[WIP] North American Rockwell Mars Excursion Module

[TiktaalikDreaming]

A vaguely current version with a few extra tweaks;

https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/releases/tag/0.14-ro3

Colliders changed (hopefully for the better) for the ascent engine and the interstage decoupler.

Rework of the de-orbit engine, all now sit in one folder, using model tags as noted above, with the main useful change being removal of a dot.  Double checked the fuel values for the solids, and they still have depressingly small amounts of fuel in game, with resultantly depressing amounts of deltaV.

[h0yer]

Awesome, will give it another few looks'n'tries after work

 

Offtopic:

I'm currently creating some sort of ' Real Agencies Collection' from real world companies involved in exploding and lithobraking through history of rocketry and I wanted to ask you, if I may 'reuse' your fine 'North American Rockwell' logos? You'd of course appear in the credits^^

[TiktaalikDreaming]

3 minutes ago, h0yer said:

Awesome, will give it another few looks'n'tries after work

 

Offtopic:

I'm currently creating some sort of ' Real Agencies Collection' from real world companies involved in exploding and lithobraking through history of rocketry and I wanted to ask you, if I may 'reuse' your fine 'North American Rockwell' logos? You'd of course appear in the credits^^

Go for it.  I stole them from wikipedia or something anyway.  All I did was mark areas as transparent and maybe a teeny bit of tidy up.

[h0yer]

Just now, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Go for it.  I stole them from wikipedia or something anyway.  All I did was mark areas as transparent and maybe a teeny bit of tidy up.

Huh, awesome, have been doing the same with a lot of other logos, eh he he

Thank you very much

[TiktaalikDreaming]

5 minutes ago, h0yer said:

Huh, awesome, have been doing the same with a lot of other logos, eh he he

Thank you very much

Layered in gimp https://www.dropbox.com/s/sad7fd7c462fzxz/NorthKerbalRcokwellLogo.xcf?dl=0

[h0yer]

A'ight, round-n..., this time, only the MEM-lab collided into the MEM-base (according to the 'Flight Results'), no more ball tanks flying around, the Kerbals almost looked sad

I tested only on the launch pad, on earth.

 

OT:

Your NAR logos found their way into the new 'RealAgenciesCollection' mini-mod, thank you again

So, if anyone should have a part with the 'North American Rockwell Space Division' manufacturer, without having your NAR-MEM installed, the parts still show up with a tiny icon in the VAB, yay^^

I think they won't conflict, in case both are installed (NAR-MEM and RAC) since I used exactly the parameters you already had set up here.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

4 hours ago, h0yer said:

A'ight, round-n..., this time, only the MEM-lab collided into the MEM-base (according to the 'Flight Results'), no more ball tanks flying around, the Kerbals almost looked sad

I tested only on the launch pad, on earth.

 

OT:

Your NAR logos found their way into the new 'RealAgenciesCollection' mini-mod, thank you again

So, if anyone should have a part with the 'North American Rockwell Space Division' manufacturer, without having your NAR-MEM installed, the parts still show up with a tiny icon in the VAB, yay^^

I think they won't conflict, in case both are installed (NAR-MEM and RAC) since I used exactly the parameters you already had set up here.

Yeah, if the details are the same, I don't know how it chooses which to use, but it won't double up, and it doesn't matter which it uses.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I have some working fix ups for chutes and the deorbit unit tested just prior to leaving for work. Some will need further tweaking, but the functions exist and behave now. If I get a moment at work I'll tell github to call it a version and make it downloadable.

 

https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/releases/tag/0.14-ro4

Edited September 27, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming
added link

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I've been working on retexturing the chutes.  There was some mild tweaing of the mesh for the drogue chute as well.  Not really 100% happy with the colour and texture of the ballute, so there may be further adjustments.

[h0yer]

The ballutes look really nice!

Are those screenshots made with the stock chute module?

On my RO install with DeadlyReentry, they clip through each other. (The version before the last one^^)

Will give it another hug after work

[TiktaalikDreaming]

36 minutes ago, h0yer said:

The ballutes look really nice!

Are those screenshots made with the stock chute module?

On my RO install with DeadlyReentry, they clip through each other. (The version before the last one^^)

Will give it another hug after work

Yeah, RealChutes over-rides the symmetry chute thing from stock that keeps them apart.  There is a slider for "Spread" or similar per chute in RC that allows you to push them apart, but it only goes out to 10 (assuming degrees, but I don't think it says).  It's not quite enough.

And, technically, the design called for only one drogue, followed by the one ballute.  My intention is to make some comms gear and a science bay type thing for the remaining insets, and then let the player choose between extra chutes and other bits-n-bobs

[h0yer]

 

...

And, technically, the design called for only one drogue, followed by the one ballute.  My intention is to make some comms gear and a science bay type thing for the remaining insets, and then let the player choose between extra chutes and other bits-n-bobs

Hmm, sounds interesting, repurposing the chute manifolds as modular bays for scientific modules.

I'd recommend making KAS/KIS boxes, just for the giggles

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

18 minutes ago, h0yer said:

Hmm, sounds interesting, repurposing the chute manifolds as modular bays for scientific modules.

I'd recommend making KAS/KIS boxes, just for the giggles

 

Well, now that I have ladder type bits (for some reason the ladder thingy isn't working, but F-climb does) leading to the top, KIS bits would be a really good idea.  
I'm actually working on adding some similar cut out areas in the cargo edition thingy that replaces the ascent stage.  Those I'm just going to do as mini science/cargo bays.

[h0yer]

Heya!

Sorry for taking so long, I had my hands full with my minimod. My head is still spinning a bit^^

 

It's a bit odd^^

Now the deorbiting SRBs don't have any fuel in them, both the monolithic one and the multipart one, but the fuel type seems to be configured corretly (BAPCP). There is neither a fuel amount slider, nor can anything be done from within the RF tank UI, I have the weird feeling my install is slightly 'damaged', not because of you mod, more because of me fiddling around with my game's guts^^

I didn't try to land this time, so no explosions^^

 

Everything else feels as good as it can be, at least in the VAB

 

Do you have any hints about the external tanks' staging sequence?

 

 

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

4 hours ago, h0yer said:

Heya!

Sorry for taking so long, I had my hands full with my minimod. My head is still spinning a bit^^

 

It's a bit odd^^

Now the deorbiting SRBs don't have any fuel in them, both the monolithic one and the multipart one, but the fuel type seems to be configured corretly (BAPCP). There is neither a fuel amount slider, nor can anything be done from within the RF tank UI, I have the weird feeling my install is slightly 'damaged', not because of you mod, more because of me fiddling around with my game's guts^^

I didn't try to land this time, so no explosions^^

 

Everything else feels as good as it can be, at least in the VAB

 

Do you have any hints about the external tanks' staging sequence?

 

 

 

The solid fuel : I did see this, and I think it's likely due to me not putting an AFTER[real fuels] in my config. I need to double check which mods were switching the solid boosters to the default solid propellant. I'm pretty sure my config is changing the fuel used by the engines and then something else comes along and changes my new fuel tanks to the other solid fuel.

For the accent drop tanks, start in the middle, in pairs. After the first two pairs, the CoM goes back to central then, and gets closer even after the first talks go. I tend to just have the last four go evenly, even though you would be slightly better off pairing them diagonally and dropping the first pair.

Also, I've noticed the accent stage doesn't have the delta V required without significant RCS help. I need to double check all the values.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Solid fuel stuff fixed up.  I messed around with a few tweaks.  The ConfigCache from MM kept having mismatches for the required propellant and fuel tanks.  After I spotted I had a ModuleFuelTanks entry with no actual tank that is.  But I tracked it down to the RF config itself about fuel tanks, and the designated propellants for solids.  There are actual lists for propellants, so my inventing one and using it wasn't working because it didn't match one of the propellants.  There'd be a tank of type solid, that had config for propellant that was incompatible with type = solid.

I've switched to one of the standard propellants, and it all works nicely.  I'll have a look at how that list is created, and see if I just missed something in my definition, or if there's someway of MMing the new propellant onto the list.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

OK, updated config that fixes a few issues with RO;

https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/releases/tag/0.14-ro5

Fixed up the Solid boosters and a few things that I can't recall.  Plus a few bits of progress in remeshing and retexturing, in the framework bits.

The most significant issues remaining with deltaV and ascent are the dry weight of the ascent tanks.  There's a spurious 400kg being added at some point, per tanik.  And I think it's enough extra mass to mess with deltaV enough that it's dropping below 3800

[h0yer]

Yay, the retros work again

But both drag and ballute burned up, structurally highly dispersive lithobraking inevitable^^

Both deployed at ~80km on mars, and the ballute has a max temp of only 220°C and I used only one each, without changing any settings.

I guess RealChute does something as well^^

The dV numbers look interesting, if one stages only one ascent tank at a time, I checked the fuel priorities on the tanks and it even has quite some spare dV on ascent, 5200m/s in all, not sure where the differences come from. The descent stage says something around 739m/s dV, numbers from MechJeb, set to Mars, alt 0m, it almost sufficed to reenter and land without the chutes. But not entirely. The boring hoverslam turned out to be a exciting suicide burn followed by an excellently colorful structural rapid dispersal

 

I'm going to do Kehrwoche now, I live in that particular (peculiar^^) area...

[TiktaalikDreaming]

9 hours ago, h0yer said:

Yay, the retros work again

But both drag and ballute burned up, structurally highly dispersive lithobraking inevitable^^

Both deployed at ~80km on mars, and the ballute has a max temp of only 220°C and I used only one each, without changing any settings.

I guess RealChute does something as well^^

The dV numbers look interesting, if one stages only one ascent tank at a time, I checked the fuel priorities on the tanks and it even has quite some spare dV on ascent, 5200m/s in all, not sure where the differences come from. The descent stage says something around 739m/s dV, numbers from MechJeb, set to Mars, alt 0m, it almost sufficed to reenter and land without the chutes. But not entirely. The boring hoverslam turned out to be a exciting suicide burn followed by an excellently colorful structural rapid dispersal

 

I'm going to do now, I live in that particular (peculiar^^) area...

OK, time to check the chute config again I guess. Although I typically open them at about 55k for the drogue and about 40 or 45 for the ballute, both should be ok for higher temps than 220. I'm guessing they're not getting the correct chute material assigned. I did sort of stop looking too close when I finally got them to function at all.

interesting that you have decent delta v for ascent. The issue may be my install. My issue seems to be that the game is dead sure the dry mass of an accent tank is 0.491, while the mm config and the cache both say 0.091.  So at launch, I'm lugging an extra 3.2 tonnes, which does seem to run my accent a bit.

I had to google Kehrwoche. Good luck.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Just a quick note.  As I moved a copy of my ModPod props into this mod, and was basically running with two copies, I've created a new mod with just the shared prop assets and will mark that as a dependency going forward.

At the moment everything still points at the mod-local prop assets, but once netkan updates to include the props, I'll mark it as a dependency, then update the two mods to point at the new(ly renamed) props.

The latest version of this mod on either spacedock or github references props in TDProps.  The CKAN file marks that as a dependency.  It's also included in the zip.  There's missing ddsification on the spacedock version because I usually copy and tidy up the mod to a build folder, then DDSify it, then pack and upload it.  I cleverly DDSified the dev folders and didn't notice until after I uploaded.  Corrective action expected later today.

So, if manually installing, I'll be packaging the prop mod with these, so it will still be a case of unpack all the GameData stuff.  If using ckan, it should be automagic.

Edited October 13, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I am still alive.  Been a bit snowed under with work and so forth, plus it starting to get too hot here to think straight.

But, I've been slowly progressing on some parts to round this out.  Since adding the revised ascent module system, I've been meaning to add these;

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Surface Attach Backwards

OK, I should be going off to work about now, but I've just struggled with an issue and couldn't find any info on it (possibly due to lack of google-fu).  @Nertea had the solution.  It wasn't actually a problem with my part at all.  

So, what was this problem?  I'm going to try to describe this as many different ways as possible to have it match searches well. 

I made a mini cargo module that can fit where the chutes go.  You should only need 2 chutes, so the other two slots are meant for either redundancy or other things.  

The issue I was having is that when I went to attach parts, aka use surface attach, the parts would rotate around so they were attached to the other side of the part.  What would be the outside, except of course that means inside the rest of the craft.

Here's a thermometer;

This is clearer;

I checked the colliders were all set up in Unity correctly.  Went back to Blender and checked the collider normals (which afaik unity ignores for colliders, but, gotta check all the things);

So, turns out there's zero wrong with the part.  So, players will also come across this (possibly it's common knowledge, but spending time making parts, doesn't lead me to finding this stuff out).  The "snap to" option, for angle and position, doesn't handle inside spaces worth a damn apparently (at least with thin fiddly colliders, maybe it's OK on those big shuttle cargo bays).  Never occurred to me.  Turn it off, and suddenly the inside spaces are available for you.

Hopefully that's wordy enough a description to show up next time someone searches for this.  And also forestalls a wave of people asking this for this very part. 

 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

After my foray into micro service bays, and a version that includes an antenna, I have burnt some time trying to work out if I can get a dish to expand using a baked cloth simulation for a foil based parabolic antenna.  I'm still not sure what the answer to that is, but the rough version is "I probably won't be able to make it work".  So, to target something I know I can make work, I've turned my attention back to those docking ports.

Now, I've configured the top surface area to take stock docking nodes.  So there's no need to have docking nodes.  But this thing does date to Apollo era, and I always wanted to animate my docking probe whatsit.  So, I've rejigged the old node, removed duplicate bits, broken it all up, UV unwrapped it, animated it and re-duplicated the rotationally copied parts.  There's no textures yet, just a generic "chrome" applied in Blender, but it now looks like;

Next up, the rather boring female end of the docking pair.

 

Edited November 6, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Early edition of the docking node is on github now. 

[TiktaalikDreaming]

And a (most likely) finished docking node set on Github now.  (https://github.com/TiktaalikDreaming/NAR_MEM/releases/tag/0.17)

 

And a sketchfab, cos I noticed it appears in the toolbar when editing posts;

Sketchfab

I'm going to deprecate the shielded node, and DDSify things before it gets to spacedock.

 

Edited November 26, 2017 by TiktaalikDreaming
anim gif