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WIP Rombus (Project Deimos) a concept from the 60's.

jackkymoon

By jackkymoon
in KSP1 Mod Development

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jackkymoon

jackkymoon

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I like going through the old NASA concepts from the space race before the funding went away, there's a bunch of over sized and strange looking rockets for mars missions etc... The Rombus is one of those over sized concepts, it would have been able to deliver 450 tons to orbit or 1200 soldiers, and be reuseable! Did I mention it's SSTO?

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This still definitely needs a lot of work. I would like to make a Torus shaped habitat module and a Duna lander for 4 Kerbals. Not to mention I need to work on the look of the giant aerospike as well as fine tune some of the collision meshes. Other than that, all that I need to do is polish up textures and work out some accurate numbers for fuel tanks, engines etc... Give me some feedback!

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jackkymoon

jackkymoon

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AW YISS! Phil Bono time!

What parts are separate parts?

The tapered fuel tank with the metal texture, the upper tank with the air force and nasa logos, the drop tanks. The engine obviously, and there's a fairing base plate as well as two fairing halves that are seperate. I have a lot of work to do on the fairings, they are giving me a really hard time.

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NathanKell

NathanKell

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Oh, awesome! I wanted to make sure the engine at least was not part of the tank. :)

Because then it can be made into a heat shield, as it should be.

Also, note that while there's one big plug *nozzle*, there are in fact many dozens (depends on ROMBUS / Ithacus / Ithacus Jr. / whatever version) of actual *engines*. For that reason, and so that the thing will be able to roll, I'd suggest doing the following:

Make the plug nozzle just a mounting plate, and make 9 4x engine clusters (ROMBUS used 36 engines, of which 16 relit for orbital insertion, and then 4 re-relit for landing) that fit in holes in the plug nozzle mounting plate. The engines wouldn't look like engines, they'd have no real nozzle (since they just spew direct from the thrust chamber onto the plug nozzle...) but making them independent allows for (a) roll control with a gimbal plugin and (B) selective relighting if you play with unthrottleable engines (and indeed ROMBUS and that whole series didn't, AFAIK, have throttleable engines; they just relit only some of the engines).

I'd suggest the Falcon 9 1.1 layout for the engines, despite IRL all 36 being around the exterior of the plug nozzle (otherwise it wouldn't work as a plug nozzle. But if you're doing 9 rather than 18, you can't get symmetry when lighting only 4/36 engines unless you put one of the quads in the center.)

Well, maybe just do 18 2xEngine parts? That's best if you're willing to make 18 attach nodes!

Edited by NathanKell
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jackkymoon

jackkymoon

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Oh, awesome! I wanted to make sure the engine at least was not part of the tank. :)

Because then it can be made into a heat shield, as it should be.

Also, note that while there's one big plug *nozzle*, there are in fact many dozens (depends on ROMBUS / Ithacus / Ithacus Jr. / whatever version) of actual *engines*. For that reason, and so that the thing will be able to roll, I'd suggest doing the following:

Make the plug nozzle just a mounting plate, and make 9 4x engine clusters (ROMBUS used 36 engines, of which 16 relit for orbital insertion, and then 4 re-relit for landing) that fit in holes in the plug nozzle mounting plate. The engines wouldn't look like engines, they'd have no real nozzle (since they just spew direct from the thrust chamber onto the plug nozzle...) but making them independent allows for (a) roll control with a gimbal plugin and (B) selective relighting if you play with unthrottleable engines (and indeed ROMBUS and that whole series didn't, AFAIK, have throttleable engines; they just relit only some of the engines).

I'd suggest the Falcon 9 1.1 layout for the engines, despite IRL all 36 being around the exterior of the plug nozzle (otherwise it wouldn't work as a plug nozzle. But if you're doing 9 rather than 18, you can't get symmetry when lighting only 4/36 engines unless you put one of the quads in the center.)

Well, maybe just do 18 2xEngine parts? That's best if you're willing to make 18 attach nodes!

Hmm, I think for simplicity I'll just have the 36 engines as one big cluster, but I think I will make the plug nozzle a seperate heat shield, that makes a lot of sense.

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NathanKell

NathanKell

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The problem with that, as I mentioned, is that there will be no way to control the ROMBUS in roll, and also no way to light only some of the engines. Also you'll get, as you say, one little bitty flame instead of lots all around the nozzle (which is what it actually will look like [n.b. that's a linear plug nozzle, not an annular one, but same thing])

I mean, if adding nodes is too hard I can do that; it's not really more modeling because you have to more or less model the same stuff anyway.

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