[1.8.1-1.12.x] Modular Launch Pads v2.7.0: Launch clamps evolved: Real-style launch bases and towers [04 July 2024]

[Sokol_323]

1 hour ago, AlphaMensae said:

A spacecraft like the Soyuz (and Vostok) would need a customized 2-piece clamshell payload-type fairing, and not one designed for conical capsule like the Mk1-2/3 and Apollo.

You could also simply not build the fairing, leaving the spacecraft exposed, but that may not be a good idea.

 

I decided to attach it to the launch pad for the Soyuz lander MK1, lifting him an astronaut and then using the Ship Manifest mod to move them into the command capsule. But I have a new problem: if I approach the rocket on your starting table (for example, the crew pulls up on the bus), then 200 m to the launch pad I explode rocket with the launch pad. This happens every time I try to bring the crew from the side. If the crew immediately is the rocket, then there is no problem. I can't figure out why.

[AlphaMensae]

3 hours ago, Sokol_323 said:

I decided to attach it to the launch pad for the Soyuz lander MK1, lifting him an astronaut and then using the Ship Manifest mod to move them into the command capsule. But I have a new problem: if I approach the rocket on your starting table (for example, the crew pulls up on the bus), then 200 m to the launch pad I explode rocket with the launch pad. This happens every time I try to bring the crew from the side. If the crew immediately is the rocket, then there is no problem. I can't figure out why.

Yeah, that can happen, and especially so in KSP 1.3.1 and I'd guess 1.4.x as well.  They're free-standing, and without any kind of command authority, are prone to the Kraken destroying them.

Try adding a probe core (use a cubic strut or such to attach it) to the pad and see if that negates the problem.

You can also anchor the pad down with some stock launch clamps, that will make it grounded to the game.  I might actually consider converrting the pads to be launch clamps themselves to eliminate the problem.

[AlphaMensae]

Well, ran into a problem with that multi-switchable arm assembly:  the fuel arm and crew elevator retraction animations stutter quite badly when they're run.

Figuring it might be due to all the mesh switching objects in the .mu file, with every arm object--24 in all--having to be in the retraction animation, I stripped out two of the fuel arms; it worked much better, and the crew arm was fine.

I'll do more tests and see what I can do to eliminate the stuttering, but in the end I may have to make the fuel arm and crew elevator separate parts, and not part of a combo, and go back to using a deploy-limit animation for at least one of the adjustments (arm height and umbilical length).  Maybe revert back to just one non-switchable arm and crew elevator in the assembly, with a separate arm available as an extra option.

Oh yeah, fueling by the arm assembly works, but in order to fuel stages above a decoupler, a fuel line would have to be run to them ...crossfeed rules are in play.

[Abpilot]

Found this pad for SA 1

[AlphaMensae]

@Abpilot Yep, that's what the tall tower for the American Launch Stand will be partly based on.  Not going to do the angled profile (I've had enough of those   ), but will do the Saturn cross-brace style for it (those two struts joining at a plate on the bottom of a beam).  It will also have different kinds of arms, in both angled-swing and straight-drop types.

 

[Abpilot]

1 hour ago, AlphaMensae said:

@Abpilot Yep, that's what the tall tower for the American Launch Stand will be partly based on.  Not going to do the angled profile (I've had enough of those   ), but will do the Saturn cross-brace style for it (those two struts joining at a plate on the bottom of a beam).  It will also have different kinds of arms, in both angled-swing and straight-drop types.

 

Also will we be seeing modern launchpads like atlas or delta IV

[AlphaMensae]

30 minutes ago, Abpilot said:

Also will we be seeing modern launchpads like atlas or delta IV

I plan at some point to add the Atlas V "tower" as an option (will use existing crew tower and arm for boarding) for both the Saturn pad and new American launch stand.  Probably won't do anything special for Delta IV, it can use the Saturn pad (Heavy and Medium) or American Lanch stand (Medium) with the tower parts in gray.  Atlas V's tower is sufficiently different to warrant its own variant, same as SpaceX's strongback; Delta IV's tower is not that much different from the Saturn tower and swing arms.

Ok, with the service arm assembly for the revised Russian Launch Stand, I did some reorganizing of the Unity hierarchy (and even rebuilt the crew elevator and fuel arm trusses in Wings3D as single meshes), and reverted the fuel arm umbilical adjustment back to the deploy-limited animation type. 

The retraction stutter is now very slight, almost not noticable:

It's like a compromise solution, though I might be able to bring back the switchable umbilicals in the future pending some additions to B9PS.

@Sokol_323I forgot to mention this, are you using Kerbal Joint Reinforcement?  I am and only once had the Saturn pad explode in 1.3.1 (though didn't try the driving up to the Soyuz pad); after reverting it worked fine.  Also try approaching the pad(s) slowly.

[Sokol_323]

1 hour ago, AlphaMensae said:

 

@Sokol_323I forgot to mention this, are you using Kerbal Joint Reinforcement?  I am and only once had the Saturn pad explode in 1.3.1 (though didn't try the driving up to the Soyuz pad); after reverting it worked fine.  Also try approaching the pad(s) slowly.

No, I don't use KJR. But I have is worth many other mods. There may be a conflict. However, this is only the launch pad for the Saturn. The speed and direction of the approximation is not affected. When I drive up to the launch pad for the Soyz, everything works fine. Added directly to the base of Saturn's launch pad two clips from the stock set and kind of like the problem disappeared. Anyway, I did some test runs yesterday. Not a single explosion.

[AlphaMensae]

11 hours ago, Sokol_323 said:

No, I don't use KJR. But I have is worth many other mods. There may be a conflict. However, this is only the launch pad for the Saturn. The speed and direction of the approximation is not affected. When I drive up to the launch pad for the Soyz, everything works fine. Added directly to the base of Saturn's launch pad two clips from the stock set and kind of like the problem disappeared. Anyway, I did some test runs yesterday. Not a single explosion.

That's great news!  I think the one time my Saturn pad exploded was because I had decoupled the crane first...not a good idea to have decoupled parts when physics loads in.

 

[AlphaMensae]

A launch demo with something I threw together from BDB parts

 

Edited April 24, 2018 by AlphaMensae

[Rory Yammomoto]

I have an suggestion: What about the Gemini Erector? That's probably not what it's called, but it sounds cool

I know you can't make a part that moves other parts (Easily), but even if it just went up and down by itself, it would still be pretty cool.

 

[AlphaMensae]

@Rory Yammomoto I've thought about it,  but as you noticed, it wouldn't be able to actually raise an attached rocket without having it decoupled first (which leads to something way more complicated), so it's not a priority.  OTOH, it would make for an alternate crew access tower, since that's how the Gemini crews boarded the spacecraft...and I've already made a retracting crew elevator tower for the Russian launch stand.

In dev news, I made the fuel arm and crew tower from the Russian stand's service assembly separate parts (this fuel arm doesn't use mesh-switching byut two deploy limit sliders, and will be in 3 different resource outputs: LF/O, LH2 and Monoprop), and I'm making them usuable on the bigger Soyuz pad as an interim step until I can make the dedicated main service access arms for it.  Also made the hinge pads switchable between 90-degree and 45-degree orientations, with 8 attach nodes in 4-way stack symmetry, so 4 can be used for the clamp arm hinges and the others for the fuel arms and crew tower.

[StevieC]

Sounds good to me, @AlphaMensaeI'm eager to try it out

[AlphaMensae]

A little demo of the revised Soyuz pad, with the alternate 45-degree hinge configuration and the fuel arm and crew tower from the Russian Launch Stand (which need a bit of position tweaking with the offset gizmo).  The base is also bigger, to accomodate the 45-degree hinge positions.

 

[Sampa]

ok, seeing some of those pictures makes me want to use that in my own game!

[AlphaMensae]

Well, what was to be a quick update is taking a bit longer, as I keep adding stuff to v1.3 beyond the original simple partial revamp I had intended

I'm going to add a bottom-mount hold down arm assembly for the Saturn pad.  It's inspired by the one used by the Delta II, though mine as retracting attach struts and arm since it's much cooler visually.  Will have switchable versions for 2.5m, 1.875m and 1.5m (BDB Delta II) tanks/engines, as well as a special one for the current BDB Atlas V, as the RD-180 engine for that isn't 2.5m at bottom of the housing.

 A pic of the 1.875m version with the BDB Titan II core:

 

The 1.5m Delta II one will have only three arms, to fit with the typical 9x SRM configuration.

A variation of this will also be included with the upcoming American Launch Stand.

[AlphaMensae]

After spending a lot of time in Unity, I've decided to save that full bottom-mount assembly for other purposes (like the American Launch Stand and derivatives), and just use an arm by itself for the Saturn launcher base.  The full thing just didn't fit in well with the square flame hole of the base, and it turned out that I would be using much of the square insert's structure anyway, so the bottom-mount arm is now simply another hold-down arm option.

 

I will be adding switchable hold-down support/node options to the inserts to provide for different tank/stage size options, and only four general size options, not tank-specific ones, since the arm now can be moved in and out to fit a certain tank diameter.  B9PS when used in node-group switching with the stackSymmetry value confnes the symmetry to just that group that was enabled, so KSP doesn't include other nodes when placing the part in symmetry.  That opens up some useful switching combinations.

[AlphaMensae]

Ok, due to a reply on my youtube channel, I made up a MM patch .cfg for FASA, similiar to the ones for BDB and TantaresLV.  It adds a size 5 attach node to the first stage tanks of the Saturn V, Saturn IB and Titan II, and the primary tank for the Atlas and Redstone.  Will be included in v1.3 of Modular Launch Pads, but it's available now on my Dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ub05cks5dkmnzzr/FASA-MLP-Patches.zip?dl=0

 

[Sampa]

FASA still exists?

[AlphaMensae]

8 minutes ago, Sampa said:

FASA still exists?

Yep, and it's available for KSP 1.2.2/1.3.1 due to the efforts of Raidernick. 

The person who commented on my youtube said he uses FASA, and someone here also requested a FASA patch some time ago...I never got around to it until now; it was only five parts.  I didn't actually load FASA, just looked at the .cfg files to find the tanks I needed, and put the new node several meters below the existing bottom node to account for engines and additional parts.

 

[Sampa]

Oh!  cool!  I used FASA all the time, back in the day!  loved it so much!

[AlphaMensae]

OK, B9PartSwitch has a KSP 1.4.3 version out now, so I just put up v1.2.2 of ModularLaunchPads on Spacedock which includes the .zip for it.  Kept the KSP 1.4.2 version as well for now.  Not sure if this was actually necessary, but better be safe.

Also included the MM patch for FASA.

Changelog:
 

1.2.2    Added B9PartSwitch v2.3.0 for KSP 1.4.3

             Added Module Manager patch file for FASA to the Patches folder.
             This adds a size 5 attach node to several meters below the bottom of the first stage tank of the Saturn V, Saturn IB and                       Titan II, and the main tank for the Atlas and Redstone.  This node is used to attach the pad bases.
 

Edited May 3, 2018 by AlphaMensae

[AlphaMensae]

Working on a switchable square flame hole insert for the Saturn launcher base.  The attach node+support configuration for the hold-down arms can be switched among various styles, and the supports have four different length and two width settings.  A WIP demo:

 

The rectangular insert will be next, it will also have switchable settings for SRB/LRB boosters of different sizes, e.g. a three 2.m stacks or a 2.m core with 1.875m boosters, and so on.

[AlphaMensae]

Almost-final version of the new switchable square insert, now with an option to turn on an inner deck:

[JPGSP]

Does it work in 1.3.1?

because in spacedock it only appears 1.4.1 to higher