frisch

Is anyone else having difficulty with struts in RO? I have the recommended mods, FASA and AIES. The struts (normal, medium and heavy) don't seem to provide any stiffness,they just stretch). The particular place I've seen this is trying to launch a good sized (100T) interplanetary spaceship in a procedural fairing, or procedural interstate adapter. The payload just flops around no matter how many struts are added. (my mechanical analysis is good enough that I know the payload position is fully constrained, and when I launch with a fairing removed I can see the struts simply stretch a silly amount. F3 doesn't show anything breaking. Needless to say RO as awesome, thanks to everyone who has worked on it. CKAN is really nice for installs as well.

Hello Ferram4 First - your FAR package is fantastic - really. A spectacular improvement to playability. Same for the realism overhaul stuff - after getting bored with a generic asparagus staged kerbal rocket, needing a "good" design makes the game far more interesting. Finally rockets that look and act like real rockets! The mod packs are such a dramatic improvement that I've completely lost interest in playing without them. But: It is just too much work to find the combinations of mods that work. I spend far more time adding and removing packages (all on on the RO "approved" list by the way), to get a game the doesn't crash, where all the parts work etc. I've finally given up. I've probably spent 10 hours trying to get reasonable set of RO packages after kerbal 25 came out and I still haven't succeeded. (is it 64 bit? Maybe the 8192 res pictures for real solarsystem? Or maybe I'm using the wrong module-manager dll - some packages have newer ones than others. KAS add=ons seem to reliably break things. there are 2^n possible configurations to try). I know there are working sets of packages out there -and it is just frustrating that I can't get one. After much time I had a working 0.24 set, and maybe I'll eventually get there. I'm not completely computer illiterate -my day job involves writing controls and feedbacks for large particle accelerators. You guys are all volunteers - so you are not *required* to do anything, and what you do is very much appreciated. Its just a shame that so much good work has gone into these mods and that many people are not able to use them.

I completely understand, but if you do ever manage to solve the licensing, I (and I suspect others) would happily pay good money for a known-working configuration. I haven's succeeded in getting an overall working setup in the last month or two.

Hello RedAV8R My initial perigee is between 50 and 55km . At the point where the heat shield died the max Gs never exceeded 0.25. I've used these numbers in an earlier version, but the model may have changed some. I had assumed that a shallow perigee would result in less heating, but with the possible problem of skipping out of the atmosphere again. If the DR heat model includes heat conduction through the heat shield then its possible that a longer, shallower reentry is actually worse. If that is the case I can try a steeper one. I'm not sure how much of the physics you are modeling. Max temperature in the VAB for the 3.75 heatshield shows 1800C, but it dies just above 1500 (last reading was 1523). The message was that the heatshield burned up, so it isn't some other component burning up first. The capsule burns up almost instantly, but the heat shield is listed as the first to go in the display. While this particular issue is frustrating the realism overhaul is very impressive. The amount of skilled technical effort that has gone into Kerbal mods is pretty amazing. If any of you want to work or large X-ray lasers instead.....

Hello NathanKell I have those numbers for the 3.75 heatshield. Thank you for looking into this. Anything else I can check?

Still mystified about deadly reentry and realism. Am I correct that I install realism overhaul (and the recommended packages including deadly Reentry), but do not need a different config file? Deadly reentry says I need "heatshields configured for RSS" which I can "get in the realism overhaul thread". Does that mean that the RO package includes those heat shields, or is there a link somewhere I am missing? Heat shield dies at 1500C. 48KM, 7900M/s, 0.32G acceleration. 3500/4000 ablative material left. "heatshield (3.75<) burned up on reentry. thank you.

Thank you for the response. I only have mods on the realism overhaul thread installed (unless I screwed up). All were downloaded in the last couple of days so I *hope* I have the most recent version of each. I didn't have parts catalog, I'll add it since it sounds like it makes this easier follow. It could be technique, but I've done realism reentries a bunch of times before. This was at a shallow angle, low G forces. Its possible I would have skipped out of the atmosphere again, but at the time of the destruction the heating should have been modest. Feels like someone it wasn't using real scale heat shields. I'll install parts catalog and see if it makes it clear what part I was actually using. I'll double check that I don't have any un-supported mods. thank you for the help.

Thank you I'm afraid it leads to one more question. In the VAB is there a way to tell what parts came from what package? The 3.75M heat shield seems to be from DRE, but maybe it was over-written by something else? In any case it seems to die on reentry at almost the same point where the procedural heatshield (with a similar amount of ablative material) dies. Is there any chance of adding some sort of tag to realism overhaul parts in the VAB? As always I appreciate the effort the modders put into this. I hope that realism overhaul is some day available as an add-on (for $$$ is fine) to the release version of kerbal (if that ever happens).

How do I tell which heatshields are RSS rated? It was probably described somewhere, but I missed it thank you

Deadly Re-entry issue (also posted on the deadly reentry discussion but no good ideas there). I'm playing real scale, realism overhaul. For some reason the ablative heat shields don't seem to be working. Returning from a 3000km orbit. Set perogee to 55km. Use the 3.75' (~4000 ablative material), or the procedural heatshield with similar properties. Odin capsule. At about 50km, 7000m/sec, deceleration is <1G. Ablative material is starting to be consumed and the heat shield overheats. I've done similar re-entries with earlier versions with no problems (and even some from escape velocity). I know how to do a gliding re-entry. Was there any recent change that would have prevented the ablative material from working? It seems the heat shield just gradually warms up and the fails at 1800 - with the capsule almost instantly destroyed afterwards. Are real scale reentries working for other people? suggestions are appreciated.

I'm using DR, with the realism overhaul pack. Using either the 3.75M ablative heat shield (>3500 ablative material). or a similar procedural heat shield, I burn up on reentry. I'm aiming for a perapsis of about 55km (from a 3000km apogee). Pressure and acceleration are OK, only a little ablative material has burned off. At about 50Km, 7Km/sec, the heat shield overheats, and then the capsule is destroyed. I've done reentries before with the realism pack, I'm using a gliding reentry - but something has changed. Its as if the ablative material isn't working, the HS just heats up to 1800C, and boom. Were there any recent changes that might have disabled the cooling from the ablative material? thank you.

For me, with 64 bit KSP, the procedural decouplers and procedural heat shields also don't work (along with procedural cylindrical tanks). Needless to say, don't feel you need to apologize because the mod you are working on for FREE isn't working at this very instant.

Dear RO devs Realism overhaul is absolutely fantastic, your work is much appreciated. If practical, once it is running in 0.24, it would be nice to have a list of the associated mods that are also known to be functional. FWIW, the sandbox version is fine with me. Realism and real scale are hard enough even with unlimited resources.

Thank you for the cfg file for inflatable heat shields. I just wanted to check, is that reasonable for real-scale / real solar system kerbal? BTW - is there a quick way to tell which heat shields are RSS/RO compatible, or just look at the numbers?

Is the inflatable heat shield not intended to be balanced? It seems to have a max temperature of 10,000 degree. It seems pretty indestructible on reentry.

Fair enough that you need to concentrate on the core game. Personally I found ion drives to be useless or boring in the standard game. The very long burn times make them dull to use, and you don't really need the high delta-V for any missions anyway. BTW, the various realism mods are quite impressive, I hope they make it into the mainstream game some day (maybe as a purchased extra). You are probably aware that someone is working on a better physics integrator that will make accurate warps with low thrust engines work correctly. The amount of highly technical work the modders are doing is amazing.

If you are far from any gravitational bodies so that during the burn time for an ion engine (say 1 day) your distances don't change significantly then applying the delta-V all at once, or slowly gives almost the same result (good enough for a game anyway). Close in to a planet then there is a big difference and setting ion engines to higher thrust WOULD be cheating. If you require a large distance then its not a cheat. Imagine you are going to Jupiter. You get to earth escape with conventional engines. Then you start the ion drive. The trip takes years, so once you are away from the earth (using Oberth effect WOULD be cheating), it really doesn't matter if the burn takes 5 minutes or 5 days. The problem is that while real astronauts on a 5 year trip don't mind waiting 5 days, if you are playing KSP it is REALLY DULL. It means that a correctly designed rocked (eg low thrust) makes for very dull game play - you need to start thing, then set alarms etc. For normal KSP it doesn't matter - you can get everywhere and back (except EVE) easily with conventional and NERVAs. For real scale though, doing outer planet missions really only makes sense with high impulse drives, or you are sending your kerbals on multi decade missions. So a X1000 physics time warp is the "right" answer, but its technically difficult to do in the game. I'm suggesting a kludge that has roughly the same effect .

I've lost track of what was installed in what order. I was just surprised that the NERVAs would heat up the plate but not other engines. Its not crazy so if this is the intended effect, that's fine.

The thurst plate multi-adapter seem to overheat with Nervas. This is a quite recent change. (not sure when it happened). The engines themselves are OK but the multi-adapter is destroyed with "overheated on reentry" if I run above about 50% thrust with 6 Nervas.

I understand the problems with simply speeding up the physics warp. The result though is that ion drives are to boring to use - start up the drive then return many hours later. For basic KSP that isn't so bad - you can do everything with Nervas, but for real scale its quite difficult to do an outer planet mission without an electric drive. (there are some wonderful ones in add-on packs). My suggestion is to have a special delta-V maneuver. The ship needs to be some distance from any object (say 1 million Km). Then you can apply an "instant" delta-V up to the amount of fuel carried. MechJeb calculates available delta-V so the data is probably available. This would let you do a launch and escape using conventional (chemical or nuke) drives. Warp to 1M km, then use an ion drive. Its not "cheating", the result will be almost the same as if you had turned on the ion drive, then let the computer run for a day or two. You could of course still use ion drives normally if you want.

I'd also like to see sandbox with all the features of unlocked career. It all depends on your style of play, but I've played enough that the limited parts available in career is dull. I played it once, got to where I could do most missions, and then its just drudgery to collect enough science to get more parts to build interesting rockets.

OK it worked this time. I have a 4M gyro wheel between the heat shield and the capsule. It seems to get hotter with the procedural shieod (no idea why). Maybe it blew up first and then everything else went. Wish there was a readout of all component temperatures. Use about 1/2 the ablative shielding on a 8.5Km/s reentry. Can keep mostly below 5Gs using the torque wheel to adjust the glide. Still working on a good config for an 11-12Km/s interplanetary reentry scheme.

Does anything special need to be done to make procedural heat shields work with deadly reentry? I'm using RO and RSS and it seems as if the procedural heat shield isn't actually protecting anything. (I've done reentries before with the stock 4M heatshield). I'm trying a few more things to be sure

I'll check the addon / dev forums. I was thinking of starting with something straightforward like an engine - maybe a nuclear lightbulb - I have some old NASA documents so can do fairly realistic parameters. Solar sails would be fun, but they are so large that I'm not sure there is a way to make them work in the system. Then I'll think a bit. Realistically I don't have a lot of time to work on this - I do have a day job.

Not sure if it fits here, but I was talking about reentry control with a friend of mine who is a propulsion engineer at NASA. He said that some of the Mars landers used droppable tungsten weights to create an off-center CG for a lifting reentry, then drop the extra weight to bring the CG to center again for landing. As inefficient as is sounds, dropping 10s of Kg of tungsten on Mars was the best answer. Right now the only way I've found to to a gliding reentry is with big gyros - which I think are a bit unrealistically strong anyway. It might be useful to have small dense weights that cold be put on decouplers. BTW -are there instructions somewhere on how to create new components for KSP? Rather than just complaining about how difficult it is to set up RO / RSS, I'd like to help.