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[WIP] Mid-Century Rocketry

hemeac

By hemeac
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hemeac

hemeac

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hHV1bjWh.jpg

Mid-Century Rocketry is intended to fill in some early tier gaps for the Kiwi Tech Tree 2.0 update.  It will not be an extensive mod, but rather a collection of parts that will help ensure players will not get stuck if they do not have an extensive mod list.  The goal is to also allow the parts to fit relatively seamless with Stockalike mods.

And a couple of Blender Renders:

AB-4 "Louse" Solid Rocket Booster

DCwlATMh.png

RCA-9 "Havanese"  Liquid Fuel Engine

meYtlD2h.png

 

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hemeac

hemeac

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10 hours ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

Looks nice! That XLR-11 looks amazing (How did you model that?!?!)

Is this JNSQ or stock scale?

Continuing on that question, is this supposed to synergize with the new sounding rocket mod?

@Spaceman.Spiff, Thanks, the texturing still needs a bit more tweaking to try and better match stockalike, but it's getting there.  I have mostly been relying on some great photos of the XLR11 from the US Air Force Museum: Photos (af.mil).  I've taken some liberties with the piping and it will be a bit shorter even after adjusting for scale. I think it should be able to complement to Val's sounding rocket mod as Aerobee will have a smaller bulkhead size than these.  A lot of my inspiration for the parts are coming from Well's Blue Steel and Beale's CRE mods and trying to complement the parts if those mods are installed, but also should be standalone enough.

Performance-wise, they will be balanced for JNSQ which is technically similar balance to stock in that parts overperform in stock scale relative to real world scale.  With that being said, the ISPs will be worse than stock parts insofar as they are meant to be early rockets.

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Spaceman.Spiff

Spaceman.Spiff

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5 minutes ago, hemeac said:

@Spaceman.Spiff, Thanks, the texturing still needs a bit more tweaking to try and better match stockalike, but it's getting there.  I have mostly been relying on some great photos of the XLR11 from the US Air Force Museum: Photos (af.mil).  I've taken some liberties with the piping and it will be a bit shorter even after adjusting for scale. I think it should be able to complement to Val's sounding rocket mod as Aerobee will have a smaller bulkhead size than these.  A lot of my inspiration for the parts are coming from Well's Blue Steel and Beale's CRE mods and trying to complement the parts if those mods are installed, but also should be standalone enough.

Performance-wise, they will be balanced for JNSQ which is technically similar balance to stock in that parts overperform in stock scale relative to real world scale.  With that being said, the ISPs will be worse than stock parts insofar as they are meant to be early rockets.

I really don't mind slight technical inaccuracies..... It is a game, after all!

Those mods are great source material; Well and Beale do some amazing work!

If you need a beta tester, then I'd be happy to help once I get KSP unborked.:D

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hemeac

hemeac

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Another render in Blender showing the different color variants for the Louse alongside the fins.  As mentioned in the previous post, the proportions are based on the fins for the Aerobee 150 SRB.  Color variants will help color match these to Stock and Blue Steel plane structural parts for those who may want SRBs for their RATO designs.

h6BVUMK.png

 

Edited by hemeac
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hemeac

hemeac

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@Spaceman.Spiff, it would just be functionally variants, don't think I need to add things in that regard that people can't have on their own, but that may end up having those in an extras folder to let people choose.  Will see what I end up with in terms of the engines.

In other news, I realized that I had gotten the aspect ratio of the SRB texture wrong and the texel density was way too high relative to other mods.  After a rethink on saving texture space, the texture size is now less than half from the previous screenshot.  I ended up retexturing the SRB and simplifying the model somewhat.  Finished modelling and texturing a decoupler and nose cone (in case that wasn't obvious from the screenshot...).  

040u28ch.png

 

 

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Spaceman.Spiff

Spaceman.Spiff

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On 1/27/2021 at 12:09 AM, hemeac said:

In other news, I realized that I had gotten the aspect ratio of the SRB texture wrong and the texel density was way too high relative to other mods.  After a rethink on saving texture space, the texture size is now less than half from the previous screenshot.  I ended up retexturing the SRB and simplifying the model somewhat.  Finished modelling and texturing a decoupler and nose cone (in case that wasn't obvious from the screenshot...).

I still like it. :)

Those fins mesh with the stripe on the SRB really well.... thats a really nice little detail. 

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hemeac

hemeac

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Have been tinkering a bit in 3D modelling again for the last few weeks as bored with playing games, and given that KSP 2 has been delayed, I am currently inspired to actually try and finish a release of this mod.  I won't feel bad if you are skeptical.  Have been really enjoying the direction of BDB so the art style on this has shifted.  As the sounding rocket mod does not appear to be in current development, I thought I would go back to my pre-MCR idea and work on the Aerobee 150A. My idea is to keep the  mod relatively compact and give a spattering of small, early rockets to give a bit more challenge to early game in 2.5x planet packs due to lower thrust and ISP.

My goal is to model the AJ11 Engine (Aerobee 150A); AJ11x4 (Aerobee 300A); XLR-11; XLR-99 alongside some basic fuel tanks, nose cones, decouplers to get them off the ground and be useful.  Hopefully have some relevant parts to conduct some science as well.  These will be modelled at Kerbal scale, so the Aerobee 150A will be 0.2344m (smaller than Luciole), Aerobee 300A and XLR-11 will be 0.3125m and XLR-99 0.625m Modelling on the AJ11 and the XLRs are done, but not textured.  Don't think that I will end up modelling cockpits and fuselage parts to recreate the Bell X-1 or X-15 as I think that would force me to be more creative on how to build those parts than I am in reality, the current parts are basically traced from diagrams.

However, have made enough progress on the tanks and SRBs for the Aerobee 150A that wanted to show off a bit.  These are rendered using Cycles in Blender so the visual results may be more aspirational than what will end up in KSP.

The SRB, Fins and Tanks of the Aerobee 150A are finished and textured with just some fiddly work on the normal map.  The goal is to have texture switches to also have white, black, and white/black variants to allow some better matching with Restock and other mods.

FTAYjEMh.jpg

Work on the parachute (absolutely petrified on trying my hand at animations):

MmkoFVph.jpg

 

Edited by hemeac
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610yesnolovely

610yesnolovely

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Definitely room for complementary sounding rockets with BDB - I very much like the look! I definitely noticed in the early game using BDB, KSRSS 2.5x and a probes-before-crew (UKS with patches for BDB rebalance). There's not much super early on that's equivalent - Scout and Vanguard are good for sub-orbital to orbital, but nothing suitable before that.

I suspect these would be useful for various early to mid science missions "above 18km" and at various places around the globe. Modular Launch Pads has some decent rail launchers to go with these.

Been watching some NASA Wallops sounding rocket launch videos recently - quite different from larger rockets. Poof.Woosh.Gone.

Edited by 610yesnolovely
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hemeac

hemeac

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12 hours ago, 610yesnolovely said:

Definitely room for complementary sounding rockets with BDB - I very much like the look! I definitely noticed in the early game using BDB, KSRSS 2.5x and a probes-before-crew (UKS with patches for BDB rebalance). There's not much super early on that's equivalent - Scout and Vanguard are good for sub-orbital to orbital, but nothing suitable before that.

I suspect these would be useful for various early to mid science missions "above 18km" and at various places around the globe. Modular Launch Pads has some decent rail launchers to go with these.

Been watching some NASA Wallops sounding rocket launch videos recently - quite different from larger rockets. Poof.Woosh.Gone.

That was the idea.  When working on my tech tree mod, found it was a bit too easy to get to knock out a few of the first contracts and I actually like the challenge of the first challenges, so that's what inspired these small rockets.  Have you found those videos on YouTube or elsewhere?  Always looking for more reference material.

Here's an animation test of the parachute in Blender, going first to semi-deployed and then onto full-deployed.  Next step will be trying to get it in the game and see how it goes, but if anyone has any feedback on the parachute, would be appreciated.  The "inspiration" on the deployment came mostly from the Orion parachute test: https://youtu.be/aYGN1Y2bfIs?t=200

 

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610yesnolovely

610yesnolovely

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https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sounding-rockets/videos/index.html - particularly anything from NASA Wallops launch site.

On YouTube it was https://www.youtube.com/user/NASAWallops - I think this is the first one I saw, then I watched a bunch of others.

What's subtle, and I'm guessing, is from these videos the launcher attitude slowly changes, probably due to wind/weather.

Edited by 610yesnolovely
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