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This is the wiki for the Optimized Rocketry ANd General Exploration Systems (O.R.A.N.G.E.S.) mod along with a few others (in particular Photon Corp, Artemis Construction Kit, Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit, and Bluedog Design Bureau) intending to provide a guide for building both proposed and historic Shuttle-Derived Lift Vehicles (SDLVs) in Kerbal Space Program.
This wiki is a constant Work In Progress and will be continuously updated. Any issues, errors, or omissions on this wiki may be addressed by writing an issue ticket (please properly label the ticket as "wiki issue" or they might be overlooked or ignored). Suggestions for new pages or expanding existing pages may also be written as issue tickets (please properly label the ticket as "wiki suggestion" or they might be overlooked or ignored). However, it is worth noting that our primary effort with ORANGES is concentrated on making new parts or fixing in-game bugs, so it may take a while for any issues/suggestions to be addressed with the wiki. It may also take a while for new part-sets to be get their own wiki page/section after they are made and pushed to this Github, so please hold off on writing issue tickets asking where the new parts are on the wiki until they are included in an official, non-development release.
Additionally, this wiki is made by the makers of ORANGES, so please do not ask questions about this wiki to the developers of the other mods that this wiki features. Lastly, the world of Shuttles and SDLVs is an incredibly complex one, with innumerable proposals and variations. While ORANGES and this wiki try to cover the highlights of these, we are not obligated to cover every Shuttle and SDLV configuration, so we reserve the right not cover any SDLV we do not feel obliged to.
Even before astronauts walked on the moon, NASA was already thinking of how they would move forward post-Apollo. One potential path forward was to design a spacecraft capable of "shuttling" crew, space station parts, and cargo from Earth to orbit, while also being able to be recovered and reused. A vehicle that could be rapidly turned around for future flights was a departure from the previous designs of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, expensive capsules that could be used only once, requiring the fabrication of an entirely new spacecraft for each subsequent mission. At its inception, the idea of a reusable shuttle had the potential to be a massive cost-saver by eliminating the need to build a new spacecraft for each trip to space. After Apollo, public interest in space exploration started to diminish as in many Americans eyes, the space race was over. This along with growing political pressure led to the government cutting NASA's budget almost in half. This meant that many of NASA's more ambitious post-Apollo proposals that involved using Apollo hardware to move toward Venus and Mars were rendered unfeasible. Because of this the shuttle was selected to be NASA's next big program after Apollo, largely because of the alleged cost-saving potential that came with reusability.
At the beginning of the program, STS was intended to ensure that America maintained a presence in space, eventually replace all expendable rockets by being able to launch payloads on the reusable shuttle, and ultimately decimate the cost of sending payloads and people to orbit. Unfortunately STS did not end up delivering on those last two promises. It ended up being a lot more costly and slower to turn around flown shuttles for a subsequent flight than was anticipated. Worse, the Challenger Disaster was a wake-up call to the risk associated with STS, and it became clear the move toward abandoning expendable launch vehicles in favor of launching satellites on the shuttle was a mistake. This also was the genesis of Shuttle-Derived Vehicles (SDVs) and Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles (SDLVs). Many of these were concepts that proposed to use and/or repurpose existing hardware developed for STS to create launch vehicles that were a cheaper and safer way of getting cargo to orbit, or even an alternate way to get crew to orbit. During this period proposals like Shuttle-C, ULV/Jarvis, and eventually NLS were proposed, rockets that used modified versions of the STS External Tank and its boosters to create expendable or partially reusable launch vehicles to launch payloads to space without crew.
After the Columbia Disaster, the rationale behind SDLVs changed. While many previous proposals like Shuttle-C or NLS were designed to be cargo launch vehicles that could exist concurrently with STS as an alternate way to launch cargo, the Columbia Disaster made it clear STS' days were numbered, and a launch vehicle/crewed system needed to be designed to replace STS entirely. This also presented an opportunity to NASA to design SDLV that could go beyond STS' capability, and take astronauts back to the Moon and maybe even Mars. This led to many different proposals like Constellation (Ares) and DIRECT (Jupiter), along with the Orion capsule. Soon, Constellation was cancelled due to its extensive, rapidly growing budget, and was eventually replaced with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket intended to launch Orion. This became the basis for the Artemis program, which is using SLS and Orion to bring humanity back to the Moon.
While STS and SDLV are frequently (and justifiably) criticized for many regards, particularly their cost and the political reasons behind their origins, both STS and its derivatives have still provided vast benefits to the space program and humanity. STS allowed NASA to keep a human presence in space for decades, even after the abrupt end of the Apollo program and a vastly reduced budget. STS also allowed for invaluable research to be continually conducted, from either the shuttle itself or from the International Space Station, which owes its existence to STS. This research has led to breakthroughs in technological development, medical science, climate science, and the overall benefit of humankind. The development and research that went into the proposals of SDLVs have been beneficial as well. While most of the SDLV proposed never ended up flying, these proposals built on one another to eventually become the basis of SLS, the rocket that will support humanity's return to the Moon. STS and studies on SDLV have also provided invaluable data and experience that has been a foundation for future reusable spacecraft.
ORANGES is a mod created by EStreetRockets and Invaderchaos designed to not only recreate the iconic Space Shuttle External Tank, but also create a foundation of specific and generic ET-derived part sets that would allow users to create a wide range of Shuttle-Derived Lift Vehicles in a restockalike/stockalike style. This mod also serves as a spiritual successor to Benjee10’s similar reDIRECT mod, which served as a big inspiration for this mod’s existence. As reDIRECT is no longer maintained, our goal was to not only recreate the reDIRECT part-set in a similar style to mods like Bluedog Design Bureau, Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit, and Photon Corp with added modularity in paint, length, and mesh variants, but to also go beyond reDIRECT’s part base to allow even more Shuttle-Derived Lift Vehicles and Shuttle-Derived Vehicles to be recreated.
ORANGES’ parts are designed at roughly 62.5% scale of their real-world counterparts and uses stock part diameters along with diameters from Making History, BDB, and Photon Corp, such as 1.875m, 2.25m, 2.5m, 3.125m, 4.25m, 5m, 6.25m, and more to maximize compatibility with stock parts and other mods. ORANGES is balanced at roughly 2.5x scale (like many other similar mods) and we recommend using a rescale mod for the stock system or KSRSS Reborn for the best gameplay experience.
We strongly recommend using ORANGES with Rocket Motor Menagerie (which adds RS-25 and other engines essential to this mod), Photon Corp (which adds the RSRMs, the Space Shuttle’s solid boosters), Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit (which adds the Space Shuttle), Artemis Construction Kit (which adds Orion, SLS, and a Lockheed Martin Orion-derived Lunar Lander), and Bluedog Design Bureau (which adds engines and upper stages useful to this mod).
Sticking to the tradition of other well-known KSP mods such as Bluedog Design Bureau and Tantares, the rockets and parts that ORANGES features use fictional, “kerbalized” names instead of their real-world names (like Mandarin Marietta instead of Martin Marietta, Olympus instead of Shuttle External Tank, Remus for Ares I, or Zeus for DIRECT/Jupiter).
This might be confusing to people trying to recreate real-world rockets, but luckily ORANGES not only includes the real-word names in the tags of each part (meaning parts can be searched for in the VAB using their real-world names), but ORANGES also includes an optional patch in ORANGES extras to make ORANGES parts show up in the VAB with their real-world names.