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[RETIRED] PEBKAC Industries: Launch Escape System


Kurld

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've been working a bit on a LES for the BDB mod, as well as going back and cleaning up some of my models and textures here and there. Things are kind of slow, but I hope to have something out in the next month or so.

In the process of making the BDB LES, I experimented with how to go from three parts for the Apollo-style LES to a single part. I was never able to get the flight characteristics to behave the way I wanted. I think I need to go back and re-examine where the center of mass really "should" be in the unified assembly. Sometimes I really wish I had paid more attention in math class.

 

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18 hours ago, VenomousRequiem said:

I'll make you a deal. I'll do it when I fix my PC but only if you keep up the good work. :wink:

Sort of a payment for doing our Apollo's BPC, eh? 

Sure that would be really cool.

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  • 2 weeks later...

For the past few weeks, I've been working on a LES for the BDB Apollo/Saturn parts mod. That LES is all fairly squared away now, and in preliminary testing seems to work well with the 1.2 pre-release. If you haven't seen it, the BDB Apollo mod is one of the finest to come along in a while. Check it out!  I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to that effort.

One of the things I was able to accomplish in the course of building that LES was to merge all the functionality and performance of the PEBKAC Mk1-2 LES into a single part. The models are simplified and look cleaner and I've spent some time optimizing the textures so they aren't such ridiculous resource hogs. Most importantly, for the user, it makes life easier to drop one part in place, instead of three. With all that in mind I am going to make new versions of the PEBKAC LES as single parts for the next release of this mod. The package will still include the original 3-part versions so existing builds should continue to work.

I'll try to get the next release out as soon as possible after 1.2 is officially released.

Cheers!

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  • 5 weeks later...

Well, I somehow managed to delete the configs I had created while working on the parts during the 1.2 pre-release. So I'm having to redo them from scratch... it will be a few more days until I get a block of time, but the new version should be up some time this weeked.

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40 minutes ago, Kurld said:

Sorry for the tease in the top-post...  Spacedock seems to be down at the moment.  I'll try to get the update posted later today or early tomorrow.

It's not down, just very slow for the past couple of days.

With the flood of mods being updated to 1.2, their traffic must be immense  :-)

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16 hours ago, StevieC said:

On the LES Mk1, what pray-tell is the difference betwixt Abort Mode 1A & Abort Mode 1B?

There shouldn't be any difference for the Mk1 except it might throw errors or something. I'll admit I didn't think about anyone being able to choose one or the other... it's supposed to all be automatic. Not at my PC, Is it showing up in the context menu or something?

On October 16, 2016 at 6:49 PM, drtedastro said:

thanks for your work and update(s)

this is  great mod and has basically become my one stop shot for LES.

Cheers.

Thank you very much.

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Well, I've had some trouble with the Mk1 LES, as I use KIS & KAS so instead of needing to hoist a mere 1224 kg away from the launch-stack, sometimes I need a LES capable of getting 1707 kg of capsule, heat-shield, and parachute away from the launch-stack, and that's before counting the mass of the LES itself. When the LES tries to carry this much mass away from the stack, it manages to lift the capsule assembly a few dozen meters up but then starts doing cartwheels, which cause the rocket engines of the LES to start thrusting back TOWARDS the launch-stack, and ultimately robbing the capsule of altitude it needs for the chute to have enough time to slow the capsule to a safe touchdown speed, resulting in a majority of aborts on the launch pad ending with the capsule crashing into the ground at >20 meters per second, killing the unlucky kerbonaut inside.

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I included an example craft in the download that includes a heat-shield and parachute. No idea what it's mass is relative to just the pod itself or to the one you're flying. I'm not sure how KIS/KAS are impacting anything. Do you carry other stuff in the kerbals inventory that adds a lot of weight?

Anyway, most flight instability has to do with relationships between the CoM and CoP of the escaping capsule. You might try adjusting the CoM offset in the part config file to see if things settle down again.

You can load the example craft and look at where it's CoM is located. You want the CoM of your escaping capsule to be in a similiar location.

Let me know how it goes. If you can post a craft file somewhere I will play with it if you want.

 

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17 hours ago, StevieC said:

Well, it uses the old Corvus 2-seat 1.25m capsule.

I don't use those parts. It doesn't look like it's been updated for a while.

Your best option is to move the CoM offset forward by a half-meter or so and see if it helps.

Add a line to pebkac_mk1_LES.cfg like:

CoMOffset = 0.0, 0.5, 0.0

You will want to tweak that second value (0.5) until you get the stability you want. Increasing its value will move the CoM forward, decreasing it will move it aft.

Good luck!

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I've made a few minor tweaks to the plugin code to accommodate using it with other mod authors' LES parts, specifically, the parts included with the SDHI SMS by @sumghai. I have a design goal of making it generic enough to use with any LES parts anybody else creates as well. If you fall into this category, let me know and I'll try to help you if you hit a snag.

To use this beta plugin, you will also need to make some minor changes to the config files for the LES rocket and BPC parts. How to do that is explained in the readme file in the download.

You can download the beta release from dropbox.

Eventually I will make an official release. Mainly I want to give @sumghai  or anybody else a chance to verify it's working well with the SDHI parts before I do that.

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