Jump to content
Please support this forum by joining the SH Patreon ×
Sturgeon's House

RobotMinisterofTrueKorea

Forum Nobility
  • Posts

    222
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

RobotMinisterofTrueKorea last won the day on September 23 2018

RobotMinisterofTrueKorea had the most liked content!

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Not Telling

Recent Profile Visitors

1,386 profile views

RobotMinisterofTrueKorea's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/3)

216

Reputation

  1. https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/bazooka-charlies-grasshopper-180974445/ Bazooka Charlie and his Piper Cub went tank busting in that battle that Delete here claims never happened. The restoration was finished last year.
  2. This weekend I finished a major hurdle in KSP. I built a pretty decent replica of the Ares from Stephen Baxter's Voyage. The Ares was a major construction hurdle in KSP for me. Usually if I wanted to explore a planet, I could put probes together, but i figured I'd aim for a manned vessel, and I figure I'd make it a big one. The star of Voyage is the gigantic Ares cluster, which is a Saturn V derived Mars capable spacecraft built for a Mars mission in 1986. One of the more frustrating aspects of the novel is that the novel regularly takes time to whinge about the technological marvel that is the Ares. Regularly the central protagonist complains about the brutish Ares, and that the more elegant Shuttle should have been built in it's place. (In the Voyage-verse the Shuttle program is cancelled in favor of a NERVA engined Mars mission, and due to a fatal failure, the NERVA vessel is replaced by the Ares). This is regurgitated ad nauseam for the duration of the novel. Stephen Baxter makes some odd conclusions in the novel. A central highlight is that a large number of NASA unmanned missions are cancelled and as a result, the humans of the Voyage-verse know less about the Solar System (including Mars somehow) than we do. This is especially strange as it implicitly makes the claim that two Viking Landers would generate more scientific knowledge than a mobile geologist during a 30 day surface stay. Like I said however, the star of the novel is the Ares spacecraft. It's all kinds of neat. It's built around a central propulsion core with an SIIC Tank complete with 5 J-2s. It's also got the added SIIC Fuel tanks which it drags along as drop tanks. The Ares is prime KSP material. The bulged section is the MEM. I used the MEM mod to provide the craft, and built the shrowd around it. Just forward of that is an SIVB living space ala Skylab, and ahead of that is the docking segment and Apollo CSM. One of the neat parts of the Ares is that it requires some reassembly at various stages throughout the flight. It's a pretty complicated Spacecraft and I ran a series of tests, during which I snapped a few screenshots. The flights were around the Kerbin System with two flights, one unsuccessful flight to minmus, and a huge successful Mun mission. The Ares is absolutely the largest spacecraft I've built in KSP at 373t and 300+ Feet in length. Here is the Ares Cluster in Trans-Mars Injection Configuration. During Transit, both SIIC tanks are jettisoned. The fairings around the docking module are removed and the CSM docks at one of the radial docking ports. It stays in this configuration until capture. Once in orbit, the crewed block separates from the propulsion stage, rotates 180 degrees and redocks with the propulsion section. This allows the MEM shroud to be jettisoned and the MEM can undock. The image above is from Flight 1. Due to a mistake with the fairing jettison force, the airlock and docking segment were destroyed. I EVA'ed some crew over and flew my first run with the MEM. I undocked, set up a deorbit burn and landed on Kerbin. The MEM is based on the North American-Rockwell design from the 1960s. It's an absolute monster to fly. It's unevenly weighted, asymmetrical and all around a blend of astoundingly fun and pain in the ass. Despite some construction errors and an early loss of RCS fuel, the MEM heatshield and parachute tests were astoundingly successful. On Flight 2, I landed a MEM on the moon. This was fairly difficult. The MEM is designed to land on a Martian or Duna style planet. It's main way of losing descent speed is through drogue shoots and Ballutes. Just prior to touchdown it has an Aerospike that can be fired up. On a Mun landing, I was entirely dependent on the de-orbit booster and descent Aerospike. I only just managed to put down before running out of fuel. Flight 2 is still in progress with an extended surface stay with the MEM. This one is pictured with the outer fairing removed and some added solar panels. You can sort of see the surface lab behind the RCS strut. Ares in orbit. The MEM ascent stage will rendezvous with the Ares, offload her crew before being jettisoned. A major difference between my Ares and the one of the novel is that I've been using a 5 man CSM. I don't quite buy that the orbital segment should be left totally unmanned. It also is capable of extended science missions, so I figure, why waste the man power.
  3. Next up in my quest to recreate cancelled Apollo Missions! This is a recent set of screenshots from my Apollo LMSS Mission. Using some Agena parts, plus a telescope piece from Coatl Aerospace, I knocked together a KH-8-a-like photo reconnaissance pod and photolab for a 30 day polar orbit.
  4. I've got it downloaded and that I've been fast at work on new rocket designs. Personally, I'm beyond hyped for the new Titan II. I'm a huge Gemini Program fan. The current version of BDB is absolutely fantastic. I haven't toyed around with the new launch vehicles quite yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
  5. I'm at work again with Skylab in BDB. This time I'm doing an LKO Skylab. This is based on an earlier design which was a Wet Workshop with an Apollo Telescope Mount that retains the LM ascent stage. In a pinch I figure the LM ascent stage can be used to guide incoming AARDVs. Additionally it can be separated from the rest of the station and fly with a CSM to a higher altitude for observations. This is the first of several Apollo Applications Program Concepts I'll be flying with.
  6. I was alerted to the existence of the universal storage mod from a reddit post where a gentleman made a Direct Ascent Gemini lander. I copied much of his design from that and put my own spin to create a USAF Gemini-I from the Blue Gemini series. With my added use of KAS and KIS, this gives my Gemini spacecraft some extra utility. The Gemini-I(A) as I call it, is a bit different than the one in the novel, where the service module doesn't open. C'est la vie. It's got more engines, giving it higher performance at the cost of endurance. I'm still toying with the design, but the Gemini is going to be a centerpiece of a great many of my future missions.
  7. Yep. I decided to return to BDB to make something a little different than usual. This is my 1959 Man-in-Space-Soonest take. It's the stock Mk 1 capsule with some BDB Mercury bits on it, sat atop a Thor. It can lift that little capsule into a sub orbital arc, and really that's about it. I did a separate orbital version: This was tricky to figure out, the Thor, without any sort of scaling mods, was just outside of the ability to put a capsule in orbit. So I figured out this little work around. As you can see, I opted for the lighter Blue Dog Mercury Capsule, which I also stripped down. it doesn't have any sort of maneuvering thrusters, it just has a parachute and a razor thin heatshield. To get the extra DeltaV I stuck the entire Thor on top of a Flea SRB. It can *barely* get into orbit. It can't carry any sort of additional Payload or experiment package. But if you want an orbital rocket in short order, this does the trick.
  8. I finally unlocked top tier Soviet tanks. The T-72A is an absolute blast. I am happy it will bring me to the hallowed T-80U (albeit by the way of some Kharkovite tanks, and the T-80B)
  9. Welcome! Thanks for stopping by, and double thanks for making such a great modpack! I'm a huge fan of BDB, I use it to build, at this point, most things. I was working on a recreation of the Ares from Voyage a while back but the save got corrupted. I suppose I'll need to get back around to building it.
  10. When compared to specifically a Pz II, then yeah the Chi Ha with like a 47mm gun might be the more attractive tank? Opposite US Armor, and really just in general, IJA armor is lacking. They tend to be larger, slower, and sport inferior armor and firepower to their Allied counterparts. I mean what does a Chi Ha have that an M2/M3 Light Tank, or M4 Medium doesn't? Literally nothing. In the world of Axis armor, it's the same sort of deal, the contemporary German stuff generally winds up looking superior. There are exceptions, for instance, I don't think Chi-Has set themselves on fire by driving up hills, or blew out their final drives after 200km, as was the case with some wartime German tanks *Cough* *Cough* Panther *Cough* Ferdinand *Cough* *Cough* It's also worth noting that post-war Japanese armor developments don't emulate their pre-war and war-time efforts. If anything they basically start building AFVs that are infinitely closer to contemporary West German and American designs.
  11. Which began execution in 1945? Dude, That does nothing to refute the fact that the F6F, F4U, and even the plucky little FM-2 were superior aircraft. A quick check shows the A6M8 is going to have a top airspeed of 356mph. Sorry to tell you, this is slow by 1945 standards. The F6F-5 has a higher top speed at 391 mph, and the F4U-4 had a blistering top speed of 446 mph. There's also other US Aircraft to consider, namely the F7F Tigercat and F8F Bearcat, which both broke 400 mph. There's also USAAF aircraft to consider, the P-51D/K and P-47N also break 400 mph. That's not counting FAA aircraft with latter variants of Seafire. Also, one of the major issues with the A6M was loss of maneuverability at higher air speeds. The entire reason the plane was so maneuverable was that it had these ECKSBAWKS HUEG control surfaces. If you put on any sort of significant airspeed, the airflow over the control surfaces makes maneuvering the aircraft difficult. How on earth would putting a larger engine on the aircraft correct that problem? The Bf-109K4 had similar issues. If you put too large of an engine on an air frame, you turn the damn thing into a death trap.
  12. I've started to go up the German tree. It's an interesting experience. It's less OP than I figured it would be. The Panzer IV with the longer 75mm are solid tanks but, if anyone looks at you, you die horribly. T-34/76s are the bane of my existence whenever I play that tree. Still, they're very potent, and the mix of vulnerability plus lethality makes them pretty fun. The Panzer III is still the unexpected highlight of the tree. The Pz IIIL is EASILY my best tank stats wise with a win rate in the 86% range and a 81:7 KDR. As a weird rule, I'm trying to avoid the big cats and go for the German tanks that receive less Wehrawank. We'll see how long my patience lasts. The end goal is to get to the West German stuff, so I can play Wargame in War Thunder. My biggest takeaway is that the German tree appears to be great gun on shockingly mediocre to outright bad chassis. Except for when it's a bad gun on a shockingly mediocre chasses (Early Pz IV). German HE filler on APHE shells also has interesting characteristics. They don't seem to ever set off ammunition. They will kill crew like there's no tomorrow, but you're banking on spalling from the shell penetration doing a lot of your damage. Maybe it changes later, but it was a surprising lesson. The US tanks have spoiled me.
×
×
  • Create New...