Winchester

Since this thread was reopened... After one too many incidents where I ran out of monopropellant with multiple kilometers per second of delta-V left in the tanks, I decided to make a version of the J RCS system that uses LFO instead. @stali79 helpfully packaged them up for everyone and added them to future releases of the Legacy Pack, and gave a download link over in the Showroom thread, which I'm pasting here as well: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qoe1vwfnlxkw89o/OPT_Legacy.rar?dl=0 The new parts store LFO instead of Monoprop as well, and give a bit more of a kick than the old ones. Also, was there a separate Fuel Switcher config for the Legacy Pack for download somewhere? I noticed that a bunch of the Legacy parts (specifically the Humpback, as that's the one I was playing around with) didn't have any fuel, and while I made a temporary fix for myself, it's not that great and I'd appreciate if someone had a better version.

Thanks a bunch. I'm assuming that goes in future releases of the Legacy pack? TweakScale is fun, this thing uses two J-81 and two J-92 engines, both scaled up to 150%, and it could probably have taken off vertically - it hit mach one before the end of the runway and made it to 100 km orbit with 6 km/s delta-V left. Conversely, the Dark Drive is near useless if scaled down, there's no way you're going to space on 1.25 meter Dark Drives. If anyone has any tips for how to prevent departures from controlled flight above 40 km (high enough that the plane is going to space regardless, so MechJeb usually sorts it out, but I'm not sure you could correct for it manually) I'd be grateful for them.

One of my favorite mods (OPT Space Plane Parts) allows you to fairly easily build single-stage-to-anywhere craft with ginormous amounts of delta-V, but mine tend to run out of Monopropellant rather quickly, so I figured why not make use of all that LFO for reaction control as well? I made some quick alternate parts that use the same models but are set up to use LFO instead of monopropellant, and they work fine, but what I really want is to set up the parts so I can switch between different modes during the construction phase to reduce the number parts to sort through. What's the easiest way to go about doing something like this? Are there any mods out there with something similar already that I can have a look at to figure out the workings?

I don't know how to do that properly, I assume I need to add a path to the model name or something? Would appreciate it if you showed me how. Also, currently writing a post in mod development asking for how to go about making them switchable to reduce the parts count...

I finally got around to making the LFO-powered J-RCS, which I basically just renamed J-OMS instead. Drop the CFG files from this zip in your OPT/parts/main folder, and have a look: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70565045/KSP/opt_j_oms.zip Note that I made the thrusters more powerful than the old monoprop ones, you may want to tone them down and reduce the fuel rate instead to make them easier to control. Note that these are separate parts for now, I'll have to ask around for how to make a switchable version.

While I love the looks of the design, I can't help but think that the in-air boosters are complete overkill, seeing as one of the prototypes for the Simplex hauls sixteen passengers to 100 km with 8 km/s delta-V remaining with only two J-81 engines - if I let MechJeb do the flying. Your plane is substantially smaller, it really shouldn't need the extra oomph unless you've modded the engines, or you've overloaded on liquid fuel.

Well, I hope whoever is responsible for this (either the deletion itself or not adding the safety features to prevent it from happening) gets to spend a day at the office wearing an Aerodynamic Nose Cone with the word "dunce" on it. That seems like a suitably symbolic punishment.

As soon as I find a decent example to work from, I'll get cracking on that. Right now, working on rebuilding the Space Plane Orion properly, with all the features you'd want aside from the sixteen meter payload bay..

Remember how K.Yeon once posted this image to show us where he got his inspiration for OPT Space Plane Parts in the first place? [img]http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/to-aru-majutsu-no-index/images/0/04/OrionSpaceplane_leftwingFire.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130907104615[/img] Well... This happened: The one thing that's majorly off here are the canards, because the plane wouldn't pitch up without them, but if you couldn't guess from the 200% scale J-81 engines and the background, this thing has no problems getting into space. I'm not done testing or tweaking it, but I'd hazard a guess and say this thing would have little problem hauling a pair of Big Orange Tanks basically anywhere. Right now I'm still using K.Yeon's J-series RCS units, but I'm thinking of switching to LFO-powered RCS thrusters instead, either by using parts from another mod or by rewriting a custom CFG for the RCS parts. Not sure right now.

Edit: Oops, posted this in the wrong thread.. Some more wishlist items I came up with while experimenting a bit: See what I did here with clipping a pair of J fuselages into the K body section to widen it? I would dearly like to see a "half J" type fuselage (or maybe even half "Stail") that'd snap right on to the side instead of having to be stuck through the wall of the center fuselage and preventing it from being used for cargo. Aside from being useful for widening the K body, since the K body itself is based on the Mk2 fuselage, it'd work with anything else of that side as well, including the Mk2 itself, the old-K (Avatar) fuselage, the Humpback/"L" fuselage, and anything designed to interact with the J fuselage from the sides, like the future E fuselage. Another item that came up as a "I really wish I had one of these right now" is a J to 3.75 meter adapter, as it would let me do things like attach a Dark Drive to the back of a J spaceplane or engine nacelle, or the J-series Linear Aerospike to the back of a Mk3 plane...

Gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Simplex series of medium SSTO transports! The baseline of the Simplex series is the Simplex C cargo transport, which seats four crew and eight passengers, and can haul a 36 ton payload into Kerbostationary orbit and then some. It is powered by four J-81 'S3B1ZzR' dual-mode engines, and weighs in at just under 100 tons fueled but unloaded. Next up is the Simplex P personnel transport, which seats the same four crew, but trades the cargo bays for sixteen extra passenger seats, for a total of 24. Perfect for moving everyone to your interstellar exploration vessel. The final version (for now) is the Simplex S surveyor/science transport, which trades the cargo modules for a mobile lab and a service bay. I haven't flown this myself yet, but it balances the same as the Siimplex P or the unladen Simplex C. The idea behind these was to have a common tail-and-wing section, and a ready-made nose section, so I could basically just switch out the middle bits for whatever I need and still make orbit without having to worry about it. Since the wings are rooted to the fuel tank behind the payload modules, I can just lift that whole section and install it wherever I want, and the same mostly goes for the forward section. The front and rear sections are balanced so that the center of gravity only moves about a meter depending on whether you have two completely empty payload modules, or two fully loaded ones complete with a Fanta Can, The J-81 engines are *hilariously* overpowered, and even the fully loaded cargo version will reach orbital velocity below 25 km altitude while Mechjeb is flying, which leads to a fair bit of wobble during the "coasting out of atmosphere" stage. Consider using MechJeb's "limit Q" function (90000 pa works, don't know how high you can push it though), Re-entry was also a breeze, and there's enough fuel to resume powered flight once you're back in the atmosphere. Now I just need to figure out how to work the autopilot properly.. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70565045/KSP/Simplex.zip All three craft in one zip file. Required mods: OPT Space Plane Parts 1.9.2, OPT Legacy Pack (whichever version we're on now), MechJeb 2.6.0.

I did some testing, and it looks like you can switch the front fuel tank back to a cargo bay if you drop the fuel in the tail parts, which given the insane amount of Delta-V this thing has to start with should still be fairly OK . The bad part is that once you take out *all* the fuel, this beast becomes a tailsitter no matter which configuration it's in. You need at least the forward J/k connector full of fuel for the plane to be stable. The good news is you can switch out the K 6-meter tank for a cargo bay, remove the fuel in the tail pieces, and disable fuel feed from the J/K connector and still have 20.9 km/s atmospheric delta-V, and 6.8 km/s space Delta-V. with no payload. With 100 tons of payload, MechJeb reports 14 km/s atmospheric and 4.2 km/s space Delta-V, which should be enough for any orbital lifting imaginable..

Glad you liked it! Now let's hope it loads and flies for me too, because all of a sudden explosions everywhere, even with the stuff that worked before...:(

There's autostrutting? "..." BRB, need to bang my head against a wall for a bit...

The RCS blocks (same ones you used on the Nations Thunder) and the 2.5 meter fuel tanks right in front of the J-92 engines, since they fit well with the Mk2-to-2.5 meter adapter (uses same texture). Could probably have used a stock LFO tank instead, but it wouldn't have looked as good.

I never touch them, but maybe I should? Yaw stability appears to be a little troublesome near the edge of space as well, lots of correcting right at the end of the ascent for some reason. Anyway, I give you the Hercules Mk1: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70565045/KSP/Hercules Mk1.craft Get this thing off the runway in one piece, and it'll get you into a 100 km Kerbin orbit with a 100 ton payload and 8 km/s vacuum Delta-V to spare. Drop the payload in orbit, and you've got 12 km/s Delta-V left. I have no idea how well it lands, as I never get that far, but it *should* work. The craft file is without the payload as it required Tweakscale, and without the MechJeb case, and requires OPT Space Plane Parts 1.9.2, OPT Legacy Pack (whichever version is the current one), and SXT (again, whichever version is the current one). I didn't upload it to KerbalX because I'd very much like it if someone with more skill than me would work some magic on the struts so they're not quite as visible, and test how well it lands since I never really get that far.

Ventral cargo bays are harder to load while you're in the hangar, and there a bunch of reasons why all the RL designs have dorsal cargo bays. Anyway, *nothing* wants to stay straight on my runway for some reason, and I can't figure out why - it's not a problem with your ship, it's a problem with KSP. I don't even think it's a problem with a mod, either, because I have trouble keeping stock spaceplanes in stock 1.2.2 on the runway right now. Babying them into the air is required.

Oh wow, was this hilariously easy to get into orbit or what? I made some changes (basically, I flipped the cargo bays the right side up and put some solar panels on it since the power supplies in the cargo bay were in the way), added an AR-202, stuck a Big Orange Tank with some bits to make it a satellite in there, and let MechJeb take me to a 250 km orbit - with 75-80% fuel remaining in the craft. The hardest part was keeping it straight on the runway, which appears to be problematic for any spaceplane right now. Now I just have to figure out how to get down...

Quick question: Some mod or other installed this as a dependency, but KSP complains about versioning during startup ("please use 1.2"). Is the mod actually compatible with 1.2.2, and only in need of a cfg edit to get it to stop complaining (if so, which cfg and what do I change), or not? And if so, can we get an actual update? Cheers!

You've lost me. How is FilterExtensions a dependency if custom bulkheadProfiles work fine in stock, other than having no icon of their own? And also, how is Size 2 "close to the right size" for S2 Wide? Also, the switch is incomplete since the HX parts still do have their own cross sections...

Is there a reason why all the S2 and S2 Wide parts in the pre-release pack only have "size2" and "srf" listed as "bulkheadProfiles"? It gets kind of difficult to find the parts you want like that, especially since most those parts *aren't* actually size2 (2.5 meters) and shouldn't be listed among the rocket parts... I did some testing earlier for OPT Space Planes and it looks like the filters (both stock and FilterExtensions, though you'll need to add an entry in the CFG for the latter) will handle bulkheadProfiles names with spaces in them, so I'm thinking about doing the same thing I did for OPT, and add "B9 S2" and "B9 S2W" as appropriate to all the parts, write a patch for the FilterExtensions CFG, and zip up and post the whole thing. Would be a little more complicated than for OPT since the B9 parts aren't in one big folder though... Edit: Also, I know the old MK2 parts are named that because they always have been, but given that the stock Mk2 is the same as B9s Mk2b, wouldn't it easier to just roll with it and use a different bulkheadProfile for the older MK2 parts so they sort separately?

Two things: First off, the next version of OPT will be changing the bulkheadProfiles values (again...) to "OPT I", "OPT J" and "OPT K" in order to un-break the stock cross-section filters (which currently drop every part with a lower case "i" in the "i" folder, and every part with a lower case "k" in the the "k" folder. This includes all variations of "size?" and "mk?", which is annoying as all get out...) I've tested the change with FilterExtensions, and it looks like all that's needed is to add these values to the filter lists in SubCategories_Bulkheads.cfg (yes it works even with the spaces, it's like the manufacturer value only can't add your own icon in stock for them for some reason.) Second, didn't this mod use to support B9? or was it B9 that stopped supporting this mod? Looking at the B9 CFGs it seems like it might be the latter, but ISTR there being icons for some of B9s custom profiles earlier in the thread somewhere.

The Mk2 angle parts (the 10 degree and 22.5 degree Mk2 fuselage pieces) currently only attach on one end and on the sides, making them rather useless. I imagine it's a node issue in the cfg file, but I don't know how those things work yet so I can't propose a fix. Also, are you making parts for this or just keeping it working?

The windows on the 1.25 m Mk 1 crew tank would look ridiculously huge if you just scaled it up to 2.5 meters, though the fuel tank and structural fuselage might work. I could probably technically model a 2.5 meter crew tank myself, but I am absolutely pants at texturing, which is why I'm looking for recommendations for finished parts. I know they exist, I've seen them in pictures posted here and there, but the pictures didn't come with a mod list so I could figure out which mods to download.

Does anyone have a list of mod recommendations for players wanting to build 2.5 meter cross-section space planes laying around? OPT Space Plane Parts, which I've been a huge fan of for some time and which everyone should at least have a look at, comes with parts for four different fuselage cross sections - Mk2, 2.5 meter, and its own OPT J-series and OPT K-series. Cockpits and tail sections are available for all of the above in the mod, but while stock KSP contains decent fuselage bits for Mk2, and OPT Space Plane Parts contains everything you can imagine for the large OPT J and K series cross sections, the cockpits (multiple!) and tail section is all the mod offers for 2.5 meters, and stock KSP does *not* have anything you could use to make a nice looking space plane that'd fit in between. And I don't really want to bug the author too much about making more parts when his muse is occupied making other wonderful parts. So, what kind of options are there for decent-looking 2.5 meter plane fuselages? I suppose procedural fuel tanks would work for structural fuselage bits and fuel tankage, but what about passenger- and cargo sections?