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What did you do in KSP1 today?


Xeldrak

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5 minutes ago, MiscelanousItem said:

Weird, in my experience >x2 warp only stops the plumes from showing, you should check in the PAW if the engine produces any thrust 

That would have been sensible! Not sure why I didn't think of that.
Lucky me has another 20 minute burn on this vehicle coming up soon so will try that. Thanks.

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Y42, D356 - Topaz-1 enters the atmosphere of Sarnus (Outer Planets Mod)

b5fGF74.png

(disclaimer: for the screenshot below, I had to temporarily disable Scatterer, because it was causing the sky here to be pitch black)

LvJX2xc.png

Edited by Pipcard
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(1.6.1) Not much to report to y'all today; screenie-less day too. Almost certainly will be that way for the coming week unfortunately, the way things currently look.

Much of my day yesterday was spent getting Necessary Evil to space station Kerbinport. While the craft had safely aerobraked the day before , she ran out of gas attempting to set up a rendezvous with the station (so even if she had made rendezvous, there would've been little that could be done other than watch the station zip right on past. Left with the option of building a new Da Luv Boat 7 emergency tanker at the Dystopia Planitia orbital shipyards or launching one directly from KSC, I chose the latter; I figured I didn't want to wait a week for Ceri to get off her stupid butt to build the thing. In the VAB, I drained the extant craft design of fuel and slapped on a pre-built booster of the appropriate size for the resultant mass (just short of thirty tonnes), and launched the craft to orbit. Upon leaving Kerbin's atmosphere she was dubbed India Princess and her on-board mass driver was activated; supplies for the business end of the ship were then sent up via mass driver from the South Base outpost near KSC. After successful rendezvous and docking, India Princess transferred her fuel supplies to Necessary Evil, which then departed and set up for rendezvous at Kerbinport; India Princess did the same once additional fuel was shot up from South Base. Both craft arrived at Kerbinport at almost exactly the same time (no surprises there all considered) and the two both docked safely to the station, with India Princess assuming the port that will be assigned to Laggin' Dragon should I ever get around to launching it. India Princess utilized her remaining fuel stores at that point to refill several of the craft docked at the station, after which tourists Magdard and Dergel Kerman boarded Necessary Evil and the ship departed for Mun; she'll arrive at a 15 kilometer equatorial periapsis over Mun in just over five hours.

Over Ike, the Spamcan 7a lander rendezvoused and docked with LSV House Corrino in high orbit. Pilot Lutop Kerman and scientist Wehrdas Kerman boarded the craft, which then departed en route to space station Ikeport. They are still en route as of this post. Upon arrival there, the Spamcan will take on fuel supplies and then ferry the two down to the Scan Queen outpost on the surface largely for flag-planting training and refueling before bringing them back to Corrino. Corrino is scheduled to remain in orbit of Ike until construction of the TBD 7dG base-seeding craft is completed, which will be in a little over three days. By then, I hope to have the outpost crew's flag-planting training at Mun complete. I'll probably be sending them out to Duna aboard LSV House Atreides; she's the only warp ship available at Kerbin at the moment. I've also recently picked up a colonization contract for the Enchova Central outpost on Duna, so I'll need to send those folks up in the near future, and I've also picked up another orbital Duna rescue contract, so I've got plenty of reason to head out that way in the very near future.

Going to try to get 1.7.x up and running today - wish me luck, y'all. Something tells me it's not going to happen...not today at least.

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I tuned some of my rotorcraft. The BAK-47 Kadzook now has a full-size cargo bay, more power, bigger rotors, and handles better; I landed it on the VAB heliport where it just about fit. I also think it looks better, and got some prettier publicity shots. Somebody want to deliver a rover or two somewhere with this?

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-47-Kadzook

wqtBUoJ.png

ClsIxpv.jpg

Then I made a variant of the BAK-52 with hydraulically sprung/damped landing skids instead of wheels. Very handy for precise landing as it'll stay where it's dropped. Here it is on the administration building helipad!

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-52NS

bLHJdBo.jpg

The BAK-52N is also upgraded -- it shed some weight, gained a more stable rotor and better handling overall. Looks more or less the same as before however.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-52N

Finally, I back-ported the BAK-52 upgrades to the original BAK-50. It is now the lightest, most nimble, and just possibly best-handling version of the series, although the BAK-52NS (with the skids) is a close contender.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-50-x2

a9JCr8G.jpg

I also made this -- it's not on KerbalX because if you're so inclined you can easily reproduce it from the BAK-52NS, just replace the skids with the pontoons. They're very fragile so if landing on solid ground be super careful!

1OGqsAI.png

And I think I'm about done with rotorcraft and suspension for the time being, I'm getting an itch to start a career and that will provide a whole different set of engineering challenges. I have some ideas on a theme already...

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3 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I tuned some of my rotorcraft. The BAK-47 Kadzook now has a full-size cargo bay, more power, bigger rotors, and handles better; I landed it on the VAB heliport where it just about fit. I also think it looks better, and got some prettier publicity shots. Somebody want to deliver a rover or two somewhere with this?

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-47-Kadzook

wqtBUoJ.png

ClsIxpv.jpg

Then I made a variant of the BAK-52 with hydraulically sprung/damped landing skids instead of wheels. Very handy for precise landing as it'll stay where it's dropped. Here it is on the administration building helipad!

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-52NS

bLHJdBo.jpg

The BAK-52N is also upgraded -- it shed some weight, gained a more stable rotor and better handling overall. Looks more or less the same as before however.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-52N

Finally, I back-ported the BAK-52 upgrades to the original BAK-50. It is now the lightest, most nimble, and just possibly best-handling version of the series, although the BAK-52NS (with the skids) is a close contender.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-50-x2

a9JCr8G.jpg

I also made this -- it's not on KerbalX because if you're so inclined you can easily reproduce it from the BAK-52NS, just replace the skids with the pontoons. They're very fragile so if landing on solid ground be super careful!

1OGqsAI.png

And I think I'm about done with rotorcraft and suspension for the time being, I'm getting an itch to start a career and that will provide a whole different set of engineering challenges. I have some ideas on a theme already...

What are the part counts on those? Im wary of using the cubic struts because they'd raise part count too much

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20 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

What are the part counts on those? Im wary of using the cubic struts because they'd raise part count too much

High, because of those cubic struts, especially on the bigger ones. 

If you want to lower the part count you can adjust the max part offset in the configs and just offset the blades to where they are and pretend the struts are there. I don't want to do that because of aesthetics (and my computer can handle the part count no problem).

I didn't find any other parts of comparable lightness that I could use for the purpose. I-beams can be used to make rotors but they're really heavy and make for a rough and inefficient ride; wing components are too big. If you have any suggestions...?

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On 6/3/2019 at 12:08 PM, Azimech said:

That is seriously impressive.

Guess its time to relive the glory days of KSP suspensions, dver since they added that stupid autostrut (which cant even be disabled or overriden in any way that im aware of) suspensions have been solid and booring not to mention unable to handle extremely rough terrain without one of the wheels catching on something while flying...

I so need to try this thing on a armored car im currently working on...

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Today in KSP i finally figured out why my launch escape tower kept blowing up my entire rocket when i decoupled it. After much testing and troubleshooting, i realized that the landing strut i had used as an aesthetic part was extended,  and so when i decoupled the tower the strut would act as a landing leg cannon, catapulting the command pod into the rest of the rocket.  This is something that i have had trouble with for the past week, and has lead to the rebuild of the command pod fairing twice.  Needless to say, it was a quick fix once i figured it out...

  7WwvSIJ.jpg

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6 hours ago, Tapeta said:

Only a simple airplane which is filled with new BG robotic parts.

They can produce a lot of drag and because of that I hide all of them inside of fairings.

 

That looks ideal for a carrier-deployed CAS craft.

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I was a little busy today, but I did manage my second Mun landing in my new career, which let Val catch up with Jeb on accomplishments.  Now that I've managed to upgrade the VAB, I can build my 2-part lander with the lower stage that stays behind as a science station.

oOALpQi.png?1

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10 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

High, because of those cubic struts, especially on the bigger ones. 

If you want to lower the part count you can adjust the max part offset in the configs and just offset the blades to where they are and pretend the struts are there. I don't want to do that because of aesthetics (and my computer can handle the part count no problem).

I didn't find any other parts of comparable lightness that I could use for the purpose. I-beams can be used to make rotors but they're really heavy and make for a rough and inefficient ride; wing components are too big. If you have any suggestions...?

Well, I was thinking of telescoping cylinders. I think my previous design used the largest size ones, in an attempt to have a compact helicopter with a wide rotor diameter

Spoiler

K0iMjrO.png

I didn't realize how heavy those are, I think I'll try today with the smallest telescoping cylinder (from 0.3 tons to 0.05, so for 4 of them that saves 1 ton), and the large control surfaces like you use. I was also thinking that maybe part of the reason it flies so poorly is the shifting CoL (when moving forward, the advancing blades will generate much more lift than the retreating blades, and the center of lift will shift a lot as they go through their cycle). So I think I'll switch to a 4 blade rotor for the top and bottom. I guess I can change the rotational servos (something has to be mounted on a node at the end of the telescoping poles for them to work to extend the rotor blade) for a cubic strut.

Since I'm still aiming at a practical compact helicopter that I can pack into a mk3 cargobay for long range transport, the 4 blade prop thing is a bit of a problem... I'm thinking 2 inline rotational servos, so the blades can all be in one line, then the two servos each rotate 90 degrees to make 2x 4 blade rotors.

As I figure it, it will be 28 parts for the rotor assembly.

2 rotational servos - 2 parts

1 standard rotor (powered) -3

1 small rotor (unpowered) - (I may change this to 2x powered standard rotors, we'll see) -4

8x small telescoping cylinders( I may try the even smaller non-telescoping ones, we'll see) -12

8x cubic struts -20

8x FAT-455 control surfaces, or some other lift surface (The FAT ones are 0.17 tons for 0.86 "lift", D/E type connectors are 0.05 tons for 0.5 "lift") -28

I'd like the entire craft to be around 50 parts or less, since it would be docked with a larger craft with a mk3 cargobay for long range transport, likely launched at the same time, likely by a resuable system that is about 150 parts (for a 3x rescale, once kopernicus updates)... so getting it to orbit will be taxing on part count.

Spoiler

as for the rest of the craft, I'm thinking

4 wheels/landing legs -32 parts

1 cockpit- 33

at least 1 reaction wheel -34

at least 1 battery- 35

at least 2 oxstat panels or 1 fuel cell+tank -37

1 docking port -38

1 storage container -39

mat bay, goo, press, temp, seismic, grav, atmo, rover arm: 47

3 parts left to help make it functional, and come in under a 50 part limit

but I'm not sure I can get the performance I want in order for it to be competitive with a good, stable rover that can cross the ground at relatively high speeds....

Of course on my mod planet Rald, a rover would have a lot of trouble around the region corresponding to vallis marinaris, and it would have to be made amphibious to reach the various islands.

I'm not sure which would be better for exploring the volcanic caulderas... they are quite steep, but the air is also quite thin.. maybe that's a job for rocket VTOLs.

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With the Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation over, Bob's still yearning to climb every mountain, drive up every river. So he's being set up as a travel agent.

In preparation for this he's got a new ride, plus a transporter to take it to those far flung, exotic locations that tourists demand.

AbAGAS2.jpg

Gz4COqd.jpg

neZ1vfM.jpg

3WNMxl1.jpg

 

 

 

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That's a very cool project @KerikBalm, please keep us updated.

My initial reaction is that if you're adding servos to the rotor powertrain assembly you're likely to end up with a less stable rotor -> more wobble, i.e. any stability you gain from a four-blade rotor will likely be canceled out by the wobble from the extra rotational servos. You never know until you try it though, if it works it'll look insanely cool when it unfolds. I think adding hinges to the bases of the rotor blades would solve this problem as they're out of the stack and symmetrical, and won't be doing anything when the blades spin.

I would first try with higher RPM however. A lighter rotor will aid with this. You can also make it lower diameter or more powerful or attempt to make the powertrain more solid in other ways. That's a very small chopper however, so here's what I'd try first:

(0) Add collective control: that will let you fully spin up the rotor before taking off, and also tremendously improve hover control.

(1) Make a lighter, slightly lower-diameter rotor. Try extending the FAT flaps with three or four cubic struts each; that won't yet completely blow up your parts budget. (You could also try other control surfaces, I haven't really experimented enough with them).

(2) Use a powertrain with a freewheeling flat rotational servo below, and a standard motor above, with the rotor blades clipped to the top and bottom half of the motor. (The flat rotational servo makes for the best freewheel, it's less wobbly than the motor.) This will make the stack lower and more rigid and I think a single standard motor ought to provide plenty of power for such a small chopper.

Part count for the powertrain would be 1 flat rotation servo (freewheel), 1 standard rotor (power), 12 cubic struts (4 x 3), 4 FAT control surfaces, 4 small rotational servos for collective = 22.

If this didn't work, then add two more blades to each rotor, with the lightest hinge at the base to fold/unfold them. 

Diagram of powertrain:

---o[+++]o---
---o[===]o---

Legend:

--- Rotor blade built from cubic struts and control surfaces
o Small rotational servo (+/- 20 degrees, collective control, target angle bound to up/down axis, reversed for contra-rotating rotor)
[+++] Standard rotor (torque bound to forward/back axis)
[===] Larger flat rotational servo (freewheeling)

 

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1 hour ago, KnutG said:

Tripod... :0.0:

Does it really walk? Maintaining balance on that Martian monster has to be difficult...!

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