cargo ramp

[miklkit]

Has anyone been able to do anything useful with the cargo ramp?  I've spent 2 days trying to get it to let a rover get in and out without getting destroyed in the process.  Or getting destroyed in flight.  It is extremely hard to work with.

[king of nowhere]

well, depends on what you define "useful". It's certainly a very heavy part for very little utility, so there's not much practical value out of it.

you can use it to do stuff that looks really cool, though

[miklkit]

I'm trying to build a rover transporter.  Get there, let the rover out to do its roverish thing, load it up and go back to base.  The cargo ramp looked like a good idea until I tried to use it.  This is as good as it gets.

[magnemoe]

Now that is a bit weird unless you drove very fast, rover looks pretty lightweight. 
But you will need to dock the rover inside the bay. You can use an claw for this. as it will grab anything. 

[king of nowhere]

14 hours ago, miklkit said:

I'm trying to build a rover transporter.  Get there, let the rover out to do its roverish thing, load it up and go back to base.  The cargo ramp looked like a good idea until I tried to use it.  This is as good as it gets.

yes, had the same problem. a smaller rover would fit, but then, a 4-tons part to deliver a small rover is a total waste. it can look cool, though

[miklkit]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now that is a bit weird unless you drove very fast, rover looks pretty lightweight. 
But you will need to dock the rover inside the bay. You can use an claw for this. as it will grab anything. 

 

I managed to get a docking port on the floor to work to hold it in place.  Without the rover being locked down it was destroyed when flying into orbit. 

This one was in the bay and I was able to roll it in and out a few times before the wheel broke.  It actually broke when backing out slowly.

Maybe turning the cargo bay upside down and hanging the rover from a claw would work. 

[king of nowhere]

3 minutes ago, miklkit said:

 

I managed to get a docking port on the floor to work to hold it in place.  Without the rover being locked down it was destroyed when flying into orbit. 

This one was in the bay and I was able to roll it in and out a few times before the wheel broke.  It actually broke when backing out slowly.

Maybe turning the cargo bay upside down and hanging the rover from a claw would work. 

yes, that is feasible, and actually more mass-efficient than the alternative. the ramp weights 4 tons, with a 3-tons cargo bay you can load a bigger rover

 

[miklkit]

Weight is not an issue.  This one weighs 203 tons.  My lightest MK3 weighs 165 tons and the heaviest weighs 241 tons.  If it can make a round trip to the Mun it will be doing its job. 

I have almost no experience with robotics, so that is going to be the biggest challenge.  That and how to mount it into the cargo bay.

[miklkit]

I already had a spaceplane with an inverted cargo bay built, so have been trying out that hinge idea.  First it catches the rover too soon, but it seems to work ok.

So far so good.

The dismount needs some work.  Thinking a docking port might work better.

[miklkit]

The docking port does work better, but now another problem has come up.  The upper hinge has stopped working.  The lower hinge still works fine and they are set to the same action group.  It's like the upper hinge tries to work but is stuck at about 3.5 degrees.

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, miklkit said:

The docking port does work better, but now another problem has come up.  The upper hinge has stopped working.  The lower hinge still works fine and they are set to the same action group.  It's like the upper hinge tries to work but is stuck at about 3.5 degrees.

not sure, but i stopped using robotics because of near constant gitches.

anyway, it took me a lot of fine tuning to make the system work. One thing I did discover is that distancing robotic parts helps; if you have two hinges attached to each other with a claw in the end, it is more likely to break; I did put an octagonal strut between the two hinges and another between the hinge and the claw, and I was able to repeat a couple cycles without problems.

I never went past early testing, though; my vehicle was supposed to be an eve ssto capable of releasing a smaller rover, but i didn't have the skill to make an eve ssto at the time

[miklkit]

The runway is really glitchy in the first place.  I might take it somewhere else to test it.    Half the time the brakes don't work either.  The brake light doesn't come on.

[miklkit]

The hinges are just too buggy and no longer work at all.  The cargo ramp works but the rover has to be so small that it can only do basic science, while I need a truck to haul stuff around.   Maybe an elevator could be made to work.

[miklkit]

 

Yeah, this works fine.

[miklkit]

Update:  Hinges do work.  At least so far in a test flight to Minmus, unloading, driving around, reloading, and going home again.  Talking to others it seems the problem is autostruts.  This time there are no autostruts and it works as it should.