which in turns derives from the KH-9 propulsion module. I don't know just how similar the two of them are, but dimensions, at least, seem to be pretty close for KH-9 and KH-11 buses. 

Well considering KH-12s don't officially exist... But yes, very much resembles something derived from a KH-9 service module. As for extending the Keyhole series in BDB (which was the original question and idk if I answered it before) uh... KH-9 is a big maybe leaning towards no? And KH-11 is a definite no, I think. But who knows.

 

EDIT: So, maybe a deal? From what I've seen this book seems like it would be an excellent source for some of the harder-to-find information on the Hexagon, but... it's close to $40 which is a bit more than I'm usually willing to shell out for reference materials. If people wanted to donate to help crowdfund a purchase of the PDF, well... I think I'd have to finish the KH-9, wouldn't I..?

 

Edited January 22, 2020 by CobaltWolf

[golkaidakhaana]

11 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

EDIT: So, maybe a deal? From what I've seen this book seems like it would be an excellent source for some of the harder-to-find information on the Hexagon, but... it's close to $40 which is a bit more than I'm usually willing to shell out for reference materials. If people wanted to donate to help crowdfund a purchase of the PDF, well... I think I'd have to finish the KH-9, wouldn't I..?

Hell yeah, I absolutely will donate if it means we'll get a KH9.

[biohazard15]

18 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

EDIT: So, maybe a deal? From what I've seen this book seems like it would be an excellent source for some of the harder-to-find information on the Hexagon, but... it's close to $40 which is a bit more than I'm usually willing to shell out for reference materials. If people wanted to donate to help crowdfund a purchase of the PDF, well... I think I'd have to finish the KH-9, wouldn't I..?

Wow!

Also, see PM.