[0.22.X] BobCat ind. Historical spacecraft thread

[NeoMorph]

Thanks for tweaking my memory about the EDS! I have the Orion and the Altair/EDS docked in Kerbin orbit (time is precious these days, so I execute phases when I can), so I'll go back and review the mission profile video so I get this somewhere in the ballpark of correct the first time. I completely agree about using MJ for the ascents. It took a few launches, but I have the profile dialed in tight now.

Yeah, I really didn't realise the EDS has a dual function...

From Wiki...

The Earth Departure Stage (EDS) is the name given to the second stages of two Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, the Ares V and the Block II Space Launch System. The EDS is used to boost the rocket's payload into a parking orbit around the Earth and from there send the payload out of low Earth orbit to its destination in a manner similar to that of the S-IVB rocket stage used on the Saturn V rockets that propelled the three-man Apollo missions to the Moon between 1968 and 1972.

Yup... Bobcat nailed it once more!

[NeoMorph]

Oh dear... I think that Bobcat actually has made a booboo... This is talking about the EDS...

Originally, the stage would have been based on the Space Shuttle's External Tank, and would have used two J-2X engines, while the Ares V core booster would have used five Space Shuttle Main Engines and two 5-segment Solid Rocket Boosters during the first eight minutes of flight. When the Ares V was then redesigned around the use of five (later six[1]) RS-68B rocket engines currently used on the Delta IV EELV family, the EDS was then redesigned using only a single J-2X engine and a common bulkhead, thus in its final design, the EDS resembled an oversized S-IVB, but with the capability of on-site storage (using new propellant storage techniques along with a "loiter skirt" containing solar panels for electricity) for up to 4 days, something impossible with the old S-IVB.

The Ares V in the new release has five engines while the EDS has one engine. Seems it is a combination of version 1 second stage (ie 5 engines) which should require two J-2X's on the EDS. If it was a version 2 it should use 6 ER-68B's on the second stage with the one J-2X on the EDS.

[Guest]

When the Ares V was then redesigned around the use of five (later six[1])

Not really. Note how this sentence is phrased. There was a time when a 5-engine CCB and a 1-engine EDS were used. Also, the engines on Ares V don't look like SSMEs, so I'm assuming they're RS-68Bs. I've got a nice booklet on Constellation, and BobCat's pack is spot-on for the version presented there.

[Danny88]

Ares V is awesome.

[sciencepanda]

I've used the Soviet pack a lot, and I enjoy it, but I noticed one thing is missing.We have the modern Soyuz, and historic Soyuz, but not the original Russian space capsule, Vostok.

[Good_Apollo]

I've used the Soviet pack a lot, and I enjoy it, but I noticed one thing is missing.We have the modern Soyuz, and historic Soyuz, but not the original Russian space capsule, Vostok.

He's had it in the works. I'm pretty sure it was pointed out that he had some alpha looking parts for a Vostok in one of his screenshots for the American Pack. The Soviet Pack isn't supposed to be complete yet as far as I know. Bobcat is a machine.

[NeoMorph]

Not really. Note how this sentence is phrased. There was a time when a 5-engine CCB and a 1-engine EDS were used. Also, the engines on Ares V don't look like SSMEs, so I'm assuming they're RS-68Bs. I've got a nice booklet on Constellation, and BobCat's pack is spot-on for the version presented there.

I'm just finding that my Kethane modified Altair Cargo is just struggling to reach orbit and then get into moon orbit. When I reach the moon surface the last time I ran out of fuel just 20m up lol. That extra engine on the thrust stage would probably get me into orbit a bit quicker (and use less fuel ironically). I don't know. Maybe I need to change my ascent profile (yeah, for multiple launch testing I let Mechjeb handle it so as to keep the data consistent).

[Guest]

No, an extra engine would actually be less efficient at this. It'd only add dry mass. Yes, try a different ascent profile, or try skipping lunar orbit and going straight for the landing (assuming you're not doing an EOR mission using the Orion, that is).

[lpam]

Your modified lander is probably too heavy for Ares V to launch into lunar orbit

[MDBenson]

I dunno, I've hurled up some pretty huge payloads to 120km orbit on an Ares V first stage since it was released and it's managed all of them pretty well.

The EDS stage is a bit sensitive to extra mass. Bobcat's tuned it pretty well to only just manage an orbit and Munar trajectory burn. I think both my Altair flights departed for the Mun with about 10% or less fuel left in the EDS. Also the TWR is balanced so that more mass soon overwhelms it, although that's not such an issue if the main stage gets you to apoapsis. spme of my heavier payloads have been lofted using a custom second stage (which doesn't look nearly as cool ).

For an ascent profile, I'd try a 40% midpoint, 5-8km gravity turn and flatten out at 70km. That's worked for me going to Mun with Ares V and both Altair landers.

[lpam]

Did you say you had MechJeb? If you do use it to see the mass of your modified lander and see how it compares to the normal Altair

[daver4470]

The EDS stage is a bit sensitive to extra mass. Bobcat's tuned it pretty well to only just manage an orbit and Munar trajectory burn.

Did he retune the stages in the last update? Because I didn't see this at all with my faux-Constellation mission. The EDS had enough oomph to put the entire Altair/Orion docked stack into a Munar trajectory (from a 100km Kerbin orbit), and would have had about 75% of the delta-V necessary for Munar orbit insertion had I not chosen to separate it during the trans-Munar coast. (I did siphon off some of the leftover fuel to refuel the Orion tanks.) The only thing that went wrong in the whole mission was that I didn't pick up that staging issue with the Altair, and (thanks to the ascent engine burning during the landing) my ascent stage was left with too little monoprop to achieve orbit after the landing. Oops.

[MDBenson]

Did he retune the stages in the last update? Because I didn't see this at all with my faux-Constellation mission. The EDS had enough oomph to put the entire Altair/Orion docked stack into a Munar trajectory (from a 100km Kerbin orbit), and would have had about 75% of the delta-V necessary for Munar orbit insertion had I not chosen to separate it during the trans-Munar coast. (I did siphon off some of the leftover fuel to refuel the Orion tanks.) The only thing that went wrong in the whole mission was that I didn't pick up that staging issue with the Altair, and (thanks to the ascent engine burning during the landing) my ascent stage was left with too little monoprop to achieve orbit after the landing. Oops.

Well, I suppose you should bear in mind I'm departing from 120km orbit but the main stage gets me to apoapsis and I'm only using about 200-250m/s to circularize. My timing to Mun may just not have been optimal or something, I don't know how much difference the position makes and what using MechJeb does for your transfer burns.

[Maxilica]

This may have been mentioned a couple of pages ago, I don't know, but I am here to whine again.

Everytime I load up KSP, it stops when it gets to "Gamedata/Bobcatind/sovietpack/soyuzpanel", starts to not respond, forcing me to close the thing.

Er... Help?

EDIT: Just realized, I've been wanting to suggest this for some time now: Will we be getting Skylab? (first american space station) Don't worry about the Saturn V launch vehicle.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Maxilica

[Kerbolman]

Man.... Sal really brought down the hammer on those guys! I got goosebumps reading that. But he is totally right and what he said should probably be taken quite seriously

EDIT: That was meant for Deltac on page 117..... My bad

Edited June 20, 2013 by Kerbolman

[Deltac]

Man.... Sal really brought down the hammer on those guys! I got goosebumps reading that. But he is totally right and what he said should probably be taken quite seriously

EDIT: That was meant for Deltac on page 117..... My bad

wat? o.o;;;;

[MDBenson]

This may have been mentioned a couple of pages ago, I don't know, but I am here to whine again.

Everytime I load up KSP, it stops when it gets to "Gamedata/Bobcatind/sovietpack/soyuzpanel", starts to not respond, forcing me to close the thing.

Er... Help?

EDIT: Just realized, I've been wanting to suggest this for some time now: Will we be getting Skylab? (first american space station) Don't worry about the Saturn V launch vehicle.

Max: Is your download or your file maybe damaged? Have you tried removing the part that is crashing KSP and seeing if it loads okay? Also how many parts have you got installed? You know there's a limit on the amount of RAM KSP can use and too many parts loading will cause it to lock up hard and die as it runs out of RAM!

[Maxilica]

As a matter of fact, I did put the part out of the folder, but then it just stopped when it got to the next part.(Block-D)

And I don't think RAM is the problem causer. My PC has 4GB of RAM and KSP takes up about 2-3 GB of RAM, if I'm not mistaken.

And I just got RID of some mods, so the part count isn't the problem either.

Anyway, I've re-installed the Soviet Pack and I'll try it out tonight.

[MDBenson]

The limit is not your PC's RAM that is installed, it's a hard RAM limit imposed because KSP is only a 32-bit application (I think it's somewhere in the region of about 3.8GB?) and over that limit the game crashes, regardless of how much RAM is in your PC, because it runs out of available memory addresses. I have 8GB in my games PC and KSP crashed on me several times when I first played it with mods because I INSTALLED ALL THE MODZ and had too many mods loaded at once.

BobCat's mods do take up a fair bit of RAM (it's worth it ) because there are a lot of parts to them all with their own textures. Because of the nature of the mods it's unavoidable.

One thing you can try, if you have the spare hard drive space, is copy the WHOLE KSP folder out to a new location and run the KSP.exe file in that folder (this even works with Steam, I have 4 installs on my PC). You can then strip out everything except the Soviet pack and see if you still have the crash.

[Good_Apollo]

Not to mention the fact that PNG textured mods are still currently borked on .20 because of who knows what that Squad did. They use like 3x the amount of RAM they did in .19

[Maxilica]

Thanks, mates! I'll make sure to try it out when I get back.

Good_Apollo, wasn't this fixed in 0.20.2?

[m4ti140]

The limit is not your PC's RAM that is installed, it's a hard RAM limit imposed because KSP is only a 32-bit application (I think it's somewhere in the region of about 3.8GB?) and over that limit the game crashes, regardless of how much RAM is in your PC, because it runs out of available memory addresses. I have 8GB in my games PC and KSP crashed on me several times when I first played it with mods because I INSTALLED ALL THE MODZ and had too many mods loaded at once.

BobCat's mods do take up a fair bit of RAM (it's worth it ) because there are a lot of parts to them all with their own textures. Because of the nature of the mods it's unavoidable.

One thing you can try, if you have the spare hard drive space, is copy the WHOLE KSP folder out to a new location and run the KSP.exe file in that folder (this even works with Steam, I have 4 installs on my PC). You can then strip out everything except the Soviet pack and see if you still have the crash.

Yep, that's what I do as well. I have a separate install with Soviet pack and functionality mods (MJ, DR, FAR) only, with even some stock parts removed. Same with Constellation.

And the limit of RAM for 32-bit apps is not 3.8GB. Actually 3.25 GB is an upper limit of whole RAM used on a 32-bit OS. The actual limit for 32-bit application is 2GB. This can be increased if an application has IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag in image header. I don't know if KSP.exe has this but it probably doesn't. There was once an application that force set this flag on binary level, I used it with Unreal Engine 3 based games (e.g. Mass Effect 2) and in Battlefield 2, but it should work on any 32-bit .exe AFAIK. Unfortunately I don't remember its name. MS Visual Studio also has an universal tool for this AFAIK.

[MDBenson]

I've seen KSP use top-side of 2.8GB if RAM on my system so I guess it is using an expanded memory space.

At the moment I have the following installs of KSP:

- Rockets (for KW and AIES-based rocket dev)

- RealSpace (basically has all BobCat's stuff, ISS and Lionhead Ariane/ATV 5 installed)

- Spaceplanes (B9, Tav Pizza, FAR) - don't use this much because I suck at it

- Test (surrently testing the ModularfuelTanks mod)

- Main (my Steam install, which has all sorts of stuff installed and is relaly slow and crashy).

Breaking it down like that means faster loading times and I never run out of RAM

[BobCat]

First. Delete all old version Soviet and American pack and ISS , before copy new files.

Im change texture format to tga, but if you only copy new version , you have old and new textures...

[czokletmuss]

I love the American pack - kudos!