Silpion

I think I found a bug in the longitude readouts: In the Real Solar System mod I launched a geostationary satellite. I then wanted to do a burn to get rid of my orbital inclination, so I looked to the Engineer screen to determine the longitude of AN and my current longitude. Because I was in a pretty good GEO, my own longitude barely moved throughout an orbit. However longitude of AN didn't move at all during an orbit. Therefore my own longitude was never the same as the longitude of AN, even as I passed through the AN. I think these two displays are referencing different coordinate systems or something. Also the longitude of Pe is greater than 360 degrees.

Question: Is there any major additional difficulty in adding stretchy liquid engines? I'd imagine it could work like this: Using the stretchy commands the user picks the size and thrust of the engine, and some fuel options are programmed in for realfuels. Then presumably there are some scaling relationships from size and thrust that will give Isp for SL and Vac, and we could come up with a reasonable scaling for engine mass as well from some real-world examples. Also you'd only need one engine model, so you could pick one with an appropriately small base size.

Yes I know that now, I'm saying that this doesn't prevent their bases from clipping on each other though.

Ha that's funny, so by rescaling the engines I got them to just perfectly stop disappearing inside the tank and so never noticed this issue. However there is still a problem in clustering engines where the size of the base will prevent me from getting them close together because of clipping.

Crap you're right, I just rechecked and the nozzle is 2.17 m, with a base of 3.5 m. Do we know what the diameter of the base of the real engine is though? From a construction standpoint what matters is the maximum diameter, rather than the diameter of the nozzle. Looks like my 4xRL10B-2 module for my SpaceX Moon mission won't work so easily now, if can't fit them in a reasonable fairing.

SFJB: When I measured the RL10B-2 diameter in-game using a stretchy tank, I got a diameter of like 3.7 m.

Is this where I post errors in SFJackBauer's engine configs? I've found two: * The size of the RL10B-2 engine is off. I get it the right size by having rescaleFactor 2.1 instead of 3.5. * The mass of the rtg is off. It's 0.00377, should be 0.0377

Agathorn: Yeah I've run into that multi-fuel-mix problem too. I just pick one, see the delta-V in engineer/mechjeb, then try the other, and keep the one that's higher. Scorpio: The SpaceX stuff is flying pretty good, so I've moved to PM's for bug reports.

I already do on my versions, but they're still unstable. And this is with a heavy fairing-enclosed payload rather than the potentially awkward Dragon.

Scripto: Mind sharing your version with the better nodes? I tried strutting up my falcon heavy and when it's stiffer it is much easier to fly even with its instability. Also, I think the upper stage tank has the volume for the Falcon 9v1.0. I believe that the 1.1 has a much larger upper stage tank, given the higher thrust and burn times listed on the wiki page. I calculate that the volume should be 87000 rather than 45000. The tank models look about right for that volume relative to the lower stage. That mass up front would also help the stability a little.

Using new cfg. So yeah, they rockets are still unstable, but not so unstable that you can't get it to launch if you just keep on top of it. However the floppiness issue is severe, particularly for the Heavy with a full load. I managed to coax a 50 ton payload into orbit with my heavy, but it was a wobbly ride. Had to fly with SAS off to prevent a resonance, but even then it was a challenge. Is there some kind of rigidity factor that has to be scaled up as well? I don't know how this stuff works. I'm using the reinforcement mod btw. Also I note that when I make a craft which is just a fuel tank, the CoL marker is near the top, while CoM is at the center. Weird. Some other issues: Strangely, in the FH you provide, the center 1st stage tank has less fuel volume than the side tanks. I can't seem to get them to fill equally. My own FH I built from scratch fills up fine. Maybe this is intended to be some kind of virtual fuel usage from the 3 engines not cross-fed? Concerning landing legs: this might not be your doing, but if you want to distribute this, I don't think the upper stage should have those giant legs. From what I've seen from SpaceX, the 2nd stage legs are going to be little peg guys that fit inside the interstage. Also in your FH, the side boosters are each missing a leg.

Scripto: I've tested your latest rocket and config version: A) The tech level change in the engines have screwed up the Isp/thrust. Now the engines are either underpowered (tech 0) or way over-efficient (higher tech). A.5) Also I'm getting a bug (unsure if yours) that when I increase the engine tech level, I can't decrease it again. It defaults to 0. This might be what you were talking to Nathan about, but the Dragon mass has gone way too low now, like 2.5 t. C) I tried your DragonI rocket, with and without extra ballast, and I think the issue comes from floppiness in the payload, enhanced by the Dragon trunk. When I remove the trunk it performs better. Maybe I didn't see this in my earlier test because I had a dummy payload in a fairing. I'll play with this a bit more tomorrow and the Heavy as well.

Awesome. I've just started playing with it, but a couple things: 1. The craft files that come with the mod are all screwed up now because of the new sizes. Is there a quick and easy way to rescale those, or should we just remake them from scratch? 2. I got a Falcon 9 flying, and had no stability issues even without tail fins. I did have a 12-ton dummy payload, maybe the lack of one makes it unstable (not enough weight in front). 3. The SuperDraco previously had fuel stored (I think) in the engine pods. Now that isn't there, so I have to add an external tank to the Dragon to fuel the SuperDracos. Is there a way to get MMH/N2O2 back in the engine pods, OR in the Dragon? 4. The SuperDraco has oddly low sea level and oddly high vacuum Isp: 71.1 / 348.3 s. Are those real values? The low surface Isp makes it unsuitable for powered landing or early aborts. 5. The SpaceX fairing might have too low of a decoupling force now that it's so much larger. Beef that up? More when I find them. Great work!

I haven't done any modding myself, but if it's a matter of flight testing I'd be happy to give you a hand. Not sure which values you need, but I've found this page useful: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falcon9v1-1.html (table on bottom of page)

Yes, but there's a complete set of SpaceX hardware in the LazTek mod which would be great to have full scale. Dragon / Falcon 9 landing gear / Superdraco etc.

Pretty glorious. Any chance of the awesome LazTek SpaceX Launch Pack getting real-sized? I'd love to do an actual Dragon moon landing using those Falcon Heavy's etc.

Another bug: It is including non-existent fuel crossfeeds in its calculations. If I have a central tank with no engine, and another tank slapped on the side with an engine, it will calculate delta-V and burn time as if it is using that central fuel.

Using the "3" update above, and found it doesn't properly deal with tweaked SRB's. It gets the thrust and impulse correct (as in the delta-V doesn't vary as the thrust is tweaked), but it doesn't reflect the longer burn times in its analysis.

Heyhey looks right, thanks!

I think something is wrong with the epoch (which I thought was J2000) and/or ephemerides. Comparing the RSS solar system to Celestia, nothing matches up right, and also when I use NASA's trajectory browser from Earth to Jupiter, it's not remotely close to right. Outer solar system (Pluto doesn't have orbit shown, but is labeled): Uranus/Pluto looks about like 1950, but the rest of the solar system doesn't jive with that either. NASA and Celestia agree with each other.

Hey, I just did an experiment to determine the amount of energy that 1 electric charge unit represents in the stock game. Thought you might be interested. Method: Launched into space a test object which was two full 9-ton FL-T800 tanks, each attached to an end of a tiny RC-001S Remote Guidance unit. I saw that with everything off I was consuming 0.05 charges/s, and when torquing on one axis I was pulling a total of 0.08 charges/s, for a net from the torque of 0.03 charges/s (the part file agrees with these figures). I time-warped to null my rates, and then torqued perpendicular to a long axis (such that it was spinning end-over end) for 10 +/- 0.5 seconds on the game clock. I then used the game clock to time the rotation rate, and got 1 revolution each 47.75 +/- 0.25 seconds. Using the part dimensions and masses, I can calculate the moment of intertia of the system, and with the rotation rate above, its energy. Thus we can get the energy per charge. I'm not sure how the game engine calculates moment of inertia. Does it treat each tank as a solid body, or as a point mass at the COM? Assuming as solid bodies, the answer is 890 +/- 90 J/charge Assuming as point masses, the answer is 690 +/- 70 J/charge

ferram4: Thanks, it worked! I didn't realize I could edit stock parts so easily. Starwaster: I'll look into that too, thanks. I've been wanting better chutes anyway.

Well crap, now I'm having another problem where my drogue chute won't deploy on Mars at all (again, it worked perfectly on Earth). Is this a FAR thing or an RSS thing? I don't think the pressure ever gets above 0.007 atm so it never partial deploys, so maybe therefore it never fully deploys?

Hey, that's it! Thank you so much, now all my hours of work are not wasted. On to skycrane.

Having a bug, not sure if RSS is at fault or not. My Curiosity replica, which functioned perfectly in its EDL test on Earth, explodes every time I come out of time warp in deep space enroute to Mars. After that, every time I reload my quicksave (which loaded fine the first time and loads fine every time I restart KSP) it explodes again. The log file says some random set of parts "collided into the launch pad". Anyone have a clue of what's going on?