justmeman117

right now I'm trying to work on a career save filled with hyper specialized designs. So SSTOs designed to go to KEO only, where cargo and crew disembark to board interplanetary ships that only operate between planets, each of which have their own SSTO designs. The idea is to make a really efficient interplanetary transportation network that's fully reusable.

I work on a 707 variant for a living. Changing fuel levels in the wing tanks of aircraft will alter the COM, though not as much as forward and aft body tanks. Since the wings are swept back, the outboard tanks tend to be behind the COM, and the inboard tanks in front. Since the 707 has 4 main wing tanks, each corresponding to one engine, all 4 tend to drain at nearly equal rates however. You are correct that having weight in the wings helps with the structure though. Having all the weight in the fuselage and all the lift in the wings could conceivably cause an aircraft to fold if poorly designed. That being said, I think the biggest motivator behind wing tanks is that wings constitute a very large, mostly empty volume that on most aircraft is utterly useless for traditional cargo due to its flat shape. Fuel however, being a liquid, fills its storage container regardless of its shape. And the more of it you can put in the wings, the less of it you have to put in the fuselage, which is a volume better suited to solid cargo. So storing a fluid like fuel in the wings is probably the best use of that empty space. -------------------------------------------------------------- Personally, I always fill up the wing tanks. A tank that isn't being used to store fuel is wasted empty mass.

Is there a way I can edit the files to make the game think I'm in an IVA when I'm in a first person EVA? I'm trying to make this mod work in conjunction with Vivero, a VR mod. Vivero unfortunately only allows you to enable VR when you're in an IVA.

This isn't a suggestion, it's something I'm actually trying to do with a mod pack. The idea is to make a full mod pack that will make the game somewhat playable in VR. Here's what mods I'm putting in: Vivero (VR mod) https://github.com/Vivero/Kerbal-VR RasterProp Monitor (and various plugins to make the MFDs more useful) Through the Eyes (Kerbal EVA first person view) KIS and KAS (to make EVA a little more interesting) I've run into a road block. Vivero ONLY allows you to enable VR when in an IVA... And apparently running the first person mod, and going EVA in first person doesn't count as an IVA. So I'm unable to enable VR while on a first person EVA. It seems like there's possibly a simple fix, maybe a file I could open and edit in notepad, so that Vivero can enable VR regardless of whether or not you're in IVA. But I don't know enough about programming to identify what file I'd have to open, and what edits I'd need to make. If anybody has any experience with modding who could point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it. I'm so close to making a proper KSP VR mod pack work.

There’s a ton of stuff you can do, I already see a bunch of people talking about tweaking wheel traction and wheel bases. Personally, I set the rear wheels to toggle on an action group. If you turn off rear wheel steering at high speeds, you get more stable turns at the expense of turn radius... Who needs to make sharp turns at high speed anyway? And if you want to get cheaty about it, the COG of jet engines are outside the physical dimensions of the part... This means you can put a bunch of them on a rover facing downwards, and move the rover’s COG below the ground. Doing this makes the rover rotate into the turn instead of away from it. It also allows it to scale 90 degree inclines, which is pretty cool.

Thank you everyone for the help. Holiday, any craft files would be greatly appreciated. I’ve experimented recently with RCS and thermos, but it kept coming loose. I think it’s because the thermos were facing the wrong way. I also have a few craft files already with working bearings, but they’re difficult to reverse engineer since the propeller is often built right into the aircraft. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to develop one as a sub assembly, so I can easily do engine changes in the field if one breaks. Halcyon, I noticed that about the docking ports. I thought about experimenting with side facing docking ports, but it’d make the assembly much wider. I also had this idea of making bearings that could slide up and down. That way, when in use ports move away from each other, and when you shut it down, you can use RCS to push them back together again. I’ll have to play around with how far they need to move before it resets though. I might also be able to just straight up change the part file so it resets at a closer distance. Also, thanks for the tip on the mod, I might just use that instead for Eve and Duna. I might still need props for Eve thanks to its oceans, but they’ll be fewer and farther between. Also, that’s an awesome design. It’s not .625 meter, so it’ll be harder to airlift places inside cargo bays, but motors that small are pushing what’s possible. That design would be useful for larger aircraft in places like eve. Would you mind sending me the craft file? Epic, I have yet to try out the claw for this, but I have plans to make my 1.25 meter versions use it. Also, while finicky, the decouplers can work. While they don’t have the clearance the part would lead you to believe it has looking at it, it does have a small hole in the middle about wide enough for a cubic to fit in there. I got the idea to use them for bearings after I had some positive experiments using them as a tow hook for rovers and aircraft. I have an ultralight with folding wings that uses bearings based on decouplers. That being said, I learned the hard way they aren’t the best approach for high speed bearings. They cause too much friction depending on what I use as the shaft, and while I’ve gotten airborn with this helicopter, too much movement in the fuselage causes the shaft to break free. It seems they’re best for slower applications like doors. I’ll have to check out those threads, and see what techniques they use.

I'm mostly asking for help in this thread. I'm currently trying to develop vehicles I can deploy permanently in the field to support a career mode colonization effort. This means I need to set up mining facilities, SSTOs, and small towns on every planet. Perhaps the most difficult planet to set up such a colony with reusable technologies on is Eve. Thanks to its dense atmosphere, simply using aircraft to fly at faster than driving speeds between bases is a compelling option. However, jet engines obviously don't work inside Eve's atmosphere. So, I have to resort to stock electric propellers (unless I want gas guzzling rocket planes that are mostly fuel, and need to land and refuel multiple times in one trip). My difficulty is prototyping a stock electric propeller with the specifications I want. I wanted to make one out of .625 meter parts, to push the size and mass limits of stock propellers (and then scale up from there for larger planes). This means using .625 reaction wheels, and possibly using .625 meter decouplers in some manner as the bearings. Next, the prop needs to be able to redock to the mothership, since propellers tend to break easily whenever the game loads or unloads a vehicle with a propeller. And finally, the propeller needs to be a sub-assembly with a docking port, so that I can change out a broken engine in the field if I need to. No sense in condemning an aircraft I went through the trouble of getting to Eve if all that broke is the propeller. Anyway, I haven't had too much luck, a whole lot of friction between parts, and the prop breaking free of the different kinds of bearings I've designed. So I thought I'd turn to the KSP community for tips or tricks on designing props that aren't just for show, but are actually useful and utilitarian. The ability to redock is probably the part I care most about. I also have the making history pack, so I have those parts to draw from for making props as well. The structural tubes might be useful for 1.25 meter props and up.

I'm having these issues as well. It's becoming extremely frustrating. I've only just now reached the point where I'm motivated to build and develop extremely large vehicles for an end game campaign I'm working on... And now I basically can't build any because kraken. And not normal kraken, I mean an unusual amount of kraken immediately on loading in for vehicles that in previous versions, would have been fine. There are 3 things this seems to affect me for: 1.) Fairings I first found this issue wherein I tried to replicate an old shuttle design I had a few versions ago with the new auto-strut feature. To make a properly scaled replica, the 3.75 meter tanks aren't big enough to take the place of the shuttle's orange tank. So instead, I use a fairing. ... It kept exploding on the pad. I tried another design in which I made a huge 1500-2000 ton SSTO to lift large cargo to low orbit. It used a maximum sized 3.75 meter fairing to store potential cargo. Even empty, it caused an explosion on the runway, and even nearly crashed the game. 2.) FAT wings I tried building an SSTO using FAT wings. i'd never done that before because of their low heat tolerance, but I'd thought I'd try it since I'd seen others pull it off. The second it loaded in, the wings were the first thing to explode, and destroyed the rest of the SSTO. It happened as a result of putting heavy tanks and engines on the end, and clipping them. 3.) Parts clipping on very large crafts That super heavy SSTO I mentioned in the fairings portion, I tired removing fairings altogether, and not using FAT wings... Though it did start loading in, and started looking promising, it started exploding again. And since it's so big, I could watch it in slow motion. This craft has a lot of clipped parts. They aren't one on top of the other, but they are clipped to make it look nice. For example, it's a twin fuselage design, and each fuselage has 2 mk 3 tanks stacked on top of each other, and they're clipped in so the flat sides line up. When I watch the explosion happen, I can actually SEE the parts that are clipping suddenly have collision between them turned on (despite being the same vessel), and the tanks and such start flying apart and exploding. It's very frustrating. It seems that clipping works just fine on smaller vessels, but once it reaches a large enough point, the game's issues with clipping it once had many many versions ago suddenly return... Which sucks, because that problem was solved already a few versions ago. I'd really like to see squad make this one of their priorities on the 1.3 development. It's making ship design difficult.

Oh, it was 1.0.4? That would explain it then, if I remember correctly re-entry heating in 1.0.4 was broken to the end of ONLY being able to re-enter with heat shields. Not that such a game mechanic would be a bad thing, but not until after the devs finally decide to make heat shielded versions of all the space plane parts. And I actually have made all rocket SSTOs and high sub-orbit first stages before, but those were rocket launchers that landed under parachute rather than by flying. The problem with that method though is you only get like 67% of the funds you recovered.

Would you happen to have a craft file or a video of the bearing mechanism itself? I've been trying to find inspiration lately to build a bearing for my not-so-successful turbo shaft engines. Excellent plane by the way. I hadn't really thought of using such bearings before for VTOL swivels.

You know, if you used fairings instead of heat shields, this would be a lot better craft for a number of reasons. For one thing, fairings tend to be a lot lighter than heat shields. They are also the second most heat resistant parts in the game TO heat shields and engines, making them good nose cones during re-entries. And because they're a lot more streamlined, you'll incur a lot less drag on take-off and ascent. I suspect you used heat shields there due to an explode-y issue on reentry, and I think I know why. You are re-entering unbelievably steep, and unbelievably fast, at a scary shallow angle of attack. I'm frankly shocked it didn't explode in spite of your use of heat shields. If you managed re-entry heat better, you could build a more traditional looking, and more efficient SSTO without ever even having to touch a heat shield. Here, here's the steps I recommend when re-entering: Step 1.) De-Orbit to a very high periapsis. I recommend a periapsis of around 40 to 45 km for Keo re-entries, and 50-60 km for inter munar, or interplanetary re-entries. Heat only becomes a major issue deep in the atmosphere where the air is thicker, so you want to bleed off as much speed in the upper atmosphere as possible. Step 2.) Upon entering the atmosphere, ANGLE. During the high altitude portion, angle to about 45-90 degrees away from your pro-grade vector. This will cause as much drag through the upper atmosphere as possible. Step 3.) Lower your angle down to around 30 degrees as you get deeper into the atmosphere, when there is no risk of bouncing back into space. At this point, you want to continue bleeding speed in the upper atmosphere, so a 30 degree angle will not only cause drag, it'll also cause just enough lift for you to hang there at a higher altitude for a while. Step 4.) Maintain this profile until you get deeper into the atmosphere, at which point you need to angle based upon where your parts are most heating up. For example, if the nose cone is near overheating, try increasing the angle. Step 5.) once you've dropped well down below around 700 m/s, then fly around normally and go land. There's a number of reasons you want to do all this. It's not just to drag either. By not angling high up, you'll not cause much drag, and so lawn dart into the lower atmosphere at 1,500 to 2,000 m/s, at which point you'll explode. Additionally, by not angling, you are focusing ALL your thermal energy on just the one or two parts at the front of the spacecraft. This is why you are using heat shields for those parts. But you don't NEED to use heat shields. If you instead angle to at least 30 degrees or more during the re-entry, that thermal energy will be spread out amongst dozens of parts, and so no single part will overheat enough to explode. Oh, by the way, you don't even need to burn to slow down from an inter-planetary re-entry. You can just use this method, though you may have to make multiple aerobraking passes using this method first before finally re-entering. This means you can use that fuel elsewhere in your missions. Just by revising the way you re-enter, you could save literally tons of weight, hundreds of delta V, and make it a lot easier to fly out of the atmosphere by decreasing drag with more streamlined parts. I recommend playing around with flight profiles like this, and perhaps considering revising your SSTO to accommodate it best. I am very intrigued by your design though. I'm used to using rapiers for SSTOs, I've never really considered making an all rocket one. The TWR on this thing means it could have very good cross range capability inside a planetary system, such as potentially landing on Tylo or Eve. I might have to try out such a design of my own.

Just as a quick note guys, someone requested a "tiny buran" video. So I'll be making and posting that one here and on YouTube as well in the next week or two.

Depends on whether or not it's bob. That coward needs to fry. GO TEAM JEB.

@YoeriCookie Everything depends on speed, angle, altitude, and parts. First of all, avoid exposing delicate parts, like solar panels, batteries, and computer cores. Either keep them tucked away inside cargo bays as much as possible, or try to keep them in the trailing edge of the re-entry profile. Second of all, you want to bleed off as much speed as you can inside the upper atmosphere. For re-entry from Leo, I usually deorbit to a periapsis height of 40-50 km. Make it a very shallow re-entry profile. Once you start re-entry, you want to stay in the upper atmosphere for as long as possible. That's where angle comes in. Angle up at about 30 to 60 degrees. This generates lift, and keeps you hovering around the same altitude bleeding speed for a long time. Finally, angle is important for another reason. Never lawn dart (never point your nose straight at your prograde vector). First of all, lawn darting means you don't really bleed off speed, and you'll end up going way too fast when you enter thicker air. Second of all, lawn darting means only the tiny area at the front of your spacecraft is taking the brunt of the re-entry heat. This focusses the thermal energy there, and overheats your parts one at a time till they explode. Angling prevents this. Anything from 20 to 90 degrees off angle will spread out the thermal energy across the spacecraft's entire surface. Since all that area has a far higher heat capacity than any single part, the parts would have to be heated for a long time before they'd get to explode. Anyway, just a re-entry tip. It's actually a fairly accurate representation of the physics involved. If you're trying to reenter from interplanetary or trans munar, you'll probably have to make multiple reentries, slowing down after each time. At those speeds, you'll probably have to aim for 55 to 65 km periapsis. Rule of thumb, the faster you're going, the higher the altitude you have to reenter at.

Thanks guys. I got a YouTube channel. You should check it out, I'll be posting more KSP ship vids. I'll probably be making my next one about the tiny shuttle's big brother.