Public Progress Thread (Off-topic SFS)

[Cresign]

300 ton C&R module has been placed in LEO, it will be fitted with booster stages and payload simulator (largest stock tank)

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Fishin boat with yeah the fishin holes to uh yes.

 

[Pink]

Damn, what kinda fish you looking for?!

 

[Cresign]

300 ton C&R module has been placed in LEO, it will be fitted with booster stages and payload simulator (largest stock tank)
View attachment 82482

No fuel source on the C&R module, i forgor ☠️

 

[Marmilo]

My man trying to catch the kraken

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Damn, what kinda fish you looking for?!

Alien fish from orbit

 

[Altaïr]

Alien fish from orbit

Here is a big one! Catch it, catch it!!!

 

[TtTOtW]

Damn, what kinda fish you looking for?!

He's out to catch Mobi Dick

 

[TtTOtW]

I'm out on a mission to prove why the Proton is my favourite stock rocket of all time. At this point I have it working to standard spec for the most part, and exactly to scale. In fact all I need to add are the visual details. Here she is in the bare metal:

I have done a few things which are quite exceptional for myself when building her. For one, something for which I'll probably get hanged around here, is stretching the main engines by 14,2857%. That is to make the hawk engines 3½m rather than 3m. the objective was not to increase the power of the engine even though it does so by the same percentage as which I stretched it. Even so even after stretch it is actually underpowered. It produces just over 822 tons of thrust. The real thing does 960 or so. But my actual reason for stretching it was to avoid adding unnecessary and non-standard lines to my rocket, and also to avoid having overlapped tanks as far as possible. In the interest of realism I did use 6 Hawk engines, and I added all six external booster fuel tanks which makes taking off quite difficult with my limited thrust, but it sort of makes up for using all 6 engines. My focus on an accurate rocket layout necessitated the use of the no heat cheat. But as matters stand I did not have much of an option anyway because there was no other way that I would be able to reach LEO in StigSpace... err... IRIS.

I did the exact same for the second stage's four Valiant engines so that the two centre engines are overlapped, although they are not stretched and I really am trying to make as accurate as possible a replica without using any unnecessary cheats or anything else I can avoid. In my 1.4 replica I had 2 hidden Titans in the core and one hidden Frontier in the second stage. This rocket has no such thing. Also, the 3rd stage and Briz-M engines do not use the no heat cheat, those that do had it activated by .bp editing.

One of my objectives was that my rocket should lift the payload to low-earth orbit in Iris that the standard rocket does in reality which is around 23½ tons on the latest model Proton-M. And that she does. Barely. Right on target. Even my rocket mass is near spot on, even on a per stage basis.

Here's how she flies:

She's not as powerful as her real life counterpart, so that should make up for the stretched engines. She practically crawls off the launchpad at TWR 1.13.

MECO and separation.

These four Valiants have a lot of work to do...

... And that's as far as they take her. Shortly after SECO, the fairings go. I could drop them earlier, but that would be contrary to reality.

Briz-M has a Kolibri, shrunk to 60% in both dimensions. In this size it produces only 9t of thrust. And um...

... yeah...

... but she levels out at the equivalent of 170km. So not a problem. She establishes an apoapsis of 80.8km, then coasts. A 9 seco d burn puts her in orbit.

And not much margin either. All in all, a great rocket and a good old-fashioned challenge.

And that is Proton putting 23.5 t exactly in orbit. What a beaut!

 

[Pink]

That is a most excellent Proton! Very carefully crafted.

I have done a few things which are quite exceptional for myself when building her. For one, something for which I'll probably get hanged around here, is stretching the main engines by 14,2857%. That is to make the hawk engines 3½m rather than 3m. the objective was not to increase the power of the engine even though it does so by the same percentage as which I stretched it. Even so even after stretch it is actually underpowered. It produces just over 822 tons of thrust. The real thing does 960 or so. But my actual reason for stretching it was to avoid adding unnecessary and non-standard lines to my rocket, and also to avoid having overlapped tanks as far as possible. In the interest of realism I did use 6 Hawk engines, and I added all six external booster fuel tanks which makes taking off quite difficult with my limited thrust, but it sort of makes up for using all 6 engines. My focus on an accurate rocket layout necessitated the use of the no heat cheat. But as matters stand I did not have much of an option anyway because there was no other way that I would be able to reach LEO in StigSpace... err... IRIS.
!

grabs the pitchforks

Honestly, the way it works now, there isn't any performance increase from stretched engines if you compensate for the missing engine mass.
3m to 3.5m? 0.5m is 1/6th of a Hawk engine. So multiply that by the 6 engines you have, it comes out to 6/6, or an entire hawk engine. The amount of ballast required to make it fly legit is thus the mass of a single hawk engine.
If that's present, then no one can reasonably cry foul for a replica such as this.

(And if the ballast decreases performance too much, stretch to 3.6m and add that tiny 1/30th's worth of extra ballast per engine. )

As for the "no engine heat" thing, there's a reason why we updated the description of the copycat mission to this:

Engine stretching and "no engine heat" is ONLY allowed on the replica challenge.....snipped...

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Here is a big one! Catch it, catch it!!!
View attachment 82698

Hey that's the good ol Tuna fish!

 

[Kirbyisbest]

Hey that's the good ol Tuna fish!

Doesn't look like a tuna to me. Its wider I assume. (I'm no fish nerd so dont kill me please)

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Doesn't look like a tuna to me. Its wider I assume. (I'm no fish nerd so dont kill me please)

Well it swims and has fins and uh fish lung thing


It's definitely a fish

 

[Altaïr]

Doesn't look like a tuna to me. Its wider I assume. (I'm no fish nerd so dont kill me please)

That's the starfish from Elon Mollusk.
That's an old screenshot actually, I did it for an april fool.

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

That's the starfish from Elon Mollusk.
That's an old screenshot actually, I did it for an april fool.

I wonder if I could catch it someday XD

 

[4KidsOneCamera]

Decided to spend this afternoon and some of this evening designing a leg/piston prototype. It took a bunch of iterations to get it where it’s at now, but the end product works great. I’m honestly surprised it performs as stable as it does!

The current design works in all the cases I’ve tested in. It can deploy and retract in atmospheric flight at decently high speeds (I haven’t found an exact breaking point), works in zero g, and it can deploy and rectact with at least 175t (which is all I’ve tested to). The staging for it is kinda funky, so that could probably be improved, and I’m sure there’s room for larger/smaller variants. Right now though, I’m satisfied with the design.

https://youtube.com/shorts/mhCDJfX5Cwo?feature=share

 

[TtTOtW]

Decided to spend this afternoon and some of this evening designing a leg/piston prototype. It took a bunch of iterations to get it where it’s at now, but the end product works great. I’m honestly surprised it performs as stable as it does!

The current design works in all the cases I’ve tested in. It can deploy and retract in atmospheric flight at decently high speeds (I haven’t found an exact breaking point), works in zero g, and it can deploy and rectact with at least 175t (which is all I’ve tested to). The staging for it is kinda funky, so that could probably be improved, and I’m sure there’s room for larger/smaller variants. Right now though, I’m satisfied with the design.
View attachment 83684
https://youtube.com/shorts/mhCDJfX5Cwo?feature=share

Dang! Now here's one share I'm taking!

 

[Nanobot]

Feel free to use this thread to discuss and post anything related to SFS, it's updates, community, arts, concepts, ideas, questions, etc. here. If you have a specific topic you'll like to discuss, feel free to post it on your own thread.

For a similar thread where you can post and discuss anything that is NOT SFS-related, use Off-Topic Thread (General Chat)

Have fun!

Ughhhh man the discord's annoying now it's actually degrading

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Welp shuttle C? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[TtTOtW]

Ouch... Dude that tail hurts the eyeballs...

 

[The epic chicken]

Should I make a shitty shuttle B4 super skrunck

It's even shorter than minius 1 skruncklr

 

[TtTOtW]

Lol. Do entertain me.

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

Separation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[TtTOtW]

That's dang nice dude

 

[Mars Pathfinder]

That's dang nice dude

That's the crap tail you've ask yesterday XD but the separation is good enough ¯\_(ツ)_/¯