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[WIP] North American Rockwell Mars Excursion Module


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On 6/22/2018 at 7:32 PM, species said:

This mod needs WAY more publicity!!! Its the best "part pack" for landing on Mars in RO! I ended up building a bit different lander more suitable for my mission needs but i used most of the parts! Its amazing beyond recognition! Very nice detail, thank you so much!

Let me know if it needs more testing.  I did a lot of testing with it, which help Tik get everything just right for it to work in RO and RSS.

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  • 4 weeks later...
8 hours ago, Frednoeyes said:

So this mod is amazing, and I'm really excited to see the final release eventually.

Just one quick question though, what do you plan on doing as far as a ladder?

That's one area where I've found no guidance from Rockwell documents. Lots of ideas from various artists' impressions, although some of those would be bad ideas.

Most of the time I've just been using the stock extending leaders (which would experience a lot of reentry heat) or just jumping. The realistic thing to do would be to have a fold away stair. Mars isn't the moon, gravity is higher, and once you add on a suit, I don't think you could realistically expect silly high jumps. And a ladder would need to angle away due to the craft's shape, so folding stairs. The other option would be a ramp, which would be better for equipment loading, but be a lot longer, so a lot heavier.

I'm short, I've thought about it, but never really decided.

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23 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

That's one area where I've found no guidance from Rockwell documents. Lots of ideas from various artists' impressions, although some of those would be bad ideas.

Most of the time I've just been using the stock extending leaders (which would experience a lot of reentry heat) or just jumping. The realistic thing to do would be to have a fold away stair. Mars isn't the moon, gravity is higher, and once you add on a suit, I don't think you could realistically expect silly high jumps. And a ladder would need to angle away due to the craft's shape, so folding stairs. The other option would be a ramp, which would be better for equipment loading, but be a lot longer, so a lot heavier.

I'm short, I've thought about it, but never really decided.

Fair Enough, TBH they (the Rockwell engineers) probably never quite got to that point in their design.

And again, I can't give you enough support with this mod, it's really awesome.

Edited by Frednoeyes
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16 minutes ago, Frednoeyes said:

Fair Enough, TBH they (the Rockwell engineers) probably never quite got to that point in their design.

And again, I can't give you enough support with this mod, it's really awesome.

Thanks. I've been a bit low on time for the last few months, so I can't promise any deadlines. But a ladder is on the radar. And a new comms dish.

Hope you find some eyes. :wink:

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  • 2 months later...

Well, it's nice to be appreciated, but I do wish if squad were going to tell people about how great the current version of their game looks, they wouldn't use versions of my mod from more than a year ago;

https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/en/?page_id=11

wg3yiBU.png

This one at least shows off the 1.4 suits and the current MEM parts.

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  • 1 month later...

I've been putting off finishing the interplanetary mission module and associated parts as I was trying to rig up and configure all the science type things into the various parts as integrated wholes.  Like the animated telescope and the wide selection of antennae.  But it occurs to me that the science bits really should be separate parts, and highly dependent on which science mods players are using.  So I'm going to actually trim off the science components I already have and make the parts a bit simpler.  Just have attachment points for science.  There may be some added science and comms parts as extras, but I figure I really don't need them integrated in the mission module stack.

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  • 1 month later...

I've been playing for testing before attempting a real Duna mission with  the MEM (renamed the DEM by me for Dunian Excursion Module). The decoupler between the two stages is very wobbly, makes everything explode, I tried everything, putting force separation down to zero, messing with autostruts configs, real struts...  yeah it is definitely a collider thing. As a temporary fix I've replaced it by a stock decoupler it works much better althoug it looks ugly. Might I recommend you to replace the collider with a stock decoupler collider for now?

The offset COM is getting me mad. It flies sideways, can't reenter properly, I know it is supposed to be a recreation of a what if historical craft, but still.  Sure poping out chutes helps.  I tried adding ore tanks as weight ballasts but still, I get the same problem as my big lander attempts on Eve (aka COM being closer to the side of the lander than to the bottom, makes the thing turn sideways on)

Side heat shields are also bumby as hell, especially when staging their separation, I then prefer to dispose of them manually.

Heatshield becomes useless on Duna with chutes Deployed. I guess I could skip much of the ablator.  Also, Legs's abaltor is not depleting, they don't seem to be taken into account. Duna's atmopsphere is not dense enough for an offset lifted reentry.  

I know it would add some work, but would you consider to make stock config with forcibly aligned COMs and keep the off set realistic COMs for RO? Would make gameplay a lot easier. I know gimbal is supposed to counteract, but you lose a ton a delta-V. True I've tested it on Kerbin only as of now, and even Kerbin's reentry goes nuts.

What are those figures for the chutes anyway? 1E6 for atm pressure and hundreds of meters high for chute altitude deploy? Are these default RO configs?

I guess most people want to use these kind of craft on RSS plus RO gameplay but it is not my case.

 

One more thing. Legs colliders seem very bizarre, when I deploy the legs for landing, the chutes are automatically cut a few hundred meters above the ground and the MEM crashes, impossibles to retrothrust without getting offset strajectory cus offset COM.  SO I prefer to land on the shield and deploy the legs afterwards wich is counter intuitive.

BTW, I'm using the MEM on KSP 1.4.5 since I haven't updated to 1.6.1 yet.

 

I know seem quite like a pesky noobish idiot but I really like the looks of the design. 

 

A shame this design only works on Duna (in stock) as for the delta-V. Laythe is too big, Eve is absolutely out of the question obviously and in OPM, Tekto has too much atmosphere and it needs too much delta-V. Thatmo has too little atmosphere on the other hand.

I'm currently working on a ship design for Duna and Ike. A transfer ship with your eight Kerbals ModPod capsule as living space (and heatshield and deorbit engine and chutes for returning to Kerbin), a Kerbal stock MEM lander from MH DLC attached in a fairong for Ike landing, big fuel tank propelled by a big vaccum engine for trip to and from Duna. Your MEM is supposed to take off separately from Kerbin since in my current career save I haven't unlocked the 5 m tanks and engines yet. So it launches with a beefed Soyouz like rocket for orbital rendez-vous with the tranfer ship. Said transfer ship is launched by a big contraption of smaller parts and looks like a big Proton with twelve Ariane V SRBs looks gorgeously overkill but it is to preserve the Delta V of the transfer ship wich is the central core of the rocket. Very Soviety and obviously very Kerbal ! 

I have lots of time for testing, Duna transfer window recently came by and I've already sent a probe for a contract so I've more than one year for testing purposes.

I'll probably have unlocked 5m parts and change my design by then, lol. But I love to work on designes to kill the time.

 

The problem with that kind of historical craft is that it is dedicated to a single mission and is not very adapatative.  Only one part can go to a said place on the contrary to the Kerbal stock parts that you can play with more easily.

I might prefer using your ModPods parts for a DEM as it is more versatile and it takes the spirit  of the NAR-MEM in a much more simplified way.

Hopefully your mod will still evolve.

 

Edited by Quoniam Kerman
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30 minutes ago, Quoniam Kerman said:

I've been playing for testing before attempting a real Duna mission with  the MEM (renamed the DEM by me for Dunian Excursion Module). The decoupler between the two stages is very wobbly, makes everything explode, I tried everything, putting force separation down to zero, messing with autostruts configs, real struts...  yeah it is definitely a collider thing. As a temporary fix I've replaced it by a stock decoupler it works much better althoug it looks ugly. Might I recommend you to replace the collider with a stock decoupler collider for now?

The offset COM is getting me mad. It flies sideways, can't reenter properly, I know it is supposed to be a recreation of a what if historical craft, but still.  Sure poping out chutes helps.  I tried adding ore tanks as weight ballasts but still, I get the same problem as my big lander attempts on Eve (aka COM being closer to the side of the lander than to the bottom, makes the thing turn sideways on)

Side heat shields are also bumby as hell, especially when staging their separation, I then prefer to dispose of them manually.

Heatshield becomes useless on Duna with chutes Deployed. I guess I could skip much of the ablator.  Also, Legs's abaltor is not depleting, they don't seem to be taken into account. Duna's atmopsphere is not dense enough for an offset lifted reentry.  

I know it would add some work, but would you consider to make stock config with forcibly aligned COMs and keep the off set realistic COMs for RO? Would make gameplay a lot easier. I know gimbal is supposed to counteract, but you lose a ton a delta-V. True I've tested it on Kerbin only as of now, and even Kerbin's reentry goes nuts.

What are those figures for the chutes anyway? 1E6 for atm pressure and hundreds of meters high for chute altitude deploy? Are these default RO configs?

I guess most people want to use these kind of craft on RSS plus RO gameplay but it is not my case.

 

One more thing. Legs colliders seem very bizarre, when I deploy the legs for landing, the chutes are automatically cut a few hundred meters above the ground and the MEM crashes, impossibles to retrothrust without getting offset strajectory cus offset COM.  SO I prefer to land on the shield and deploy the legs afterwards wich is counter intuitive.

BTW, I'm using the MEM on KSP 1.4.5 since I haven't updated to 1.6.1 yet.

 

I know seem quite like a pesky noobish idiot but I really like the looks of the design. 

 

A shame this design only works on Duna (in stock) as for the delta-V. Laythe is too big, Eve is absolutely out of the question obviously and in OPM, Tekto has too much atmosphere and it needs too much delta-V. Thatmo has too little atmosphere on the other hand.

I'm currently working on a ship design for Duna and Ike. A transfer ship with your eight Kerbals ModPod capsule as living space (and heatshield and deorbit engine and chutes for returning to Kerbin), a Kerbal stock MEM lander from MH DLC attached in a fairong for Ike landing, big fuel tank propelled by a big vaccum engine for trip to and from Duna. Your MEM is supposed to take off separately from Kerbin since in my current career save I haven't unlocked the 5 m tanks and engines yet. So it launches with a beefed Soyouz like rocket for orbital rendez-vous with the tranfer ship. Said transfer ship is launched by a big contraption of smaller parts and looks like a big Proton with twelve Ariane V SRBs looks gorgeously overkill but it is to preserve the Delta V of the transfer ship wich is the central core of the rocket. Very Soviety and obviously very Kerbal ! 

I have lots of time for testing, Duna transfer window recently came by and I've already sent a probe for a contract so I've more than one year for testing purposes.

I'll probably have unlocked 5m parts and change my design by then, lol. But I love to work on designes to kill the time.

 

The problem with that kind of historical craft is that it is dedicated to a single mission and is not very adapatative.  Only one part can go to a said place on the contrary to the Kerbal stock parts that you can play with more easily.

I might prefer using your ModPods parts for a DEM as it is more versatile and it takes the spirit  of the NAR-MEM in a much more simplified way.

Hopefully your mod will still evolve.

 

In order. :)

The interstage decoupler: It's a pig.  I've tried all sorts of things, including the tweaks you mentioned.  The issue is it *should* encase the ascent stage a bit, but doing that causes lots of issues.  And not doing that causes other issues.

The offset CoM isn't *THAT* bad.  I always thought it was going to cause me heaps of grief when I was working on getting the craft ready to fly, but in practice it's a bit annoying, and means I strategically drain and ditch external tanks to centre it during ascent.  But otherwise isn't too bad.  Keep in mind that I haven't nerfed the ISP figures, and the delta-V is going to be excessive for Duna landings.  It does tend to end up scooting sideways a bit during landing, but for the last bit I tend to use the over-powered RCS for countering that with translation.

Re-entry ablator: It's there because according to every source, it needs to be there, but in my experience, Duna and Mars in RO/RSS, you don't really need it.  You can start popping the chutes at about mach 3, which is almost as soon as you enter the atmosphere in stock Duna landings.  The orbital speeds and the thin atmosphere just doesn't seem to lead to a lot of heating.  Obviously, it's nastier in RSS/RO, but the amount of heating that happens, even without ablator, is pretty minimal.

Legs cutting chutes:  I have never before experienced that, nor had reports of that.  10 out of 10 for the workaround, but wot???  That's definitely something I'll need to take a closer look at.  It might be a strange interaction between ksp versions and specific MEM versions.  Where did you get the mod? Spacedock or Github?  And do you know what version?  I'll double check I didn't leave anything in a half baked dev state.  And double check it in 1.4.5.  There was a version between working legs way back when KSP changed all the wheel/leg modules, but that was like 1.1 or 1.2 or something.  I think I just did animated parts then, no suspension.  But since 1.3 it *should* be OK again.

RE: Diversifying.  This mod exists pretty much as a historical oddity.  There's some others with much later (and better) NASA plans like Mars Direct (no idea if that's what the mod's called).  But the North American MEM was the first serious design after NASA discovered just how thin the atmosphere was, and served as the basis for the next 20 to 30 years of both Mars mission planning and the more researched fiction about such things.  And what I really wanted to capture was how, although it would work, it was pretty horrifying for anyone on board.  The offset CoM is what mostly comes through in KSP, as there's no way of including the horrors of FLOX.  It's really a very early go at how humans would get to Mars.  

 

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I use the version I got via the spreadsheet of all mods leading to your page, so the Spacedock version rated compatible for KSP 1.6.1 dating from This month.

Landing gears underwent modifications i 1.4 and 1.5 and 1.6 on suspensions and animations mostly. (as well as landing wheels too) So I guess there is an unforeseen interaction.  Or maybe I throttled the engine too much but it happened also before I switched the engine on.

Oh wait, maybe it is because it is compatible with 1.6.1 and the physics of kanding gears was not completely implemented in 1.4.5 ?

About the overall design  IRL, I'd find it very umpractical indeed.  The small bent tunnel between the command pod and the lab is very 70' like and would be uneasy to crawl in each time. Having this as a base would be umpracticle, too small and cramped. Even at this time Von Braun himself had much bigger ideas already for real colonization. This MEM would be an Apollo style on Mars but all know that a simple Apollo style mission that far away would be completely pointless to begin with.

The Mars Direct project is more well thought. Yeah, i've downlaoded it and I look forward to playing it when I'll go up to 1.6.1. The craft as well as the mod seems nice and very practicle.

The MEM project seems like a rushed project, a rought first sketch of a Mars Mission. 

WHat I hate with  poping chutes early is that you end up with a greatly umpredictable trajectory unless you really know what you are doing. Dumping the tanks is a getting me nuts because you have to select and monitor them manually instead of a regular asparagus staging. 

How come you can't replace your decoupler collider by the standard stock decoupler collider? With autostruts it holds fine and leaves the stage behind no problem. Why can't you swap the colliders without sacrificing the aesthetics? You just have to make the upper part non physical but keeping the attachment nodes where they are (might need a very little change in height though as I tweaked the height witht eh offsetting tool suring assembly with the stock decoupler but it is nearly unnoticable).  

The side shields, I decouple them manually, one at a time or they'll collide with everything.

I added science instruments attached to the center core and the lab door side. I never attempted to pop out of Kerbal from the lab yet to be honest.

I notice that when I try to put equipment into the base in lieu of some fuel tanks, they heat very easily on reentry, as if the heatshield was non existent. I obviously let the three fuel tank attach nodes opposite to the bad since there already are the upoper stage fuel tanks on this side empty. What a waste of space.

 

I kinda thought that the offset COM is responsible for the faulty decoupling since the offset COM will make the part have a slight horizontal speed in the direction of the COM once ceparated. LLegs suspensions also play a role. I have more of the ascend stage intact when I fol the legs before stage separation.

Apart from changing the decoupler for a stock one, the only fix I can think of is cheating by suppressing breaking of parts while folding landing legs.

Edited by Quoniam Kerman
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I'm on my phone, so I'll just give a short answer for now. You seem to be having a lot of collider issues. Some of them I know of, like the interstage, which I keep shrinking on the z axis. But some are weird. I'm not sure when I'll have time at my pc to check it out. It sounds like I'll need to get the old debugstuff mod out and show colliders.

As far as I know, there's no significant changes to collider behaviour going from 1.2 through 1.6, except for wheels and legs. The side panels sound like pre unity 5 concave colliders. Which was ksp 1.1 or maybe even 1.0.

And yes, the bent tunnel is hilariously bad.

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1.4.x and 1.5.x versions are infamous for the landing gear physics, drag cubes and collider issues. The problem has been remedied only in 1.6.1 for some of those, it seems. 

As for reentries, Ballute is nice but it ruins the fun of plasma and ballistic reentry imho. Having a conical capsule is made for ballistic reentries. Having a ballute kind of negates it.

Here is my specul modification some small ore tanks as weights. Clipped by two, the center ones juste under the small material bay are empty. Admire the low torque on the two first stages ( deorbit and reentry).  Not shown here the COM comes just at the level of the Base cornice.

I added some solar panels to preserve fuel and instruments for science ! I decided to keep the ablator to lower the COM the most.

you also can see the stock decoupler, ugly but efficient.

I tried taking off with the offset COM on the Ascent stage, it's doable if you don't make the SAS follow the Prograde, just keep stability and a bit of RCS until you've ditched the lab and the tank opposite to it. Reaction whell can take care of the next stage and when there are only the balanced tanks on the sides it flies like angel from there. I don't remember if you have set fuel priorities. When I put the tanks I get an orange message on the right upper corner of the screen telling me it can"t recognnize stage groups fo the tanks. I don't know if the fuel priorities I had on my trials are the ones I set or if you have set those by default.

Spoiler

screenshot2.png

 

Edited by Quoniam Kerman
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There's no real issue with most of the colliders checking them out in DebugStuff by Sarbian, but I've finally spotted the issue with the Interstage decoupler.  It's using completely the wrong mesh from the one showing in Unity.  It's exported with a collider of the shape of the ascent fuel tank.  Also, to try fixing it, I kept shrinking it on the vertical axis, and it's totally not shrunk at all.  I had trouble finding the collider because I thought I'd selected the fuel tank.  :/  

JfnYFsK.png

 

And here's the part in Unity

DxCBAqd.png

I can see what happened though, that flat cylinder is copied off the cylinder from the fuel tank and squished.  Seems it got unsquished when exporting to mu file.  I'm now running late for work, so there's no re-package just yet.  But if you replace the part by replacing the mu file from https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/tree/master/Parts/MarsExcursionModuleStage/Interstage it should fix that particular horror.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Oh Nice i'll try it.

 

I'm now on 1.6.1. Sadly Duna Direct doesn't work due to incompatibility between B9 Part switch and cryo tanks/Engines from Nertea. So I either rely on your NAR MEM or your ModPods mod wor exotic Duna missions.

I've noticed that the ascend stage attach nodes were wacky in 1.6.1, way beyond the part itself, I had to zoom in and offset if to avoid it being trapped inside the ascend stage fuel tank halfway through... I hope there won't be any problem for colliders then.

When I was back in 1.4.5, I've noticed that your side shrouds for launcher itself (enclosing the MEM and the lab with the truss structure) were wonky as well. When I try to put one, the VAB editor puts for of them and completely in reverse, curved outwards. I know those parts are WIP, tho.

There is also a bad attachment node on the MEM male docking port, the node is way higher than the part, so the part gets sunk in the command pod when attached.

On that and on the engine, both attach nodes are offset from the part, not just one node. KSP physics at its best...

I've notices through my building attemps that a good old small engine (don't remember if it was a Spark or a Terrier) could replace the ascend stage aerospike with approx the same delta V, however I haven't checked the TWR.  Stock aerospike is bad because of no gimbal.

As for the Landing legs issue, it might be because of the dampening system animation they added, so as I always set the dampeners to maximum for landings it might offset a collider upon touch down, and so the craft thinks it has touched down about a fex meters above the ground and the chutes cut themselves...

I'll try everything tonight when I have time.

Edited by Quoniam Kerman
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3 hours ago, Quoniam Kerman said:

Oh Nice i'll try it.

 

I'm now on 1.6.1. Sadly Duna Direct doesn't work due to incompatibility between B9 Part switch and cryo tanks/Engines from Nertea. So I either rely on your NAR MEM or your ModPods mod wor exotic Duna missions.

I've noticed that the ascend stage attach nodes were wacky in 1.6.1, way beyond the part itself, I had to zoom in and offset if to avoid it being trapped inside the ascend stage fuel tank halfway through... I hope there won't be any problem for colliders then.

When I was back in 1.4.5, I've noticed that your side shrouds for launcher itself (enclosing the MEM and the lab with the truss structure) were wonky as well. When I try to put one, the VAB editor puts for of them and completely in reverse, curved outwards. I know those parts are WIP, tho.

There is also a bad attachment node on the MEM male docking port, the node is way higher than the part, so the part gets sunk in the command pod when attached.

On that and on the engine, both attach nodes are offset from the part, not just one node. KSP physics at its best...

I've notices through my building attemps that a good old small engine (don't remember if it was a Spark or a Terrier) could replace the ascend stage aerospike with approx the same delta V, however I haven't checked the TWR.  Stock aerospike is bad because of no gimbal.

As for the Landing legs issue, it might be because of the dampening system animation they added, so as I always set the dampeners to maximum for landings it might offset a collider upon touch down, and so the craft thinks it has touched down about a fex meters above the ground and the chutes cut themselves...

I'll try everything tonight when I have time.

I don't think I've seen an issue with the accent stage nodes. I don't suppose you have a screenshot? I can't think why they might go moving around.

The shroud placement is a known issue. Basically each part can only have one symmetry set for stack nodes, so it doesn't matter if you select two way or eight way symmetry, when you go to attach, the symmetry will lock to the part's configured symmetry. The shrouds just need to be added one at a time. Right at the moment, I can't actually remember why it has four easy symmetry though. The base has six way because that's the only way to place the legs. But I can't remember why four way for where the shroud fits.

I'll check the fitting of the male docking node. I sort of expected the female to go on the lander, so it's the one that I checked the fitting for.

For all that the craft only really works with all the custom parts, I did try to get some diameters matching stock. I think that the ascent engine and the body section are both standard sizes.

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Spoiler

unknown.png

unknown.png

unknown.png

unknown.png

 

Here are the pictures of the off set nodes.

Note that I didn't get the issue in 1.4.5...

Female docking port and shrouded male docking port (unfinished as for the textures I guess) are fine.

However, the shrouded male docking port is slightly higher than it should, it was the same in 1.4.5.

Spoiler

unknown.png

 

As for engine performance, the SParkler engine from Modular Rocket systems (equivalent to two Sparcks) has similar performances than the ascend stage Aerospike in TWR with slightly less D-V. Funny.

Nonetheless, despite the offsetting of the engine nodes, the new mu for the decoupler works like a charm. No wonkiness at separation anymore. (except for the fact that the side heavy craft turned on the base because not enough TWR from Kerbin at full charge, regardless, in the same conditions, seperation wans't as smooth on previous version for sure).

Now I can plan Duna missions.

Here an Ariane V (recoverable first stage Space X style) to get the MEM into LKO, I've yet to design the transfer ship, no nuke pls... I'll add a smaller lander LEM style for Ike.

Spoiler

unknown.png

Note that I've ditched your breaking solid fuel engine for a more KSP like Monoprop stage (more TWR means more accuracy for deorbit burns)

Edited by Quoniam Kerman
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@Quoniam Kerman

 Replying without quoting because the mobile forum interface is awful.

I definitely need to look into the nodes. That's crazy offset.

Regarding the docking nodes, I'm half intending to deprecate the shrouded node, uncertain just yet. But I can say it didn't get any love on the last revamp, so won't really match the new parts on the top of the cabin.

On the topic of the twr and dv, the real craft was intended to use a fairly nasty combo of liquid methane and FLOX, which is a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid fluorine. I checked some modern simulation systems recently and you can pretty easily get ISP values in the low 400s. Just at the cost of horrible toxicity and acidity (some of the exhaust will be hydrogen fluoride, thoughtfully mixed with water vapour).

And on using mono (or anything) instead of solids for the deorbit. Pretty much anything will be better than srbs in ksp. The advantages of solid boosters are that they'll last, and reliably start when you want them, which is a moot point in ksp. Trading that for all the downsides, no throttling, no shut off, bad ISP, etc seems silly, esp when you're not preplanning down to the cm. But, for the mod I'm providing what was planned. Do I always use the SRB deorbit engines? No. But even when I do, I do kind of hate them. :)

 

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Those little SRBs have awful TWR, with that big of a plume you'd think they'd have more punch. I'd advise you to diminish the size of the plume so they show their lack of power visually.

About three fuels combos, Scott Manley has recently made a statement on those as I recall.

Too dangerous for human rating of the spacecraft, plus add the fact that tha fuel must be stored into the fuel tanks for months, no wonder they couldn't guarantee the fuel tanks integrity for so long ! Not to mention the engines that must endure this combo without exploding.

 

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23 minutes ago, Quoniam Kerman said:

Those little SRBs have awful TWR, with that big of a plume you'd think they'd have more punch. I'd advise you to diminish the size of the plume so they show their lack of power visually.

About three fuels combos, Scott Manley has recently made a statement on those as I recall.

Too dangerous for human rating of the spacecraft, plus add the fact that tha fuel must be stored into the fuel tanks for months, no wonder they couldn't guarantee the fuel tanks integrity for so long ! Not to mention the engines that must endure this combo without exploding.

 

Ha, yes, they need much smaller plumes, but I've only just started working with custom plumes. And you can store flox in inconel I think, even for a long time, but the other issues are nightmarish. I wouldn't be walking around outside after landing until after the first few rain storms, which could take a while on Mars

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1 hour ago, Quoniam Kerman said:

Yeah Inconel, Sctt Manley mentioned it as well.

It was the time when Nasa had crazy ideas...

but that kind of alloy is never perfect, there would be micro corrosion sometime and over time, that could endanger the craft.

There's the 1972 handling guide online https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235040434_Fluorine_Systems_Handbook_Section_VI_Dynamic_Compatibility_of_Fluorine_with_Metals . The short version is some stainless aren't bad, but nickel super alloys are where it's at especially if you also need temperature resistance. And don't use Teflon, it's hypergolic. Most metals have erosion rates measured in mm per minute. Handling flox would be very similar, with a slightly lower rate of erosion.

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Hmmm... I'm gonna need to check what's in my downloads.  :/

Nodes all look fine to me in 1.6.1.

NyV84ap.png

3wTKu32.png

So,....  I'm wondering if there's a window of daftness where I had new models, but old stack node vectors or something.  I'll do some checking between my system, github and spacedock.

If you have the time, can you let me know which version you have and where it can from?  Thanks

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