[Launch Escape System] Rocket Stack Failure Detection

[CoriW]

So when I'm launching Kerbals into space I always like to have a launch escape system on the pod just in case of launch failure, however one thing that happens frequently in the case of rocket failure is that a fuel tank connection fails and the rocket which is still firing quickly plows through the upper stack towards the pod giving me only a split second to hit the launch abort button before the rocket hits the pod. This can be very concerning in that if I'm not paying complete attention and don't react quickly enough, Jeb could die.

Yesterday I stumbled upon the video below and one thing that caught my attention is that they stated that there are 3 wires running the entire length of the rocket, and if 2 out of 3 wires are to lose power it will trigger the launch escape system. So this got me thinking about if it would be possible for somebody to write a plugin that detects if any connections in the main stack of the rocket have failed or broken and if so simply fire the abort action group, now I'm not entirely sure how easy/hard this would be but I wouldn't think it would be too hard to do, it would just need to make sure that it could tell the difference between a decoupler/separator firing and an actual connection/part failure.

[alpha tech]

this is totally true. plus there is/(or use to be) a cause on the stock Les u might be able to dig into that and also you need something to detect explosions so many meters from your craft and then if yes it will fire your Les because if you do it by staging then it could possibly fire when your perfectly fine.

[fairy]

"back in the day" I used to use kOS and TAC Self-Destruct to activate the LES or initiate a self-destruct sequence if the rocket went off-course. I don't know if TAC Self-Destruct works anymore, but that is what I used in combination with kOS to blow up rockets that didn't perform as expected.

As an example; I worte a few lines for kOS telling it to activate the TAC self-destruct part IF the rocket went <10 degrees off-course, or activate the LES if it was a "manned" flight.

[satnet]

I saw this post and was inspired, so I put together a part/plugin that does this and added it to my mod for flight safety tech. I just uploaded the new version of The RAT Pack (Dev Thread) with it included. I had some other significant changes in this release, so it will probably be a few days before it makes it into an official release.

I'm sure I'll make it more sophisticated, but for now it will trigger the abort action group when any part is unexpectedly destroyed which seems to work pretty well.

[KerbonautInTraining]

Given that most in game structural failures are aero related, would it be possible to grab FAR's "Aerodynamic failure!" warning and use that to trigger the abort sequence? I say that because, typically, going off course won't cause a break up with the stock aero model.

[satnet]

On 12/5/2015, 7:35:21, KerbonautInTraining said:

Given that most in game structural failures are aero related, would it be possible to grab FAR's "Aerodynamic failure!" warning and use that to trigger the abort sequence? I say that because, typically, going off course won't cause a break up with the stock aero model.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just posted 0.31 which supports this.