LT-3-4 Landing struts.

[Arugela]

I make really big ships. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I currently have a big ship with 64 LT-2 and it's not enough. It's also not long enough(and adding more parts is not a good idea to extend them). Having and LT-3 and LT-4 could be really nice. They should be longer and have up to say 900 -1200 impact tolerance or whatever the relative value is compared to the LT-2. Really large ships could really use them to get adequate landing. Let alone emergency landings.

so anyone want more. And what stats do people think they should have. I'm no up on the math for landing gear. I assume the Landing impact total divided by the planets gravity and compare to the actual weight in tons. But I wouldn't be surprised if this has nothing to do with how it actually works.

My vessel has a max designated weight of 5760 tons without boosters or any gear to get it in orbit initially from Kerban. It's designed to land on smaller bodies but I want to get as big of a range as possible. It is also basically a flying space station. Part of it's role potentially is to mine get in to orbit and use the ore as a means to keep the fuel up for refueling. And send vehicles/probe off for missions etc. So it could use as much help as it can get for landing. It's also nice to be able to land it safely in case of emergencies or various user stupidity and not be stuck in orbit in case of a really bad situation.

Edited October 14, 2015 by Arugela

[sam.johnson841]

Not sure we need two new legs, but one bigger one is defiantly needed.

- Sam

[Rath]

Dude, the legs have like a 12 meter per sec impact tolerance.

[Alshain]

Impact tolerance shouldn't change with size. Joint and suspension strength should. All landing gear should have nearly the same impact tolerance with only slight variance.

1200 m/s impact tolerance would allow you to land without a parachute, air brakes, or engines on Kerbin. Pretty much the definition of overpowered.Terminal velocity at sea level is somewhere in the 250 m/s range (I haven't tested it since 1.0, it should be close). EDIT: Wiki says 100m/s not sure if that is updated.

Edited October 14, 2015 by Alshain

[Pthigrivi]

Good lord man, what the balls are you towing around out there?

[kStrout]

I have to agree with you, I am designing an eve ascent vehicle based off the MAV from the Martian, and the 12 landing legs I have are all the way compressed.

[Pthigrivi]

Oh sorry I didn't mean to disagree though. There's a thread around here somewhere suggesting aerodynamic landing gear. The Lt-1 and Lt-5 seem pretty good but I could see the L2 could be redone with a housing and a nice big one could be added above that.

[Arugela]

Impact tolerance shouldn't change with size. Joint and suspension strength should. All landing gear should have nearly the same impact tolerance with only slight variance.

1200 m/s impact tolerance would allow you to land without a parachute, air brakes, or engines on Kerbin. Pretty much the definition of overpowered.Terminal velocity at sea level is somewhere in the 250 m/s range (I haven't tested it since 1.0, it should be close). EDIT: Wiki says 100m/s not sure if that is updated.

As I said(or may have said), I'm not familiar with the math, but the point is longer and a bit stronger. At least twice as long and strong enough to deal with MK-3 (3.75 parts) a little easier. And not need quite so many struts. Maybe 600 if that is strong enough. Again, I don't know what that comes to. Maybe it should be different stats that are stronger. I'm not sure. Whatever makes them stronger.

If this helps. This needs some bigger struts! It's landing on 4 engine pods that are made of, and have the diameter of, S3-14400 tanks. It could use length and effective strength on landing.

Edited October 15, 2015 by Arugela

[Kelderek]

Terminal velocity at sea level is somewhere in the 250 m/s range (I haven't tested it since 1.0, it should be close). EDIT: Wiki says 100m/s not sure if that is updated.

KER shows it to be around 400-500 m/s in 1.0.4 near sea level.

[Snark]

Certainly it would be really handy to have one bigger size of landing-leg.

Ratio of biggest to smallest, by category:

Engine: 150 (Spark to Mammoth, that's not even counting Ant & Spider since anything tiny enough to land with those doesn't need legs)

Fuel tank: 324 (Oscar to S3-14400)

Legs: 6.7 by mass, 5 by spring strength

There's a big disparity there. I don't think we need 2 more tiers of legs-- seems to me that something weighing thousands of tons should be very hard if not verging on impossible to land, at least in the stock game. But one additional tier up would really be useful.

The Karbonite mod includes such a leg-- it's 0.25 tons and quite a bit taller. Would really like to see something like that in the stock game.

(And while we're at it... a longer extensible ladder would be good to have, too. Anything that needs taller legs is going to be a stretch to reach the ground with the existing ladders.)

Regarding terminal velocity:

Terminal velocity at sea level is somewhere in the 250 m/s range (I haven't tested it since 1.0, it should be close). EDIT: Wiki says 100m/s not sure if that is updated.

KER shows it to be around 400-500 m/s in 1.0.4 near sea level.

...In the old pre-1.0 days, it made sense to speak of a single terminal velocity for a given atmosphere, because everything had the same terminal velocity. (On Kerbin it was a smidge over 100 m/s at sea level.) However, it's now meaningless to talk about "the" terminal velocity on Kerbin. It totally depends on the size, shape, and mass of your ship. You can make something that flutters down at 50 m/s or less, or you can make one that plummets at hundreds of meters per second (if it's aerodynamic and dense). In any case, this is kind of a side issue to the main topic of the thread, so 'nuff said.

Edited October 19, 2015 by Snark

[moogoob]

Something comparable to the SpaceX Falcon landing legs would be great. Low drag when stowed, strong enough to land a booster stage when extended.

[Arugela]

So, is one of these going to be in 1.0.5 or 1.1 that anyone knows of?

[Stoney3K]

How about a set of legs that is conformal to the 2,5m or Mk3 hull shape so ships can land on their long end instead of tail first?