sgt_flyer

testing out the stock canadarm in orbit (can anyone guess which payload it is ? )

1 additionnal pic of the canadarm (gravity hack enabled) turning on SAS on a section make it keep it's orientation, while you move another

fully articulated 3 section canadarm, 72 parts, fits within a large + small cargo bay , redockable (plus some RCS in the manipulator section, can help speed up movement a bit, without having to control each section (though, it's also feasible to control each section too :p) degrees of freedom : 3 DOF on the shoulder (to restrict it to 2DOF would add on to partcount severely), 1 DOF on the elbow, and 3DOF on the wrist

@castille7 the 'white' sections are not supposed to be solar panels they are ISS radiators - you should try with the small deployable radiators

the antennas are the enclosing could have made the enclosing out of thermometers too, but at an higher part count and more chances of clip through the 'closing' part on the opposite of the I-beam is a pressmat barometer - i basically enclose a sphere (for bodywork, the small ladder will do wonders to hide the gap ;))

it's roughly cubic strut sized (the (the omni RCS physics geometry is much smaller than it's 3d model), but with 3 DOF

maybe, maybe not still, it's nice that you can surface attach things onto the linear RCS it's thanks to that i was able to build this joint (heck, the damn thing's even smaller than spider hinges ^^)

@Majorjim yup surprise

@Majorjim not yet still working out the fine part translations to get lower chances of clip through (though the current version,the I-beam's weight swinging at full torque and impacting the base holds :)) still, it's was never meant for extremely high stresses anyway, it's a bit more for delicate 0g works

testing out a small 3-axis joint for 0g operations (entirely controlled through torque ^^) (gravity hack enabled for the test)

i don't use either mods for 1 main reason - i want that anyone who wishes to study my .crafts to be able to recreate my designs and techniques without having to DL those mods. if those tools become one day stock, i'll start using them at this time . besides,i find that having to fight the constraints during building is a good challenge using those mods would take away a good chunk of these challenges think of it as my propension to puzzle solving

there's something wrong with your images for me i just see a random string of characters instead

yes, i'm more afraid in 1.1 for other stock tricks though, like one old (still working) trick that could create additionnal number of symmetries without a mod ;), or my open ended fairing technique i really have to test those once we can test 1.1

is the whole weight supported by those 6 offseted structural parts visible on the pad ? as a sidenote, there's a stock way to make this kind of very long offset without the mod (though it's going to require 1 additionnal part for each support part) - inside a fairing, the child part of a fairing can be offseted almost anywhere within the fairing - and you can delete the shape afterwards (leaving the child part hanging very far from the fairing base). what can i say even if the file can be loaded in a stock game, i prefer to be able to recreate techniques in a stock .craft without needing a mod to remake those

even a single bolt hitting something with a few hundreds of m/s of difference can cause some serious damage. (ex, if the bolt comes from an excentric orbit, and crosses a circular one) get damage to the thermal protection layer of a satellite, even if the components are unharmed at first, can lead to more serious consequences afterwards. regardless, even an impact that creates minimal damage will lilely create even more debris, on an orbit very close to the one your satellite already is. there's a reason the astronauts on ISS have to go into their soyuz spacecrafts if there's some risk a debris will come near the station. now, with launch prices starting to come down, there are more and more studies (public and private) to see if there would be economic ways to salvage or deorbit some of the most dangerous debris.

at least, they might have a bit less maritime traffic to contend with - oil rigs won't move must be a bigger problem in florida to have to deal with boat companies - as those lose a bit of revenue when they can't navigate their usual routes each time anyone launches a rocket from the cape. one other advantage for boca chica, is that it's almost the shortest path to the east coast from hawthorne - especially when moving oversized loads by road. - allowing to save a bit on transportation.

you'll still need at least two of them for a custom diameter SRB 1 open ended and the other for the nose , in order to get something flush. Though it'll be much more forgiving for sure

for the oms fuel tanks with a 1 button click, if you use Thuds as OMS, you can put the fuel tank behind a docking port (then pull your fuel lines from the docking port to the engine) disable fuel crossfeed on the docking port, the crossfeed toggle can be used through action groups (1 single docking port is enough to use that, no need to put two of them :)) here's a quick album for that trick for the fairing based SRBs, if you want, i can try to build one to your specifications (through PM if you want) diameter, length, thrust - i'll even break the symmetry inside, so it'll be much easier to place - with 1 additionnal trick for easy symmetric placement) - i'll just have to know if you're using Claw's stock bugfixes or not (as the fairings can behave a bit differently with or without those bugfixes, especially with drag ;))

which fuel tanks do you have in the ET ? if you want the COM to go up, you could clip several of those tanks to the top, without needing to shift the ET's position too much (after all, they did put the lox tank on top in the real shuttle ET for this reason ;)) on another point, just to know, what kind of problems did you have with the fairing hidden SRBs that made you go with a fairingless version ?

Suborbital is way easier than orbital for the 180km launch, Harp fired the test projectiles (martlet-2) with a 7000FPS muzzle velocity (2,1 km/s). orbital velocity is at 7,8 km/s. the test projectiles they later fired with solid motors in the projectiles - the solid fuel had problems resisting muzzle velocities above 3400 FPS... (martlet 3A, martlet 3B) they supposedly found a way to make the fuel more resistant to acceleration later, but never fired these versions before HARP was shut down.

it's simply two tails clipped together one of them is set to deploy in reverse, so when you hit the action group key, they split. when non deployed, they simply respond to yaw normally, and move the control surface in the same direction - you can use the same technique to make roll control surfaces able to also act like split airbrakes (like the ones on the A-10) @selfish_meme mmh, looking at it, there's something a bit 'off' in the proportions. the ET and boosters look slightly too long (or maybe the orbiter is placed too low - based on the position of the nose of the orbiter compared to the top of the SRBs)

heh as the moon is tidally locked, you even can place the payload on an aerobrake trajectory back to earth without needing to re aim (you'd still need some form of propulsion on the payload to circularise once your apoapsis lowered, if your facilities are in LEO)

you could theoritically get your periapsis out of atmosphere without using propulsion, but it would take even more initial velocity (with all that implies for the gun & the payload...) - as in order to raise your periapsis, you'll need either a gravity assist from the moon, or go on an escape trajectory. and given n-body problems + atmospheric perturbations during launch, you're likely to still need to make some minor corrections to pull that off.

@SSgt Baloo there's one simple problem with hardening the electronics and various actuators / solenoids / solar panels against the kind of G forces they would have to sustain when launched from such a cannon - it would make the satellites themselves even pricier than what they already are... sure they would pay less launch fees, but needing extensive R&D and materials for the satellites... it would make such a gun would only be useful for launching very small amounts of raw materials - for which you need to add a container to protect them, a docking system (ideally you'll need a tug to ferry those raw materials) and an access system to enable the transfer of those raw materials.

@fredinnohmm, maybe it's because of the launch inclination, as the only current destination would be ISS aditionnaly, having a more capable booster could allow them to broaden the launch window (they'd have enough reserve delta-V to make a more important dog leg manoeuver during ascent)