Dropping Probes with Active Parachutes from a Plane

[Spricigo]

20 minutes ago, grafdog1138 said:

This 

This brings up serious philosophical questions, such as "how fast can I slam one of these pods into the ground and still expect a working probe?".

As said by @Urses depends on the part but its 12m/s for the okto probecore, which I assume you are using . What need to be tested (or calculated) its the actual speed and terian altitude for safe deployment.

 

 

22 minutes ago, grafdog1138 said:

 

Thinking out loud, here's what comes to mind: Once I find the biome I'm looking for, I slow down and take a flyby overtop of it with the cargo bay opened. In this way, I can use the Kerbnet access of the probe core to find and mark a certain point for the drop off. Now, odds are I can't really expect to hit the exact coordinates, but if the area chosen is reasonably flat I can presume that the altitude of the waypoint set is gonna be close, give or take 100m, to wherever the probe ends up. Then all I have to do is set my chutes to open with the smallest margin of space from the ground I dare (say, 500m), turnabout, fly back over the waypoint, and drop. I'll admit it to be overcomplicated, but it's bound to be more fun than circling for a half hour.

 

 

Ok, lets make a lot of assumption, rough rounding and a tiny bit of math...for better results actual testing is advised.

Assumptions:

1.You are cruising at 300m/s level flight, 200m above ground;

2. the pod takes 4s to slow down to 250m/s, at this point the parachute opens(deploy when safe).

3.Consider that the drag (which is the cause of the deceleration) is mostly horizontal and constant.

4.Pod decent at constant 4m/s vertical after parachute is open(instantly)

 

So after 4s, pod's horizontal velocity is about 40m/s, 80m lower and 700m ahead of the dropping point; the carrier is 1300m ahead of the dropping point. BUT it will take 30s more to the pod touchdown and in this time the carrier will travel 9000m, almost 10km away from the pod.

The good thing its that we noticed that we can open the parachute when the carrier is just 700m away, the bad thing its that we need to reduce the time between parachute opening and touchdown. To do this we need to either drop the pod lower or reduce the carrier speed (pick your poison).

At this point I’m going kerbal in my mind. I'm expecting some fun when I get to the game... if the anxiety don’t kill me before.

 

[bewing]

Put a wheel on the bottom, and maybe use a drogue chute instead of a regular chute. Wheels can take a heck of a bump.

[Urses]

One option would be with addition of Wheels like @bewing mentioned + drougechute and maybe a seperatron Combo for brutebreak. Concepted as Dumbfiremissile but in opposite Direktion? Some tweaks with thrust and Solidfuel and fire from decoupler. The drone is light and droug will open on Release? 

As Brainstorming option

Urses

[Spricigo]

Results of m  most recent testing :

1. A plane capable of cruising at 500m/s and 5km powered by 4 Junos. I liked. 

2 A rocket sled to launch said plane,  necessary because plane has no landing gears. 

3 parachutes ripped off by aeroforces,  unlike my  previous run.  Further testing pending. 

4. Regular parachutes opening at  height of 50m,  plane cruising at 350m/s.  Plane leaves physical bubble and vanishes 

5. Drogue opening at 50m, fixed landing gears to raise impact tolerance,  plane cruising at 350m. Pod land safe while plane still in physical distance. 

 No ksp for me for a few days   next test run will take awhile 

[magico13]

I did something like this back when the physics range was 2.5km instead of 22.5km, except instead of probes for science I was dropping RemoteTech relay stations halfway across Kerbin. Drop it close to the ground (like less than 500 meters, the lower the better) at as low a speed as possible (max 300 m/s), deploy chutes right away, then do a big circle (circle can be much, much bigger now than when I did it). Drop all your probes, then land the plane and visit each probe from the tracking station.

Or use FMRS, drop the probes, then manually watch each one descend. Either way you've got to take the amount of time it takes to fly out there and the time for each probe to touch the ground. Even circling is fast in comparison to flying a plane out there each time and landing.

[Spricigo]

 

I also feel FMRS is the best option. The carrier drop the pod and go immediately to the next waypoint. And commanding the pod allow for more precision.

 

My trials was an attempt to minimize the mission time of a stock variant. So far I’m not satisfact whit the results. Parachutes deploying(and being destroyed) instead of arming was really bothersome.

[grafdog1138]

Yeah, I was trying some of these low drops and precision timed parachutes, and it seems to be working better. I think I may reroot the plane back to having the cockpit as the main control point, that way I can still fly it and pull of that circle @magico13 mentioned.

Also, I should have been more specific when mentioning impact speed of the pod. I know about the tolerance specifications on each part, I was rather referring to the concept of shock absorption by placing a gear or struts on the pod, as mentioned by @bewing. I might try that and use only one drogue chute on the pod; that'd cut the decent time a lot, and with a lowered drop and speed i think I could do it in vanilla KSP.

I suppose my hesitation to add mods (of this type) comes from not wanting to clutter the game UI up so much that I can't even focus on the main thing. That's why I'm kinda waiting on them. Plus I really enjoy limitations; they breed creativity and problem solving in a special way.

 

[Urses]

If i am not completely wrong "lithobreak" would be a option for you. You build a Landing gear out of cubic struts and Drop the thing. If it collides with the ground outer would be destroyed but give a slow moment to the remaining craft. Maybe you need some Tests to figure out how many Layers of ablative gear you need but with a droug for descent orientation and thick enough layer you can land the probes on higher impact speed.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Urses

[grafdog1138]

If I'm not too off in my lingual parsing and contextual reading, by lithobrake, this community means nothing more or less than crash landing? That's pretty funny, not gonna lie 

I'm not quite positive if a rig of this description would fit in the cargo bay I have currently. Also, cubic struts are just barely out of my tech reach... seems a little weird to me that i can launch and stabilize a space station with massive solar panels and an onboard lab, but can't make a cube of metal... whatever.

Edited April 7, 2017 by grafdog1138
typo

[bewing]

4 minutes ago, grafdog1138 said:

by lithobreak, this community means nothing more or less than crash landing?

Weeeelll, technically the term is 'lithobrake' -- which just means "letting contact with the ground stop your fall". But yes, lithobreak is an amusing version which captures the KSP essence of it -- when the ground stops you, parts tend to fall off.

[grafdog1138]

 I meant to type the first version, but yes, in KSP the venndiagram of the two seems to overlap quite a lot.

[Bornholio]

FMRS is def. the safest way.  I've done it bomber style though.  Need to retro the pod and chute it and it has to be low enough to land before you hit 22.5km distance or it will unload. None of that was to difficult.  I didn't think it was worth the hassle though.  Real chute would make getting the chutes out in the right time and maybe eliminate the need for retros since you could pre-deploy by altitude.

Speed 330m/s used a "Candlewax" srb with half fuel, sepatron would work fine also (probably better)

Service bays are tough and service bay doors even tougher...I hot keyed the doors to open as it launched/primed-chutes/decoupled.  Higher drag from open doors also.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Bornholio

[grafdog1138]

@Bornholio I don't think I can justify retros on this setup... although yours looks pretty awesome. But I don't think it'd work terribly well on my setup. Keep in mind I'm in a science game and as such I'm restricted by the parts I have available currently... the carrier is a mk2 body all the way, with a mk2 to mk1 bicoupler at the back. It'd be nice if you all could see it, but I can't really figure our how to upload .craft files or images

Edited April 7, 2017 by grafdog1138

[Spricigo]

1 hour ago, grafdog1138 said:

If I'm not too off in my lingual parsing and contextual reading, by lithobrake, this community means nothing more or less than crash landing? That's pretty funny, not gonna lie 

Spoiler

BTW Modular Guirder Segment are available from Start and can resist 80m/s. Put one at the botton and a drogue at top and the pod probably will resist the fall. Go as low and as fast as possible for bonus point.

 

39 minutes ago, grafdog1138 said:

Keep in mind I'm in a science game and as such I'm restricted by the parts I have available currently...

May you post a screenshot of your techtree?

[grafdog1138]

Quote

It'd be nice if you all could see it, but I can't really figure our how to upload .craft files or images 

 

[Spricigo]

Ok, first you need to find your root directory or 'where I installed the game directory'

Inside the root directory you can find the Screenshot sub-folder where the images are supposed to be.

The .craft files will be inside /saves/[your save]/ships/VAB or /saves/[your save]/ships/SPH.

You need to host the screenshot somewhere (imgur is a popular one) and then post the image link.

For the craft file there is kerbalx, a site dedicated to KSP's craft sharing.

[Urses]

Arggghh  @grafdog1138

i try with my bad english.

the fastest way to get your picture posted here is.

1. You make a screenshot ingame (F1 for Squd install F12 for the Steam version)

2. You go to a page for picture distribution (like Imgur) and upload this screenshot from your Game/Screenshots/ (you need only to drag and drop the picture mostly)

3. you get a link there if you activate your picture with a ending like *.png, *jpg

4 . you copy/paste this link in your post here and everyone cann see it.

 

For crafts, like @bewing said on other place in the forum you need to know the craft files for your planes and rockets a saved as Textfiles. And they are saved in Game/saves/savename/ships/ and there you look in in SPH or Vab find your craft open it with a textprogram and copy the data. load the text to Dropbox or xomething like it an post the link for the file here. Everybody can than download the file and have a copy of your craft.

 

i hope this helps

14 minutes ago, Spricigo said:

Ok, first you need to find your root directory or 'where I installed the game directory'

Inside the root directory you can find the Screenshot sub-folder where the images are supposed to be.

The .craft files will be inside /saves/[your save]/ships/VAB or /saves/[your save]/ships/SPH.

You need to host the screenshot somewhere (imgur is a popular one) and then post the image link.

For the craft file there is kerbalx, a site dedicated to KSP's craft sharing.

Ninjaed XD

[Spricigo]

2 hours ago, grafdog1138 said:

I suppose my hesitation to add mods (of this type) comes from not wanting to clutter the game UI up so much that I can't even focus on the main thing. That's why I'm kinda waiting on them. Plus I really enjoy limitations; they breed creativity and problem solving in a special way.

That is how much space FMRS will take when active. Personally, I don’t think its much.

About the limitation, not arguing about it. I have FMRS instaled but I still experimented to do it in stock because of the challenge (or rather, because the rule of cool)

 

@Urses TMNT FTW!

[Bornholio]

Most here use imgur for pics. Gives you an easy copy paste bbc code link to put into your forum comments.

Drop box if you want to share craft files.  This is less common since most people are running various levels of mods.

You can achieve many things even with the humble cubic octagonal strut. It lets you surface mount things that are node mounted.  the comments above using structural elements work well in combination with a drogue chute.

However in all honesty a small plane can parachute land a lot of places and with a scientist and engineer aboard you can re-launch and load all the science from several biomes without needing remote pods just by re-packing chutes.

Do what is fun not efficient. make boats, subs, trucks, trains, base stations.  And air drop them all. /smirk

 

[CSE]

One advantage of carrying the probes on the outside of the plane is that you can deploy the probe chute (and the probe legs if you have them) before you drop the probe, allowing you to release the probe very low indeed.

[grafdog1138]

After a little more testing (been busy building space stations with onboard labs; turns out that gives me all the science I need), I've worked out that I can drop the probes from really low and keep them intact most every time in vanilla KSP. It's been really fun trying different setups out, and I've really enjoyed hearing from y'all, you're a super great community for a newbie to come into. I think this thread has about covered the topic though, so until next time, thank you all so much!

grafdog

[Spricigo]

1 hour ago, grafdog1138 said:

I've worked out that I can drop the probes from really low and keep them intact most every time in vanilla KSP. 

Out of curiosity: What worked best for you? And the speed/height you are dropping the pods?

[grafdog1138]

Well, the plane tops out at around 380m/s as mentioned. That's at full throttle, which I keep it at when flying since the point is to mill science fast and move on to better parts of the game. When I find the drop zone, I figure out its approximate altitude on kerbnet, set my drogue to fully deploy at only 100m or so above that, and my mk1 to only 50m above. Then I take another pass as low as ever I can, and keeping speed at around 150m/s, drop, and start circling immediately. Works like a charm.