White Owl

Here's a link to my Wings mission pack, which starts with the first powered flight and proceeds to high altitude research. link Here's a link to the current - incomplete - version of the Space Race pack: link This early version of the Space Race pack goes from the first satellite launch to manned landings on the Mun and Minmus. I intend to keep writing more missions for this pack, leading all the way up to colonizing the outer planets and moons. I'd love some feedback on this one... especially on the reward amounts for a successful mission, since those are just blind guesses at the moment. The Space Race itself was PD TV's idea, and Ryan Turner has also been participating. We three agreed to play on Mission Controller's default medium difficulty, 50,000 krone kerbal insurance per crew member, and a starting budget of 200,000 krones. I'd love to see some more people participate! Whoever gets to the Mun and Minmus and back with the best budget wins! Or... maybe the winner is whoever does it in the least number of launches. Or the shortest total time played in the savefile. Or whoever has the most elegant designs. You see what I'm getting at? I personally love that there is no explicit victory condition specified in this race; thus is the true sandbox nature of KSP exemplified.

I ran into a problem with the latest version, where some procedural wing parts had almost no drag. It was a lot like flying one of the infinigliders in stock aerodynamics. Switching back to .9.5.1 fixed that problem. I'm hesitant to share a craft file since I use so many mod parts, and I can't rule out a conflict with some other plugin(s). Maybe I'll try to duplicate the bug with a simpler vehicle.

Well that's upsetting. I see two issues in that video. First, the main engine isn't producing enough thrust. I just did some experimentation, and apparently stats edited with the tweakable parameters mod need that mod installed, otherwise they revert to the base stats. So that's my mistake, and I'll need to change the list of required mods to include Tweakable Parameters. The second, much more disturbing issue... why the hell is the shuttle exploding!? I just loaded up the game to look at this design again, and one of the fuselage pieces is overheating and exploding, when it never had a problem before! What. The. Hell. Sorry, I don't have a solution to that one yet. Edit: now waitaminute, I changed the uploaded version so it wouldn't need Tweakable Parameters... I just double checked that. What. The. Hell. Edit again: The exploding bug is related to Deadly Reentry. Specifically, I duplicated the bug in DR 2.2f. Updating to DR 2.3 resolved the issue for me. Maybe I'm wrong about the engine thrust... it's supposed to be 800kN. Could you check that, please?

I'm happy to confirm the hotfix does indeed fix the compatibility problem, and this mod plays nice with FAR. Your example shuttle vehicle can't be loaded, though. It wants a mechjeb part. I very much like the notion of the separation gimbal! Radially attached boosters colliding with my shuttle wings has always been a problem, and this looks like a good solution. However... it's kinda startling to jettison the spent booster and see it instantly accelerate away in front of the rocket/shuttle, like firing a missile. Any way the thrust for that brief separation burn could be turned way down? Once I figure out how to get Mission Controller to charge a sane fuel cost for this custom SRB fuel, this mod will be ready to go.

Bad news. This mod is incompatible with Ferram Aerospace Research 0.9.5.1 I uninstalled all mods, installed Advanced SRB, and the boosters work perfectly. I installed FAR, tried to launch the example craft, and the boosters produce zero thrust. Not only is there no thrust, but only the bottom segment is burning fuel; all other segments do nothing. I hope this can be fixed.

Basic effects means it looks perfectly usable now. Nice job! May I suggest making some similar SRBs in different scales? I'd like to use little .625m boosters on a small rocket, and 2.5m on a heavy lifter or space shuttle. Maybe even bigger!

Okay, that's troubling. I wish I knew what a galaxr2 is. I'll try to figure this out. Edit: that's from the AIES pack. It's the small engine I'm using as OMS.

I'm not entirely certain in which sub-forum this thread belongs. On one hand, the focus is creating a series of vehicles to share with others, so maybe it belongs in the Spacecraft Exchange. On the other hand, a few custom modded parts are involved, so maybe it would be better in Addon Releases and Showcase. But on the third hand, I'm making a series of videos to document the design and test flights of all these spaceplanes, for purposes of entertainment and education, so maybe the thread belongs here in Mission Control. Hmm. Anyway! Wherever this thread lands, I'm making a series of space shuttles for others to download and use. These birds will all follow the NASA configuration of liquid fueled engines attached to a reusable orbiter spaceplane, drawing fuel from a jettisonable external tank, carrying payloads inside an enclosed cargo bay, and using solid rocket boosters to get off the ground. This style of vehicle is my favorite thing to build in KSP, and it saddens me that many people seem to have difficulty in getting them to work. I want to help with that. Here's the first video in the series, showing the development of the Falcon, a small launch vehicle for delivering 1.25m diameter payloads to low Kerbin orbit: Here's version 1.0 of the Orbital Wings Launch System, including the Falcon craft file, required mod list, and a few custom parts. DOWNLOAD See my main video series thread for a complete mod list of everything that appears in the video. Regarding required mods for the OWLS vehicles, you will need: AIES Aerospace, for the OMS engines. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35383-0-20-2-AIES-Aerospace-v1-3 B9 Aerospace, for the cockpit and fuselage. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-20-2-b9-aerospace-pack-r3-1/ Ferram Aerospace Research, for the realistic aerodynamics. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ferram-aerospace-research/ I haven't tried flying the shuttle in the stock game's troublesome aerodynamics. I don't know what will happen if you attempt it. KW Rocketry, for the struts and SRBs. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/?p=2109 Procedural Wing, for the... well... wings. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/29862-0-20-Procedural-Dynamics-Procedural-Wing-0-4 Taverio's Pizza and Aerospace, for the control surfaces. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/0-18-1-taverios-pizza-and-aerospace/

That's a good idea. I think I'll do that.

Yes! All my shuttle designs will have to wait for quite awhile after starting a fresh campaign. They may be theoretically cost-effective in the long run because they recycle the most expensive engines, but they cost so freaking much to build, I can't afford to risk damaging a vehicle; it would shut down my whole space program.

Nope. SRBs are hollow in the middle, so they burn from the center outward. Longer = more surface area burning = more thrust. Wider = more fuel = longer burn time. Extremely simplified explanation, but that's pretty much how they work.

I really like where this is going! The useless stock SRBs have always bothered me, and there's been a real shortage of sensible mod parts. With the Mission Controller mod growing more popular, some inexpensive SRBs are looking more attractive.

Yeah, fuel in wings is still problematic, I understand that. How about fuel in the pAdapters? It occurs to me that a scalable fuel and oxidizer quantity inside an adapter would be functionally identical to a procedural fuel tank. Is that possible?

It's a specific pWing part that's modeled to match the B9 wing parts. Easy to overlook in the aero tab of the SPH. DYJ, I don't suppose there's any chance of getting fuel and oxidizer inside those adapters, is there? Maybe in rockomax orange too? I want to make a whole series of easy-to-fly space shuttles, specifically to share craft files with everybody and anybody who's ever had difficulty making a shuttle work. The series will already depend heavily on pWings, and I'm considering options for the external fuel tanks.

If you aren't afraid of clipping parts together, you can closely approximate a lifting body using FAR and Procedural Wings. Just increase the pWings' root size until the fuselage mostly disappears inside, and blend the two structures together with smaller pWing pieces. The result will look and fly very much like a true lifting body.

Also, there's a problem with surface attaching things like landing gear and wing parts to some mod parts out there. On those parts, the gear will attach slightly off center, no matter what you do; it appears to be impossible to attach something perfectly straight. I don't know enough about 3d modeling and collision meshes and whatnot to say why this is... I just know it's a problem. If you attach a landing gear part, and drag it forward and aft to choose the best spot, watch for the part kind of wiggling back and forth as you drag it. If it wiggles, you're probably better off attaching the gear somewhere else instead of trying to fix it. Less frustration that way. The same issue can cause a theoretically perfectly symmetrical aircraft to have seriously unbalanced wings and stabilizers.

You discovered the same thing I did! That silly little stock SRB, which has persisted through so many versions of KSP but has always been of such limited usefulness, has a new lease on life. It's a great first stage for lightweight probes!

The engine costs seem fine to me. I finished the first few stock missions with very minimalist UAV spaceplanes, in the process lost a few vehicles in unfortunate piloting error incidents, and am still making a decent profit. Liquid fuel engines are supposed to be the most expensive part of a launch vehicle. If anything needs balanced, it's the payloads that should be more expensive.

I'll admit I felt kinda awkward when I saw how short all the other videos are, and mine almost hit an hour long after a LOT of editing. Oh well.

That is the best suggestion yet! ...but unfortunately I already decided to go a different direction. And that KVAC sign is awesome. XD

Nobody44, I love this mod. I hope you don't feel too pestered by all us users clamoring for fixes and updates. Be sure to take time to just play. That said... I had an idea about balancing part costs. I suggest generating a given part's construction cost by multiplying its mass by some constant for that type of part, then adding the cost value from the config file. Example: A simple structural or aerodynamic part will be relatively inexpensive, so Cost = (mass)x(100)+(cfg cost) A fuel tank or RCS tank is slightly more complex, so Cost = (empty mass)x(500) + (cfg cost), and of course you wisely count the actual fuel cost separately. An SRB has to be stronger than a fuel tank, but is still fairly simple tech. Cost = (empty mass)x(1000) + (cfg cost) A liquid-fuel rocket engine is very complex, so very expensive, and has a few more factors to consider, such as thrust, Isp and gimbal range. Cost = (mass)x(5000) + (thrust)x(500) + (gimbal range)x(1000) + (Isp in vacuum)(100) + (cfg cost) An unmanned probe core represents the heart of the payload, so is even more expensive than an engine. Cost = (mass)x(10000) + (cfg cost) And of course, a manned crew capsule is the most expensive piece of equipment you can find. Cost = (mass)x(25000) + (crew capacity)x(10000) + (cfg cost) Keeping the config file cost as part of the equation allows mod authors to still have a large influence over the relative costs of their custom parts. And obviously all these numbers are just what I made up out of thin air to illustrate the idea; they would need balanced. I'm no coder, but it seems to me that since you already read the fuel quantities to generate costs, a system like this shouldn't be too very different.

Know what would be extremely awesome? A few different engines all using the pitch vector model. Like a half-meter version and a 2.5 meter version. That way we could mix and match clusters of engines to fine tune the thrust for shuttles of various sizes.

I think I see the problem. You're attempting to solve a very tricky aerodynamics problem, with the very buggy stock aerodynamics. That ain't going to work out well. Long ago, in the stock aerodynamics, I made a space shuttle similar in configuration to the real deal. I figured out how to launch and orbit the thing, but it just wouldn't glide to landing. At all. I knocked my head against that wall for awhile, came up with an ugly, hackish solution that technically worked but was unstatisfyingly cheatish... Then I installed FAR and tried out that same shuttle; no changes to the design. It glided perfectly the first try. YMMV. Edit: Hey DYJ, I ran into an unexpected problem when using the mod and Mission Controller together. I made a curved wing out of multiple pWing parts, and it ended up being exorbitantly expensive because each tiny wing section added to the cost. How difficult would it be to scale cost along with mass, so a large pWing section is more expensive than a small section?

You can disable the plugin before launch. You can reset the budget to start at any time, via the ingame GUI. You can edit the .sp file with any text editor, and give yourself any amount of funds you want. You can write your own missions and set any reward for any goal, repeated as often as you like. Even at this early stage of development, Mission Controller is extremely forgiving of mistakes. This is no threat to your consequence-free sandbox experience.

Regarding your poll... I suggest you don't assign a specific Krones amount to the life of a kerbal. Instead, simply list the number of kerbals launched, kerbals recovered, and kerbals killed. Let the player decide how valuable that little green guy's life is.