[WIP] North American Rockwell Mars Excursion Module

[h0yer]

Played a little around with the new parts and they all already look very nice

Since I usually run the RO-suite, I noticed that the scaling is off on a few parts, I guess that comes from changed part-names and the already existing RO-configs for the previous NARMEM version, where the ascent module was one part.

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

40 minutes ago, h0yer said:

Played a little around with the new parts and they all already look very nice

Since I usually run the RO-suite, I noticed that the scaling is off on a few parts, I guess that comes from changed part-names and the already existing RO-configs for the previous NARMEM version, where the ascent module was one part.

 

On yeah. There's no RO config for the parts that have split, so they'll be completely wrong.

Oh, which version of ksp are you using for ro?  1.2.2?

Edited September 21, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming

[h0yer]

44 minutes ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

On yeah. There's no RO config for the parts that have split, so they'll be completely wrong.

Oh, which version of ksp are you using for ro?  1.2.2?

Yup, using the entire 1.2.2 suite.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

8 hours ago, h0yer said:

Yup, using the entire 1.2.2 suite.

Cool.  I have an aborted attempt to get a RO 1.2.2 install working somewhere on this PC.  I'll fix that up and do up some config.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I'm still messaging around getting a working RO install, but I think the only remaining hurdle is not trying to use the 8k textures in RSS. But, I have to go to work, so that's on hold for some hours.

There's some untested RO and RF config in the github (link to be added when I'm not on a bus... and have actually updated github version).

Edited September 22, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming
no github update

[TiktaalikDreaming]

OK, some config here - https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/blob/master/Config/NewPartsRealismConfigs.cfg

I spot at least a few issues.  RCS isn't changed but RCS fuel is, I assume because the underlying RCS changed modules in 1.2  Taking out the hydrazine and ClF3 and replacing with monoprop does fix this, but it'd be better to fix the RCS in the MM patch.

The drogue is being stupid.  Not sure why.  Will look.

No flames visible for the de-orbit engines.  They still function.  I assume something silly going on with real plume config.

[h0yer]

3 minutes ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

...awesomesauce...

Will give it another look after work ( in ~2h)

Which config file needs to be replaced, the original one, or the one in the RealismOverhaul folder?

[TiktaalikDreaming]

7 minutes ago, h0yer said:

Will give it another look after work ( in ~2h)

Which config file needs to be replaced, the original one, or the one in the RealismOverhaul folder?

it's an additional MM patch file for the new parts.  So it just gets added into the configs folder.  No replacing anything.

[h0yer]

A'ight, I've dumped the new config file into the narmem's config subfolder. (Gamedata\NAR_MEM\Config\...)

 

I'm not really sure what exactly changed, besides a few stock fuels,  so I made a few screenies:

From the looks, the capsule, the ascent stage's core tank, the drogue chutes and the nose section still need to be scaled up a bit.

The procedural tank is just for scale, its a 3x3m fillet cylinder.

 

Hmm, I'm sure the MEM was originally designed that way, but wouldn't it be 'neat' to have the little bent crew tube slightly offset, so the lab can be connected centered, without having to twist the entire ascent core tank or colliding the lab and RCS arms? Or move the lab's tube exactly between 'ribs' two and three, instead of exactly onto rib number two (if counting from the right)?

Just some thoughts^^

[TiktaalikDreaming]

5 hours ago, h0yer said:

A'ight, I've dumped the new config file into the narmem's config subfolder. (Gamedata\NAR_MEM\Config\...)

 

I'm not really sure what exactly changed, besides a few stock fuels,  so I made a few screenies:

From the looks, the capsule, the ascent stage's core tank, the drogue chutes and the nose section still need to be scaled up a bit.

The procedural tank is just for scale, its a 3x3m fillet cylinder.

Hmm, I'm sure the MEM was originally designed that way, but wouldn't it be 'neat' to have the little bent crew tube slightly offset, so the lab can be connected centered, without having to twist the entire ascent core tank or colliding the lab and RCS arms? Or move the lab's tube exactly between 'ribs' two and three, instead of exactly onto rib number two (if counting from the right)?

Just some thoughts^^

That's definitely not using the new config for some reason.  Apart from the Ballute.  Which makes it just a tad stranger.

 

Actually, the Ballute didn't change name, so it's just using the existing rescale.

Can you check the file was in the same place and had same file system properties (permissions, ownership etc) as the other realism config file?  It seems the game just isn't reading it.

I've also put a pre-release quasi updated package up on git to avoid any mismatch there might be between the core parts and the RO config.  If you delete the existing NAR MEM and replace from the github release https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/releases/tag/0.14ro it *should* apply RO config to the parts.

Fixes in this RO config.  
"fixed" the drogue from being totally daft, by applying the correct mesh names to the config bits, so now it knows the drogue chute is the chute part so shouldn't start extended.

RCS fixed so it uses hydrazine and ClF3.

Fixed up the TAC Life Support bits so they should only apply if TACLS is installed.

Marked the RO converted parts as RO so they don't show up as nonRO in VAB
 

Known issues:  Chutes are still being weird in that they don't seem to animate, so when deployed, nothing much happens, when they go to fully deployed they go to the start of that animation, which looks a lot like partly deployed.
Still no plume from deorbit solid rockets
multipart deorbit module is strange and not scaled right, and is basically unusable

No testing of the ascent stage has happened yet, because I staged for ascent on my test in such a way that parts ran into each other and the ascent engine exploded.  Who woulda thunk it could be an issue with that design???

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Well, today has taught me I've lost the skill of judging when to initiate my landing burn.  If it weren't for "revert to...", Mars would now be scattered with the debris of several almost landed MEMs.   I shall land and test the ascent stage some time, I'm sure.  Still puzzled by the parachute issues.  I'll wander off and check the RealChute topic.  Things do seem to basically be working as well as can be expected.

[h0yer]

Huh, the new file I put in the cofig directory was indeed 'treated special' by win10, as I downloaded it directly into it, I should have known better, sorry^^

However, I deleted the old install and gave the new release a try and the scaling looks OK so far, as well as the fuel configs and TACLS configs

 

A few oddities though:

There are now both old and new parts. The entire old ascent stage and the old chutes and ballutes popped up again and no new ballute is available, only the old 'flat' one.

 

 

I dispersed my last venus multiprobe right after a quite successful aerocapture, when decoupling from the aeroshell, I ran the probe complex into it while doing the short burn to get Periapsis out of the atmosphere^^ Lessons...

[TiktaalikDreaming]

38 minutes ago, h0yer said:

Huh, the new file I put in the cofig directory was indeed 'treated special' by win10, as I downloaded it directly into it, I should have known better, sorry^^

However, I deleted the old install and gave the new release a try and the scaling looks OK so far, as well as the fuel configs and TACLS configs

 

A few oddities though:

There are now both old and new parts. The entire old ascent stage and the old chutes and ballutes popped up again and no new ballute is available, only the old 'flat' one.

 

 

I dispersed my last venus multiprobe right after a quite successful aerocapture, when decoupling from the aeroshell, I ran the probe complex into it while doing the short burn to get Periapsis out of the atmosphere^^ Lessons...

Um, yeah.  The github is a straight copy of my working folders.  So it does tend to have a lot of excess bits n bobs.  A bit weird you're not getting the new ballute.  But it does (unlike the drogue) have the same part name.

Still can't get the parachutes to be visible, except for the final stage of deployment of the ballute.  And I cut down the number of spare chutes from the default (the NAR MEM chutes were huge, and heavy, no way they'd be carrying lots of spares), but when in flight it's showing 5 spares still.  So maybe we both have lingering module manager weirdness, or I have lingering module manager files.

I think I'm sold on the new chute units, so I'll kill off the old ones.  And find and kill off all the old parts and old MM config bits.

I have no idea how many bad landings I'd done in the last 16 hours or so.  3 worked.  But then I had the staging wrong for ascent and made things explode.  I think in all cases, the kerbanauts were capable of walking away.  But that doesn't do you a lot of good when there's no-where to walk to.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Killing off all the old chute parts plus their MM config, and the file ModuleManager.ConfigCache seems to have gotten me parachutes that are visible.  I probably should have killed those things off one at a time to check which.

 

https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/releases/tag/0.14ro2

Edited September 23, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming

[h0yer]

A'ight, that fixed it

Scaling looks OK on all parts and both ballutes and drogues show up.

The monoblock deorbit motor seems to have very low Dv, about 20m/s, the multipart one seems OK  with about 80m/s.

The fuels on both is ordinary SolidFuel, but I guess that was intended.

 

[h0yer]

Well, I attempted a landing, and indeed the kerbals could walk away after, but ascend staging caused an explosion and the engine was gone^^

I think the deployment altitudes of drogue and ballute are switched.

And I have the feeling the decent stage has very low RCS fuel. I wasted some of it during an unwise maneuver but it still depleted somewhere during lower atmosphere descent and control got quite hairy on lower thrust^^

But technically it works all very well already

[TiktaalikDreaming]

7 hours ago, h0yer said:

A'ight, that fixed it

Scaling looks OK on all parts and both ballutes and drogues show up.

The monoblock deorbit motor seems to have very low Dv, about 20m/s, the multipart one seems OK  with about 80m/s.

The fuels on both is ordinary SolidFuel, but I guess that was intended.

 

Yeah, something's wrong with the deltaV and the whole lot of the deorbit stack.  It used to be fine to come in on a highly elliptical orbit, but now it'll basically manage a deorbit burn on a just above atmosphere circular orbit, or just shift it slightly.  Mixed with it not showing anything for a plume, I suspect all sorts of weirdness.  I'm going to do the full RO engine thing to it.

I think RO/RFuels doesn't really have any variation in the solid fuels.  Which is why there's only minimal RF config.  But seems having a more detailed config might be required.  I'd like to at least get a plume Darn it.

7 hours ago, h0yer said:

Well, I attempted a landing, and indeed the kerbals could walk away after, but ascend staging caused an explosion and the engine was gone^^

I think the deployment altitudes of drogue and ballute are switched.

And I have the feeling the decent stage has very low RCS fuel. I wasted some of it during an unwise maneuver but it still depleted somewhere during lower atmosphere descent and control got quite hairy on lower thrust^^

But technically it works all very well already

The RCS is also overpowered.  For most of the trip down, I have it limited to around the 10-20%.  I only allow it full thrust if I'm using it to adjust orbit or something.  If you use it at full thrust, it'll burn through fairly quickly.

Just looking at the RO config for the deorbit single piece engine.  It added ModuleEnginesRF without removing ModuleEngines.  I suspect a working fix will be coming shortly.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Well, now the part doesn't show up.  "Progress"!

It's gone for me from stock as well.  Even though the MM config cache has it, and the logs have no errors....  Not working too well today.  Gonna park the de-orbit engine issues for a bit.  It's making no sense.  

I have moved all the de-orbit stuff into one folder so it just needs the one copy of that one texture.  And switched to the MODEL {model = } format in case there was confusion about parts etc.  But, as far as I can tell. my PC just decided to hate that part.

There's a chance coffee will help.  It never hurts.

Edited September 23, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming

[h0yer]

I concur with the coffee attitude

(Good morning)

Interesting findings, I had thought that the single SRB part and the full block had just their values switched. The one part thingy has about the right thrust, but burns only for barely 5 seconds, so just some propellant would be missing (It has only 172 arbitrary units of SolidFuel). The combined block with seven individual SRBs burns for about 20s and works like a charm and each 'bulb' comes with 103.7 units of SolidFuel.

There are quite a lot of different solid fuels in use ingame already, not sure though where their configuration comes from. Quite a lot of HTPB, PBAN, PSPC, NGNC, not sure if Be-doped fuels are available, but I guess you could just configure one.

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

12 minutes ago, h0yer said:

I concur with the coffee attitude

(Good morning)

Interesting findings, I had thought that the single SRB part and the full block had just their values switched. The one part thingy has about the right thrust, but burns only for barely 5 seconds, so just some propellant would be missing (It has only 172 arbitrary units of SolidFuel). The combined block with seven individual SRBs burns for about 20s and works like a charm and each 'bulb' comes with 103.7 units of SolidFuel.

There are quite a lot of different solid fuels in use ingame already, not sure though where their configuration comes from. Quite a lot of HTPB, PBAN, PSPC, NGNC, not sure if Be-doped fuels are available, but I guess you could just configure one.

 

Yeah, thinking of making up a resource for Ammonium Perchlorate Beryllium Composite or something like that.  There's not actually heaps of info on exactly what the beryllium based propellant was.  So assuming the usual oxidizer doesn't hurt.

The MIA part ended up being a spurious full stop character in emmisiveConstant.  :-/  

And, yeah, 172 is the non-RO value.  It *should* have 1730.29

 

Testing!

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 hour ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Yeah, thinking of making up a resource for Ammonium Perchlorate Beryllium Composite or something like that.  There's not actually heaps of info on exactly what the beryllium based propellant was.  So assuming the usual oxidizer doesn't hurt.

The MIA part ended up being a spurious full stop character in emmisiveConstant.  :-/  

And, yeah, 172 is the non-RO value.  It *should* have 1730.29

 

Testing!

OK, Chutes not as fixed as thought, but still working.  Having a look at the ascent stage's staging fun.  There could be intersecting colliders causing the explosions meaning there's no way around it.  It *could* just be due to the daft ideas, but I tried froma quicksaved landed MEM several times with several techniques with no luck.  And if the A-4 from A-10 staging works this has no excuse.

[h0yer]

Rather low-prio, but the docking ports' nodes are off a tad, small gap between the chute frame and any docking probe. And the docked probe and drogue have as well a gap.

Some pics:

Attempting another landing, just for the giggles...

 

[h0yer]

Well, I again landed with excess horizontal speed and lost all legs.

And ascent was again quite Kerbal style, accompanied by multiple simultaneous explosions, wee

Guessing from the aftermath, there's indeed some collider stuff going on, the ascent engine, the decoupler, the lab and a few tanks exploded...

And after staging a bit further, I noticed that 'broken neck'^^

Fun fact:

The marooned ascent stage is doing a quite spooky Gandalf/Saruman rotary pwnage reverse backwards upside down breakdance^^

Edited September 24, 2017 by h0yer
Better resolution

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I have a partial fix for ascent stage staging by way of fixing up some collider meshes so they act like non-intersecting parts,.  Of course, there's still the inherent joy of staging an ascent stage from a base that is not a series of launch clamps.  With new colliders I've managed a clean separation.  It took a few tries, but I got there.

There also doesn't seem to be quite enough delta V  for a Martian orbit though.  I'll have to look at whether some parts aren't picking up RO config or if said config needs assistance.

Edited September 24, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming

[TiktaalikDreaming]

2 hours ago, h0yer said:

Rather low-prio, but the docking ports' nodes are off a tad, small gap between the chute frame and any docking probe. And the docked probe and drogue have as well a gap.

Some pics:

Attempting another landing, just for the giggles...

 

Yeah, I'm tempted to actually kill off all the docking nodes in favour of either stock, or other mods' docking nodes.  So, the docking nodes in this mod are in a weird limbo of care factor.