Noname117

It's been 6 years since I last heard from him. Was always curious as to what happened to him. If you are who you say you are, I'd like to have a conversation with him at some point in time. Glad he's doing well.

Not needed to keep them attached. I plan on trying out the antenna bearings later today.

I'm looking for something where the spinning part is lightweight with very low friction. The new design is not the ones above and functions differently

Bearings needed! So I'm experimenting with a new clawjet design right now, and I have achieved (relatively slow) rotation. I've tried out Jon144's bearing, but it's not working (do note the problem may be with the design and not the bearing). So I want to ask the good people of the forums, what's the smallest bearing with the least friction with the lightest spinning part you can create which is still stable enough to use with helicopter blades (excluding tip-jets)? I need to try out different bearing designs here to figure out if the problem lies with the claw or the bearings.

And with that all being said a few designs did fly for short periods of time, with I think one being controllable and stable enough for extended flight and landing. Still a shame that they fixed the bug... At the same time, I'm wondering if stacking 2 claws on top of each other to get a 90 degree tilt would work. I remember odd things happening with just a 45 degree tilt, but I'm wondering if it's possible to cancel out some of those odd things by stacking 2 claws. Or it may just make the problem worse.

Ah dangit, these were quite promising and its a shame to see that gone

Take a look at the dropbox folder I provided. It is full of the prototypes I built and with a little experimentation you should be able to reverse-engineer them.

Likely very hard to do, as I don't think jet engines can push on stuff which is part of the same craft as it, but you can still "hide" the jet engines within the hull of the craft without any real danger

Probably quite hard to be useful for much else. It would be hard to precisely aim anything with it, and the claw must start out pointing upwards and the rotor do a full 180. It's basically only useful for spinning jet powered things, and even then only really things in which the claw can be pointed up on. Helicopters are perfect for it, just about everything else would require large amounts of engineering to get it to work.

(Edit: If you want to see the part about needing the bearings, go look at the more recent posts. March 9th or later). The time was in the middle of last summer. @Jon144 had built his beautiful helicopters while I had nothing to show for it (We've competed with designs in the past and I usually lost). I didn't really like the fact that stock KSP helicopters had to detach their rotors to work, requiring switching crafts to adjust throttle, and set about on the quest to see if a claw based bearing could work (tests in previous versions showed it couldn't, but I wanted to see if anything had changed). Forcing the claw to stand upright did not work, but then the entire rotor assembly tipped upside-down and started spinning like a charm. And thus I had my idea. The Clawjet Rotor So why did I call them "clawjets?" Simple. The claw is the most important part of the bearing and it uses tip-jets to spin the rotor. The Clawjet rotor's main advantage is that the power of the jets can be adjusted mid-flight without having to switch craft and lose control of the helicopter for a few moments. With a properly placed fuel tank its possible to fuel the rotor from fuel stores aboard the main craft, and the blades can clip through the main craft if you wish. The main disadvantage to it is that it's complex to set up prior to the flight and likes to break at every opportunity. That's the main reason why I never actually built a proper non-experimental helicopter using one to upload to the forums, and decided to just put the whole project on hold. So how does it work? Glad you asked and I didn't type out the exact response I wanted you to have in big blue text above this statement! The setup is effectively made up of 3 parts: The claw, the rotor, and the lock (which itself is made up of 3 parts). The rotor is placed upside-down directly above the claw. It is then detached, landing center on the claw. The claw is then set to "free pivot," allowing the rotor to tip upside-down (2 upside-downs makes a right-side up, so this is good). The rotor is then locked in place with the lock. Here's a picture: In this example the decoupler is between the fuel tank and the claw; its just that the decouper is actually attached to the structural support on the right side of the image and majorly offset over (more than the stock settings allow). Also notice how the claw is tipped back slightly. This is because the claw can't rotate fully upside-down, it just gets really close to doing so. I think this is the reason why the rotors destroy themselves at every opportunity. So then how does the lock work? Ok, the lock is divided into 3 parts, which I shall call the "rotor lock," the "detached lock," and the "attached lock." Here's the same picture with the lock parts highlighted instead: I've named the 3 lock parts in this format because it's descriptive of where they are. The rotor lock is attached to the rotor. The detached lock gets detached from the craft. The attached lock stays attached to the main craft. The attached lock and the detached lock form your typical bearing setup. The rotor lock winds up in the same place as the attached lock once the rotor has been rotated upside-down by the claw. The detached lock then detaches, locking the rotor lock and attached lock in the same place. Essentially the detached lock holds the rotor lock in place, while the attached lock holds the detached lock in place. The rotor lock is "locked" to the main craft, and thus the rotor shouldn't tip when the helicopter decides to lean. EDIT: Make sure to lock the pivot on the claw once the rotor is rotated into place. Free the pivot again when you detach the detached lock. This will make sure that the rotor lock locks properly with the detached lock. This lock setup will work with many types of bearings, and I have indeed experimented with many types of bearings. If you want to get especially creative you could have the rotor lock and attached lock be in different places; as long as the detached lock is locking the rotor in place and allowing it to spin while the attached lock is locking the detached lock in place you should be fine. Success? Flight was achieved with several prototypes, and at least 1 even landed, although they did all encounter many issues with the rotors breaking off when trying to pull maneuvers, along with the helicopters being practically uncontrollable. Eventually I settled on counter-rotating prop designs as the best option, but even that did not remedy the problem. Eventually I abandoned development because the challenges to overcome were greater than my interest in continuing development. Anyways, have some pictures: The Future? The game has gone through a couple of updates since I experimented with these rotor bearings, though I would think they'd still work in the current version. Autostrutting might do interesting things for the clawjets, and perhaps allow them to actually succeed. However, I'm definitely done with them after all the trouble they gave me and a waning interest in KSP. However, now that I'm no longer working on these things, I thought I should probably at least share my progress to the forums. So I guess that's where you guys come in. Try some things with these clawjet bearings and see if you can get them to work properly, or if the concept is so bad that it's unfeasible. And since it's the spacecraft exchange I better post a download link Below is the download for all of the experimental helicopters and rotor setups I have. All of my research into these rotors is in there, so hopefully you can go from where I left off. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sjsjqxn4yh5xv9o/AACOVuObf-mRivggylhRmwsTa?dl=0

Have you decoupled them and switched to them? If you have, then a game update probably broke something.

Though adding an outer half of the solar system would add a good deal of content which is much harder to reach then the current content in the game. You could double the content to explore and maybe get 3-4 times the gameplay out of it.

Yeah. Right now I'm trying to use Space Engine to make a new, more accurate outer planets type mod (If only I knew how to do it). There are several mods which would partially fix my issues (Probably a contract pack or two, and that mod which makes rocket building take time).

The issue is I feel KSP is limiting itself by being a sandbox game. Giving the game more of a point would increase its longevity. As it stands I'm quite bored of KSP because it doesn't give me any of the problems of a real space program, and there isn't a game which does while allowing rocket customization.

Honestly maybe the science in the game should mean more. Kerbal could partially solve its issue if it provided more stuff further out to explore and if there was more to discover in regards to the science. A good goal to the game would be to understand the solar system and its formation, and that goal would last far beyond the tech tree (especially if they added an outer solar system). Yes, eventually this content would dry up, but it would take longer to do so and probably give the player more reason to go to other planets (I haven't really done so because there's really nothing to see or do there). Or maybe a tougher more realistic contract system and tech tree would extend the game out a bit

Those look like kerbals operating missiles...

Perfect timing for me to get caught up again. Looks like we're near the climax.

Ok, I have little clue how to code other than to change already defined values, and I would like to make a planet. I cannot figure out the format or anything and I can't seem to find anyone who is willing to explain it to me. Could anyone please help me out? (preferably through private messages)

So I have the pre-release and have been playing career on it, and I noticed a possible balance issue. The AV-R8, despite being blatently worse than the tail fin (less lifting area, less deflection range, less deflection percentage) and is more expensive. And honestly, comparing it to the other control surface parts, the tail fin should definitely be priced more expensively than what it is at right now. Just a little balance issue I noticed

I've got a busy October ahead of me where I want to do many things. Plus I don't know what payload to launch. Somebody else can have my current slot and I might consider going for another in November or December .

I hate to say this, I think I'm going to cancel my shuttle launch for now. Someone else can take my time slot .

Thinking about actually building some warships again and maybe participating in a battle for once in the near-ish future.

I'm fine with being postponed as well (kind of glad actually). Just don't put me on a Saturday.

Honestly idk. Just making sure in case we ever need those capabilities.

I'm asking about return capabilities because it's important to this. We have a limited amount of shuttle launches per month and knowing the limitations of the craft is very important, especially when launching or returning modules.