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  1. Shuttle Payload Delivery Systems This mod adds: IUS Airborne Support Equipment Centaur (G/G-Prime, II, III) Integrated Support System SpaceLab Pallet with two types of "shelfs" Dependencies: Breaking Ground DLC B9PartSwitch ModuleManager Bluedog Design Bureau Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit What version of KSP is this mod for? I tested this mod on version 1.12.3, but I think it will work with any version that BG works with. What's next? In future I want to add other shuttle payload things like SpaceHab, Integrated Cargo Carrier and more. Recommended mods: SOCK Repainted by @Arthurism SOCK Recolored by @Invaderchaos reCOLOR by @MATVEICH_YT and @AstroMods Screenshots: DOWNLOADS SPACEDOCK GITHUB Available on CKAN Special Thanks to: @CobaltWolf and @benjee10 for making BDB and SOCK @Zorg and @CobaltWolf for helping me making this mod And everyone who supports me during developing Licence: CC BY 4.0
  2. There has clearly been an update. Now that there is a sidebar, everything has changed. Parts are no longer green ghosts in front of Kerbals that you can orient around. They have controls similar to VAB ones. My Kerbal engineers can now place things on the ground if I click on the large menu that opens by clicking the gear icon on the right side of the screen. Click on the part in the inventory, orient with WASD, click on the ground to place them. But once they place it, that's it. Nobody (engineer, scientist) can pick them up or interact with them or start experiments. Nothing. Right clicking on experiments shows no useful buttons. All needed parts are on the ground. Station, RTG, communication, experiments. Literally nothing works. I tried looking online but this DLC has been pretty much ignored. I don't understand why this has to be so complicated.
  3. I have made a helicopter that works except for one part. Once it gets up if it rolls one way i cant get it to roll back without changing the pich of the intire copter. How would i fix this problem??
  4. So, I spent the afternoon building this: It's using two of the largest rotors in a contra-rotating arrangement, with four fuel cells as power. My problem is, it stubbornly refuses to leave the ground, at least without tipping over and ripping the rotor blades off. I suspect this is something to do with the contra-rotating rotors cancelling each others' motion out, but I'm not sure. Since I've seen a lot of successful helicopters being build since BG released, I'm asking the experts how to get my chopper into the air safely.
  5. I'm going to keep my russian aircraft in a singular post here so I don't inevitably clutter up the Spacecraft exchange I only use stock parts or parts from either DLC _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sukhoi Sukhoi Su-57 "Felon" Length: 16.9m Weight: 55t Parts: 329 AG1: Toggle afterburners AG2: Toggle payload doors _________________________________________ Sukhoi Su-27P "Flanker" Length: 17.96m Weight: 35.5t Parts: 262 AG1: Toggle afterburners _________________________________________ Sukhoi Su-33 "Flanker-D" Length: 18.0m Weight: 34.7t Parts: 379 AG1: Toggle afterburners _________________________________________ Sukhoi Su-35S "Flanker-E" Length: 17.63m Weight: 34.47t Parts: 260 AG1: Toggle afterburners _________________________________________ Sukhoi Su-37 "Terminator" Length: 17.9m Weight: 29t Parts: 202 AG1: Toggle afterburners _________________________________________ Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut Length: 18.2m Weight: 28.29t Parts: 140 AG1: Toggle afterburners ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mikoyan-Gurevich Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29A "Fulcrum-A" Length: 15.4m Weight: 22.64t Parts: 163 AG1: Toggle afterburners _________________________________________ Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21bis "Fishbed-C" Length: 14.14m Weight: 17.96t Parts: 164 AG1: Toggle afterburners ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mil Mil Mi-24 "Hind" Length: 18.4m Weight: 21.613t Parts: 161 AG1: Fuel Cell toggle AG2: Juno toggle Requirements: Breaking Ground DLC Note: Set the throttle to 1/3, pin the main rotors, and modulate the deployment angle to control the heli ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Tupolev Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" Length: 30.4m Weight: 58.3t Parts: 185 AG1: Toggle prop engines Requirements: Breaking Ground DLC _________________________________________ Tupolev Tu-22M3 "Backfire" Length: 28.7m Weight: 50t Parts: 200 AG1: Toggle wing sweep AG2: Toggle Flaps AG3: Toggle bomb bay doors Requirements: Breaking Ground DLC _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
  6. I'm designing an electric amphibious vehicle to send to Laythe whose design is based on my years-old Amphibian. The jet engines were replaced with Breaking Ground props, the passenger capacity was reduced to make room for scientific instruments and reaction wheels, the fuel tanks were (95%) emptied, and the pontoons were replaced with a lot of batteries. Image of the (second-to-latest) prototype. I named it "Saltrider" since the only way Laythe's waters can remain a liquid at below-freezing is if it has a high-enough salt concentration to make it have a significantly lower freezing point. The latest one had wing connectors (and control surfaces) in the back holding up the engines, although it did not make a difference in the outcome of the water test. I'm going electric so I don't get stranded in the middle of the ocean forever when I run out of power. It has retractable landing gear on the side as an anti-crash measure in case it tips over. Solar panels not included, as I need to conduct a successful water test before deciding the placement. Though the land tests looked promising - and I was probably going too fast (85 m/s at a 17-degree propeller blade angle) - the water test was not so much. It was nose-heavy when I got in, and when I tried turning right to I literally went belly-up. I brought back the engines to try and balance things out, but it didn't make a difference - structural pylons or wing connectors. Could you please tell me what's causing the boat to get all nose-heavy and how I can fix this? Here's the craft file if you want to mess with it - https://mega.nz/file/zaAGyIpD#62WNRZzcqXpyO-ipP2ISX5W25pZinpWrzQUbe17sUyI Thank you very much.
  7. Level: Intermediate/Advanced Craft used to illustrate this tutorial: BAK-52NS Version history: 1.2 - Updated with a note on 1.7.3 built-in rotor and propeller blades 1.1 - Updated with better rotors, thanks to a tip from @Hotel26 1.0 - Original version About this tutorial This tutorial is a basic primer on stock helicopters made with parts from the Breaking Ground DLC. It does not discuss pre-Breaking Ground stock rotary motors, nor helicopters made with mod parts. I have limited experience with both and it would expand the scope of the tutorial rather too much. I also do not claim to being the inventor of any of the construction techniques or principles discussed here; a quite a bit I have discovered on my own, and a quite a bit I have picked up around the forums. If you feel you ought to be credited, please say so and I'll add you. What's a helicopter? A helicopter is an aircraft that flies by producing lift from one or more powered rotary wings, or rotors. If the rotor is not powered it is not a helicopter, it is an autogyro; they are also very cool but out of scope of this tutorial. And if the rotor is not used to produce lift but for some other purpose -- thrust, for example -- then it is not a helicopter either. Helicopters can have other forms of propulsion as well: real-life choppers with jet engines bolted on exist and work well. If it's necessary to make the distinction, they are known as compound helicopters. This is a helicopter. It's the BAK-52NS. This variant uses hydraulically sprung and damped landing skids instead of wheels, making precision landings easy...ish. How is it different from an airplane? Airplanes fly by producing lift from airflow around wings. They need to be moving forward to do this and stay in the air. With helicopters, the spinning rotor moves the lifting surface through the air, producing lift. This allows them to hover. However, the big rotating propeller on top of the craft produces a whole set of complications, many of which are shared by kerbal helicopters and human ones; others however are specific to one or the other because kerbal physics aren't quite like real-life physics, and stock kerbals lack certain highly useful bits and pieces used to make human choppers more manageable. On the other hand, kerbals have some amazingly powerful components to build with. Cyclic and Collective Another obvious difference between a plane and a helicopter is how they're controlled. Planes are controlled by moving control surfaces -- rudder, ailerons, elevators, and canards -- which modify the lift produced by each lifting surface, applying forces to the plane and causing it to turn. Pull the stick back, and the control surfaces move to produce more lift near the nose and less lift near the tail, pitching the nose up; push it right, and port control surfaces move to produce more lift while starboard ones produce less, causing the plane to roll to the right. Since helicopters need to be controllable even when they're hovering, they work differently. The primary controls on a chopper are cyclic and collective. Cyclic means adjusting the pitch of the rotor blades differently depending where they are in the cycle of rotation. Imagine that your chopper sits in the middle of a clock face, nose pointing at 12 o'clock. Now, if you want to pitch up, you will want the blades to increase their pitch as they near the 12 o'clock position, and decrease their pitch as they near six o'clock, thereby producing more lift towards the front and less towards the back. You'll also want to adjust cyclic as you start going faster: if your rotor spins counterclockwise, the blades at three o'clock will have a faster airflow over them than the blades at 9 o'clock, because the airflow from your forward motion will get added to the airflow produced by the rotor's rotation. This means you'll want increased pitch around 9 o'clock and decreased pitch around 3 o'clock, or else your craft will roll to the left. This makes helicopters rather hard to fly in real life as well as on Kerbin. What's more, kerbals have no direct control over cyclic: instead, when you adjust the pitch, yaw, or roll, the magic control surfaces try to figure out what you want them to do. This works acceptably with regular aircraft; with helicopters, not so much. So cyclic control on Kerbin is crude at best and you will need partial or total workarounds for this. ~ * ~ UPDATE: FooFighter has built a working swash plate with collective and cyclic control. If you want to make a realistic helicopter that is controlled without reaction wheels, now it's possible! https://kerbalx.com/FooFighter/Swashplate ~ * ~ Collective is a much simpler proposition: it just means the average blade pitch on the rotor. Increase collective and the rotor produces more lift, causing you to gain altitude. Increase it more and your motor will run out of torque to spin the rotor: the RPM will drop and eventually the rotor won't be able to produce any more lift. You'll leap up and then drop down again. Increase it too much, and your rotor will stall, causing you to plummet rather precipitately. And conversely, decrease collective to descend and reduce the torque needed to spin the rotor, allowing it to rotate faster. Collective gives really fine control over hover, and makes a helicopter extremely responsive in vertical motion, comparable in KSP only to a wildly overpowered rocket-powered VTOL. Thankfully, it is possible to make a really nice collective in kerbal helicopters. Perhaps surprisingly, hover on a helicopter isn't actually controlled by throttle. The motor's job is just to keep the rotor spinning; collective and cyclic do the rest. Torque effects In addition to the asymmetrical aerodynamic effects described above, rotorcraft have one more issue to contend with: torque. Spinning up a rotor and, when flying, pushing against the air to produce lift requires torque. Because Sir Isaac Newton is no fun with his laws of motion, this torque will have to get transferred somewhere in an equal but opposing manner. If you don't want your helicopter to spin in the opposite direction of the rotor, you will have to find some way to balance out the torque produced by spinning the rotor. Most real-life helicopters do this with a tail rotor: the helicopter has a pretty long tail which works like a lever arm, and at the tip of the tail is a propeller producing thrust in the opposite direction of the main rotor's torque. The pilot controls the pitch of the tail rotor using yaw controls, and will in fact be continuously adjusting it in different flight conditions (unless he has a computer to do it for him). Sadly, this does not work all that well in KSP. It is possible to make a smallish single-rotor/tail-rotor that is somewhat controllable, but it is hard, it won't be all that easy to fly, and it will very likely require a lot of reaction wheels to paper things over. That's why we're going to discuss a different type of helicopter here: one that flies with twin coaxial contra-rotating rotors. This solution neatly balances out the asymmetrical torque and aerodynamic effects, making for a stable, neutral basis for your craft. By all means attempt to make a conventional main rotor/tail rotor helicopter. Just expect it to be quite hard! This has real-life counterparts as well, notably the Soviet/Russian Kamov Ka-50 and its relatives, and the solution is used there for the same reason it works for kerbals. It makes the craft stabler and easier to fly. By Dmitriy Pichugin - http://www.airliners.net/photo/Russia---Air/Kamov-Ka-50/0920728/L/, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5896037 The coaxial contra-rotating twin rotor powertrain The simplest kerbal rotorcraft powertrain uses a similar solution as in the Ka-50. Kerbals have the advantage of having incredibly powerful, yet compact electric motors that can be placed anywhere, so that's what we're going to do. The powertrain only consists of two parts: at the top a motor (the standard or heavy electric rotor work well for most craft), and below it, a flat servo with its motor disengaged (with no motor at all). The rotor blades attach to the motor above, and the freewheeling servo (or the bottom half of the motor) below. When you spin up the motor, the torque will be evenly split between the two rotors, which will start spinning in opposite directions. Note: this isn't the only way to make a contra-rotating powertrain; you can also use two electric motors surface-mounted to a base, then gizmoed into being coaxial; in this case, each motor will be spinning its own rotor. It has twice the power. For most purposes, the single-motor/freewheel solution is sufficient, however, and has the advantage of being simpler and stabler. Collective Since KSP 1.7.3, Breaking Ground includes propeller and rotor blades as parts. Clip them onto a motor, deploy them, and bind their authority limit to an axis group to control collective (e.g. up/down). Note that they come in clockwise and counterclockwise variants: if building a contra-rotating powertrain, be sure to use mirrored variants for each rotor so that the marking decals point the same way on each, and set the deploy direction on each of them so that adjusting collective up increases pitch on both of them. When building your own rotors (see below), mount an elevon on a servo as pictured above, limit the servo's angle to some relatively sane values, and bind it to an axis group as above. Rotor design The built-in rotor and propeller blades differ greatly in performance from ones made from elevons. They are much more powerful in the lower atmosphere, producing a great deal more thrust/lift. However, their performance drops off much more abruptly and their service ceiling is much lower. A craft powered with a rotor made from elevons can reach 20 km on Kerbin and operate easily on Duna. Therefore, for such special off-world uses, hand-built rotors still have a niche. With rotors, light weight is everything, so use the lightest components available for the job. Your rotor blades should be control surfaces -- FAT-455 for bigger rotors, elevons of various sizes for smaller ones. Here's the best way I know to make a rotor: Place servos onto the motor or the freewheel in radial symmetry. Small ones work most of the time; for very big rotors you might want to use larger sizes. Attach a control surface to the servo and rotate it to the correct orientation. Hold down the shift key and offset it outwards to your desired radius. Set the angle restrictions on the servo. Values of about 12 to about 35 degrees depending on rotor size work for me. If making a bigger rotor, add a second control surface and repeat step 3 for it. Optional: add a strut connector from the servo to the nearest control surface. It won't do anything much but it will make it look better. Copy the entire blade assembly onto your other power element and turn it upside down. Assign servo angle on both sets of servos to up/down, reversing one of them. Important: Disable yaw control on all the control surfaces on your rotor, leaving pitch and roll enabled. Powering it Rotorcraft require electricity to run the powertrain (and also operate collective). Small craft like the BAK-52NS "Kranefly" above could actually run just on a pair of the larger solar panels, or you could bring enough batteries to give you the endurance you want, but the all-around easiest solution is to use fuel cells as above: the golden tank contains enough fuel to fly the Kranefly for probably longer than you have patience, and it only needs a few cells to run. For the heavy rotors you pretty much have to use fuel cells; a pair of large fuel cell arrays is sufficient to power a single heavy electric motor. Controlling it You can set up whatever control scheme you like of course, but I have found the following to work for most things: Action group 1 Toggle fuel cells and engage motor(s) Main throttle[1] Adjust engine torque (you'll want this at maximum most of the time) Up/Down axis Adjust collective (K increases pitch, I decreases pitch -- this places them at the same positions on your right hand as pitch on your left) [1] Since 1.7.2, F/B in 1.7.0-1.7.1 Additionally, brake will apply brake on the motor driving the rotor. Because you have a freewheel between the rotors and the craft's body, this means you can stop the rotor very quickly by disengaging the motor (action group 1) and hitting the brakes -- both rotors will stop with the torque canceled out between them. The magic of reaction wheels Kerbals may not have cyclic but by the Kraken's tentacles they have reaction wheels. You can paper over minor misbehaviours in the craft by adding some reaction wheels... sometimes quite a lot really. Don't feel bad, it's a kerbal solution. Tuning it The powertrain described above is fairly docile and you can stick it on top of the centre of mass of pretty much any craft light enough for it to lift, and it will fly and hover. Getting it to fly well is a different kettle of fish altogether. If there is a science to tuning kerbal rotorcraft I haven't discovered it -- all of my tuning has been through trial and error. I suspect the unpredictability is due to the way KSP translates control inputs into control surface positions on the rotor, which is a bit on the flaky side: Change the number of rotor blades. I've had good results with rotors from 2 to 6 blades. More blades require more power but run smoother. Adjust blade length. Larger rotors are more efficient but less stable unless you feed them with more power. Move rotor forward/aft. Moving it forward and back changes the craft's tendency to pitch forward or back as you increase/decrease collective; it also changes its sensitivity to roll and yaw controls although I have no idea exactly why and how. Even tiny adjustments can make massive differences; less than a "click" of snap-to motion can completely change the handling characteristics of a chopper. I suspect this is due to the way the rotor blades respond to your control inputs. Move rotor up/down. Up tends to make the chopper more stable but less responsive to control inputs, down does the opposite. It's quite possible to make a really numb chopper that only goes up and down and barely even responds to pitch, roll, or yaw controls! Tilt rotor forward. It does something so it's worth a try. Adjust control authority. Less authority means less judder but less control; more does the opposite (and might cause blade stalls which is no fun at all). Adjust the craft's centre of mass. Generally speaking you will want a high centre of mass, close to the rotor: this is why the fuel tank is right below the powertrain in the BAK-52 above. Add or remove reaction wheels. Tip: Tune with SAS off. You might find that your chopper flies rather pleasantly without it in fact! Flying it To fly a helicopter, spin up the rotors with collective at zero, engines at maximum torque. Then increase collective until it takes off. Pitch to accelerate, slow down, or fly backwards; roll to fly sideways, yaw to spin around. When you're moving forward at a decent pace airplane-like aerodynamics start to enter the picture which is fun and different. Developing it further The basic Ka-50 style craft plan is just one possibility among many. Once you've got the power train figured out, you can make bigger ones and smaller ones, choppers powered by more than one set of rotors in a variety of configurations, tilt rotors with heavy servos making for an Osprey-style VTOL craft, and so on. You can stick on a jet or two just below the rotor assembly to make it go faster -- making fast choppers is a completely different and much harder challenge than making fast planes, since the limiting factor is stability rather than thrust to weight ratio; you will need to design rather different rotors for choppers that go very fast. You can also attempt different solutions altogether, like with non-coaxial contra-rotating rotors, or even attempting a main rotor/tail rotor style craft. There's a lot of room for tuning in rotor design as well, and if you feel the stock electrics don't quite produce the oomph you want, research turboprops and start breaking records (ht: @Azimech). You might have to get creative to find a practical use for helicopters in career missions but they are a lot of fun to build and, eventually, to fly. There are at least two helipads on the KSC just begging to be used, so go out and use them!
  8. Thanks to a bunch of hippies from Green Springs and their goons at the so-called Environmental Security Agency (or, as we like to call it, the Economical Screw-up Agency), we now have to limit our Kerbin circumnavigation challenges to have ZERO overall emissions. In other words, whenever we circumnavigate the planet, we have to do it in an electric vehicle. Fortunately, thanks to our folks at Kerbal Motion LLC, we now have the means to do so. It may be slow, but it is possible. In other words, the challenge is to go one full equator's length of Kerbin WITHOUT any gas-powered engines - which means ABSOLUTELY NO: Jet engines Rockets Gas-powered turboshaft engines (like the R121 or the R7000) Electric motors are okay. Here are some other rules for this challenge. Leaderboard placement will be awarded based on TOTAL MISSION TIME ELAPSED (As you may have already guessed) vehicle must be all-electric. Which means are solar panels and/or RTGs are highly recommended. Having liquid fuel and/or oxidizer is okay ONLY for weight and balancing purposes. This can come in real handy if you need to move your CoM forward or backward. Fuel cells are not permitted, since we're trying to conserve gas thanks to those pot-smoking bureaucrats at the ESA. Even if I did allow fuel cells, they won't be enough to push your vehicle through the whole length of the trip. Stock and/or DLC parts only. Autopilot/navigation/gauge mods okay. Generally, no mods outside of DLCs that come with additional parts EXCEPTION: mods that come with balloon or dirigible-related parts are permitted, but those craft go in a separate division. If you want to allow a specific mod that conforms to the other rules, let me know and I'll take a look at it before deciding if it shall be allowed. Your vehicle must come back IN ONE PIECE. Not that you should need an extra fuel tank for an all-electric vehicle. Surface vehicles are okay, but they'll get placed in a separate division. Mostly because you'll take longer to go around the planet. On the bright side, if you have to stop to recharge, you can pause and take a break IRL. Just keep in mind that any and all recharge breaks in which the MET clock is running count for your finishing time. Crew capacity is optional. Divisions are as follows: Trekker Division - vehicles that can't fly, but travels on land and/or water to complete the journey. Earhart Division - aircraft like planes, helicopters, and gyroplanes. You'll get an Earhart Division: First Class medal if you successfully fly Kerbin's equator WITHOUT STOPPING. Heisenberg Division - balloons, blimps, zeppelins, et cetera. I don't know much about the balloon/airship mods, but the reason they're a separate division is because they can stay airborne without needing to land or stop. This may provide an unfair advantage over the aircraft, since they'll have to come down and recharge for God-knows-how-long before taking off again. Sun Soaker Division - any craft that can successfully cruise at 175 m/s. More details later. Multiple entries per person allowed, but only the best-performing one for each division will be accepted. Pictures and/or video required for entry to be valid. Be sure to include: Your craft in action. Start/finish times. (Optional) the craft in the hangar. If you're having trouble getting your rotors to work, please consult this thread below. @Echo__3 and @18Watt really helped me out when I started to use the Breaking Ground DLC. Sure, I originally asked about a motor that's prohibited on this challenge. Nevertheless, the same principles still apply - and I got the electric-rotor plane to work successfully. As promised, here's an explanation as to why the Sun Soaker Division has a speed requirement: And last but not least, here's my entry. Can't wait to see what you all come up with. LEADERBOARD - (ONGOING) MARCH 7, 2023 TREKKER DIVISION (empty) EARHART DIVISION @18Watt - 3 hours, 14 minutes (FIRST CLASS) @Mars-Bound Hokie (ME) - 5 hours, 11 minutes, 30 seconds (FIRST CLASS) This was a last-minute entry. Better time than my last entry, but not fast enough to overtake the current leader @OJT - 17 hours, 13 minutes HEISENBERG DIVISION @Snigel - 5 hours, 3 minutes I know that he damaged the Thunderbolt's lower battery pod during the landing, but the "Come back in one piece" rule was mainly intended to prevent jettisoning and mid-air explosions. Had he kept the landing a little softer - or if landing gear wasn't too much of a problem for the craft's performance - he could have landed the craft intact. SUN SOAKER DIVISION (Could be me, but I don't really care since I was doing a speed test before sending the E-40 to Laythe) (Please let me know if I missed anything)
  9. Calling all Console Kerbonauts! This Wednesday the 16th, Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition Complete launches for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. We want to highlight the most creative Console Kerbonauts from the community in anticipation of the release. Upload your best console capture footage by September 16th using either or both of the History & Parts Pack and Breaking Ground DLC's, and we'll feature our favorites, plus contact you individually. Happy Launches!
  10. As the title implies, show us what electric aircraft you got. Whether they be pure stock, stock + DLC, or modded. I'm very interested to see what you all have. The only rule is that the end-stage (as in the plane itself) must run on pure electricity - no using Lf, Ox, Lf+Ox, or monopropellant for propulsion. If your plane is designed specifically for Duna/Eve/Laythe use, then your delivery rockets can use whatever is necessary to get it to its target (like on my E-38 Earhart and E-39 Earhart Junior). As long as the plane itself doesn't use up any chemicals to move, you should be good. Having those (or ore or xenon) on board the plane is okay if it's for balancing purposes. Just don't use up any to move the plane. Besides, fuel cells aren't exactly a reliable power source when it comes to battery-powered plane propulsion. And xenon is too weak to move anything outside of a vacuum. Being able to carry passengers and cargo are awesome bonuses, but not required. I'll start this thread with my own entry. The E-40 Impulse on display in the SPH It has "PLANE ONLY" in the name since I have plans to take it to Laythe later. In the meantime, I would have to test its capabilities here on Kerbin Its cargo bay is loaded with science station equipment, EVA kits, and repair kits Although I personally don't really know how to operate the science stations. I just placed them close together and hit "Interact." Here's a funny little blooper: Jeb hitting the "Reverse Thrust" button by mistake. At least he remembered to turn the nav lights on (this time). As soon as Jeb was airborne, he turned west in order to maximize the plane's exposure to sunlight If he flew east, he would inevitably enter a dark zone and lose electric charge Nice shot of the E-40 flying over the desert. This was taken before I installed nav lights and rear robot arms in the current prototype. Jeb looking at Engine One from the cockpit, as well as the mountains to the south. Engines are numbered starting with the furthest left (looking forward from the cockpit). 100 km away from the KSC, and the mountains to the west of it are in sight. Under Engine 1, you can barely see the abandoned island airfield. 1 km ASL and ~8 km away from the runway. 5 HOURS, 11 MINUTES, 30 SECONDS Since I was flying faster than the planet's rotation about its axis, I launched mid-late afternoon so I wouldn't outrun the sunny spot and therefore lose a constant power source. E-40 Test Run Performance Stats Crew Capacity 1 pilot + 2 passengers Power Plant (2 x EM-64S) x (4 x R-25) Total Empty Cargo Capacity 12 (all loaded) Cruising Altitude 7 km Cruising Surface Velocity 200 m/s Minimum Throttle Required 2/3 Blade Angle 38 degrees (45 is optimal) Optimum Takeoff Time Westward Flight Mid-late afternoon Eastward Flight Early in the morning (NOT recommended for long flights) But I did not stop there: Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/Mars-Bound_Hokie/E-40-Impulse-PLANE-ONLY What do you think? Show us what you've got.
  11. This assembly here is controlled by a KAL-1000 controller. It doesn't clip when it is moving. The pistons, except for the ones with servos attached, do not move. Also, the hinge on the top left doesn't move. Is there any way to move the pistons without adding servos to them?
  12. The title's self-explanatory, but here are the details. I recently acquired Breaking Ground and want to try the new R121 Turboshaft Engine. However, none of the tutorials I find seem to work out for me. Even my most successful attempts turned out to be failures. First attempt as it accelerates on the runway. After taking off at ~60 m/s, it rose for a bit then took a nosedive. Eventually, I crashed into the ocean. When I installed the KAL-1000 controller and tried to follow the instructions from the tutorial videos, it seems like it made things WORSE - and, apparently, wrecked all subsequent attempts to correct this error. My second prototype for testing a propeller didn't help out either. Below are the craft files of both of my failed attempts. https://mega.nz/file/TeAhwJwD#VQhNdFvCKejmi4nUusIjLx38ZOdLN_9mbQCVBWsGxzY https://mega.nz/file/yD40HTSa#sE2O_GRCPjaeAGSaIgDsw5YjQo_ET1Fcu8A014L21gw Any ideas where I went wrong? Was it due to poor aerodynamic design or improperly setting up the propeller? How can I get the propeller to work? And do I really need the KAL-1000 controller? Sure, the second prototype failed, but initial performance without it seemed promising for the first thirty seconds. WITH the controller, the plane was barely moving at all. Is there a written set of instructions I can reference - one that actually works? And does these rules apply to electric propellers too? I'll test whatever answers are given and let you all know how they work out. Thank you very much. If I can get this to work, then I can build USAF aircraft replicas and luxury vehicles for Laythe tourism.
  13. I am am making class-specific suits with the class icons on them, is there a way to change the glow texture. I have done everything to make a normal suit including the config and regular texture, but in is there a way to specify a csutom glow texture in the config. I have also extracted the default glow texture from the files.
  14. I am am making class-specific suits with the class icons on them, is there a way to change the glow texture. I have done everything to make a normal suit including the config and regular texture, but in is there a way to specify a csutom glow texture in the config. I have also extracted the default glow texture from the files.
  15. Hello, this is my first part release so please bare with me. I dont know how to make a fancy page yet. JxFab Utility Systems JxFab Utility Systems is the start of a parts pack that will add on to the robotics category of the Breaking Ground DLC. Currently there is one part type, the straight rail. There are four lengths of 5, 10, 15, and 30 meters, The straight rail comes in three variants. I plan on adding additional robotics parts to this pack, such as curved rails and rotational station hubs. DOWNLOAD LINKS Current Download: https://github.com/JackATac98/JxFab_Utility_Systems/releases/tag/v0 Dependencies This mod requires the Breaking Ground DLC to work! (I am working on a version that uses Infernal Robotics) KSP version 1.12.2 License This work is shared under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.
  16. Explore the Kerbal Universe like never before with Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground, the latest expansion pack for KSP. Breaking Ground is all about exploration, experimentation, and technological breakthroughs. Study mysterious Surface Features on all of the moons and planets of the Solar System. Set up a base and deploy experiments for the long-term study of celestial bodies, and test your creativity with brand new robotic parts. Breaking Ground will help you and the Kerbals reach new horizons, all in the name of Science! Robotic Parts Take your creativity to the next level! Brand new robotic parts, include hinges, rotors, pistons and rotational servos. These parts come with new control mechanics and let you create all sorts of inventive vehicles and crazy contraptions to aid the Kerbals in exploring their Universe! Surface Features Find interesting Surface Features, like mineral formations, meteors, craters, and some even more curious planetary features across the solar system. Study them and collect valuable scientific data with a brand-new Rover Arm! Deployed Science Bring equipment for experiments with you from Kerbin and deploy them on the surface of a celestial body to take measurements over time. Set up a science station and put your crew to work. From seismometers to weather stations, there are plenty of experiments for you to try out! Additionally, we’ve kept our promise that all players who purchased the game through April 2013 will receive the expansion for free. To redeem the game click here and follow the instructions. Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground Expansion is now available on Steam, the KSP Store, and will soon be available on GOG and other third party resellers. As with every release this thread will be used to bundle all general discussion about the new DLC so that the forums can continue to actively host threads on other topics as well. CLICK HERE for the official release announcement for Kerbal Space Program: Breaking Ground Expansion. Happy launchings!
  17. PS4 user here. Just about got used to all there is to know on KSP basics and been building out my career nicely, last night I added another module to my munstation, about 5 modules in total. Spent a good hour getting it docked and saved game fine back to the KSC. I had a fleet of boosters in sub assembly and have been really enjoying the game. Last night I quickly loaded back into my munstation to check a few things again before closing for the night and it blue screen errored. It's done that a few times since I've been playing and usually it just loads up the last persistent save file fine. But for unknown reason on loading just now it says corrupt file keep or remove. I selected to keep but now when trying to load my career save has been removed. Noticed on here a few old threads but not for a while, as we recently had updates to breaking ground on PS4 I wondered if old bugs have crept back in or if this is just a result of poor quality on console versions? End result, I've lost hours and hours of hard graft and enjoyable gameplay... All those seat of the pants rescues and missions I've completed are down the drain and I've been forced to start new career. Am I the only one that thinks this is very poor? Even if they aren't releasing new updates anymore, surely we need a stable game to play!?
  18. Hi everyone, I've ran into an issue with the breaking ground DLC, none of the parts included display in the SPH/VAB, the category 'robotic parts' is present, as is all the stock craft that come with Breaking Ground, but the category is completely blank and none of the Breaking Ground stock craft can be loaded due to containing 'locked or invalid parts' and can't be loaded. Clean (and new) install of KSP 1.12.2.3167, Breaking Ground 1.7.1, Making History 1.12.1 (both appear in the bottom-right corner of the main menu), attempted to completely remove KSP and then redownload to no avail. Windows 10 Home 64 bit. EDIT: Just to note, I've never had this issue before on previous versions of KSP/Breaking Ground. A link to the imgur album showing screenshots of what I'm seeing can be found here. Any help would be appreciated.
  19. Do you think there be robotic parts in KSP 2? Will they be added in the base game or in a DLC? I really hope they add robotic parts in KSP 2, so I can make cranes, excavators, and other equipment in KSP 2. If they do add it, I want them to be procedural, where I can make a hydraulic cylinder really long, really short, wide, or skinny. Also, telescopic crane booms similar looking to Liebherr's TELEMATIK system, and NON-FLOPPY ROTATION SERVOS, SOMETHING VERY SIMILAR TO CRANE SLEW RINGS. Also for VTOLs and similar things.
  20. I can't work out (or find via search) how to pick up (using a Kerbal) a deployed science experiment or supporting solar panels etc after they are deployed. Is this even possible? Also can the science they have be collected by a Kerbal or does it have to be transmitted?
  21. Note: At very low torque, this mod makes the rotors consume extremely low fuel, making them rather overpowered for small planes such as the one pictured. Balancing is in progress. The Kerbal Space Center made a biplane using the R121 turboshaft engine, and it ran out of gas before it could fly a km away from the space center. After Jeb safely whipped that baron onto the mysterious green substance that makes the scientists yell at him for not cleaning his boots, the incident report team at R&D realized that it consumed fuel 6.25 times AFP (At Full Power) faster than the small jet engine AFP! The kerbal engineers contacted C7 Aerospace Division only to receive automated replies spouting nonsense about a warranty. Fortunately, Jeb owns his own junkyard and with a bit of duct tape and some spare parts the Kerbopower 108 was good as new and ready to circumnavigate the world!* Of course it was only after all of this that C7 Aerospace Division finally bent to the countless lawsuits of failed classic airplane designs to revisit their horribly designed turboshaft lineup. As much as their management hated them, however, the recalls saw resounding success. Spacedock! Github! [Source] Find it on CKAN! Soon! Hopefully! *Circumnavigation requires frequent stops at intermediate airports. The Kerbopower 108 has a powered flight time of 25 minutes with rebuilt engine on a full tank with cruise speed of 270 km/h or 75 m/s. Range may be increased by flying at lower power. For increased fuel capacity, consider purchasing the Kerbopower 105 or Kerbopower DT-1 supplementary fuel tank (sold seperately) Graphs for smarty pants: Contains MIT License. If you have a better idea for what license to use, feel free to leave a comment. I wasn't sure which one to use because this mod is a very tiny patch to make the LF consuming rotors actually useable in career mode, so I just used the same one as another tiny modlet. Though that one was a plugin, so I may not have been correct in doing so.
  22. What it does Adds the ability to "slave" one robotic servo to another. When you change the master's target angle, it automatically adjusts the slave's angle accordingly. Automatically takes care of updating the slave's traverse speed and damping, too. Locking the master will lock all its slaves, too. Lock an entire limb with one click! Can slave as many servos as desired to one master. Can toggle a hinge's "slaved" status on/off, either in the editor or in flight scene. Super simple UI makes it a breeze to set up complicated robotic limb motions that are controlled from a single hinge. Easy to toggle hinges in and out of slave mode as needed. Simplifies working with the KAL-1000, too! Now you only need one track per master; the slaves take care of themselves. A picture's worth a thousand words: Download from github License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 Source code [NOTE: Requires Breaking Ground expansion. It won't actually hurt anything if you install without Breaking Ground being installed... but it won't do anything for you, either.] Development status SlaveDriver is currently in pre-release status. It's functional and (I believe) reasonably "safe", both to run and to uninstall after use. It's fully playable, you can grab it now if you like. However, it still has some rough edges, known issues (see discussion below), and not-yet-implemented features, which is why I'm calling it WIP. Use at your own risk. How to install Unzip the contents of "GameData" to your GameData folder, same as with most mods. (Note, includes ModuleManager.) Why would anyone want this? The Breaking Ground expansion introduces a variety of robotic parts. These are great fun to play with, but I've found it tedious to set up multi-jointed robotic limbs, because every single joint has to be set up independently. This means a few things: It's very awkward and tedious to build and design a multi-jointed limb in the vehicle editor. Trying to get multiple joints coordinated properly requires doing a bunch of tedious math to correctly coordinate all the various traverse speeds, damping values, etc. with the angle ranges, and any time you touch any one of these, you have to do the math all over again. If you want to use the KAL-1000 to control a complex sequence, every single joint needs a separate control track, and keeping those synchronized is a nightmare-- not just to set up in the first place, but to maintain when you need to tweak things. Which you will. A lot. Because robotics requires a lot of tweaking. SlaveDriver does one very simple thing that I find highly useful, by allowing me to reduce the number of "degrees of freedom" of a collection of joints, thus greatly simplifying the build-and-control process. How do I use it? The UI is as simple as can be: When you place a hinge on your craft, SlaveDriver automatically analyzes its "parent part" hierarchy, from the hinge up to the vessel's root part. This is fully automatic, no action needed on your part. If it doesn't find any hinges along that path... it means that there isn't any potential "master" to use, so it decides it can't do anything and leaves the stock UI alone. (Note the right-click window at right, in the above image. That hinge is mounted to the root part, can't be a slave because there's no viable candidate for a master, so its UI looks standard.) If it does find anything, then it adds a "Slave to <part name>" button at the bottom, like this: By default, it doesn't change the behavior-- everything is "un-slaved" and behaves as normal by default. But if you want to put it into "slave mode", just click that button. When you do that, the UI for the part changes. Note the right-click menu for the "elbow" hinge in the above illustration, at top left. Several controls are now missing: you can't set the target angle, the traverse rate, the damping, or lock/unlock it. That's because as long as it's a slave, all of those are controlled automatically by its master. You can still see what the values are, though: it adds some display fields to show their values. The above example shows a robotic limb with six hinges in it: one at the "shoulder", two at the "elbow", and three fingers hinged at the "wrist". All of the lower five are slaved to the shoulder. Planned features and known issues This is still a work in progress. Here's the current status: Planned features The mod currently enables slave mode for all of Breaking Ground's hinges (two square hinges, three alligator hinges). It does not currently support rotational servos, though I plan to add that feature in an upcoming release. It does not support rotors, nor do I plan to (the feature doesn't really make sense for them). Pistons are not supported either. Uncertain whether I'll do those or not-- there are some interesting design issues to work out. I'll likely add an "invert" button to go with the slave button, i.e. slave is at min angle when master is at max, and vice versa. For now you can accomplish the same effect on a square hinge by just rotating the hinge 180 degrees about its axis, but that won't work for the alligators. Known issues The most important problem is a doozy: If you wiggle the hinges around a lot in the editor, then parts start to "drift" away from the hinges that they're attached to. This bug can be worked around if you're careful, but it's annoying as hell; this one bug is the thing that's stopping me from calling this a "release". If you see something that looks like this, that's what you're running up against. I believe this is a bug in KSP itself, not my mod. Sounds like it may be the same issue mentioned here. If I'm right that it's a KSP bug, then hopefully they'll fix this soon. Doesn't affect vessels in the flight scene; appears to be purely an issue with the editor. If you have a slave's UI window open when you toggle the "locked" status on the master, the the slave's UI window gets messed up. This is only cosmetic; if you close and re-open the slave's UI, the problem fixes itself. The display of the "locked" status on the slave's UI says "true" or "false" rather than "yes" and "no". Bug reports (other than the above-mentioned issues) and feature suggestions welcome! Hope folks have fun with this.
  23. Please see new thread here: I am very new to modding, this is my first ever KSP "mod" of sorts. All it is supposed to do is change four lines of code, but I went further and made the LF/Air-powered robotic rotors available earlier in the stock tech tree. I even have an MIT license bundled with it, even though it's copied from another tiny modlet. Basically, I made a biplane using the small Breaking Ground turboshaft, and it ran out of gas before it could fly a km away from the space center, and then I realized that it used fuel 6.25 times AFP (At Full Power) faster than the small jet engine AFP, implying turbojets are better than turboprops at low speed, which is just wrong from an engineering standpoint. Turboprops typically average about half of the specific fuel consumption as turbojets, according to a chart from MIT (and my Aerospace Engineering degree). It's not because of how fast it spins or anything either because this engine is kinda meh even for turboprop standards AFP (though for early career purposes is still quite useful). [source: https://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/fig3BPRTrends_web.jpg] [source: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/stop-disrespecting-the-turboprop-c00acd3fff3a] So then I set out on my quest to make my very first MM patch. https://spacedock.info/mod/2725/Breaking Ground Propeller Rebalance source: https://github.com/Autolyzed-Yeast-Extract/KSPStockPropRebal
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