KSP Loading... Preview: Breaking Ground - Robotics

[Gargamel]

34 minutes ago, warrior606 said:

Is no one going to mention Stratzenblitz75's jets to orbit? Just figure out a way to launch it with a catapult and keep it oriented; it probably wouldn't work for atmospheric bodies, but maybe for something like Minmus...

There's a thread on it floating around here somewhere

[TheBlueKerbal]

So the question is can we make a stock spinning habitation ring for artificial gravity?

[KerikBalm]

We already can, but these rotors will clearly make them much better

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, TheBlueKerbal said:

So the question is can we make a stock spinning habitation ring for artificial gravity?

Just don't try to actually use them. At best, the Kerbals will be in a perpetual ragdoll state. At worst, the Kraken awaits...

[sgt_flyer]

I wonder how much gyroscopic forces will be modeled in game with those robotics ? Between counter forces,  Gyroscopic precession, and possibly wheel torque saturation. (A gyroscopic wheel would likely need to be able to switch between motor and free pivot though)

Plus, are the free pivots perfect, or do they have a minimal amount of friction ?

Last but not least - what kind of effects timewarp will have on free pivots ^^

[warrior606]

16 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

We already can, but these rotors will clearly make them much better

Also the best we could do was a whole craft spinning, unless you misuse the claw or use stock hinges, which some people (like me) could never get the hang of.

[releansol]

Untill now I wasn't hyped...but now I am 

[KerikBalm]

34 minutes ago, warrior606 said:

Also the best we could do was a whole craft spinning, unless you misuse the claw or use stock hinges, which some people (like me) could never get the hang of.

I was referring to stock hinges, and trim to make them rotate even when changed back to the main craft.

Here's one I built:

Spoiler

Starting construction.. the green lab is a modded greenhouse life support part:

And the rotor part with a lander added:

The rear half is just an ejection booster that stays in Kerbin SOI and gets reused

Notice the clock:

Based on my calculations of the RPM and the radius, the kerbals in those itchhiker modules were getting at least 0.8 G's

and with the rotor locked in place again, it starts its ejection burn, to go into deep space, keeping its kerbals in a comfortable gravity environment.

Also, its all in a 3x rescale, so that's why the orbital velocity is so high, and why its got such large fuel tanks.

It took a while to tweak the rotor right, but then I saved it as a sub assembly (and a few others)... but you have to re-connect them before time warp, and for my atmospheric craft with propellors, it was really hard to get a working stock prop that I could reconncect. If you can't reconnect them, then they break as soon as you switch to another ship or time warp...

I am very much looking forward to stock centrifuges that don't have all these problems, and are simple 1 part rotors. I think the rotor on that thing had: 1 outer tube (MH structural tube, can also be made to work with fairings), 1 inner tube (I think? I forget), 2 docking ports, 1 probe core, 1 reaction wheel, 1 RTG, and I think 4 wheels (optional, but made the thing rotate smoother): 11 parts.

At a minimum you need 1 part to house the rotor, 2 docking ports (*maybe 1 claw instead*), 1 probe core, 1 reaction wheel, 1 RTG(or other part to supply power): 6 parts. 1 Spinning part (I really hope they have a part that spins on both end, so I have have a rotating section in the middle of my craft, without needing a second rotor to "de-spin" the craft on the other side of the rotor.

We can already (clumsily) make rotating parts, this expansion will make it much easier and better.

You gotta love this old video, showing clearly what you can do in KSP once you have rotating sections:

I hope this still works with the updated wheels. I hope it works even better (those old wheels broke unless you did it at near geosync orbit where the "surface velocity" value was really low).

[warrior606]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

We can already (clumsily) make rotating parts, this expansion will make it much easier and better.

That was always my problem - the hinges, no matter how much I tweaked them, would always be kraken-possessed. I also never saw any practical use for stock spinning stations, as (a) the spinning part was always a separate ship, meaning no transfer of crew was available, and (b) even with an artificial grav station, whenever you switch away from the vessel or timewarp the thing stops spinning. That is one thing I hope Squad changes at some point; it seems to me that it wouldn't be that hard to include the rotation in the craft file, so when you hop out of timewarp it spins just like it did before. I get that people use timewarp to stop crafts, so it would be nice if it could only do it for the robotic parts. That way you could have a spinning ring that would continue spinning whenever you reloaded the craft.

[KerikBalm]

I don't mind that you have to restart the spin when you load up the craft, and have to stop the spin before switching/time warping for the old stock rotors. I'd be interested to know if rotors in the DLC stay "on" when time warping, or coming back to a craft. It would help maintain immersion.

To be clear, there was never any practical use for spinning stations, it was always for the cool factor. If we don't even have stock life support, don't expect stock bone and muscle loss due to extended periods of weightlessness.

The only "practical" use I ever found for stock rotors was surface exploration:

I never got them to work well in water.

A single prop would make the nose go sideways, acting as a water/paddle wheel (blade pitch angle didn't seem to change much), and using them as a paddle wheel gave me really lackluster results

I couldn't make any sub work. I tried making a whole craft spin with angled blades, but no luck. I don't recall testing counter rotating props (if they are finnicky in a vaccum/atmosphere, they are really troublesome under water).

It is my hope that with these new DLC rotors, that I can make a craft that can propell itself underwater with contrarotating rotors, and I'll be able to explore Eve's oveans. I'm thinking a mountain top launch site, and electric prop aircraft flying from there to the coasts and such, I don't think I'll be doing reusable ascent vehicles though..

[St4rdust]

On 5/18/2019 at 1:49 PM, RealKerbal3x said:

Congratulations SQUAD (and @Snark) you’ve officially got me super hyped for the DLC’s release. I await the KSP Loading newsletter with more information!

Good to know! :)! 

[Mikki]

(Totally not referring to trebuchets or catapults) 

I bet my ...(oh yeah what now?)... ummm, i bet it takes just a few hours after the DLC dropped when we have a forum challenge like:

"Sling a Kerbal from the KSC to the Island Airfield. Clearly, Kerbal must survive."

Only technic allowed: Gravity, lever, sling, parachute. Good luck!

[Laie]

On 5/18/2019 at 9:51 PM, Snark said:

...That's completely unmotorized.  It's purely using the weight of the counterweight to drive the whole thing.  It flings when I release that launch clamp at left. 

Will there also be a mechanism that allows re-arming in the field?

[Snark]

Just now, Laie said:

Will there also be a mechanism that allows re-arming in the field?

In the case of the trebuchet shown above... no, because the release mechanism I chose to use in the design there is a stock launch clamp, and those things can only fire once.

In the case of the catapult?  Sure, that can operate however many times it needs, because its operation doesn't involve any "can only fire once" functionality such as staging a decoupler or SRB.

Folks are naturally going to be very curious about "how is the robotic stuff controlled by the player", but how much (and when) that gets announced is up to Squad, not me. 

[Tyko]

On 5/18/2019 at 6:00 PM, 5thHorseman said:

You joke but now we actually CAN get things to orbit with 0 fuel usage.

Granted we could do it before with decouplers but that was an edge case. now you can get as many (reasonable) m/s as you want with careful planning and execution.

You’d still need a little DV to circularize because your PE would be at the catapult (barring any aerodynamic effects). 

This sounds like a great challenge: Lowest DV for SSTO to orbit with trebuchet launcher

[VoidCosmos]

16 minutes ago, Snark said:

In the case of the trebuchet shown above... no, because the release mechanism I chose to use in the design there is a stock launch clamp, and those things can only fire once.

In the case of the catapult?  Sure, that can operate however many times it needs, because its operation doesn't involve any "can only fire once" functionality such as staging a decoupler or SRB.

Folks are naturally going to be very curious about "how is the robotic stuff controlled by the player", but how much (and when) that gets announced is up to Squad, not me. 

How did you get a copy of the DLC??

[Laie]

25 minutes ago, Snark said:

In the case of the trebuchet shown above... no, because the release mechanism I chose to use in the design there is a stock launch clamp, and those things can only fire once.

I've seen this coming but then thougt "nah, I don't have to specifically point out that I've seen the clamp and am aware that it won't fire twice -- Snark knowns that I know, no need to waste time on that."

Asking the same Q in more words:

Will it be possible to return it to a pre-firing position (attitude? configuration?) so another Kerbal can take the seat and have a go? Without making it (say) more than twice as complicated as it currently is?

 

Edited May 20, 2019 by Laie

[MaverickSawyer]

On 5/18/2019 at 1:07 PM, Starboost88 said:

I.E. Making a rocket propelled catapult?

This guy's got the right idea.

22 minutes ago, Tyko said:

You’d still need a little DV to circularize because your PE would be at the catapult (barring any aerodynamic effects). 

This sounds like a great challenge: Lowest DV for SSTO to orbit with trebuchet launcher

Have you forgotten Stratenblitz's air breathing SSTO? He had an incredibly elegant solution to that.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Nigel J. Cardozo said:

How did you get a copy of the DLC??

Explanation here.  Short answer, am member of a small testing group (under NDA, obviously, which is why I can't discuss anything that Squad hasn't publicly announced) who work with the stuff for a while before release to help find issues (bugs, etc.)

1 hour ago, Laie said:

I've seen this coming but then thougt "nah, I don't have to specifically point out that I've seen the clamp and am aware that it won't fire twice -- Snark knowns that I know, no need to waste time on that."

Well, I was pretty sure that you know that, but wasn't sure that everyone else who ever reads this would also know it, since there are likely to be some folks who are new to KSP.  So I figured it was worth mentioning.

1 hour ago, Laie said:

Will it be possible to return it to a pre-firing position (attitude? configuration?) so another Kerbal can take the seat and have a go? Without making it (say) more than twice as complicated as it currently is?

See my earlier answer. To summarize:  "no" for the trebuchet (since it relies on staging), "yes" for the catapult (since it doesn't).

(Sheesh.  Now you've got me picturing it as a sort of Kerbal carnival ride.  I'm picturing all the eager kerbals lined up on the pad, waiting their turn...)

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Tyko said:

You’d still need a little DV to circularize because your PE would be at the catapult (barring any aerodynamic effects). 

Not if you catapult a catapult into space, and that second (or third or fourth) catapult gets the payload into orbit.

[theJesuit]

On 5/18/2019 at 11:40 AM, St4rdust said:

If you get it just a little worse wrong, then Val is having a b ad problem and she will not go to the beach today.

RATFLMAO.

I could probably add more letters.

Peace.

[pincushionman]

5 hours ago, Snark said:

…(Sheesh.  Now you've got me picturing it as a sort of Kerbal carnival ride.  I'm picturing all the eager kerbals lined up on the pad, waiting their turn...)

Well, we are talking about a people whose tourists are willing to plunk down thousands of Funds for a trip where the most important requirement is that you make them black out in the process.

[Fraston]

On 5/18/2019 at 2:46 PM, Snark said:

catapult

Sling-a-pult more like

[warrior606]

9 hours ago, Tyko said:

You’d still need a little DV to circularize because your PE would be at the catapult (barring any aerodynamic effects). 

Check Strazenblitz’s jets to orbit; if you did it right, spin from the initial release could be utilized to circulation.

[scottadges]

On 5/18/2019 at 4:30 PM, Streetwind said:

A catapult is any apparatus designed to hurl an object with mechanical assistance. Ancient greek: kata peltes = "downward" "hurling". Unfortunately the term is often misused as a specific name for what is actually called an onager. Which to be fair is a kind of catapult. Just not the catapult.

Trebuchets, mangonels, onagers, ballistas, crossbows, aircraft carrier launch rails, and hand-held slingshots are all catapults. Railguns are not catapults, as they use electromagnetic force. Cannons, rifles and pistols are not catapults, as they use chemical energy.

Is there a kerbal-moji for "pwned" ? LOL

Edited May 21, 2019 by scottadges