Project Lunar Orbit Station in the works...

[Andy44]

I'm not sure about the size, but it will definitely be less than the LEO station, so fitting it into a NOVA should be no problem, and the Nova should have enough delta-V left over to shove it and its propulsion tug to the Moon. At least that's the plan.

If I can, I'd like to use AndyMc's Jupiter III launcher, since that is FutureTech while the various Nova rockets are all 1960s tech, but whatever it takes. The Jumbo Tanker is too heavy for the Jupiter III, anyway, so it's no showstopper if this is too.

 

[Andy44]

Update. I think I'm just about done texturing, although the surface plating looks a bit dark. I may be able to fix that with manual text editing of the mesh file. One of the tedious things I have to do is detach the faces of various parts with different material names, or else Urwumpe's Anim8or export plug-in won't recognize them.

Unfortunately, that makes the next task even more tedious: identifying all the groups for the purpose of animations. And THAT is going to suck, because you are seeing the station on fully deployed mode, and I have to "fold" up the parts so it will start life in a rocket fairing as a spacecraft3 vessel. Then comes the building of .ini file, scenarios files, etc....

And to think, I remember when I started doing this stuff I thought the modeling was the hard part. That's actually the fun part. It's all the tedious stuff you have to do after the drawing and painting is done.

 

[Andy44]

Okay, I've found some time to move forward on this. I finished texturing, used Urwumpe's export plugin to create a mesh, built a test .cfg file, and cranked up Orbiter. Took me a while to straighten some things out with the textures and faces, but it's good now. I just spent the last 2 hours using MeshDebug to document all the groups so I can build animations in sc3.

The bad thing about this is that it's going to be a beautiful weekend and I might spend it indoors if I can't get over the addon bug I've contracted.

 

[eveningsky339]

Looking great! :speakcool:

Might I recommend utilizing Sputnik's Velcro Rockets to attach SRMs to the Nova? You can fit quite a bit. That should give the stage a more generous amount of delta-v for the TLI burn.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Just out of curiosity, but about how much does it mass in the launch configuration, and about how big is it for the fairing?

 

[Andy44]

Just out of curiosity, but about how much does it mass in the launch configuration, and about how big is it for the fairing?

I haven't worked out the mass, yet, but that will be interdependent on the propulsion tug module that will be launched with it and used to execute LOI.

As for size, it should easily fit inside the NOVA-SSTO fairing. I'd like to use AndyMc's futuristic Jupiter III, but I'm not very hopeful it will have the necessary delta-V, and I'd probably have to build a wider fairing for it.

For now I'm just trying to find the time to get the animations working so I can have a working sc3 vessel. Then I will build the propulsion tug as a seperate vessel, then I will worry about stuffing the whole works into a launch vehicle. I may indeed wind up using an enhanced Nova, perhaps the Nova GDB by Aenemazoso, which is another fine launch vehicle.

 

[Andy44]

Update! I finally finished the mesh, and got all the animations working!*

Test of the post LOI deployments:

Test of the solar array adjustments and the EVA hatch, visible near the pressurized docking ports:

*unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make the solar arrays deploy like an accordion. The sc3 docs don't explain the parent function at all and while I try to mimic the example sc3 ini file, my solar panels rotate in wierd patterns. So I am just unfolding them one fold at a time instead, which is not as visually pleasing.

Now it's on to build the propulsion unit. This has been my most ambitious project, with so many details and animated parts, plus the need for a second vessel. Maybe by Christmas, but who knows?

 

[Andy44]

Docking ports tested for location, direction, rotation, and fit. I used a badly-overscaled mesh as a template to start the project, and the entire station had to bescaled down to 30% of what you see in the above pics! This is the second time I've done something this dumb. :suicide:

Fortunately, Mesh Wizard to the rescue. I was able to shrink the mesh down to the actual size it needs to be, but I had to recalculate all my docking port and pivot point locations, as well as translations. All good now.

Here's the right-sized LOrbS with a full house. Looks like I will have to use the nose docking port of the LTV, judging by the proximity of the reactor to the passenger module in this pic. Radiation = not fun.

-----Post Added-----


And finally moving on to building the propulsion unit, known as the Lunar Orbit Tug or "LOrT". Nothing particularly fancy about it; it should make a nifty upper stage for lots of stuff besides shoving the LOrbS around Lunar space.

-----Post Added-----


Looks like the LOrT tug is about done. Here are some views of it, as well as a launch test to see if the Nova SSTO can shove the whole stack uphill to the moon. Turns out that as I currently have these vehicles configured it's no problem for the big rocket, and it even has a little bit of fuel left over. I'm not sure how realistic I'm being with the masses and sizes, but it's pretty much done.

I have to do some flight-testing, tweak the .ini files, write some docs, and put together an add-on zip package, but the hardest part is done.

Should be ready by, say, Tuesday?

 

[eveningsky339]

Party at my house!

 

[Missioncmdr]

That looks really good. Should be a neat spacecraft to fly in Orbiter.