Orion Mods

[kerman001]

I'm pretty crazy about the Orion Nuclear Pulse drive these days. One pitiful thing is that few of them consists of vector controls.  Is there an Orion Mod that consists of vector control and pulse yield control at the same time?

[JadeOfMaar]

@kerman001 Orion pulse is fundamentally unfriendly to any application of thrust vector control, as far as I understand it. The only safe means to give gimbal to a ship equipped with this is to redistribute mass and very precisely shift your CoM out of alignment with the CoT...Or just have really powerful RCS so you can rotate quickly before or after a single pulse. Anything you try to use as thrust vanes or gimbal flaps (in a real world build) would realistically either get blown off quickly or require actuators that compromise quickly. Deliberately deflecting the pulse itself could quickly compromise the shock absorbers or the joints between them and non-engine body.

Fortunately, the go-to mod for Orions does exist. It's KSP 1.8+ compatible, it has proper pulse physics and the yield can be changed in the editor and in flight. Its parts are rather heavy on junkyard style, though, and aren't attractive if you're particular with clean or Restock-alike looks.