totm june 2018 Work-in-Progress [WIP] Design Thread

[Servo]

1 hour ago, HB Stratos said:

Remaking my X-31.
gear doors are now on but not in the pics...
(and yes the side panesl are deployable radiators because of low drag and no lift(new inovation?))

I would love to heat what you think about it.

Looking good - the radiators are a neat idea. I've been messing around with ideas for fuselage parts that won't screw up my aerodynamics royally. I've settled on landing gear and air intakes (despite the small amount of lift, it's much less than radiators or wings, even when accounting for differences in area).

This was part of an experiment I ran to compare radial air intakes, radiator panels, and wing parts. After modifying the design with SAS + fins to stabilize them, I compared the heights each one reached. Four radiators was roughly equivalent to ten intakes in altitude, and the wing panels had significantly more drag.

I accounted for that in my design for the rest of the Raptor. I minimized the number of wing parts angled to the air flow, and used lower drag parts (solar panels, air intakes, landing gear) to form the shapes angled to the flow. As a result, this Raptor can reach 330m/s at sea level, and likely will be able to punch through mach 1 at altitude.

Unfortunately, as a side effect of having so many rotated wing panels (fuselage sides, tail, nose), it is hideously unstable in the yaw axis. Prograde hold is necessary when flying it, and using as little yaw control as possible is recommended.

[Castille7]

Working on another Lighthouse and the Sun happen to be right here at the time of structural testing

 

[Triop]

On 7/25/2018 at 4:17 AM, prgmTrouble said:

PFFFFFFT! What is this blasphemy!

Also, I seem to recall a certain 

for no reason at all...

Spoiler

 

[Mignear]

10 hours ago, HB Stratos said:

 

Remaking my X-31.
gear doors are now on but not in the pics...
(and yes the side panesl are deployable radiators because of low drag and no lift(new inovation?))

I would love to heat what you think about it.

The use of radiators is pretty good. They work pretty well as well and if you have to you can use them to cool the plane down after landing if its hot for whatever reason.

[EvenFlow]

 

Remade my Su-27S and made some extra variants while I was at it.

And the fact that the Su-33 is a bit more than a Su-27S with canards and a tailhook was also taken into consideration so there's plenty of nice extra details.

Edited July 26, 2018 by EvenFlow

[Kronus_Aerospace]

I have had a growing fascination with Sukhoi aircraft as of late. My skills with fighter craft have yet to grow to the point where I'd be able to make a replica, so instead I started work on an original Sukhoi "inspired" aircraft.

So far the craft is turning out well and is stil under 100 parts, granted it has a pretty simplistic design, but I'm happy with that none the less.

The craft is basically an amalgamation of various elements from different Sukhoi aircraft, making the craft more of a vessel to experiment with this type of design than anything else.

This craft is also quite interesting in that the CoL is in front of the CoM and as one would expect it flips out quite easily, but it always stabilizes itself very quickly. Considering that most of my aircraft that have the CoL behind the CoM do not recover nearly as easily, that makes me think that there is some kind of funny business going on with this craft's aerodynamics.  

[prgmTrouble]

5 minutes ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

This craft is also quite interesting in that the CoL is in front of the CoM and as one would expect it flips out quite easily, but it always stabilizes itself very quickly. Considering that most of my aircraft that have the CoL behind the CoM do not recover nearly as easily, that makes me think that there is some kind of funny business going on with this craft's aerodynamics.  

I've intentionally placed the COL in front of the COM in order to neutralize torque caused by off-center engines. Does it have the same stabilizing effect when the engines are off and the craft is moving at high speed?

If it's not the engines, my best guess is that the fairings "subtract" a substantial amount of drag, causing the front of the craft to naturally counteract the COL-COM disparity. 

One more thing: I noticed that you used landing gear on the tail. I think that you might be a little more satisfied using the retractable ladders since they are one larger piece. Great work so far!

[Kronus_Aerospace]

@prgmTrouble

Upon checking everything out I was able to figure it out, the engine torque doesn't have that much of an effect in the craft's stabilization.

The culprit would seem to be the front section, the fairing gives it very low drag, due to the higher drag of the lower rear section this creates a downwards torque. Also, the fairing itself is angled downwards causing it to generate a decent bit of downwards body lift. Altogether pushing the nose down, this combined with the craft's good yaw stability causes it to naturally stabilize.

I like it when you get pretty complex aerodynamics like this in KSP, crazy to think it all happened by accident.

[prgmTrouble]

4 hours ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

The culprit would seem to be the front section, the fairing gives it very low drag, due to the higher drag of the lower rear section this creates a downwards torque. Also, the fairing itself is angled downwards causing it to generate a decent bit of downwards body lift. Altogether pushing the nose down, this combined with the craft's good yaw stability causes it to naturally stabilize.

Very fascinating...

I might do some experiments on fairings and the intakes and see how much of a difference there is (especially with varied faring shapes). We'll see just how many different ways we can exploit this phenomenon...

[EvenFlow]

On 7/25/2018 at 11:21 PM, Servo said:

Looking good - the radiators are a neat idea. I've been messing around with ideas for fuselage parts that won't screw up my aerodynamics royally. I've settled on landing gear and air intakes (despite the small amount of lift, it's much less than radiators or wings, even when accounting for differences in area).

This was part of an experiment I ran to compare radial air intakes, radiator panels, and wing parts. After modifying the design with SAS + fins to stabilize them, I compared the heights each one reached. Four radiators was roughly equivalent to ten intakes in altitude, and the wing panels had significantly more drag.

I accounted for that in my design for the rest of the Raptor. I minimized the number of wing parts angled to the air flow, and used lower drag parts (solar panels, air intakes, landing gear) to form the shapes angled to the flow. As a result, this Raptor can reach 330m/s at sea level, and likely will be able to punch through mach 1 at altitude.

Unfortunately, as a side effect of having so many rotated wing panels (fuselage sides, tail, nose), it is hideously unstable in the yaw axis. Prograde hold is necessary when flying it, and using as little yaw control as possible is recommended.

I've dealt with a similar issue with my Tomcat a while ago, just try to stick some extra wing surfaces into the rear part of the airframe, this should stabilize it significantly. The main issue are the wing panels used in the nose since they are far away from the CoM and thus induce high torque at relatively low AoAs.

[Mignear]

A good start I guess

[Servo]

18 hours ago, EvenFlow said:

I've dealt with a similar issue with my Tomcat a while ago, just try to stick some extra wing surfaces into the rear part of the airframe, this should stabilize it significantly. The main issue are the wing panels used in the nose since they are far away from the CoM and thus induce high torque at relatively low AoAs.

Thanks for the suggestion - good to hear I was on the right path there. The problem was fixed by adding a fuel tank in the nose to shift the COM forwards a bit more. As a convenient side effect, that allowed me to remove the wing panels I had clipped into the rear fuselage, upping the top speed from 300m/s to 320m/s.

Now that it is yaw-stable, I decided that it was good enough to be released. Camera Tools really allows for some wonderful screenshots.

I also created a version without the decorative engines. That knocked 50 parts off the total, and allowed me to enable thrust vectoring again. The 'F-22 lite' is now more maneuverable than the regular version and has an even better top speed of 370m/s at 5km. That's the second best performance I've gotten out of a 1:1 craft (after my Rafale), off of only 6 panthers.

[prgmTrouble]

34 minutes ago, Servo said:

only 6 panthers

That's the spirit!

[ghostbuzzer7]

I took a stab at using fairing pieces to make the fuselage of a fighter jet to add that extra smoothness. It's a tough technique to master but the results were great minus fixing the CoM and CoL. 1200 m/s in the upper atmosphere.

 

[Servo]

I've been toying with the idea of making more cinematics soon, and I figured that if @EvenFlow can make a carrier, why can't I? So I filled the SPH with fuel tanks and used vesselMover to drop the "Flat top I" into the ocean just off the runway. It clocks in at just over 100m long, and while it's quite big, it's also really not.

A modified kerbal-scale F-15 ACTIVE replica was cooked up and drogue chutes + airbrakes allow it to land on the carrier (now christened the KSS Tombstone for its shape). Once the chutes are repacked, it's trivial to take off - 1.9TWR makes it rather easy.

Emboldened with the success of the Tombstone, I pushed the offset tool to its limits. Just over 400 parts and 250m long, this new ship (Flat Top II) earned the moniker "KSS Boulevard." 

Unfortunately, as soon as I approached within 250m, the Boulevard decided to dissociate...

Work on the shuttle continues as well, though it probably needs a near-complete redesign. It's stable up to the point of SRB burnout, at which point, the shuttle's engines don't have the gimbal required to keep the EFT + Orbiter stack under control. Additionally, the shuttle is extremely unstable on reentry, and easily enters an unrecoverable tailspin.

[KerbolExplorer]

Started working on the first dome for my ksp novel "Surviving Duna"

What you can see is a dinner,At the other side of it you see what is soupussed to be a farm to sustain food for the dome,thought that right now it looks horrible....

[Kronus_Aerospace]

Finally finished up the Sukhoi-esque fighter craft that I started awhile ago. I'm happy to say that it turned out pretty good.

The craft itself has a part count of about 270, which isn't exactly low, but it's conservative by my standards. However this part count is bumped up to 350 with the addition of 4 missiles.

The missiles are each powered by 8 seperatrons and are able to accellerate to beyond mach-2 before running out of fuel, they have an effective range of 3 kilometers.

The craft also ended up being very similar to the Su-30 in terms of general appearance, approximate size, and even weight. This was not intentional but I'm not complaining.

The final version also turned out to be significantly larger than I had anticipated.

Here's the craft compared to @Servo's F-22.

Despite its apparent bulk this craft is actually very maneuverable and extremely responsive.

EDIT:

The engines have been tilted downwards such that they are now inline with the CoM. Also due to various optimizations the craft is now a whole 3 tonnes lighter and is even more maneueverable.

Edited August 2, 2018 by Kronus_Aerospace

[Mignear]

On 8/3/2018 at 5:04 AM, Kronus_Aerospace said:

 

The missiles are each powered by 8 seperatrons and are able to accellerate to beyond mach-2 before running out of fuel, they have an effective range of 3 kilometers.

Here's the craft compared to @Servo

How are the missiles? Are they stable in flight or do they spin out of control?

[Kronus_Aerospace]

8 hours ago, Mignear said:

How are the missiles? Are they stable in flight or do they spin out of control?

They each have 1 reaction wheel, so if you have SAS active on the jet itself and launch a missile then the missile will  also have SAS active. The missiles are actually stable without SAS, but will arc downwards if it is not active.

[Castille7]

"LIGHTHOUSE POINT"
Update: 08.04.18

Working on this one between other projects

Edited August 4, 2018 by Castille7

[Mignear]

16 hours ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:

They each have 1 reaction wheel, so if you have SAS active on the jet itself and launch a missile then the missile will  also have SAS active. The missiles are actually stable without SAS, but will arc downwards if it is not active.

3km on separatrons is pretty impressive though. I assume you gave them RTGs to keep the reaction wheels powered.

My jet engine propelled missiles' ability to endlessly hound its target via SAS' target guidance was thanks to the jet engines' low fuel consumption, it does make for heavy missiles(and they are relatively inaccurate) unless I use the small jet engine(and mk0 fuel tanks) which limits the altitude it can be used, so I was looking into using rockets for small high altitude missiles.

 

[Mephisto81]

Time to build a little bigger again.
My last Grand Tour vessel had an empty weight of 62 t, Eve lander included. But somehow, building a bit bigger is also interesting.

WIP for a Tylo-Capable SSTO, which can bring some tons of payload to Tylo and up again.  Weight should be between 300t - 400t, preferably on the lower end of the scale.


This iteration was a bit front heavy and did not have enough dV for Tylo landings.

Next one is Tylo capable, but the design still needs some works.

Tested for 30t to LKO and Minmus with room to spare. Should be able to bring 10t payload to Tylo and up again. In each of the forward fairings is a Mk2 Command Pod for 2 Kerbals and 4 inflatable airlocks for a total of 12 Krew for a cost of roughly 5 tons.

We'll see, how it turns out.

Mephisto.
(Drag is king. But who are those drag queens?)

[Thor Wotansen]

Hm, seems I need to go to Making History parts SSTO school.

[EvenFlow]

Something big this way flies.

108m big.

[Mignear]

Test flight to see if this is able to land in the treacherous terrain of Mount Treacherous.


Answer? Nope.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Mignear