Daniel Prates

@Snark with 1000+ game hours I shoukd know if a craft is out of range or something like that. I see what is happening. Some versions ago I must have used some mod, maybe kerbalism or remote control, that demanded direct antennas for craft dialoguing with eachother, and in my mind I must have made a "note to self" marking that as a general, stock rule. You know how you sometimes you adopt a rule and it lingers on, after it becoming obsolete? Thanks for correcting me, I was adopting an unnecessary procedure without it noticing.

What I mean is, if my relay has a relay antenna but not a normal antenna, it will be uncontrollable, right? Even out of control it can still relay? You see I ask this, because ever since the new signals system came out years ago, I always placed both kinds of antennas on all relay craft and never really tried without both, in the understanding that craft-to-craft comms demanded both having direct antennas.

That has never crossed my mind @Snark. I always put both kinds in the relay craft, but that is because I always want to control it for whatever reason. Guess I just got used to that and never really tried just the relay antenna. If the relay is out of control, does it still function properly?

Your relay craft talks to the probe via a normal antenna, so your probe needs only a direct antenna but the relay craft needs both a direct antenna (to talk to the probe) and a relay antenna (to talk back to kerbin). And of course, all of them must be within range of eachother. There is a great mod, "antenna helper", that shows very easily the range of your current antenna setup. Worth a try.

Hey that is great! I use KER for years and have never noticed that!

That is what I mean. Maybe you guys don't think its all that awful, but in many situations I find the interface too cluttered to allow easy selecting and unselecting of targets. Specially so when your target is near other craft or bodies. A screen where you sort all available targets and select the one you want makes even more sense if you can also unselect a target with the mere clicking of a button in the very same GUI you already have oppened in front of your face. Selecting target bodies and unselecting them makes equal sense to me. Edit. I made similar comments in the targetron thread, with similar feedback, so apparently I am alone in this. Oh, well!

I know. Would be nice to do it clicking the same button you use to select a vessel though, specially if you already have the mod interface open in front of your face. What is your speedy method of unselecting a target, btw?

So I decided to try out the 1940s Northrop/Horten flying wing concept. I am not posting this on spacecraft exchange because it seems more like a generic airplane-design topic. Jack Northrop felt that the concept of a flying wing was sound because it eliminated parasitic drag from tail booms, tail empennage, engine nacelles etc. It would however create problems of its own regarding placement of CoL in regard to CoM, and control surfaces in regard of the CoM (its much more complicated than that, but summing up...). Already knowing how the Gotha/Horten and the YB-49 looked like, after some fiddling around I came up with this: The inner control surfaces are inactive. The middle ones are the ailerons (as with such long wings I do not need a lot to get good roll torque) and the outermost controls are the elevators. Being so close to the CoM, I needed the elevators to be as far back as possible, and the picture shows I could only get them so far back, which is not a lot: You may ask by looking at the picture above: why not sweep the wings farther to the back, so that the elevators actuate a little farther from the CoM, thus being more effective? Well, it turns out that it would result the CoM dislocating back a lot while the CoL dislocated only a little, making the plane an impossible design when near empty of fuel (notice the red center there, courtesy of RCS BUILD AID). When low on fuel, as it is, the CoM almost goes behind the CoL. So the sweep of the wing can only be that much. As a consequence, the main performance issue I found is that pitch is somewhat ineffective. For that matter: fuel tanks are behind the intakes, and in the center section - as far ahead as possible. Wings are not wet. If I place fuel tanks inside the wings, the CoM again dislocates way far to the rear and again the design is rendered impractical. A few more design features you can see in the picture above: a) TWR is around 0.87, good enough for a fast plane; b) I chose the engines I did because I wanted to couple speed with range and time aloft. Hence they couldn't be joyride engines but also couldn't be a punch through the wall like an X-15. In the end it was a medium/fast design choice, allowing for decent endurance - an interceptor design would have to aim at some other setup of course; c) you can see it has some 40 minutes of endurance, which of course depends on altitude (more on that later). With stronger engines that would be much, much lower, so I am happy with my choice; d) full weight is a bit over 10 tons, empty weight is closer to 4.4 tons, allowing for easy landings and low stall speeds; e) being not-that-heavy-really, but at the same time with such large wing area, you just know it floats like a balloon with just a little speed, so high cruise altitudes are to be expected. The main design feature arising from the lack of a rudder is that yaw is controlled by aerobrakes on both sides (I placed on top and below the wing to avoid it influencing the pitch). They double as speed-breaks: It turns out that yaw control is decent with that system. Roll control is excellent and pitch control is, well, good enough, kinda. But it allows a perfectly controllable plane in most situations, so that's that. Lets take it for a spin! Rotate is above 40m/s, which is not surprising given its large wing surface. Climb rate is also excellent: Speeds were quite bad at low altitudes. This design allows for eliminating useless drag, but it is not exactly low-drag either. I don't know if KSP is perfect when simulating this, but it was to be imagined that with such a thick wing my drag characteristics would result a poor performance at low altitudes - in this case, just below supersonic at 1000 meters at full throttle: HOWEVER, all that lift carries you very high where the air is much thinner, and at 11.000 meters I achieved no less than mach 3! It shows what a combination of 'lowish'-drag with high lift can achieve, specially with decent jet engines: Sorry, forgot to take a pic of that, but I actually took it as high as 18.000 meters. But by then it was nearly uncontrollable, specially the elevators, which were nearly useless. Endurance also fell a lot above 10.000 meters, due to the much thinner air affecting engine performance. So I wouldn't say the safe envelope is that high. Flying around 10.000 is where I got the most of it. Just some more vanity pics of the return flight and I'll wrap things up: My conclusions: 1 - It was hard to deviate from what Northrop and Horten already concluded on their own. All changes I did eventually lead to a worse of even impossible design. And it is no surprise my own thing came out looking so much like their own; 2 - Speed is great in higher altitudes, and terrible in lower altitudes. In my understanding this is because drag remains a bit high due to the large wings, so it is meant to be optimal as a high-flyer. A plane meant to do what a Panavia Tornado does, for instance, could never be designed like this. A high-altitude bomber, however, could. 3 - Lift is in ample supply, which opens a lot of opportunities for several different design purposes. 4 - What I really didn't like are the poor characteristics regarding pitch control. I will consider a future 'B' version with canards on the tip of the nose to correct that. 5 - The thing is a test plane only, so it carries only the bare minimums. But all the characteristics indicate that it could mature into an effective, fast long-range bomber or a medium/high passenger plane very easily. I could easily double or triple its payload or fuel capacity, so the concept has a lot of potential.

maybe the idea was that a light enough abrasive surface would have to be made of high-tech materials. A lead file would serve the same purpose but would weight too much. Anyway, I agree with you, a mere high-attriction endcap for landing struts (can anyone think of another use?) shouldn't be too high on the tech tree. you have a point, a good one as a matter of fact. However many mods have already made propeller engines which are much more sensible to use. The current way stock ksp is doing propeller engines, would be comparable to the already extant jet engines, but we having to calculate the rotor fan's blade angles, the compression of the burn chambers, the actual airflow etc... and using the robotics gizmo to do that. It would be too much, I think we can all agree.

Can I set and also unset targets? Also, can I target bodies with the mod, or only vessels?

Let me butt in here.... Actually, I have spoken skeptically about this new propeller business so far, but a place I think it has the potential to work very well is with helicopter design!

Ach, don't get me started. Piston engines is something the game is still far from doing well, even some mods specifically tailored to do that haven't got even close.

Hehehe touché, but that too is something most people apply in ksp with in an intuitive, superficial manner. Maybe I am wrong, maybe ksp is giving incentive for the next generation of propeller designers. But I will adhere to @Foxster here, at the very least we need some simplification, like using the throttle commands to increase/decrease rpm, and another set to change prop pitch. Nothing more.

Prop pitch is indeed a knowledge only for the innitiated in it's arcane arts and sublime mysteries (until you get it and thinks "it was so obvious!"). I am a bit surprised that squad made it so that the game goes there, and using the new robotics gizmo no less. I am not one to defend dumbing down the game, God forbids, but this particular thing seems to me a bit too much for most people.

After eating some duna berries, my little green guys ran straight to the bathroom and haven't been seen ever since.

A+ for KSP!

This actually happens in RL piston engines. Unless they are counter-rotating, they will pull the plane to one side because of the engine's torque. Single engine planes too, but it will be more noticeable on multiengine setups. Hmmm... I wonder if the game is correctly depicting the torque effect of rotating shaft engines or if it is some other phenomenon of ksp physics.

I too at fist thought it was a bit overdoing it, to have blades attach to an engine and have it be controlled by the robotics interface. It seems though that it has a lot of potential, since the blades are actually control surfaces that can be set to control in all three axis. Makes more sense to build helicopters whose blades are controllable in all three directions. We'll have to see how this plays out.

Yes! But then again, no! It would seem newer versions are inclement with some parts mods and this one seems to have been hit hard.

New version @micha? What's new?

Hehehe. Visual Enhancements will give you Eve clouds, bur won't make them block the sunrays from reaching the photovoltaic panels. Those first several 1000 meters or so shouldn't be possible with all that cover.

Save for CPU speed of course. TBH I have a high-tier machine and with 200+ mods performance is "not great, not terrible". Imagine what a few hundred trusses would do to fps! With that put behind us: if the idea is proof of concept, I dont think anybody would mind a lot of alt+12. Build a elevator tower segment with detacheable RCS and alt+12 piece by piece.

It sure looks stunning. The IVAs alone, for god's sake!

The crittercrawler is turning out to be an excellent feature-finder: Btw, it works fine underwater: my contraption sank slowly to the bottom. It has a low CoM and the density appears to be just right to provide just some negative flotation:

Yep, now that you mentioned it, that seems about right. The other ones may remain inside the craft or they all have to be "boots on the ground" to benefit?