[WIP] O.R.A.N.G.E.S - Stockalike Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles! (v1.0.0-beta-2 6/Feb/2023)

[EStreetRockets]

23 hours ago, Invaderchaos said:

With the new delta blue paintjob, I decided to make my take on a totally normal "Delta II":

 

I want to make it ABUNDANTLY clear that I had no connection WHATSOEVER to the construction of this monstrosity.

[GoldForest]

@EStreetRockets I was wondering, do you plan on making the Shuttle ET wetlab concept? if not, could we get a flat bottom Shuttle ET so we can kit bash one together? 

STS External Tank Station (astronautix.com)

etwic88.jpg (317×240) (astronautix.com)

Edited February 9, 2023 by GoldForest

[eagleswing12]

6 hours ago, GoldForest said:

@EStreetRockets I was wondering, do you plan on making the Shuttle ET wetlab concept? if not, could we get a flat bottom Shuttle ET so we can kit bash one together? 

STS External Tank Station (astronautix.com)

etwic88.jpg (317×240) (astronautix.com)

I second this. I made a small extension for the ReDirect ET in private, and it seems like just implementing the lab itself wouldn’t be that hard. Could we see this in the future?

[Invaderchaos]

 

@EStreetRockets I was wondering, do you plan on making the Shuttle ET wetlab concept? if not, could we get a flat bottom Shuttle ET so we can kit bash one together? 

STS External Tank Station (astronautix.com)

etwic88.jpg (317×240) (astronautix.com)

I’ll look into this.

The inline bottom/ogive top part was one of the things I still need to get in game.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

6 hours ago, Invaderchaos said:

I’ll look into this.

The inline bottom/ogive top part was one of the things I still need to get in game.

I think the shuttle ET lab would work very well with SSOUP.

[Astra Infinitum]

tested out this pack today, you did a great job on all the parts esp the tanks and engine mounts. i really like it

[Antiperson]

Congrats on release! I absolutely adore the work you guys have done for this mod, it's glorious.



 

[DJ Reonic]

This is looking quite good. I'm already using this for my shuttles. I like how I can make nearly all the variations of the ET for the various shuttle missions.

[DaveyJ576]

May I suggest one small change to the STS-1 tank configuration? The ET used on this flight was unique visually. It had a black band around the ogive section. This was part of the lightning abatement system. The heavy black paint was intended to give a lightning strike an alternate path. After the STS-1 flight, engineers feared that the heavy, thick paint would become a debris hazard if it broke off during flight. ET-2 used on STS-2 had the paint removed at KSC prior to flight leaving a white scar on the tank. Of course, for ET-3 and beyond with the lack of white paint there was no black stripe. Below are two pics of the ET-1 tank. Unfortunately, I could not find a clear pic of ET-2 that showed the scar, but in essence it was just a barely visible light white colored strip around the ogive where the black paint had been removed.

Spoiler

This is a very nit-picky observation of a totally amazing work of KSP art. Very well done @EStreetRocketsand @Invaderchaos! You can be proud of this mod.

By the way, as a reference there is no better book than Dennis R. Jenkins' Space Shuttle: Developing an Icon 1972-2013. It is THE definitive reference work on the Space Shuttle. You won't need any other technical reference. It is a massive three volume magnum opus. It is a little pricey, but it is worth every penny.

Edited February 16, 2023 by DaveyJ576

[Royalswissarmyknife]

40 minutes ago, DaveyJ576 said:

May I suggest one small change to the STS-1 tank configuration? The ET used on this flight was unique visually. It had a black band around the ogive section. This was part of the lightning abatement system. The heavy black paint was intended to give a lightning strike an alternate path. After the STS-1 flight, engineers feared that the heavy, thick paint would become a debris hazard if it broke off during flight. ET-2 used on STS-2 had the paint removed at KSC prior to flight leaving a white scar on the tank. Of course, for ET-3 and beyond with the lack of white paint there was no black stripe. Below are two pics of the ET-1 tank. Unfortunately, I could not find a clear pic of ET-2 that showed the scar, but in essence it was just a barely visible light white colored strip around the ogive where the black paint had been removed.

  Hide contents

This is a very nit-picky observation of a totally amazing work of KSP art. Very well done @EStreetRocketsand @Invaderchaos! You can be proud of this mod.

By the way, as a reference there is no better book than Dennis R. Jenkins' Space Shuttle: Developing an Icon 1972-2013. It is THE definitive reference work on the Space Shuttle. You won't need any other technical reference. It is a massive three volume magnum opus. It is a little pricey, but it is worth every penny.

How much do you know about the shuttle! 

[KeaKaka]

5 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

May I suggest one small change to the STS-1 tank configuration? The ET used on this flight was unique visually. It had a black band around the ogive section. This was part of the lightning abatement system. The heavy black paint was intended to give a lightning strike an alternate path. After the STS-1 flight, engineers feared that the heavy, thick paint would become a debris hazard if it broke off during flight. ET-2 used on STS-2 had the paint removed at KSC prior to flight leaving a white scar on the tank. Of course, for ET-3 and beyond with the lack of white paint there was no black stripe. Below are two pics of the ET-1 tank. Unfortunately, I could not find a clear pic of ET-2 that showed the scar, but in essence it was just a barely visible light white colored strip around the ogive where the black paint had been removed.

I'm pretty sure Invader said elsewhere that details like that can't really be implemented very easily onto the texture due to the way it's unwrapped, although you can approximate the stripe at the moment using appropriately coloured conformal decals (by getting a text decal and typing something like IIIIIIIIIIII and then playing around with the text spacing settings and text colour to turn it into a block, then just use symmetry to align it)

 

[DaveyJ576]

23 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

I'm pretty sure Invader said elsewhere that details like that can't really be implemented very easily onto the texture due to the way it's unwrapped, although you can approximate the stripe at the moment using appropriately coloured conformal decals (by getting a text decal and typing something like IIIIIIIIIIII and then playing around with the text spacing settings and text colour to turn it into a block, then just use symmetry to align it)

 

I figured that texturing limitations were at work. Doing all of that with Conformal Decals is a lot more work than can be justified! I will happily fly it as is. 

[JebTheDestroyer]

Does anyone know of any/have any plans to make a RO patch for this mod? Really wanna use it in RSS.

[Alpha512]

Will there be a canon OPAV later in the mod?

[guest10985]

Is there going to be Jupiter-direct parts? if so this has different LVs from pg.51 to pg.107.

[SpaceCube2000]

Can this be added to CKAN? 

[Ultim32]

1 hour ago, SpaceCube2000 said:

Can this be added to CKAN? 

I think that the only place to download this for now is on github, because it is still in beta. I would ask the developers of the mod if I were you.

Edited February 22, 2023 by Ultim32

[Blufor878]

Orange Falcon 9 anyone?

What, don't look at me like that!

[GoldForest]

@EStreetRockets @Invaderchaos Found a bug.  One of the reverser RCS ports doesn't fire with the others on the 5m avionics core. 

[theonegalen]

B9PartSwitch says there is a "Serious Warning" when installing this on a completely stock build of KSP (except for the requirements).

[Blufor878]

On 2/15/2023 at 6:37 PM, Antiperson said:

Congrats on release! I absolutely adore the work you guys have done for this mod, it's glorious.



 

I need to ask, where did you get that fairing. Is it part of ORANGES or another mod?

[The Dressian Exploder]

It looks to me like one of BDB's SAF fairings.

[Kurld]

I finally added the ET to my SOCK shuttle. 

I was using the tank from ReDIRECT before and the SRBs from Photon. Everything worked well with these parts for the MechJeb ascent guidance to get the STS to a 115k circular orbit in a 2.5x rescaled system.

I swapped out just the ETs and it pretty much lays an egg and can't hold things along the ascent profile, soon pitching over too far and leveling out about 15k altitude.  The engines are gimballing for all they are worth to very little effect..   Weird.

The only major difference I can see is the new tank actually weighs about 17 tons less than the old one (dry).  I'd assume this would actually be easier on the flight controls.  I gave a cursory glance at the CoM/Thrust and everything looks reasonably close.  The SRBs align a bit differently, but are generally the same geometry as before. 

I didn't change anything in the MJ profile because I didn't think I needed to.  It's pretty much the standard profile anyway except I've changed the target alt for the higher atmosphere in 2.5x

Thoughts?

 

 

[Ultim32]

On 3/7/2023 at 8:17 AM, Kurld said:

soon pitching over too far

The same thing happened to me, and I also don't know what caused this.

EDIT: It actually happened twice. On the second attempt, I managed to pull off a RTLS Abort.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Ultim32

[Horizons Aerospace]

On 3/7/2023 at 8:17 AM, Kurld said:

I finally added the ET to my SOCK shuttle. 

I was using the tank from ReDIRECT before and the SRBs from Photon. Everything worked well with these parts for the MechJeb ascent guidance to get the STS to a 115k circular orbit in a 2.5x rescaled system.

I swapped out just the ETs and it pretty much lays an egg and can't hold things along the ascent profile, soon pitching over too far and leveling out about 15k altitude.  The engines are gimballing for all they are worth to very little effect..   Weird.

The only major difference I can see is the new tank actually weighs about 17 tons less than the old one (dry).  I'd assume this would actually be easier on the flight controls.  I gave a cursory glance at the CoM/Thrust and everything looks reasonably close.  The SRBs align a bit differently, but are generally the same geometry as before. 

I didn't change anything in the MJ profile because I didn't think I needed to.  It's pretty much the standard profile anyway except I've changed the target alt for the higher atmosphere in 2.5x

Thoughts?

 

 

 

On 3/7/2023 at 10:06 PM, Ultim32 said:

The same thing happened to me, and I also don't know what caused this.

EDIT: It actually happened twice. On the second attempt, I managed to pull off a RTLS Abort.

These seem very similar, if not identical to a problem I frequently have with Mechjeb ascent guidance. I have not been able to find a solution, but turning off limit AoA" allows the spacecraft to self correct shortly after launching. Manually fighting against the turn before the self correction kicks in also helps.