[1.2/1.3] Real Scale Sea Dragon 0.3.4 (2016-07-12)

[NecroBones]

Real Scale Sea Dragon - Parts Pack

Realistically scaled Sea Dragon rocket

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NOTE: This is still an alpha/beta development project. New parts are still being added, and things can and will change!

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Required Dependencies:

• Module Manager
• Hangar Extender

Highly Recommended:

• QuickSearch   (you can just type "dragon" to quickly find the parts)
• Kerbal Joint Reinforcement   (big parts = big flexing?)
• Real Solar System
• FAR

 

 

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Installation:

Simply copy the "RSSeaDragon" folder into your GameData folder. If upgrading from a previous version, be sure to delete the old one from GameData first (this is the cleanest option).

 

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NOTE:
 
These rocket parts ARE NOT stock balanced! They're using the real world mass ratios, thrusts, ISPs, dry weights, and so on. They will certainly WORK in stock, just with severe overkill.

SECOND NOTE:

This is still in alpha/beta development. Parts are still being added, and things can and will change!

 

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Design Notes:

Primarily meant for use with RSS or other large scale Kerbins, however you can certainly fly this in an otherwise stock game. In stock, it will be ridiculously overkill, but since it's a bit of an overkill solution anyway, that's part of the fun, right?

• Known Issue: Fairing "confetti" is rather deadly. KSP 1.1 should allow us to eject it further.
• Known issue: Steering authority in upper stage is weak. Already artificially inflated though! (should be worse!)
• Currently doesn't have a set of ballast tanks for water launches. This will be looked into, but it's unclear how well it will work, until experimenting.

 

To-Do List:

• Ballast tanks for sea launches (works in testing, tank model coming soon).
• Larger smoke trail for first stage (completed for 0.2).
• Extending second-stage engine bell.

 

Primary design diagram used:

 

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Download From:

SpaceDock

-or-

curse.com (soon)

-or-

ksp.necrobones.com

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Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

CC BY-NC-SA

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Change Log:

0.3.4 (2016-07-12) - Tweak.
 - Slightly increased heat tolerance of first stage parts.

0.3.3 (2016-05-11) - Minor hotfix.
 - Corrected staging problems in sample rockets.

0.3.2 (2016-04-22) - Tweaks.
 - Added collider setting for procedural fairing base.
 - Adjusted tech node to play more nicely with Real Scale Boosters.

0.3.1 (2016-04-03) - KSP 1.1 Hotfix (1.0.5 compatible, except for the sample rockets)
 - Sample rockets were locking up KSP 1.1 when sending to the pad/runway. Updated for 1.1, but are no longer compatible with 1.0.5.
 - Sample rockets saved with fairing settings to use maximum ejection force, and 4-way clamshells.

0.3 (2016-04-02) - The Sea-Recovery Update. (1.0.5 compatible)
 - Increased crash tolerance of first stage engine and tank to 150 m/s to support oceanic crash-landing recovery.
 - Removed stack attachment node from end of skirt extension on second stage tank, and instead added it to second stage engine.
 - Added inflatable "recovery flare" to the first stage engine, and updated sample rockets to put it on action group 2.

0.2 (2016-03-28) - The Sea-Launch Update.
 - Increased crash tolerance considerably on all parts, to allow bouncing around in the water.
 - Added attachment node at bottom of first stage engine to allow attaching the ballast tank. 
 - Extended first stage tank's lower skirt, and removed extraneous attachment node corresponding to it.
 - Shortened first stage engine length (and updated sample rocket accordingly), after discovering miscalculation.
 - Reworked colliders for first and second stage main engines, and first stage tank.
 - Added ballast tank for sea launches.
 - Added SPH sample rocket with ballast tank. 
 - Updated VAB sample rocket to ignite the verniers at launch in the staging.
 - Added an animated bell extension for the second stage engine, and updated sample rockets to use it (action group 1).
 - Added custom smoke trail for first stage engine (known issue: runs regardless of air pressure).
 - Removed smoke trails from upper-stage engine + verniers (hydrogen burns cleanly).


0.1 (2016-03-25) - First test release.
 - Mostly complete. Using stock procedural fairing system. No ballast tanks. 
 - Known issue: Fairing "confetti" is rather deadly.
 - Known issue: Steering authority in upper stage is weak. Already artificially inflated though! (should be worse!)

 

[HoloYolo]

Holy crap is that huge, like damn Necro chill out.

[NecroBones]

 

CKAN pull request added:  https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/NetKAN/pull/3480

[Spaceception]

The link that you put on SpaceDock to bring us here isn't working.

[NecroBones]

2 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

The link that you put on SpaceDock to bring us here isn't working.

 

Fixed, thanks. Somehow it lost the "http://" portion.

[Bonus Eventus]

Any plans to have this somehow launch from the sea like in the original design specs? Love to see how this would work with the new buoyancy system! 

[NecroBones]

5 hours ago, Bonus Eventus said:

Any plans to have this somehow launch from the sea like in the original design specs? Love to see how this would work with the new buoyancy system! 

 

It's possible, but it'll take some experimentation. I'll first need to see if the buoyancy system works with having a ballast tank to turn the rocket upward.

[NecroBones]

 

I'm starting some testing of ballast and buoyancy. The ballast tank looks like it'll work pretty well (I haven't modeled one yet, so right now it looks like the first stage fuel tank). But the problem I'm running into is that the engine won't start. If I stage it under water, it can never be started. Since I've never tried launching from the ocean before, I'm guessing KSP treats liquid fueled engines as destroyed if you try to start them in the water or something, whether that was intentional or a bug.

 

The engine reports that it's in flame-out, and deprived of oxidizer, even though it's still attached and the gimbal works, and the fuel tank has plenty of propellant.

 

 

[Glaran K'erman]

So close, I haven't launched from the sea yet either but did you thrown on infinite fuel to see if it would launch anyway? While on the "does this do that" train....expanding second stage engine nozzle?

[NecroBones]

 

I got the engine thing worked out. It turns out it was "connected", but not in a way that would pass fuel, which is an odd side effect. The actual problem was just that I hosed up the attachment nodes for the engine when I added a second node for the ballast tanks to attach to. I got that all straightened out, and now it works.

 

When I model the actual ballast tanks, I'll set the fill rate to be slower. I just needed it quick for testing.

 

 

[Matuchkin]

The size of the smoke trail is... quite anticlimactic...

[NecroBones]

2 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

The size of the smoke trail is... quite anticlimactic...

 

Yeah, I may need to make my own. The stock trail looks pretty puny.

 

[NecroBones]

5 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

The size of the smoke trail is... quite anticlimactic...

3 hours ago, NecroBones said:

Yeah, I may need to make my own. The stock trail looks pretty puny.

 

Hmmm, I wonder if there's a particular trick to getting smoke trails working. Flames are pretty easy, but the smoke trail I'm trying to add isn't appearing in-game at all.

 

[NecroBones]

 

As it turns out, the smoke trails use prefabs that have built-in rules about altitudes, and so on. I don't know of a way to make that, currently. However, I can fake a pretty good smoke trail now, using the flame-like emitters:

 

 

[Miuramir]

I've been a fan of Sea Dragon for decades, and I've been wanting a KSP mod for this since KSP has had mods.  Major kudos for doing this, and I've got high hopes. 

For those wondering *why* anyone would do this, one of the points of Sea Dragon was that it would be *cheap* on a per-pound-to-orbit basis.  It was as large as it was on purpose, to allow it to be built from (comparatively) inexpensive industrial and shipbuilding materials, in a more-or-less ordinary shipyard.  Estimates were $20/pound in 1983 dollars, still less than $50/pound today.  From a KSP perspective, it's a small number of simple parts to lift big things, which is also handy. 

It's also historically been considered as one of the few logical ways to launch a good-sized Orion nuclear pulse drive out of the biosphere for interplanetary use, for those days when alien invasion isn't imminent and you're feeling a bit squeamish about all those nukes going off on the way up. 

First test, "stock" version: Generally awesome.  Stability under physics warp is excellent, and I was wondering whether you'd gotten then nosecone-in-engine-bell working, and it looks like it does!  I'm pondering whether the side-mount steering engines should be treated as very large LF+O RCS?  Tradeoffs either way; perhaps there should be two versions, one as-is that's throttle controlled, and an otherwise identical version that is hooked into RCS logic?

[Bonus Eventus]

16 hours ago, NecroBones said:

 

It's possible, but it'll take some experimentation. I'll first need to see if the buoyancy system works with having a ballast tank to turn the rocket upward.

 

8 hours ago, NecroBones said:

 

I got the engine thing worked out. It turns out it was "connected", but not in a way that would pass fuel, which is an odd side effect. The actual problem was just that I hosed up the attachment nodes for the engine when I added a second node for the ballast tanks to attach to. I got that all straightened out, and now it works.

 

When I model the actual ballast tanks, I'll set the fill rate to be slower. I just needed it quick for testing.

 

 

I'm getting pumped!

[Table]

looks.... amazing

 

hope you make the models more detailed mate

[Table]

Also, here are some design layouts for the Sea Dragon, as you can see the fins are actually rocket enginee?   If you dont see the image im sorry im using my phone and i jave no idea what im doing

Edited March 27, 2016 by Table

[NecroBones]

 

There's a lot of detail on it that you can't see zoomed out like that. The engines all work, don't worry.

 

[Glaran K'erman]

In the flood of comments mine seems to have been lost...

While at work, I was admiring yours @NecroBones. I was curious if you have plans/already included the expanding second stage engine bell? Wish I could download every mod I was interested in but alas, I stick to a single very full install.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Glaran K'erman

[NecroBones]

 

@Glaran K'erman -- Sorry about that. I meant to answer that. I'm not sure. In the documentation I saw a lot of references to it, but the diagrams I worked from for modeling showed what appeared to be a completely static engine bell, so I went with that for the time being. But an expanding bell certainly is doable too. I may just have to completely fudge it, since I don't know what it's supposed to look like in this case.

 

[NecroBones]

 

Heh, fun image I found while googling diagrams:

 

[Glaran K'erman]

26 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

 

@Glaran K'erman -- Sorry about that. I meant to answer that. I'm not sure. In the documentation I saw a lot of references to it, but the diagrams I worked from for modeling showed what appeared to be a completely static engine bell, so I went with that for the time being. But an expanding bell certainly is doable too. I may just have to completely fudge it, since I don't know what it's supposed to look like in this case.

 

Not a problem I figured with all the other stuff you do I probably got buried somewhere!
That's the problem with theoretical stuff isn't it, no definitive example makes it tricky. Whatever creative license you take I'll be fine with it...but I will throw in my vote for an Expando-O-Bell 

 

Edit: Haha, you posted that just before I replied, they obviously needed a universal frame of reference! 

Edited March 27, 2016 by Glaran K'erman

[NecroBones]

10 hours ago, Glaran K'erman said:

Not a problem I figured with all the other stuff you do I probably got buried somewhere!
That's the problem with theoretical stuff isn't it, no definitive example makes it tricky. Whatever creative license you take I'll be fine with it...but I will throw in my vote for an Expando-O-Bell 

 

 

Guess what? I decided to work on that part first.

 

 

[Glaran K'erman]

55 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

Guess what? I decided to work on that part first.

Aha! Very nicely done, but I may mess up launches having way too much fun playing with that toggle...can you live with that on your conscience?
But mainly, kudos