NeoMorph

Oh... Freakin... WOW! See, this is something I didn't even think about. I've come across 3D printing a lot in the last year but I never even THOUGHT about using it to fill this problem. Because I really had my idea of my build and wanted the holes perfectly on the axis and I was wondering how hard it must be to get the axis hole perfectly centered... AND I THINK 3D PRINTING MIGHT JUST DO IT. The halves don't actually screw together round the equator. There will be a rod going to the inside of the center, through a circular mounting plate and then attaching at the other centre. I will have to do an example to show you. If the numerals and lines are engraved right then the painting should be easy enough. Paint the lines and numerals first (just paint in the engraved bits) not worrying about the over spill. Then wait until paint is dry and sand down the outer sphere (the numerals being "engraved" won't get sanded). Then fill the lines with liquid mask and sand down again... Then paint the outer part of the sphere. Wait to dry and then peel the liquid mask. Simples. Hmmmm... Time to get my modelling hat on. Haven't done any 3d modelling for years.

The apollo style one is the Flight Director Attitude Indicator... I have a LOAD of data regarding the system including how it actually worked with the gyros. I just don't know where I could get the markings done on the ball. Thanks anyway guys... The only instruments I have made like it are the ADI ones for my ATR72 sim... (I sooooo need to start building that but I don't have the space atm). A plane doesn't usually do loop the loops so you can fake it easy enough with a bent piece of aluminium and painting the face is easier still. I used a DYMO labeller to add the numbers using clear tape. I COULD do that with this nav ball but I want to make a really good job with this sim. PS... that Jet ADI looks sweet. Shame someone axed the leads off at the back. Price is good too but I'm in the UK... and I don't want to build another Jet. Spent way too much time in my old Eurofighter cockpit hehe.

This is for the KSP hardware interface project. I've managed to figure out 90% of my real nav ball design but for the life of me I cannot think of who to go to to get a nav ball made. I'm talking of the ball itself. It has to be two hollow hemispheres with a screw hole at the top. This is to attach the third axis. For my test systems I'm going to fudge it with a kids ball and the markings scrawled on. I haven't decided on servo or stepper motors yet... both have good and bad points so I will probably do both... But I have no clue where to get a ball made. Once I finish this I will post all the specs for how to make one yourself. I was surprised at how easy the design is. I think the only real expensive parts are the servos and maybe getting the ball done. But compared to a real one it's going to be cheap. The only hard part in construction is the link tracks (remember as the sphere rotates if the wires were directly contacted to the internal servo it would tangle up and die. It's going to look like a record player with many needles heh. So if anyone has any help I would be eternally grateful. I soooooo wish I had a CNC machine that could sort this out.

I've been looking at some more instances of attitude directors and the reason they are blue and brown is to denote sky and earth. As the sky in space isn't blue I think that is why they went with black and light grey... and no, neither of them denote ground, UNLESS the ship is using ORDEAL mode. In space between the Earth and the moon they locked the nav ball to the onboard Inertial Measurement Unit or IMU. When in orbit of Earth or the Moon they used ORDEAL which stands for Orbital Rate Display Earth And Lunar. This was a box of tricks that worked out the angle of the orbit the ship was at and then rotated the 8-ball so that the pilot was shown as if the ship was horizontal to the ground. It let the pilot keep the attitude of the ship parallel to the ground. Actually when the ship was in the IMU config they pointed the ship vertical to the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the plane that the solar system is on. They then started a slow roll which was commonly called the Barbecue Roll as one side of the ship that was in the sun was baking hot while the other side was freezing cold. To even out the temps and not freeze or boil their fuel and oxygen they did the life saving roll.

It means the Kerbal Special Aerospace Service soldiers are on board... SAS is the rotational stabiliser (think Gyros). ASAS is the flight computer part (or it was).

Nah... I just think HarvesteR accidentally put the servers into the centrifuge and we are now at 500 mph and that's the message that keeps popping up... "500 - Internal Server Error". Actually, they should do a picture of a Kerbal digging into a server box for that error message lol.

I'm now imagining the Kerbals on their home planet... they get on their computer and up pops a message from a friend... KWITTER: "HEY... HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS AWESOME NEW GAME... It's called Human Space Program"

I always quicksave BUT.... (and it's a big BUT)... I never use the save if it is my fault. If I mess up I mess up. If the game engine crashes though it is legit to restore. No harm, no foul. It's just a safety net for the Alpha version of KSP. Maybe once the game reaches release and is stable I will do away with quicksaving but until then I will save a LOT.

Rigorous testing and robust (have to have robust in a political speech) training plan have kept Bill, Bob and Jeb alive in my Space Agency. We test all craft to destruction before we allow any kerballed missions. Many Bots died for this information. The amount of testing for aborted takeoff on each new rocket is a pain but it keeps most Kerbals alive. I have lost some though when I panicked due to something going pear shaped. Like landing craft flipping upside down while under P66 Translatron mode. Usually comes down to unbalanced fuel tanks. Anyway, if Bill, Bob or Jeb get in trouble I just send Space Cat to retrieve them... You know, I always wondered what a cat would be like in free fall (once it acclimatised that is).

I had an impact that scared the crap out of me. I had a satellite on a polar orbit at 75K that I had forgotten about... I was just doing a docking manoeuvre with my interplanetary train (on an equatorial orbit) when that darned sat came and nicked the side of the lander, flinging it on a wierd orbit.... Totally trashed the satellite too. But it was the bang that made me jump as I had my headphones on and was drifting off to sleep... Was only when I realised the polar sat was missing that I realised what had hit what.

Actually neither... It's actually aligned to the gyros. Remember if the gyro is set with black as ground on one side of the planet then white will be ground when the spacecraft is on the other side of the planet. The gyros are just there to lock the display to a fixed frame of reference. There is no up in space after all.

Remember the clipping problems affects your roll too. I had one rocket that would spin so fast that when it began its gravity turn it fought against it.... and then the wobble began and then KABOOOOOOOOOM as it flew apart. That was all down to a battery would you believe.... I had an extra one added due to the replication problem and it was inside another part. Caused a phantom force that drove the spin.

Dude, they still do e-ink Kindles. The Paperwhite is a top lit e-ink display. You can read it outdoors without the light on even. I've got every model of Kindle e-book (not the Fire because it's not a true e-book like you said) since the second gen as I've loved them. I've just stored books in my older versions and have a whole library in just a few inches. I've only got a small flat so all the boxes full of books (I read a lot) have ended up going, bit by bit, to the charity shops. But the Paperwhite Kindle is my favourite e-reader. I might have to buy a new one because I've chipped the screen after dropping it recently and my OCD keeps dragging me to look at the small mark. I'll probably give it away as it's annoying me somewhat.

In the real apollo the Pitch Roll and Yaw would be relative to the gyros alignment. In KSP they would have to be relative to the attitude of the spacecraft in the sim. Simple as that. If the ball wasn't locked to the gyros it would be a meaningless instrument because the gyros are locked to the fixed solar system plane. That way, the astronauts will know the attitude of the spaceship without having to take numerous time wasting star sightings which they had to do whenever they got into a gimbal lock situation.

I've got the rates and error needles working fine. The problem I would have with the ball itself is due to reading the exact alignment of the thing. The way you would have to do it is have a magnetic systems that reads the three variables, Pitch, Roll and Yaw, and I have no idea how I would go about that at present. The Roll rate and error needles are simplicity itself. Oh and once you figure out how to read the ball you also have to have it either engraved or printed. Looks like the Apollo version was engraved and painted.

The gyros are held in a separate unit... What I don't understand is how they manage to read the attitude of the ball is what I meant (sorry for being unclear guys). This is the gyro unit... ... which is a bit big to fit in such a tiny ball.

Nah... It's just the link of "Problem" and "Maria" that triggers that song in my head. Annoying as hell. Not your fault though... was my Dad's for playing it a lot on his cassette player way back when.

You should see the insides of the thing. Mind blowing tbh. I still can't figure out how they manage to have the ball rotate 360 degrees in both directions.

Why is it when someone posts about the maria problem I hear this song...

The various indicators on the Apollo Nav ball are pretty darn easy to read... The outer indicator arrows (starting from top) are Roll Rate, Pitch Rate, Yaw Rate and the yellow indicators starting from the top are Roll Error (ie from flight path), Pitch Error and Yaw Error. Simple eh wot? I'm also beginning to think the sphere is actually black and light grey rather than white.

I noticed that the colour blind thread has vanished and don't want it to be forgotten. As one of the many male players who suffer from the common red-green colour blindness I have to speak out. One thing that NASA learned was that the black and white 8-Ball was better than colour versions for quickly picking up the attitude of the craft so it makes sense for KSC to include it too (hint hint). Oh yeah, and trying to spot the purple icon on the orange background is next to impossible for me. It's like the icon merges into the background. It would be nice if we could select the colour of the icons as not everyone has the same colour perception. There are also many variations of colour blindness as well. Edit: Oops... I meant the Pink icon... Still can't see the darned thing lol.

Gotta say, LOVE THE MUN!

They use them on satellites and space telescopes too. It's the reason that the Kepler space telescope is near to breaking because out of four wheels, one died and a second one died quite recently and they need two to keep it working. Dunno what they are going to do to fix it, I guess they could send up the Shuttle to... oops!

Regarding that gyro toy I mentioned... I actually found it with the power of the net... Was that exact same model. Was what got me interested in gyros in later life.

I think it's because what you get out of the game is the square of what you put in... It's THAT rewarding. Most games it's follow a line through the game and then ENDING.... restart? KSP is launch, blow up.... ENDING err... Rebuild and try again. and again, and again. I routinely get sidetracked when playing KSP. I'm trying to build a decent hardware interface (wait until you see me landing attitude and radar indicator - really pleased with it so far) but when I get into testing I keep playing the game rather than focussing on the darned test code lol. I found four hours had gone by the other other week when I had only started the game to check if I had zero'd the axis on the instrument correctly. It should have been "in... test zero... correct... finish" and all done in about 10 minutes or less. When I noticed that four hours had passed I realised I needed a break from KSP... I was getting addicted lol.