[1.12.x] Tundra Exploration - v7.0 (Nov 5th, 2023) - (Re)Stockalike SpaceX Falcon 9, (Crew) Dragon (XL) & Haven-1!

[RealKerbal3x]

18 hours ago, damonvv said:

Thanks to @Starwaster I no longer need action groups to decouple the FH decoupler!
This is pretty sweet as you now can use the AnimatedDecoupler plugin and just decouple the boosters like any other decoupler and not having to worry about action groups anymore! (Will put it on the beta sometime tomorrow)
 

 

Cool stuff! So will AnimatedDecoupler be a dependency now? Or is it optional?

[Damon]

3 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Cool stuff! So will AnimatedDecoupler be a dependency now? Or is it optional?

Probably a dependency as I also have some ideas to animate the F9 interstage with the emergency pusher

[infinite_monkey]

I see the RCS of the F9 boosters fire immediately after decoupling - is this just the SAS being still active or how do you do that?

A side note totally unrelated to the beta: I was trying to build a Philae-like lander. I noticed the solar panels on the Pill pod seem to be inverted - they produce power only when the sun is on the flat side. And I wanted to test the grappling legs prior to send my probe actually to an asteroid. They don't seem to want to attach to anything.

[HotVector]

@damonvvYou know how airbrakes have options to make it a control surface(pitch, yaw and roll triggers when you right click on the airbrakes)? Isn't it possible to do the same for the fins?

Also, the G9 plume doesn't expand as it goes higher into the atmosphere(it's still very pretty though)

https://imgur.com/MWum9f7

Edited October 10, 2018 by HotVector
Added another bug/concern

[RealKerbal3x]

I thought this was worth posting here.

[Damon]

40 minutes ago, HotVector said:

@damonvvYou know how airbrakes have options to make it a control surface(pitch, yaw and roll triggers when you right click on the airbrakes)? Isn't it possible to do the same for the fins?

Also, the G9 plume doesn't expand as it goes higher into the atmosphere(it's still very pretty though)

https://imgur.com/MWum9f7

At this moment no, the way KSP is written is that I cannot make the fins act like airbrakes while you also use them for vertical take-off and landing. It will be super unstable during launch/landing.

Ah yes, I haven't made the new plumes work with Realplume/Smokescreen. Will hopefully do in the future!

1 hour ago, infinite_monkey said:

I see the RCS of the F9 boosters fire immediately after decoupling - is this just the SAS being still active or how do you do that?

A side note totally unrelated to the beta: I was trying to build a Philae-like lander. I noticed the solar panels on the Pill pod seem to be inverted - they produce power only when the sun is on the flat side. And I wanted to test the grappling legs prior to send my probe actually to an asteroid. They don't seem to want to attach to anything.

The Ghidorah Heavy sideboosters have an probe core and when I keep SAS on, somehow the boosters want to stay upright and therefor you see the RCS. Helps a lot when clearing those boosters!

Interesting on the lander, will have a look!

[infinite_monkey]

Just tested the new BFR for the first time  Looks awesome. I can confirm that the thing breaks apart very easily, just by steering a little bit during ascend. Even when keeping it on the launch pad (OK, I only used 3 clamps) for a little while, it just fell over.

The hatch inside the cargo bay can't be used - it says "hatch obstructed".

Do you think 4000 liters of KIS storage are enough for the BFS capsule? Even a 2.5 m KIS 6K Container offers 6000 L, when scaled up it offers 20.250 L for 3.75 m and 48.000 L for 5 m. In my other install, I think I added about 14000 L to it. Aft storage will come later or did I miss something?

Also, the BFS capsule doesn't have an antenna!

[Damon]

2 minutes ago, infinite_monkey said:

Just tested the new BFR for the first time  Looks awesome. I can confirm that the thing breaks apart very easily, just by steering a little bit during ascend. Even when keeping it on the launch pad (OK, I only used 3 clamps) for a little while, it just fell over.

The hatch inside the cargo bay can't be used - it says "hatch obstructed".

Do you think 4000 liters of KIS storage are enough for the BFS capsule? Even a 2.5 m KIS 6K Container offers 6000 L, when scaled up it offers 20.250 L for 3.75 m and 48.000 L for 5 m. In my other install, I think I added about 14000 L to it. Aft storage will come later or did I miss something?

Also, the BFS capsule doesn't have an antenna!

More people complain it breaks easily but mine doesn't break that easily for some reason..

I know about the hatch, still trying to fix it!

I only renamed the config files, I haven't actually installed KIS and balanced that one. Will do! AFT storage comes later! (This weekend, with all the KIS balancing on the BFS)

Oops! I knew I forgot something!

[infinite_monkey]

Hm, just did my second try and made it to orbit, this time it didn't break so far (except when jumping back to the booster, since the saving delay was too short - does anyone know how to set that to another value by default?).

Now I triy landing the booster, but apparently it has no RCS at all? RCS for the BFS seems to work, although the plume could look a bit more impressive  The reaction wheels seem a bit overpovered, but I guess that is for reentry?

Oh, about the plume: the booster's plume looks a bit short, but maybe it's just becuase it's so wide with so many engines?

Edited October 10, 2018 by infinite_monkey

[JadeOfMaar]

15 minutes ago, infinite_monkey said:

although the plume could look a bit more impressive  The reaction wheels seem a bit overpovered, but I guess that is for reentry?

Oh, about the plume: the booster's plume looks a bit short, but maybe it's just becuase it's so wide with so many engines?

I know, right?  Too bad nothing can be done about that for a while...

Reaction wheels are overpowered because parts are very massive and RCS tends to be very underpowered.

About engine plumes, yes, it seems short because of the "saturation" of plumes from many nozzles, and not being wired up to be longer and more convincing in the many-nozzle modes. In single/center mode they all look great.

[eskimo22]

59 minutes ago, damonvv said:

More people complain it breaks easily but mine doesn't break that easily for some reason..

I know about the hatch, still trying to fix it!

I only renamed the config files, I haven't actually installed KIS and balanced that one. Will do! AFT storage comes later! (This weekend, with all the KIS balancing on the BFS)

Oops! I knew I forgot something!

the BFS in my save breaks up quite easily. The ship frequently breaks up into 3 pieces, and the dorsal fin is quite wiggly.

Edited October 10, 2018 by eskimo22

[Damon]

25 minutes ago, infinite_monkey said:

Hm, just did my second try and made it to orbit, this time it didn't break so far (except when jumping back to the booster, since the saving delay was too short - does anyone know how to set that to another value by default?).

It has tiny RCS plumes indeed, might change that. And yeah FMRS has a very very.. short delay. You can change it:

Edited October 10, 2018 by damonvv

[infinite_monkey]

2 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Reaction wheels are overpowered because parts are very massive and RCS tends to be very underpowered.

Is that a technical limitation in KSP? No power config for RCS?

BTW, I just landed that thing successfully. And almost got the booster landing as well - now all I need are clamps to land on

@damonvv Thanks, yeah I knew I can change it that way, but it seems I have to change that every time

I crunched the numbers a bit - in Elon's presentation, the aft cargo bay was 88 m³. That's for a 9 m wide BFS. So scaling that down to 5 m gives about 15.4 m³ or 15400 L. For the pressurized area, I didn't find any numbers about how much of that is for cargo.

[infinite_monkey]

Just attached a bunch of portable containers around the engines - gives me 12000 L of storage

EDIT: I just noticed there's a thight gap between the white fin and the fuselage. You can see it a little in the screenshot. When viewed from the side, you can see right through it.

Edited October 10, 2018 by infinite_monkey

[infinite_monkey]

2 hours ago, damonvv said:

3 hours ago, HotVector said:

@damonvvYou know how airbrakes have options to make it a control surface(pitch, yaw and roll triggers when you right click on the airbrakes)? Isn't it possible to do the same for the fins?

At this moment no, the way KSP is written is that I cannot make the fins act like airbrakes while you also use them for vertical take-off and landing. It will be super unstable during launch/landing.

I just added some airbrakes and tested the behavior. It seems that when deployed, they don't move anymore, even if pitch/yaw is enabled. So I think it could work if the 120° config would be the deployed mode,  and reentry is done with "undeployed" airbrakes.

[Damon]

2 minutes ago, infinite_monkey said:

I just added some airbrakes and tested the behavior. It seems that when deployed, they don't move anymore, even if pitch/yaw is enabled. So I think it could work if the 120° config would be the deployed mode,  and reentry is done with "undeployed" airbrakes.

I have tried many things already and not found a solution for this. So I don't think it will work in KSPs current state 

[StevieC]

On 10/8/2018 at 9:25 PM, Starwaster said:

SSPX has a telescoping docking port that will probably be long enough, but I don't have SSPX installed on the same installation that Tundra is, so I can't say I've verified it.

That telescoping docking port won't fit behind the the hinged nose-cone of this mod's Dragon 2 analogue. I've tried.

[space_powder]

8 minutes ago, StevieC said:

That telescoping docking port won't fit behind the the hinged nose-cone of this mod's Dragon 2 analogue. I've tried.

That's why you put the telescoping docking port on the BFR, not the Dragon 2

[StevieC]

My mistake. I stand corrected.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

18 hours ago, damonvv said:

I have tried many things already and not found a solution for this. So I don't think it will work in KSPs current state 

I know the fins not moving beyond the two position toggles isn't the most accurate thing in the world, but honestly, I'm not having massive issues flying it in its current state.

My BFS behaves itself with a variety of fuel fill levels, with cargo in the trunk or not, and either controlled manually or using MechJeb2.

Edited October 11, 2018 by Sufficient Anonymity
Sleep deprived me... grammar... urgh

[SpaceMouse]

21 hours ago, infinite_monkey said:

Just attached a bunch of portable containers around the engines - gives me 12000 L of storage

EDIT: I just noticed there's a thight gap between the white fin and the fuselage. You can see it a little in the screenshot. When viewed from the side, you can see right through it.

Hope those are heat-ressistant. XD

[HotVector]

4 hours ago, SpaceMouse said:

Hope those are heat-ressistant. XD

You could probably just put a mini heat shield on each one of them. Or change the configs(and increase the cost in the process).

[Nessus_]

Nice work, the new BFR looks amazing! For anyone who wants to try it in Realism Overhaul, I made some basic RO configs for all the new BFR parts. I made them 80% bigger (5m * 1.8 = 9m) and replaced all fuel with LqdMethane/Oxgen. The raptor engines and BFS RCS also use Methane.

Download link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DGrzOa6sgHp2y2pmTUkg94H8Nr_YAWk5 (also contains a config file to stop boiloff)

The only thing that still bugs me are the raptor plumes, they didn't scale up with the engine. I'm not an expert in modding and a standard RealPlume config just makes the plumes disappear, maybe someone can help  

[Janus92]

17 hours ago, Sufficient Anonymity said:

My BFS behaves itself with a variety of fuel fill levels, with cargo in the trunk or not, and either controlled manually or using MechJeb2.

It's ofcourse important that it's controllable enough to reliably steer towards a landing spot throughout a wider re-entry envelope. And the current version starts wobbling and rolling uncontrollably for me at high angles of attack and low fuel on board (read: very aft Center of Mass, hence unstable by nature). That would suggest we need a slightly more forward CoM (read: more stable, but also less control authority) and increased pitch, roll and yaw authority (to fix the reduced control authority).

In my previous post, I managed to fix these for myself, but I noticed that at half-full tanks and subsonic glide to landing pad, there's the danger of becoming stuck in a situation of heavy mass, low AoA, higher speed glide and slightly too much forward CoM, where it's impossible to flip over at 2km altitude. Maybe requiring more RCS power? Or is a half-full-tanks-landing by definition unrealistic and just outside of the Vehicles envelope. Ah, the questions..

On another note: I wonder if somehow we are experiencing different behaviour? I also don't have any problems with the rocket breaking apart during launch (I haven't managed, even though I tried). Is everyone using the provided BFR 2018 ship saved under "ksp main folder"/ships?

[Sufficient Anonymity]

1 hour ago, Janus92 said:

Or is a half-full-tanks-landing by definition unrealistic

I've been running it slightly emptier than that (ranging through to practically on fumes) for landing. That said, I'm not quite as picky where I'm landing mine - provided it comes down in the vicinity of KSC, I'm not that fussed

On 10/10/2018 at 7:24 PM, damonvv said:

More people complain it breaks easily but mine doesn't break that easily for some reason..

No BFR breakages, but I have once had the BFS break after what I thought was a pretty soft landing (I'll see if I can replicate this). The legs on the BFS jiggle loads though, even when autostrutted, to the point that it sometimes walks across the surface so much that recovery and saving is disabled.