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automcdonough

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    Sr. Spacecraft Engineer
  1. check out some of the land speeders. the airplane wheels won't pop on overspeed.
  2. not much, i'll set it then usually staring at the navball/instruments.
  3. I have a two-shot for ya. 1. My "isplore" rover. It's a few versions old but still king for full-speed + low-grav baja action. link in my sig to the thread for it and craft file. 2. A sort of minimalistic science ship for 1 pilot that I call "Solo". It carries 1 of everything except the big lab, nuke for efficient travel and a little VTOL engine for easy landing. It's very well balanced, center of mass being in the fuel tank so it won't go front/back heavy as fuel is used. I had originally tried to SSTO it but decided I would rather have it be good at space and return trips and I'll use a launcher. Shown here with ridiculous launcher: The business end. 5700 d/v optionally eject the tanks if things get tight on the return trip. 1350 d/v here and all science on board.
  4. it's because of max speed rating of wheels. if you break the ruggedized ones going less than 60, try more wheels or less weight.
  5. aw yeah that is tricky. a CNC costs a lot more than a nice set of drills! I've made gears by hand before, they were good enough for the low-speed application I made them for. Printed them 1:1 on a sticker and laid it flat on the metal then got to work with a saw and files. It sounds tedious (and it was) but like most of the things I've made by hand, took way less time than trying to get a 3D printer to do it right. (and in that case I wanted metal..)
  6. you should check out the aviation lights, they have flash/strobe modes and lots of colors. good for blinky applications. This seems more like a floodlight kinda thing..
  7. so.. I have an idea/request. Something I've wanted since ISA came out several versions ago with the GPS part.. I would like a direction finder for getting to anomalies. Something that, as you're driving around looking for it, uses the map data you've collected to help you zone in on the location. This could perhaps be any waypoint that you click on the map to set, it _somehow_ conveys which direction you have to go to get to that point. It could be a point on the nav/compass. It could be a window with some obscure homing beacon blip like out of the first two aliens movies. It could show on the screen as if approaching a flag. A separate compass. I'm not picky about it, don't relaly care just want the functionality. It doesn't have to be 100% precise, just some basic guidance. It could be a separate GPS type part, but you do already have one that serves only to display map. In lieu of this, perhaps a way to zoom in on the big map and see where you are compared to the map blip?
  8. my rovers i saved as subassemblies.. It was built from the top docking port down with intent to use as a subassembly. science/util version shown doesn't have docking port up top i just decouple it when i get there.
  9. isplore, science utility version! flying squirrel! too heavy to do anything in particular very well! Still looks neato.
  10. Anyone get some use out of this?? science utility version! started with the isplore5 (stock link still works). Mods you see are MJ, KAS, inline light, and there's an aviation tail light too.
  11. I wanted a biome explorer. Something that can do a long distance hop to a point then do some driving around, and not be awful at it. 1st attempt "Explorer" A successful spaceplane which could VTOL up and away and use orbit altitudes to drop in anywhere. At 22t it proved a bit too heavy to do any reasonable sort of offroading, and actually flying in VTOL mode was a bit of a nightmare. 2nd attempt "Armadillo": A similar concept which uses the little rockomax thrusters for VTOL. It's about half the weight at 13t, drives better but still seems to be hard on the wheels. 3rd attempt "Squirrel": I pretty much set the science setup on the frame for my isplore rover (see sig). To slim it down I bailed on all VTOL and orbiting capability, it's got 1 turbojet and that's it. I also didn't want to deal with landing gear, so enough lift to take off at 60m/s was in order. This got the weight down to a little over 5t. It drives great.. Did some offroading at the north pole in search of an anomaly (didn't find it). looks almost like a hurricane back there clouds on the pole, beautiful Driving up a mountain or steep hill then gliding off is an AWESOME way to get around. Good trip!
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