[1.2.2] Realistic Progression Zero (RP-0) - Lightweight RealismOverhaul career v0.53 June 12

[SoTOP]

3 hours ago, harlikwin said:

Interesting, mine looks very much like that visually but your TWR is way higher. I am not using baloon tanks, is that a procedural option? Also are you just decoupling the engines at 130s or the side tanks as well? I don't have a LES in RP-0 yet, 23m is just the tank length.  What are you using for flight control the 3M core or something else? I haven't thought about lightening up the capsule in any way yet but I'll try the ablator trick. 

Also what sort of flight profile are you using? I start the gravity turn at 100m/s then follow the ship over to about 45 degrees until my apoapsis is what I want ~150-200 and then pitch toward horizontal. 

I have a R7 style rocket that has been my goto launcher and works very well but I wanted to try this route as well. 

Yea, procedural tanks have balloon option. For avionics I use 2m early guidance unit that gives 120t. Here's video how it looks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RkwdIoFZwU

This isnt optimized and more proof of concept, since for career I add small upper stage for higher margins and safety.

[harlikwin]

2 hours ago, NathanKell said:

A 2m guidance ring should be sufficient, it supports the full mass of Atlas (that's what it's for, mostly). The real Atlas D had a sustainer mass at burnout of only ~2.6t, so if your dry mass is higher than that, that's the problem.

Yeah, it was the balloon tanks. Learned something new today, thats an amazing/crazy engineering feat actually. I am now in orbit with the merc pod. 

[NathanKell]

@harlikwin I still say the more impressive one was Titan. It had nearly that high a fuel fraction...without balloon tanks.

[harlikwin]

23 minutes ago, NathanKell said:

@harlikwin I still say the more impressive one was Titan. It had nearly that high a fuel fraction...without balloon tanks.

Looks like I have some more research to do... Thats actually one of my next projects to clone along with the proton once I get the next tech nodes. 

On a totally unrelated note, are there any actual cost breakdowns of what a given rocket costs, i.e. engine costs X, fuel tanks cost Y, fuel costs Z. 

I assume its mainly engine costs, but don't want to make too many assumptions.

[NathanKell]

It is, yes. However, it's very complicated. Here's one essay on the subject: http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm

Costing aerospace hardware is very hard...that's one *major* cause of difficulty in RP-0.

[Phineas Freak]

Played around a bit with the RP-0 tree config (up to TL4), following the plan of @Niemand303 and i can say that, when it is implemented, it will be awesome!

Spoiler

 

Edited November 17, 2016 by Phineas Freak
Update image link

[Autochton]

17 hours ago, harlikwin said:

Just looked that up, and its an interesting, plausible, but also quite conservative alternate history.

Realistically I think if the soviets had managed to get circumlunar flights with Zond up before say NASA, and the N1 project didn't fail spectacularly, you could have a future with a "continuing" space race. The reality is that most of the issues with manned space flight to date have been more political than technical. The entire reason the space program was defunded after the moon landing is that the US won. IF there had been less of a victory i.e. a soviet lunar landing on the moon shortly after Apollo, and some soviet successes before that (circumlunar Zond) IMO the space "race" would have still been on. And if it was on, then I think NASA plans for heavy lift with saturn5, and the NERVA stage might have gone forward to put up space stations much more advanced than skylab in the 70's/80's. And probably moved onto lunar bases, as well as manned missions to mars using nuclear engined space craft. 

I mean its sort of fun to shoot probes at planets, but I'd say a more "advanced" tech tree should be a post-apollo focus just to give people the option of playing historically, as well as ahistorically. 

You might say that our history represents a game where suddenly the player suddenly, after landing on the moon, found themselves terminally low on funds, with only a few contracts to build a space plane and some interplanetary probes around. In KSP that's less likely to be a random-chance outcome, more likely to be based on player activity (or lack of same?). So going by the real world history alone seems artificially limiting, honestly. We're going to need to venture into plausible speculation quite quickly after Apollo/N-1 level tech to keep a good progression going, lest the player end up with tons of funds/science/prestige and nothing to do but hurl probes into the yonder and fly a space shuttle (but nothing more advanced/efficient) for forty years.

[harlikwin]

6 hours ago, Autochton said:

You might say that our history represents a game where suddenly the player suddenly, after landing on the moon, found themselves terminally low on funds, with only a few contracts to build a space plane and some interplanetary probes around. In KSP that's less likely to be a random-chance outcome, more likely to be based on player activity (or lack of same?). So going by the real world history alone seems artificially limiting, honestly. We're going to need to venture into plausible speculation quite quickly after Apollo/N-1 level tech to keep a good progression going, lest the player end up with tons of funds/science/prestige and nothing to do but hurl probes into the yonder and fly a space shuttle (but nothing more advanced/efficient) for forty years.

Yeah thats kind of my take on it. Post Apollo, space shuttles and stations are realistic. But there were plenty of other ways to go, especially manned stuff. I.e. Bases/ISRU were planned for the moon by the US and Soviets. As were trips to Mars using either NTR's or Ion engines. and I think the tech tree needs to have some reasonable paths toward those goals. Same with usable SSTO's. v

[chrisl]

Does anyone know if Kerbal experience is hard coded?  Or is it something we have some sort of control over?  I ask because stock KSP basically assumes that you will eventually send kerbals to various planets in order to increase their experience.  But with RO, you're pretty much limited to the Moon which means your kerbals are pretty much limited to "level 2".  I mean, I'm sure it's eventually possible to send a Kerbal to Mars but in career mode, you have to go for a very long time before that really becomes feasible. 

[harlikwin]

Hi Chris, 

No idea if its hard coded, but it does follow the normal KSP progression as of now. Personally I'm using Mechjeb/KER anyway for most things which I think I simulates having a few hundred people with slide rules over in mission control doing the work for each mission pretty well. You can use Mechjeb Smart A.S.S to cover the various kerbal piloting functions (point whatevergrade). 

 

Also, to NathanKell or anyone else that wants to chime in. 

Quick question on engines. I'm trying to build a Titan II and later rockets and I see the LR79's have several options, but no LR79-5 which is the hypergolic propellant version, does this get unlocked at some point? Also I'm not seeing a upper stage LR91 either. I do have the hypergolic russian engines RD210? IIRC and have sort-of substitued those.

 

Edited January 25, 2016 by harlikwin

[chrisl]

27 minutes ago, harlikwin said:

Hi Chris, 

No idea if its hard coded, but it does follow the normal KSP progression as of now. Personally I'm using Mechjeb/KER anyway for most things which I think I simulates having a few hundred people with slide rules over in mission control doing the work for each mission pretty well. You can use Mechjeb Smart A.S.S to cover the various kerbal piloting functions (point whatevergrade). 

 

Also, to NathanKell or anyone else that wants to chime in. 

Quick question on engines. I'm trying to build a Titan II and later rockets and I see the LR79's have several options, but no LR79-5 which is the hypergolic propellant version, does this get unlocked at some point? Also I'm not seeing a upper stage LR91 either. I do have the hypergolic russian engines RD210? IIRC and have sort-of substitued those.

 

I'm less interested in the Pilot and Engineer experience than I am with Science since the stars a Science Kerbal has effects the speed that science can be researched in space stations.

[Phineas Freak]

@NathanKelli took a look at the craft screenshots that are linked in the OP and i noticed something that i want to replicate: the Prometheus - Centaur C uses a stringer - like procedural structural fairing for the booster engine mount and for the interstage adapter. Are these parts and/or textures available?

[NathanKell]

@Phineas Freak I believe that's @ferram4's Saturn-Nova texture pack (and fairing texture pack). Not sure where it's available; I know we folded it into COM. You can get it from there (the two SN folders). With ferram's permission we should probably just plop it in RO.

 

@harlikwin the Titan's engines were LR87 for the booster and LR91 for the upper. They are available in the FASA pack, which RP-0 mostly supports (and RO completely supports). LR79 was the engine for Thor/Jupiter, and later reworked into H-1 for Saturn I/IB (and RS-27 for Thor again). It was comparable to the LR89 Atlas booster engine.

[Phineas Freak]

I had a suspicion that it reused these textures but my luck of texturing skills did not allow me to re-texture the PF fuselage. For that, i thank you!

[Adax]

I need help finding some parts. I've tried to turn my R-7 "Luna" rocket into "Soyuz", but can't find some parts. For example, stage 3 tank. Did some digging and found cfg file for it (RO_RN_R-7 Tanks.cfg). Also found this name in tree.cfg, which says:

@PART[r7_blok_i_m]:FOR[RP-0]
{
    %TechRequired = fuelSystems
    %cost = 714
    %entryCost = 14280
    RP0conf = true

So i've looked in the CCTChanges.cfg for node fuelSystems which now seems to be "Staged combustion". But in-game I can't find that part in that node! Any advise?

[Workable Goblin]

On January 19, 2016 at 6:15 AM, Autochton said:

I'd be inclined to steal some notes from Eyes Turned Skyward on what might become feasible when, for those who don't want to go all Space-Shuttle-y, and with a nice focus on space stations and heavy launch. 

That seems fairly reasonable to me, but keep in mind that we were aiming at a target (the Mo certain place landings in 1999) and that we weren't sticking to what was entirely plausible. In particular, our Saturn 1C was basically not going to happen for a variety of reasons and there are probably more probes (particularly in the 1970s) than was entirely likely (blame that one on me, I wrote all of the probe sections). Of course, this being a game the player can do whatever he or she likes, and I would describe the general outline of building an Apollo-supported station (or Big Gemini, if that's your thing, or HL-20-style mini-shuttle, if you'd rather) as being plausible.

[NathanKell]

weird. Typo somewhere I'd guess.

 

@Oromis Finally looking into the bug. Does it ever occur on something other than a RealChute? If not, I think it's safe to say the issue is in how RealChute's module reports mass (via GetModuleMass). Also, it's very much the case that the mass shown in the part list tooltip won't match the mass in practice, since it's a procedural part...

[Autochton]

5 hours ago, Workable Goblin said:

That seems fairly reasonable to me, but keep in mind that we were aiming at a target (the Mo certain place landings in 1999) and that we weren't sticking to what was entirely plausible. In particular, our Saturn 1C was basically not going to happen for a variety of reasons and there are probably more probes (particularly in the 1970s) than was entirely likely (blame that one on me, I wrote all of the probe sections). Of course, this being a game the player can do whatever he or she likes, and I would describe the general outline of building an Apollo-supported station (or Big Gemini, if that's your thing, or HL-20-style mini-shuttle, if you'd rather) as being plausible.

To be straight with you, there's absolutely nothing implausible about a vehicle like S1C in KSP RP-0. :-) An upgunned F-1? Not just doable, necessary for a decent tech tree. A reworked Apollo capsule? Also entirely within bounds. What we should aim for is to provide a plausible game experience based on reality, and realistic fiction where that will not suffice. RP-0's endgame will likely need technologies that we did not get around to IOTL, and which might seem a bit much for a speculative one, even - but if the player focuses all effort on nuclear-powered spacecraft exploring the solar system with crews, then that is actually somewhat plausible.

The primary thrust of my comments to this effect has been to encourage a broad-spectrum approach to the post-Moon-landings game, so that we are not blinded to reasonable possibilities by the events of what happened in this world.

I did very much enjoy ETS, by the way. It is a very inspiring piece of work.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Autochton

[Workable Goblin]

1 hour ago, Autochton said:

To be straight with you, there's absolutely nothing implausible about a vehicle like S1C in KSP RP-0. :-) An upgunned F-1? Not just doable, necessary for a decent tech tree. A reworked Apollo capsule? Also entirely within bounds. What we should aim for is to provide a plausible game experience based on reality, and realistic fiction where that will not suffice. RP-0's endgame will likely need technologies that we did not get around to IOTL, and which might seem a bit much for a speculative one, even - but if the player focuses all effort on nuclear-powered spacecraft exploring the solar system with crews, then that is actually somewhat plausible.

I was speaking of the politics, which is why I mentioned that this is, after all, a game--without politics  From a technical standpoint you could do the Saturn IC, but from a financial and political standpoint the options (other than Shuttle, obviously) were uprated Saturn IB or Titan IIIC, and something like our Saturn IC was a nonstarter. However, we wanted to keep the F-1 around (precisely one of the reasons that such a vehicle would not have flown in the real world), so Saturn IC it was. Of course such a thing would be no trouble in RP-0 (I'd probably have built one myself, but I've never actually gotten far enough to unlock the appropriate parts).

Think of it like the Martian dust storm in The Martian--Plausible? Not so much. Fun? Yes, definitely.

I might be a little bit sensitive to this because I've seen some people taking our work far more seriously than it should be elsewhere. I just wanted to make it understood that our tech was plausible, other parts maybe not so much.

Leaving that aside, though, I agree with you. There certainly needs to be a somewhat speculative element in RP-0 once you get past the Apollo years so that the player (who, as I mentioned, is not bound by petty political concerns ) can do...whatever the player would like to do. Which does make things tricky.

[NathanKell]

I concur on the above. Also regarding Saturn IC / F-1 continuation as it happens; I'm persuaded, actually, by the argument for Saturn IB (if the USAF can be bludgeoned into not going for Titan Uber Alles), and perhaps going to 9 H-1s. Heck, you can even dunk the darn things and they still work, so first-stage reuse isn't so implausible. 9 further-uprated H-1s and a tank stretch should break even with F-1A's higher Isp, and at a reasonable cost (and without the NASA-too-big-for-its-britches issues with keeping the F-1 around).

[Temeter]

I've just seen the last changelog update contains a 'Place and price CryoEngines mod'. What's that about, support for another mod (e.g. nerteas cryo's)?

edit: Also, another question: Do only certain craft survive the 11km/s reentry after returning from moon? I'm trying a mercury level sub 700 ton moon mission and I've found the capsule i've used for a test flight (the soyuz style STX capsule) just burns up at high altitude despite 280 ablator.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Temeter

[Workable Goblin]

11 hours ago, NathanKell said:

I concur on the above. Also regarding Saturn IC / F-1 continuation as it happens; I'm persuaded, actually, by the argument for Saturn IB (if the USAF can be bludgeoned into not going for Titan Uber Alles), and perhaps going to 9 H-1s. Heck, you can even dunk the darn things and they still work, so first-stage reuse isn't so implausible. 9 further-uprated H-1s and a tank stretch should break even with F-1A's higher Isp, and at a reasonable cost (and without the NASA-too-big-for-its-britches issues with keeping the F-1 around).

Plus the H-1 is common with Delta, so you get some synergistic cost savings going on.

[Adax]

Hmmm... sorry for inconvenience. Seems like bug in CKAN, because Soviet Rockets mod was selected, but not installed. Unselect-select - all parts on their places.

[NathanKell]

@Temeter yep, only Lunar-rated heatshields are lunar-rated. Weird that the Soyuz isn't, that was originally designed for lunar missions. I'll have a look. I didn't know RP-0 supported the SXT Soyuz already...

[Matuchkin]

Is is possible to make contracts so that, in the beginning of the career, all the contracts will be given from the navy and will only involve the development of ICBMs (maximum flight range)?