Mister Dilsby

I like that--you're using half the bearings I am, I have separate races for radial and thrust bearings. Tarantulae, I asked the same question here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/113195-Stock-Rotor-Techniques and Azimech gave a great response. I learned a lot by downloading and disassembling his craft.

Honored! And it worked, too: I made an electrically driven centrifugal 'chunker': ...I went with 12 wheels per radial bearing, which is maybe too much friction. The lower thrust bearing does rest on a cone with four wheels, which seems to work pretty well. I will probably add an upper bearing for a bit more stability.

No time for it here, but if I really wanted to find this out I'd use Hyperedit to delte Kerbin's atmosphere, and drop fuel tanks of a known mass from varying heights over the VAB until I found the exact altitude threshold of destroyed/ not destroyed. Then I'd test the physics model by trying to scale different masses to different altitudes--I don't think we don't know for sure whether explodyness is based on just mass, just velocity, momentum (mv) or kinetic energy (mv2).

Re-did mine, with proper switching/F3 this time. 37m! I think noorm is still beating me in centrifugal division, though I am not only reloadable, but 100% electrically driven!

Thank you! I've always dreamed of joining the ground crew

I've found that the only way to go is to PULL the asteroid. Here's my class-E hauler, the KSS Archimedes (we call it 'Arxie' for short): Arxie carries four clusters of 4xLV-N engines, loads of fuel, RCS, and SAS stabilizers. The long tail is necessary to put enough space between engine exhaust and the rock (otherwise it impinges and you get no thrust) If I recall correctly, with a full tank Arxie can put about 150 m/s on a 3000t rock. I made a lot of mistakes in my run, correcting orbit too close to Kerbin and had to send a tanker, but it all worked out in the end. Good luck!

Getting there... need to switch POV to record the distance, I know...

Here's a few more things I learned so far taking apart Azimech's ingenious Gnome engine: 1. Symmetry on symmetry. Azimech put two (symmetrical) gear bays on each of four posts with mirror symmetry, then put the four posts around the shaft with radial symmetry. This way one can adjust clearance by moving the four (or six, or eight) posts, and keep clearance constant all the way around. 2. Gear bays for thrust bearings, too. There are two wheels at each end of the shaft to keep it from moving axially. I might try this with the wheels impinging on a cone rather than the flat end of the shaft. 3. Use a separator to detach the rotor shaft from the rest of the craft. The craft must start out as one piece, then in operation the rotor and stator have to be two separate pieces. I tried using clampos first, but I suspect the magnetics were interfering with rotation. 4. SPH clearances can be (visually) deceiving. When i looked at the shaft in SPH it appeared there was lots of daylight between the gear wheels and the shaft. In operation, every wheel seemed to be in contact with the shaft all the way around. Good thing this design and SPH 'gizmos' make it easy to tweak clearance (see #1) I'm sure I'll learn yet more as i try to build my own, scaling up to allow some 'flinging' of parts. I'll leave this thread 'unanswered' for now because I'm sure there is more than one way to skin this kat. Maybe in the end I'll have enough techniques to help someone else out someday

Good stuff, thank you! I will take some of your designs apart and see what I can learn.

Thanks! What stock materials can you wrap around a shaft? Do you mean to link up a bunch of structrual parts like girders and beams and angle offset them to make a ring, or something else?

Can anyone share some techniques for building rotating machines out of stock parts? I have some concepts for the chunkin challenge and beyond that could use them. I understand that rotating bearings are typically made from aircraft wheels in a ring, but am unsure about things like how far to place them from the shaft, what to use as a thrust bearing, etc. Looking more for design guidelines than finished .craft, but could certainly learn something by taking apart the latter. Thank you!

Oh, you've made me so happy! Thank you! I am now inspired to fling large fruits or whatever off the runway in the Chunker challenge...centrifugal division, of course

Abused SAS to fling a rover clear across Minmus. I think I could add another 'stage' to this thing and reach orbit!...

Arggghh! Love this challenge, hate that my Minmus Fling-O-Matic can't enter (not stationary). Must...build...rotor!

Yes, press alt-F5 and you can name multiple quicksave files. Then use alt-F9 to load any one of them. You can also load from the space center "buildings" screen by pressing ESC. ETA: Oh, I think you mean have it automatically save every ten minutes FOR you. I don't think so, not in-game. I'm sure some clever fellow could write a Windows script that copies your persistent.sfs file into a new .sfs with a unique timestamp every ten minutes. I am not that fellow.

Bwahahaaa! OK I sincerely hope you all like this video. I spent all ?!!@ing day getting the software, ?!!@ing up the software, ?!!@ing up the jump, signing up for google+ and youtube, etc. etc... BUT-- I DID IT!

Nice run Vaporo! Yeah, not turning around definitely speeds things up. I'd considered driving the Kerbal Lee backwards for the first 2k then firing rockets to go back (or put rockets on the front bumper too... or make a ship that isn't 10t of inert metal...or at least enable steering on the rear wheels..,) but didn't like the visuals.

I just put the Kerbal Lee at http://kerbalx.com/kuzzter/Kerbal%20Lee

I sometimes put a pair of them in the middle of my wings, mount little Rockomax engines and use them for VTOL.

Congrats, Ghostbuzzer! You are the latest member of the 1km club on the Open board.

My entry in this challenge http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/111664-The-Excursion-to-Mt-Keverest/page4 ...is one way to do it in stock, with monopropellant thrusters. The imgur gallery shows some details of how I made sure the center of mass was aligned with center of thrust for the VTOL system, and how I managed fuel flow to ensure that center of mass would not move around when I was in VTOL mode. Note that RCS and SAS motors are used to stabilize the system in VTOL flight. Rockets and jets make more efficient VTOL lifters. Jets are very hard to control because of the lag time in controlling thrust. Good luck!

Could not agree more, that's a great run! Thanks for posting this, it explains the spirit of this challenge very well. I hope to get to it when I'm done fooling with rovers.

That's crazy! I wonder if the effect works in deep space? You could make an infinite push machine. In any case, I'm afraid it seems a bit glitchy to me. There's no way an object should be able to accelerate itself without any energy input. So it's definitely not an Open entry, which requires all kinetic energy to come from "electrically driven rover wheels". Let's qualify it for Unlimited; even if it does completely violate the basic laws of motion. Certainly torque wheels violate those laws at least a little, and we are allowing those. Again, great job putting this together! I love it when a challenge uncovers new exploits.

So do I understand this right, the ship is propelled by the force of your clamps docking and undocking? That's insane! I'm thinking that if the crewed rover needs to separate rom the 'pusher' then it belongs in Unlimited (like my Flinger). Open rules require that the "ramp" (herein taken to mean whatever crafts you use to launch the rover) be on the ice and "inert". But if you kept the parts connected through impact then I think you would qualify for Open. Can you confirm the propulsion method please? And well done on such a creative solution!

My Fling-O-Matic from the Minmus thread did manage to get poor Frodo to escape velocity, though I might have bent a rule an eensy bit. I did not bother to run the wheels (wouldn't have mattered anyway, have no provision to maintain surface contact) Just flipped it into the air with the gyros and flung Frodo into deep spaaaaaaace..... Do I win a coconut?