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[1.3.1] Ferram Aerospace Research: v0.15.9.1 "Liepmann" 4/2/18


ferram4

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@aquilux: I quoted stuff from KerbalSpacePort into the Raycast Drag Thread with my responses. Go find me there and we can argue more. :)

@dlrk: I've always kept my initial pitch within 5 degrees of vertical during launch. As for "proper pitch technique" I'd advise looking up real-life rocket launch information; that should help you out.

And as far as terminal velocity goes, I don't worry about it. If you really want to keep your rocket stable during launch I've found that staying well below terminal velocity helps a lot.

@SalmonellaDingDong: OK, its still the debris problem. I'll keep working on that.

@Glaucus: Remove the plugin dlls and just copy over your current Parts folder with the stock Parts folder; that should remove all of the updated part.cfgs.

Edited by ferram4
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Thanks, but I now know why my rockets were flipping out, but not sure how that happened.

If I bring up the lift icon in VAB, it is not square. Restarting the rocket from scratch put the lift back to normal. S far I have not been able to predict what's causing it, it seems very random, but once it happen, you have no choice but to restart from scratch on the rocket.

So it can stay :), but be nice to pin point what was causing this, it might be in compatability with other plugins.

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actually I've found it.

is this meant to be like this?

most of the pods(all stock parts, other parts from mod packs are not affected) do not have a balanced centre of lift.

However if I take a mod pack pod, and then add a stock pod to it, it messes up. if I remove the stock pod, the centre of lift does not revert back.

This seems to be causing my flipping out issues. the few pods that do have a proper centre of lift fly nice and stable.

screenshot3kou.png

Edited by Glaucus
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So at least I've gotten a single space plane actually into orbit without it flipping and rolling all over, but upon returning to Kerbin, I COULD NOT control the thing at all. I know there's less fuel but in this case maybe 20% less.. so why does the plane that took off stable and flew straight up to orbit now want to fight any attempt to go straight and plummet into the ground refusing any input to the controls?? (And yes the angle of attack was to naturally pitch the nose UP) At any thrust the same plane now only want's to fly backwards mixed in with somersaults and fight fight fight me. :/ Yeah, I know I'm coming down fast, but I survived re-entry for god's sakes and now I can't pull up no matter what kind of wings/flaps/speed/thrust I have?

I dunno.. It just feels like everything I fly now is constantly rolling and pitching when I want to go straight and going straight when I need to turn, the keyboard overcompensation is actually worse than before, only exaggerating the porpoising. It's not pretty. I know there's some kind of control damper option but I have no idea what the 'K=" means since I can't find any documentation for the mod.

Edited by mcbmaestro
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I haven't installed this mod yet, but it looks pretty awesome. Before I do install it, I wanted to ask a few questions: Does this work with the FASA Gemini capsule? And should I uninstall the Deadly Reentry mod before installing this mod?

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@mcbmaestro: First, documentation can be found in the Help functions in-game; that will explain what the K values are; they're actually simply gains for the control systems, essentially telling the control system how strongly to react. If the plane is porpoising all over the place with the systems on, reduce the gains so that it doesn't overcompensate. If the control system isn't doing anything, increase the gain.

The situation with your SSTO sounds like it has become unstable due to fuel drain; try designing it so that the CoM doesn't move as much when fuel drains.

@Nobody_1707: There's no reason it shouldn't work with the Gemini capsule; it works rather well with all part packs. You might want to remove Deadly Reentry, but I know that White Owl was able to bring down spaceplanes with both FAR and Deadly Reentry installed, it's just quite difficult.

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Look for a part folder named "Aileron." That's what corresponds to StandardctrlSurface. It might be that you have the part.cfg in there from the mod download, without any of the models that I expected to be there from the stock game (I didn't want to make the download larger than it had to be). Try re-downloading 0.17 or using the patcher since it seems like you're missing a part, which would be the source of the problem.

I'm having the same problem, I just made sure that all of the original parts that you haven't touched were copied over into my parts folder but it still got stuck on StandardctrlSurface. I have a folder called "Ailerons" but none for the singular "Aileron". I've had Steam make sure that I'm not missing any files, and they all seem to be there. I'm using the Mac version btw, and although Spacesport said you would have special instructions for me in this thread, they seem to have disappeared with the forum reset. I don't know whether that matters.

Never mind, it seems to not be copying over the model files and such, I'm doing it by hand now. It's weird that this is only happening for some of the parts...

EDIT: I finally got it working. I would kill for Steam Workshop support. Manually copying over meshes, models, and textures from my backup parts folder to my actual parts folder is very tedious. I wish I knew why merge didn't actually merge all of the folders...

Edited by Nobody_1707
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You might want to remove Deadly Reentry, but I know that White Owl was able to bring down spaceplanes with both FAR and Deadly Reentry installed, it's just quite difficult.

I'm about to start recording a video to explain how to do it. The short version: as you descend toward 30km altitude, you need your EAS below 120m/s and your rate of descent below 100m/s. I do the initial aerobraking at 45km, then manipulate airspeed and descent rate from there.

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@ferram4:

I was using static analysis earlier, on a craft where cM never crosses the axis downwards when fuel is empty.

I tried setting flaps to full and while that changed the cD and cL, cM was unchanged, which I'm pretty sure is a bug?

P.S. The only thing you're changing for the airscoop intake is giving it custom cm/cl/cd curves, I don't think its a critical part so you might want to get rid of it so you have one less cfg to manage.

Edited by Taverius
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Just out of curiosity, are there any more examples of how this improves rocket designs? I don't use shuttles of planes myself (not yet anyway) and I am mostly on Mun runs and space station construction missions so I am curious to know what would this do to my current rocket designs if anything. I know that drag would be reduced but by how much are things improved? Not sure how much it would actually effect my rockets seeing as most of my rockets have a Mk3 command module at the top with a docking shield. But there are a few designs with side fuel pods that would be able to have a nosecone for drag reduction.

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Just out of curiosity, are there any more examples of how this improves rocket designs? I don't use shuttles of planes myself (not yet anyway) and I am mostly on Mun runs and space station construction missions so I am curious to know what would this do to my current rocket designs if anything. I know that drag would be reduced but by how much are things improved? Not sure how much it would actually effect my rockets seeing as most of my rockets have a Mk3 command module at the top with a docking shield. But there are a few designs with side fuel pods that would be able to have a nosecone for drag reduction.

You can single stage to orbit with a vertical rocket with only a small SRB some fins and a Mk-1 Crew capsule, but you'll explode during ascent if you have Deadly Reentry turned on. Considering that a single SRB would never make it past the thickest part of the atmosphere with that payload before, I'd say that it improves rockets a lot.

Edited by Nobody_1707
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You can single stage to orbit with a vertical rocket with only a small SRB some fins and a Mk-1 Crew capsule, but you'll explode during ascent if you have Deadly Reentry turned on. Considering that a single SRB would never make it past the thickest part of the atmosphere with that payload before, I'd say that it improves rockets a lot.

If anybody reading this has never used FAR and/or Deadly Reentry, you've got to try this!

I just modified an OKTO 2 probe core with the far module and guessed drag values and did this.. (LoL!)

I don't know why the whole thing didnt explode, maybe my guessed drag values were too small or not needed by FAR.

0 to 70,000 meters takes about 40 seconds, it gets to EAS 424 m/s at maximum, my AV-R8 winglets disintegrate about 8 seconds after launch , max Q gets to about 130 thousand(!!), the nosecone glows white hot.. Mach 10-12 around 68,000 meters altitude, apoapsis about 4.8 to 5.6 million meters when pointing up.

Edit : I had a bad performance problem, dropping to 1 fps, after launching a bunch of okto 2's with modded FARControlSys module section in the cfg. I guess that caused some debris related problem, since after I set max debris to 0, things went back to normal. I guess that is why they aren't modded this way right now?..just a word of caution for Kerbonauts.

To camacha : They work fine together for me, yes.

Edited by localSol
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@Nobody_1707: I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and guess you're playing on a Mac, right? If that's the case, then the problem you've run into is that the standard "move" command on a Mac is not "move and merge" it's "clear the folder out and then replace its contents with what I've selected." Go and search for "Merge folders on Mac" and you should be able to find some useful help, maybe even a video; it's kind of like us PC folks not knowing that CTRL + SHIFT + ESC directly opens taskmanager.exe.

It also isn't too extreme that a single SRB can put a Mk1 pod into orbit without staging; you'd be amazed how much delta-V you can get out of something if you have a small payload and you're tossing a ton of mass out the back. Go and try out using the rocket equation and find out the delta-V for that rocket and I'll bet it's somewhere around ~4 km/s.

@Taverius: Hunh, I thought I'd changed that; it's entirely because the airscoop needs to have a different "forward" vector defined in order for the drag values to work out right and I hadn't added that bit to the code yet. I'll look into that.

@localSol: Can you cause that again and post the output_log.txt? That will help me confirm whether this is an issue that I've fixed or if it's something different.

@Camacha: Yes, but it is difficult and is more difficult than stock aerodynamics + Deadly Re-entry. You're welcome to rip your hair out though. :D

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@ferram4:

Not sure if it's been pointed out before, but in 0.9.1 when resuming a craft the flaps are always down 2 notches, regardless of where they were at when you left the game. I've got an SSTO in orbit and every time I load the game and go back to it the flaps are down even though I pull them up every time.

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@Camacha: Yes, but it is difficult and is more difficult than stock aerodynamics + Deadly Re-entry. You're welcome to rip your hair out though. :D

Great! I also just installed the fresh version of RemoteTech. No one ever said rocket science is easy. Rocket science is fun, though! Anything that adds realism is one more thing to learn, master and enjoy.

Edited by Camacha
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