EpicSpaceTroll139

After modifying the descent stage of my lander to accommodate the new leg design, I found that it was still having some problems. But now I've finally figured out what's been causing my problems all along. Struts (and possibly fuel lines) apparently have a collision mesh on their root end. Who knew? So either I'm going to have to figure out a way to turn around the struts on my leg (not likely since they need something for the other end to attach to anyways), or I need to adjust them so they don't contact the other struts or sides of the descent stage (will probably compromise looks somewhat, ah well). Anyways, I took a bit of a break from that to do some work on a new variant of my E-50, the E-50B. Changes include a vertically aligned rotor system, and a pair of wheesley forward motion jets. It has demonstrated a cruise speed of 120m/s, which is more than twice that of the E-50A, allowing transit times to the island of about 7&1/2 minutes. However, it is currently proving to be no more reliable than my Helene prototype (speaking of which, I'm going to remove that from KerbalX, it's a deathtrap, and I don't have any idea how to fix it). At certain speeds, various factors seem to result in pitch instability, or at least make it prone to pilot induced oscillations. This, combined with the fact that the rotors will self destruct when subjected to hard maneuvers, means it is often just one mistake away from falling out of the sky. There's also a weird roll-right tendency noticeable at high speed, and hard to counteract at high power (wet mode). I'm a bit perplexed, as the coaxial rotor system should cancel out any disymmetry of lift. My current hypothesis is that the draggier multiple-part turbine of the upper, counterclockwise spinning rotor results in it spinning slightly slower. Anyways, @klond the airbrake actuator reminded me that, while I haven't tested it yet, I have a concept in my head that might solve the problem of blade pitch on stock tilt-rotors. The idea is to attach the blades to the hub using some kind of elastomeric twist bearing (for KSP just some kind of part arrangement that has some give in the joints when subjected to torsion), with the blades being attached so that their default position is cruise pitch. The blade is set so that most of it kind of trails behind the bearing a bit. Like this: ___/||||||||||||||||||||||||||/ When trying to hover, the forces on the blade will be enough to twist the bearing so the pitch decreases to 5 degrees or so. As speed increases, the forces on the blade decrease and the blades move back towards their default position. This would probably only be viable on large prop-rotors though

^ugh mobile North American XB-70 Valkyrie?

Well, that was kind of my point haha. I haven't seen so many pictures in a post located outside a spoiler box.

This has got to be some kind of record post length lol.

Apparently the sideways docking port decouple force is enough to knock the legs out of alignment on my lander, making them near impossible to lock into position. Or well, it did that if I only decoupled one leg at a time. If I did them all at once, it was enough to completely bust the legs out of the hinge. So, I redesigned them with the docking ports facing radially, which while meaning I have to be more careful about keeping them from hitting other components inside the descent stage (mainly the fuel tanks and a balance weight), should mean that the decouple forces won't work to wrench the legs sideways. It should also conveniently bounce the legs out into the deployed position. I also replaced the strut that went the length of the leg itself with a fuel pipe to give it the thick, insulation wrapped look (sort of), and I'm considering replacing the ones that form the upside-down Vs on the leg mounts too. At this moment I realized I had made a careless mistake while building. I had built the leg such that its parts connected to the lower port, and the lander connected to the upper port. Thus, it docks in the retracted position, instead of extended. Not very useful for landing! Oops... Ah well, shouldn't be take very long to fix. With any luck, the legs will be working tonight. Edit: turns out there's not quite enough space in there for the new docking port arrangement, so I'm going to either have to figure out how to make the earlier arrangement work, or replace the fuel tanks and the RCS plume deflectors that are attached to them.

The antenna-thermo and antenna-solar bearings mentioned by @Majorjim! and I above are very lightweight and have virtually zero friction. Or are you looking for other bearings that keep the rotor as part of the ship?

Basic Turboshaft E-50A Triton This rotor and heli demonstrate the virtually frictionless, reasonably durable, and exceptionally lightweight antenna-solar panel bearing, which was originally based off Majorjim's antenna-solar bearing. These bearings are used in pairs, with each consisting of a disk of static solar panels (attached to the heli) with a small hole in the middle in which a communitron 16 antenna (attached to the rotor) spins freely. In the E-50 one of the bearings can be seen to be replaced with an experimental lower part count bearing which uses 4 octagonal struts instead of a disk of solar panels.

I figured I could improve my LM's legs mechanism by swapping out the RCS ball joints for axial antenna hinges. All seemed well until I reloaded it this morning to continue work. I needed to move the legs out away from the lander to do some work on them and the descent stage internals, so I did so like I had numerous times before. It was then that I found that the game had decided to reconnect many of my carefully placed struts. Most importantly, it reconnected several which led to the thermometer parts of the bearing, instead attaching them to the moving antenna part of the bearing, so they disconnect as soon as the legs are released. It should be noted that connecting the struts was not a simple task due to the fact that both they the parts they connect to must be moved only in a certain order and manner and the undo button must be completely avoided otherwise they all disconnect. They were the hardest part of this lander to replicate. This sums up my reaction pretty well:

https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/77I--Offshore-Mining-Platform-v10 Edit: ninja'ed

I believe the specific contraption Rune was referring to doesn't even involve any bearings. It's just a whole bunch of trusses connected end to end forming a structure that looks kind of like a spring, and stretches down to the seabed under its own weight. One would be hard pressed to come up with a simpler solution

Thanks! Indeed I have tested the ascent stage, and though I had tried to balance it in the VAB (I had to resort to sticking small ore tanks in the back), it did have a slight unbalance. I think I've fixed it though. I still need to test descent and landing, though I don't expect very much trouble from that. I might squish some science doodads in there. On the rover: possible, but highly unlikely. If I manage to trim down the part count on the lander by a lot, I might consider attempting a rover, but otherwise probably not (Nobody Most people won't want to play with a super high part count monstrosity). If I do, I'll probably have to redo a fair bit of the descent stage to make room.

My Lunar Module is just about finished. I just need to refine the landing leg deployment mechanism, and set the legs up in the folded position ,(and perhaps refine the look of the ladder, it looks weird and floaty right now). Problem is that the lander is just over 300 parts... I might have to go through and find ways to reduce part count before integrating it with everything else. Side note: I've been designing the thing without reaction wheels, so the thrusters are used for attitude control as well as translation, like IRL. The solar panels don't work either (still wish I could paint them though).

Yah, I've noticed the ascent stage appears a bit small compared to the descent stage. I need to recheck the descent stage dimensions. I might have made it slightly too tall. Yes, I do intend to have one that opens like the real thing. I'm just hoping that with all the experience I've had with hinges so far, it might be relatively easy to make what amounts to four large, rounded doors... Of course now that I've said this I'm doomed to spend a week trying to get them to not explode on opening. Anyways...

The Apollo LM really does not lend itself easily to replication in stock. I imagine this is probably going to hardest part of this whole project. Everything else is just cylinders, cones, and of course, rocket engines.

Big rocket is big (It is pretty much just an empty tube at this point, this is in no way representative of the final product other than indicating size)

I finally got my Heli working at speed, tuned it, and released it. Now that that's done with (other than perhaps some small upgrades I have in mind) I need to figure out what my next project will be. I'm thinking a replica. There's that partially built CH-53E sitting in my hanger, but I think I should take at least a short break from helicopters because otherwise I'm going to get burned out. So that leaves some options. I could start work on building a 727, 757, 767, or 777, since I laid out their spacial dimension frames. Or I could start work on some other fighter jets, perhaps a Saab Grippen, Eurofighter Typhoon, or Sukhoi 27. Or, there's this thing I found in an older save. Apparently I started work on an Apollo replica once, and never really made more than an unfinished command module and the descent stage of the LM - the landing legs (I wonder if I can make ones that look like the real deal using RCS ball joints and antenna tubes and stuff). I'm kind of inclined to try and work on this thing, because... Gosh... I haven't gone to space in like a month or two.

So, while peering inside the housing of my helicopter during a flight, I noticed that the engine mount was jerking up and down at random intervals. I theorized that there was simply too much stress being put on the mount, so I reattached the pins that held the rotors on to the main fuselage. Voila! No more jitters, and it became much more reliable while carrying a load on the hook. However, I still had problems with flight above 30m/s. Befuddled, I tried removing the motor housing to see inside clearly. And then...

I tried designing a turboshaft powered car. A lack of round, highly impact tolerant parts usable as wheels has caused problems. I've also been continuing work on my general purpose heli. It is slowly improving in reliability. In plain configuration it has nearly perfect reliability in hover and low speed flight. Get it over 30m/s though and all bets are off. It's weird. I can have it held in a cruise by KOS going toward the island at 35m/s, and it will be fine for like 10 minutes, and then without any warning: *BANG* Something(s) (I suspect the lower turbine is the first part to go) inside the engine comes dislodged and hurls itself; through the side of the housing (usually resulting in all blowers becoming detached). In doing so it pulls the lower rotor out of alignment, completely shattering it, and partially or completely breaking the top rotor. Then of course the heli falls to the ground/sea. Anyways, I also tried adding a hook with a toggleable lock to hang loads from. It seemed like a perfectly good idea, and even appeared to work fine during the beginning of a test. However I've been left scratching my head as it seems to somehow massively compromise the reliability of the engine/rotor assembly. Even suspending a featherweight 0.5 ton load from the hook prevented me from flying it for it for much more than 2 minutes before it came tumbling from the sky.

Maybe a curved strip of structural plates going around the turbine with the final plate dipping ever so slightly inside the radius of the turbine.* When turning the right direction, the turbine blades would just push the structural plate out and away, allowed by the springyness of the strip. When it tries to turn back however, the blade will be unable to move the plate due to the angle at which they meet. *Imagine it like an @ symbol, with the thing in the middle being the turbine and the spiral thingy around the outside being the strip. The final plate wouldn't dip in so sharply however Edit: I've modified the revolver with the mechanism I described, and so far I've gotten it to fire 5 of the 6 shots. I need to do some tweaking to make it more reliable and get that last shot.

The calculation is a simple unit conversion doable by simply googling it since caliber (as far as I understand) is just the diameter of the inside of the barrel or the diameter of the projectile measured in inches (it can be measured in metric ofc but then you don't put cal after it). Anyways, if you go by the "bullet" I think it's about 24 cal, if you go by the inside of the barrel tho it's more like 45 cal.

Nice work! I wonder if a kind of ratchet mechanism could be integrated with the incrementor mechanism at the back to allow the elimination of the stopper gear... I'll have to test it when I get home. Edit: The above may not be possible, I think I misinterpreted how it works.

While I do think my turboshafts are reasonably efficient, I think most of the endurance is because I packed 3625 units of liquid-fuel in there. Anyways, refinement of the rotor system has lead to this: It actually hovers at about 63% throttle, but I think my endurance estimate is still reasonably accurate. Now all that's left to do is tilt the rotors and do some modifications for aesthetics (it looks silly with the engines on tiny struts). Edit: It seems I accidentally touched something in the rotor assembly and now it won't stop breaking UGH!

^bad mobile compatibility strikes again Anyways, I've been working on that general purpose helicopter I showed earlier. It now uses coaxial rotors. I need to work a bit more on the assembly to make it more compact and less ugly, but mechanically the rotors are working OK. So far it has about 2½ hours of endurance hovering at 68% throttle (at least at the begining, that probably goes down as fuel burns off).. It's not very fast at the moment, but once I get the rotor assembly into a more compact form, I plan to tilt it forward a bit and add some larger tail surfaces to help it cruise efficiently at moderate speed (hoping for 50+m/s).