aevionknight

Isn\'t that just a cylinder? I think there are a few cylindrical tanks floating around the mod forums. : )

I really hit the sweet spot tonight. 1. The RV has just the the right amount of control authority. By grabbing the flaps hard-over, you can hold a 15-20 degree angle of attack throughout the whole entry, but you can\'t cause it to tumble. This seems like a reasonable amount of authority for the size of the flaps. 2. The RV doesn\'t stall until just over 45 m/s (!). This gives you a nice smooth deceleration with good control almost the entire way in. 3. When it finally stalls, the RV actually does the pitch over all by itself! It\'s almost too easy to light the engines and gain stability for the landing. This will be offset by the fact that you probably won\'t have a lot of fuel left by this point, so this is a really neat behavior. 4. Lift-to-drag is a bit higher than I\'d like but not absurd. I tried to cut this down but it ended up messing with the wonderful performance I had, so I\'m going to leave it. I\'m baselining this configuration for the first release. Stuff left to do before then: 1. Texturing 2. Decoupler 3. Finalize propellant budget (I\'ve been flying on nearly-infinite fuel to tune the aerodynamics, need to ensure the orbital delta-v feels right). Re-entry at max Q (5.4 G), holding 20 degree angle of attack w/ full flap extention.

Friends! I return from an expedition deep into the heart of the KSP aerodynamic model armed with nothing but spreadsheets and a vague guess about how it all works. I think I\'ve finally got something flyable. Re-entry is downright fun in this thing - it has just enough of a lift-to-drag ratio to give you some really nice maneuverability and cruising range. I balanced the center of lift and center of drag such that the lifting body stalls out at about 200 m/s - this is a good thing! Once you\'ve decelerated to about this speed you\'re at maybe 3000 meters altitude, so you can fire up the engines, mash the pitch controls and do the pitch-over, then settle in for a nice propulsive landing. I\'m going to do a few more flights tomorrow to really dial in these values, then go into texturing. Also I\'m going to whip up a nice aerodynamic decoupler that goes from the 1.5m square base back to a 1m rocket stack.

Okay, I have the orbital handling down pretty well now. It\'s going to take a few days of tweaking and tuning to get the re-entry flight dynamics correct. I will probably have to split the RCS tank into two pieces and make one of them a lifting body to actually get some cross-range out of it. I was hoping for a completely unpowered pressure vessel w/ RCS and the gyro, but no dice. The thrusters don\'t seem to fire at 100% when doing rotation, so I have to jack up the thrust to get decent control, but then they become essentially another main propulsion source all by themselves and can send you to the Mun (literally - I did this). I decided to give the pressure vessel a small torque and scale the RCS way back - it is useful for orbital touch-ups and linear motion, but not so much rotation anymore.

Yep! The flaps move, the thrusters work. The main engines have 'gimbal' (they don\'t move, they do differential throttling).

Cyclone rocking a coat of Range Safety Orange in the VAB. All parts are functional, now I\'m going to actually tune the thing and then texture it.

The Cyclone model is 99% done, just a few small touch-ups and I\'m ready to do the KSP import (need to fix some smoothing on the CMG and give the flaps some actuator arms). Assembled view: Exploded view: Sadly I think the only two things that will be useful in other builds are the heat shield and CMG (1m and .43m respectively), everything else is custom to the Cyclone. I think that\'s okay for this pack - I wanted to squeeze a fully-functional orbiter into a tiny package, which is difficult to do with stock stuff. I intend for almost all of my future stuff to be more interchangeable.

Welcome to the forums, mate!

Those are nifty... Most intriguing.

That\'s actually pretty Kerbal, now that I think about it.

True, although I believe the Roton used base-first reentry.

Jeb doesn\'t like AVK one bit. We haven\'t made even a single booster yet. It\'s best if you don\'t mention where his gear comes from.

A quick preview of what I\'m working on next: Good as an orbiter or as the top stage of a direct ascent Munar lander. Aerodynamics are stolen from the EXPERT vehicle (because I think it looks cool) and also resemble the DC-X, although significantly downscaled. The flaps should give it good maneuverability on reentry, then pitch over for a propulsive landing. I\'m also going to do a .43m SAS (a control moment gyro, specifically) to aid in keeping upright for the landing that will go under the heat shield. The model is pretty well roughed out and split into its component pieces, just need to add some details toward the aft end and then step into UV and textures. I\'ll probably do a dirty import to KSP to play with the balance before I start the texture work.

Made a cut-down version. Try it out!

After a week off during Thanksgiving, the Kerbal holiday celebrating Jeb\'s decision to blast himself into space instead of wreak havoc on Kerbin, AVK Spaceworks will resume normal operations.

Looks like the high-res pack is OK. These fairings are really good-looking! A couple things: 1. Looks like there\'s no 1m-1m shroud, that would be useful for small rockets. 2. The adaptor shrouds could use an attachment node at the rim, wide payloads currently clip through the throat (e.g. landers).

In the low-res pack, all of the tall fairing walls seem to be 3m in diameter, despite being named 1.75, 2, and 3. Downloading high-res to cross-check.

This pack is lots of fun! Once I realized that I had to ride out the first and second stage at about 50% throttle to avoid wasting my fuel against aero drag, I was able to get to orbit pretty easily. I blew out the 3rd stage engine due to overheating after about 70% of the TMI burn, but made it up with the lander stage. After that, cruise to apomune, and did a direct de-orbit burn since I wasn\'t sure how much fuel the lander still had (turns out quite a bit!). Powered descent and snapped this on the surface of the big crater: Actually, kind of a big step for Kerbal. Got into Munar orbit on the ascent stage trivially, TKI at 800 m/s. Left the Mun SOI, correction burn, and decided to try and land back at KSC. I got myself into a 500 x 670 orbit around Kerbin and did my de-orbit from there. Ran out of fuel *just* before I wanted and overshot into the sea, but just off the coast. All in all a successful mission with a well-balanced rocket! I was able to do the whole mission despite wasting 25% of the third stage when I blew the engine, so it might be able to throw a *bit* more mass to the Mun (or cut the fuel a bit to make it even more challenging). Of course, the fact that the parts are beautiful made the whole trip enjoyable. Thanks for the pack!

To choose the fuel value, I actually calculated the cylindrical volume and it came out to like 1.06x the volume of Nova\'s short 2m tank. So it really is a 2m tank wrapped around a 1m tank, which is a good bit of fuel, but should be balanced against Nova\'s stuff. If you can throw it to TMI you can land some heavy stuff, I\'ll bet. I might bump up the mass a bit - right now it\'s only a ton heavier than the 2m (10.0 v 9.0), but it\'s probably carrying more extra structural mass than that.

I can do a shorty 425 if there\'s interest in something with a little less delta-v. The 850 is meant for when your ascent stage is also your Kerbin return vehicle. This is direct ascent, after all! I like to give my Kerbals a bit more room to live than just the capsule on their way home.

About Us 'Advanced' Rocket Research Lab Welcome to AVK Spaceworks, the research division of Jebediah Kerman\'s Junkyard and Spaceship Parts Co., proudly bringing you advanced* concepts in rocket design! We are dedicated to bridging gaps and filling holes in the JKJSPC product line. As a public-facing division of JKJSPC, we welcome customer feedback and suggestions for future research. Provided you survive, of course. AVK Spaceworks: Yesterday\'s technology, tomorrow! *not advanced Technical Notes Despite Jeb\'s endless objections, all of our releases are carefully crafted to avoid breaking any known laws of physics. Our top scientists inform us that, while possible, breaking these laws may knock Kerbin off its axis and send us spiraling into the sun. Our parts adhere to the SE Standard. All releases are pre-packaged for your convenience to be compatible with the Generic Mod Enabler. Projects AVK Cyclone | Download 1.1 Archived Releases |1.0 A fully-featured orbiter and reentry vehicle. Four main engines give you enough thrust for orbital maneuvering and a propulsive landing, while reentry control surfaces and a lifting body give your Kerbonauts a nice light-gee entry and some control on the way down. Flight manual and detailed specs/images coming soon! AVK Landers | Download 0.2b Archived Releases | 0.1 The results of our ongoing research in an exciting new field: how to get rockets back after we launch them. Future Work [li]Landing legs of various sizes.[/li] [li]RCS tanks.[/li] [li]Cargo modules.[/li] [li]RCS thruster stand-off arms.[/li] FL-TW850 A wrap-around fuel tank which helps keep the height of heavier landers down. Features: [li]Contains 2m x 1m usable volume inside to store your ascent stage.[/li] [li]2m diameter base for attaching large engines.[/li] [li]Fits inside a 3m payload fairing.[/li] [li]Kerbosene tanks were wrapped in heavy insulation after the first model boiled all of its propellant off before getting to the Mun.[/li] [li]Foil heat shielding added to the thrust frame after the incident...[/li] [li]Features a nice top deck to enjoy the view on the Mun![/li] FL-TW425 All the features of the 850, but half the size. Features: [li]Like the 850, but for smaller landers. Don\'t tell Jeb.[/li] Release History [li]r4 [li]Added surface attachment to all decouplers.[/li] [li]Added a 1.75m decoupler.[/li] [li]Added an emergency chute that attaches to the Cyclone baseplate. Four (4) required for safe landing. Will only work for water landings![/li] [li]Reworked crash tolerances to avoid part exploding as much.[/li] [li]Upped pod torque to make rotation in space / entry less painful.[/li] [/li] [li]r3 [li]Released version 1.0 of the Cyclone.[/li] [/li] [li]r2 [li]Fixed a dumb texture mistake on the short wrap tank.[/li] [/li] [li]r1 [li]Added a shorty tank to AVK Landers.[/li] [li]Improved textures for the existing wrap tanks.[/li] [li]Renamed aevWrapTank1 to avkWrapTank1[/li] [/li] [li]r0 [li]Initial release of AVK Landers w/ FL-TW850 wrap tank.[/li] [/li]

Make you feel good about flying for Science.