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[WIP] German WWII rockets including never built absurdities


TiktaalikDreaming

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I've updated the mod with a new version.  Mostly it's a Realism Overhaul update.  There's been some tweaks to make the realism overhaul function to the A-12 stage as well.  It's now taller, and the whole thing is looking more like a Von Braun ferry rocket.

The A-6 Ramjet is still not right in AJE/RO.

There's a non gimballing edition of the A-10 engine as well, in case you don't feel the need for gimbals on every of the 50 engines on the A-12 stage.

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5 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

cool! Its interesting how early they were looking at reusability to save costs. The Saturn stages were initially meant to be reusable as well, but they cut that in order to meet the Moon deadline. I wonder if we still might be flying them (or incremental upgrades) if that capability had been kept.

 

Yeah, I found an article on that in an old 1968 book I read in my school's library. (Published in November, a month shy of Apollo 8)

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5 hours ago, halowraith1 said:

whenever i ignite all of the a12's engines, only the middle two actually fire and the game tells me that there are insufficient resources to ignite? this is the RO configuration. happens with the a11 too

Add battery.  They need 3.something electrical ooomph to start, and the A-4 control unit only has a max of 10.  I've been adding a collection of four to the top of the A-10, so there's spare electricity until I'm back to the A-4

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  • 1 month later...

I'm hoping to get some help here. The A-4 does badly at high altitudes (using Mechjeb). If I connect the A-4 to the A-10 it does fine until separation from the A-10 booster. The A-4 then tends to oscilate and tumble. I get a bit better flight dynamics if I decrease the maximum thrust of the rocket, but the A-4 itself does fine at low altitudes by itself. I'm curious if anyone has an easy fix for this. I've tried many combinations of fins but they all generally act the same.

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15 hours ago, captainradish said:

I'm hoping to get some help here. The A-4 does badly at high altitudes (using Mechjeb). If I connect the A-4 to the A-10 it does fine until separation from the A-10 booster. The A-4 then tends to oscilate and tumble. I get a bit better flight dynamics if I decrease the maximum thrust of the rocket, but the A-4 itself does fine at low altitudes by itself. I'm curious if anyone has an easy fix for this. I've tried many combinations of fins but they all generally act the same.

I'll have a look.  I've mostly been looking at the RO edition recently, and there's nothing that stands out as particularly changed for 1.2, but the aero has changed.  And maybe it's finding problems that the old aero skipped over.

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5 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

I'll have a look.  I've mostly been looking at the RO edition recently, and there's nothing that stands out as particularly changed for 1.2, but the aero has changed.  And maybe it's finding problems that the old aero skipped over.

This is something we're messing with in the Mechjeb thread as well, so it not just your machines.

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12 minutes ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Ah.  It could still be interaction with the new aero.  I'll check out the MJ thread.

As far as I can tell that's exactly what's going on. The new atmosphere is a lot more "soupy" at high altitudes than it used to be apparently. Mechjeb is partially at fault here as it seems to be overcorrecting itself, but that's not the whole issue.

Edited by captainradish
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Just now, captainradish said:

As far as I can tell that's exactly what's going on. The new atmosphere is a lot more "soupy" at high altitudes than it used to be apparently. Mechjeb is partially at fault here as it seems to be overcorrecting itself, but that's not the whole issue.

Yeah.  I've been a bit suspicious of the aero on the A-4 for a while actually.  When I check out the various centres (mass, lift, etc) it's all OK, and the numbers seem to line up.  But occasionally it'll do some pretty weird stuff.  Like falling cheeks end first while spinning madly. 

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Finally got around to checking this out.

The issue is gimbal.  Any craft with a large gimbal seems to get into an escalating over-correction cycle.  For some reason, gimbal doesn't seem to have been as cleverly adjusted as other SAS controls for 1.2.

I'll be dropping the gimbal on the next release.  I've been working on emissives for the engine heat as well, so there is an update coming.

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  • 4 months later...
3 hours ago, redmonddkgamer said:

How. What. Why. HOW DID THEY THINK THIS MONSTROSITY WOULD WORK?

There's several items of "optimism" in the design.  :-)  A lot of it is immaturity in aerodynamics, a lot of which they were pioneering.  But they were pioneering without a lot of data.  And, the A-12 design was mostly just a set of numbers for "we'd need X fuel, with Y engines on stage A, which means X2 fuel on stage 2 with Y2 engines, etc etc.  And then with the thrust to mass and volume of the engines, it led to short fat stages.  Nothing beyond the A-10 really had much work put into actual design.

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7 hours ago, redmonddkgamer said:

The green V-2 needs texture replacer, right?

Firespitter-core actually.  For reasons.  I should convert to texture replacer for the simple fact that it does what's needed and nothing else, while firespitter core does a few things, most of which aren't used.  But when I was developing, I had firespitter installed, but not texture replacer, and firespitter has an option to change texture maps, so....

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17 hours ago, captainradish said:

Yay! You're not dead or something!

I found this mod promising and was a bit disappointed that there hadn't been any replies since October.

No, it's still very much alive.  It just hasn't changed recently, and I've got a bucket of other stuff happening.  I am slowly going through my mods and tidying up textures (and the UV unwraps), and this should be on the list eventually.  And I've been kinda waiting for Realism Overhaul to catch up, to fix that stuff up (the RO config included for this is tested in 1.1, not 1.2).

And there's been a bit of "Interesting times" for me recently.  Hoping that's dying off now.  Stupid life.

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  • 2 months later...

Updated to 1.3 (basically just minor tweak to manufacturer config).  I think, all things considered, this could do with at least German language localization.  It could also do with me eventually doing the textures as well of course.

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7 hours ago, argentrolf said:

So maybe im doing something wrong... but the v2 wont seperate from the a10? Or is this the wrong mod?

I'm guessing it's the right mod.  Getting the A-4 to separate cleanly is a bit of an art. I just rechecked it works, as I had trouble before when the collision system changed with KSP versions, and it still works as well as it ever did.  But, be warned, the concepts the Germans came up with were cutting edge in the sense that no-one had tried them.  The idea was that the A-4 would sit inside the fuel tank cavity of the A-10.  Any modern rocket engineer would just tell them "no, <expletive> off".  The surprising thing is that it can work in KSP.  But, it depends heavily on getting everything just right and above all, having absolutely no rotation during separation.  You can't be turning on any axis.

Anyway, here's the basics.  I've now done it a few squillion times, so am finding it works 90% of the time.  But those 10% mostly result in destroying the A-4 engine or at least one of the flaps.  Occasionally I get the A-10 front shells flying back and destroying things.

 

 

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