Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[Boosterspice]

I think Nova came before Nyrath, adn didn't Nova give Nyrath his old code? Seems like that, but correct me if I am wrong.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom?p=350433&viewfull=1#post350433

[Canopus]

I think Nova came before Nyrath, adn didn't Nova give Nyrath his old code? Seems like that, but correct me if I am wrong.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom?p=350433&viewfull=1#post350433

He had an unfinished code and gave that to Nyrath. But Nova's new mod uses Nyrath's finished plugin.

[Boosterspice]

Ah, then we agree, mein freund

[Scotius]

Can a mod be any more Kerbal than this? Love it.

A great way to experiment with technologies we'll probably never see. Also a great way to get those high part count ships to orbit. Here is the experimental Ion Flair Mk I, I forget the total part count but with over 450 Ion engines you can imagine the rest.

The Ion Flair series is so environmentally friendly and earns so many environmental credits that an atomic lift stage is not so much justified as it is mandated.

Holy fireball, Batman! Forget this ship - i want your computer

[Canopus]

Ah, then we agree, mein freund

Of course no problem

[nyrath]

Yes, NovaSilisko gave me his old code. I used it as a skeleton for developing my mod's plug-in. However, I had to change so many things that very little of it is left.

The plug-in contains all the mechanics for the Orion: moving the pusher plate, applying the impulse from each bomb blast to the vessel, that sort of thing.

Using my plug-in, and the notes in the readme file, anybody who can create 3D models could make their very own Orion parts, and link them to my plug-in with the part.cfg file.

NovaSilisko was in the process of doing that, making his own marvelous Orion parts. Naturally he was running into trouble, since the mod's author (me) was a rank novice at KSP, C#, Unity3D, and Kerbal mods in general (still am, actually). After making us all salivate by showing us his ultra-sexy Orion, NovaSilisko went on vacation, where he undoubtedly has better things to do than fix the Orion mod.

[Canopus]

I hope and believe that he will finish it

[ecat]

Holy fireball, Batman! Forget this ship - i want your computer

My computer?

My computer weeps every time I click the KSP icon. The tears help keep it cool.

Great Galloping Delta Vee!!! Look at the size of that monster!

<chuckle> I suppose it does rather dwarf the already huge Orion engine, whoops.

When people ask about design methodology typical replies are:

I design for minimum part

I concentrate on aerodynamics

I optimise the delta v for every stage

My methodology is to look at how much space there is in the assembly building, fill as much of that space as I can, then make it fly.

Thanks again for a great mod. And thanks to all for the excellent ships, comments and links throughout this thread.

[Mekan1k]

Yes, NovaSilisko gave me his old code. I used it as a skeleton for developing my mod's plug-in. However, I had to change so many things that very little of it is left.

The plug-in contains all the mechanics for the Orion: moving the pusher plate, applying the impulse from each bomb blast to the vessel, that sort of thing.

Using my plug-in, and the notes in the readme file, anybody who can create 3D models could make their very own Orion parts, and link them to my plug-in with the part.cfg file.

NovaSilisko was in the process of doing that, making his own marvelous Orion parts. Naturally he was running into trouble, since the mod's author (me) was a rank novice at KSP, C#, Unity3D, and Kerbal mods in general (still am, actually). After making us all salivate by showing us his ultra-sexy Orion, NovaSilisko went on vacation, where he undoubtedly has better things to do than fix the Orion mod.

Undoubtably. I mean that there are some of us, myself included, who are modders, and we might be able to debug the NovaOrion for him, and then we could release it as a collaboration project.

[Canopus]

Undoubtably. I mean that there are some of us, myself included, who are modders, and we might be able to debug the NovaOrion for him, and then we could release it as a collaboration project.

I don't know, just let the master himself do the work.

[Mekan1k]

Why not let us aprentices try to help the master finish a small piece then? The bug he stated he was having was that the ship would spin, oddly, and that is a bug that us mod makers see occasionally. We might be able to help.

[Agarax]

Why not let us aprentices try to help the master finish a small piece then? The bug he stated he was having was that the ship would spin, oddly, and that is a bug that us mod makers see occasionally. We might be able to help.

Once you've worked in software development long enough you'll find out that having more people on a project does not equate into faster results. Often, you'll even end up with a slower development pace if you have too many 'cooks in the kitchen' as it were.

[Agarax]

Yes, I had been toying with the idea of more ferocious atomic rockets. Nuclear lightbulb, gas core, all that. And a NSWR if I want to go full-Jebidiah on my mod-making. Again my main concern is breaking the game. With those monsters, who wants to play around with piddling chemical rockets?

I copied and hacked up the large NTR from KSPX to match the specs for the DUMBO NTR (it was the most powerful one on the Atomic Rockets drive table that also weighed 5 tons), and got some pretty sick results

OFC I could have made a mistake in there somewhere, I was never the best at math.

[Scotius]

TWR 10 and 6+ km/s dV on a nuclear SSTO. That's sick. And awesome Heinlein would be proud. Can you share the engine? I would love to recreate this sip.

[LaydeeDem]

Speaking of making stuff from nyrath's site...

What the finished product will look like:

Edited July 6, 2013 by Nutt007

[Canopus]

@Nutt007 did you make any progress on this? Because i really like the idea.

[nyrath]

I copied and hacked up the large NTR from KSPX to match the specs for the DUMBO NTR (it was the most powerful one on the Atomic Rockets drive table that also weighed 5 tons), and got some pretty sick results

Well, the original NERVA solid core NTR had a pathetic thrust of 49 kN. The stock KSP LV-N atomic rocket motor has a thrust of 60 kN. The Dumbo NTR was estimated to have a thrust of a whopping 3,500 kN, which is ginormous compared to the stock NTR. It would have the same atmosphereCurve specific impulse, that more or less depends upon what you are using for propellant. I didn't do the math for Agarax's ship, but it looks reasonable.

What the finished product will look like:

Oh, my. That is a freaking NEXUS booster, with gas core nuclear thermal rockets. And they didn't say anything about "closed-cycle" either (translation: you get twice the specific impulse compared to a closed-cycle gas core, at the cost of having glowing radioactive death spraying from the exhaust nozzle).

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=700

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Nuclear_Thermal--Gas_Core--Open_Cycle

That monster can boost 1,500 metric tons into orbit with one trip. You are probably looking at a thrust of 3,500 kN to 5,000 kN, depending upon the specific impulse (Isp goes down as thrust goes up). It does have a chemical first stage which is a small mercy.

[nyrath]

New Version 0.16 available

at the first post.

Only difference is the animation of the dropping bomb.

WARNING: this means the explosion happens 0.16 seconds after hitting the Z or spacebar, instead of immediately.

I had a couple of designs where the vessel was held in the air by launch supports. Previously the spacebar would release the supports and the throttle would make the first bomb immediately loft the vessel. But now, if the vessel is held too low, it might drop and hit the launch pad before the first bomb goes off.

Having said that, in most cases you can just launch the blasted thing with no launch supports, pusher plate sitting flat on the launch pad.

Due to the extra animation (bomb drop), the pusher plate animation will be swifter. The entire sequence has to fit into 0.8 second.

Edited July 6, 2013 by nyrath

[Canopus]

To bad i'm away from my computer right now.

[Anton P. Nym]

I'm rather new to the forum, and have only played KSP since the Steam sale, but the above is my second cut at using Nyrath's Orion mod the KSS Stanislaw Kerman. It's intended as a persistent ferry for interplanetary missions; hence the 5 docking ports (one shielded axial port into the flight deck, 4 mounted radially below a Hitchhiker module) so that I can just fly up the right payloads for each mission.

Primary propulsion is ol' Boom-boom, fed by the 600x3.5MN magazine stack plus 60 each of the .88MN "trimming" charges and the 400MN transplanetary injection charges. Secondary propulsion (also acting as secondary attitude control thanks to thrust vectoring) comes from 6 NERVA engines, each fed by 3 FL-T800 tanks topped by SAS gyros. (I had to mount the NERVAs away from the ORION's hull, as otherwise the NERVA exhaust impinged upon the pusher plate with, er, less than entirely salutary results... I figured the Kerbal solution would be to add more fuel instead of putting them on pylons.) Primary attitude control comes from 18 RCS quad-blocks fed by a small ocean of hydrazine (4x FL-R1 tanks below the Hitchhiker, 18x FL-R25 tanks set one apiece atop the FL-T800s); 6 blocks just below the flight deck, 12 near the base of the Orion's working parts about half as far from the Big Stan's centre of mass.

Electrical power is provided by 2 RTGs; I figure with all the fissionables already aboard two more sources wouldn't hurt. When running alone they're largely superfluous, but when payloads are docked they can keep payload batteries charged and power the 4 docking lights I have mounted to make docking a bit less hairy. I've also festooned the upper areas with ladders to make EVA a bit less fraught.

Alas my cunning plan has come aground slightly; I got a "bomb truck" tender docked to Big Stan before discovering I can't transfer bombs to the main stack; I don't know if this is intended or not, as it must be terribly awkward to haul those magazines around in freefall. If not, well, can I make a feature request?

In any case, Big Stan is now in a 141x132km orbit of Kerbin while I refine some bugs out of its first payloads; a pair of Dunar lander probes, a pair of Dunar rover probes, and a big Dunar sample-return probe to rehearse landings on and take-offs from Duna. I have some more screenshots; I'll likely be putting them up on my blog later today.

I'll sign off by saying that I'm having amazing fun with KSP, which is threatening to take over my life, and by thanking Nyrath & crew once again for an amazing mod.

-- Steve

[nyrath]

Alas my cunning plan has come aground slightly; I got a "bomb truck" tender docked to Big Stan before discovering I can't transfer bombs to the main stack; I don't know if this is intended or not, as it must be terribly awkward to haul those magazines around in freefall. If not, well, can I make a feature request?

That is a truly amazing vessel! I am most impressed!

Ah, you mean dock the bomb tender to the big ship and pump the bombs from one to the other? Yes, I am still trying to figure out how to do that, I want it as well. Trouble is that bombs are not quite like resources, and the documentation is sketchy. But that does have a high priority.

I had to mount the NERVAs away from the ORION's hull, as otherwise the NERVA exhaust impinged upon the pusher plate with, er, less than entirely salutary results...

Oh, dear. I'm sure the explosion blinded most of the Kerbals on the hemisphere facing the vessel.

[Anton P. Nym]

That is a truly amazing vessel! I am most impressed!

Thank you. It was a blast (er, figuratively) to put together.

Ah, you mean dock the bomb tender to the big ship and pump the bombs from one to the other? Yes, I am still trying to figure out how to do that, I want it as well. Trouble is that bombs are not quite like resources, and the documentation is sketchy. But that does have a high priority.

Great! Look forward to it, if it indeed can be pulled off.

Oh, dear. I'm sure the explosion blinded most of the Kerbals on the hemisphere facing the vessel.

Yeah, it turns out de-tempering the steel of an armoured plate designed to withstand nuclear explosions is a bad idea. (Writes out on blackboard 100x)

-- Steve

[LaydeeDem]

So today I finally finished my trip to Duna via Orion.

MPSS "Adrestia"

IEM "Deimos" Crew:

Commander Ordun Kerman

Mission Specialist Joemy Kerman

Intern Bobble Kerman

DEM "Phobos" Crew:

Commander Jebediah Kerman

Pilot Bill Kerman

Mission Specialist Bob Kerman

Everyone at the Jacqueline B. Kerman Space Center is very proud of the bravery of these astronauts.

[nyrath]

So today I finally finished my trip to Duna via Orion.

Congratulations to your ship and your brave crew!

How many bombs did you burn for the trip?

[LaydeeDem]

Congratulations to your ship and your brave crew!

How many bombs did you burn for the trip?

Too much. I'm afraid I'm going to have to improvise for the return trip.