Are fairings useless?

[sal_vager]

Yes it's a nice patch

[Giggleplex777]

Did you subtract the mass of the base? A 0.4 ton fairing minus the base is only 2.5 tons, but the KSP engineer is lazy and he rounds up, so I used KER.

http://imgur.com/a/dner2

(Only placed fairings count to mass and I tried to get it as close to 1.25m as I could)

The fairing panel alone in this example is 186Kg, the area of the fairing is 4.9 metres so the fairing panels themselves are 37.95Kg per metre.

That suggests it's steel at ~4.8mm thick, overkill for a rocket payload fairing definitely and it'll need reducing, but not quite the lead some people claim

I don't think the fairings should be modeled after steel though.

[sal_vager]

No that's true, anyone care to calculate the thickness of 1m² aluminium at 39kg ?

[Red Iron Crown]

No that's true, anyone care to calculate the thickness of 1m² aluminium at 39kg ?

14.4mm for pure aluminum, probably less for alloys as Al is usually alloyed with denser elements.

Edited May 9, 2015 by Red Iron Crown
Slipped a decimal place.

[Sky_walker]

What about reducing the base? Make it as thin as Stack Separator or thinner (depends on a size), cut the mass by half (or more), and bang - you already saved quite a bit, especially on a shorter fairings. And you also made it less obtrusive, cause right now it looks needlessly large.

[Brotoro]

The base should have very low mass. The mass should be almost entirely in the fairings. But I wouldn't recommend making it thinner now, since people already have it in their 1.0 designs. But, yes, I wish they would have made it thinner to begin with.

[Superfluous J]

Note: My goal is slightly different than the goals of others in this thread. I want to balance fairings to the other parts in the game, not to reality. That is a different discussion that IMO belongs in a different thread and I won't discus it here. Using realism to compare parts in the game to each other is fine. Comparing parts in the game to real-life parts without first completely balancing all the other parts (and physics) in the game to reality is not. This is my opinion. I won't try to change yours, don't try to change mine

BASES:

The Mk1 decoupler (18A) is 0.05 tons. The mk1 fairing base is 0.15 tons. It seems to me that they serve similar functions (Need to be able to explosively disconnect things and support the stack) so a first approximation seems to suggest the mk1 stack separator is somewhere around 3 times too heavy.

The Mk2 decoupler (Rockomax) is 0.4 tons. The mk2 fairing base is 0.35 tons. I always thought the mk2 decoupler was too heavy but at least they are similar.

The Mk3 decoupler (38D) is 0.8 tons. The mk3 fairing base is 0.95 tons. Maybe a little heavy, but again similar.

Conclusion: The mk1 fairing base is way too heavy. The 2 and 3 bases are reasonable considering decoupler masses. IMO fairing bases should weigh the same as their similarly sized decouplers, so I'm going to modify them to mass .15, .4, and .8 tons respectively.

FAIRINGS:

The Mk1 Structural Fuselage is 0.1 tons. A similarly-sized fairing is 0.2 tons. This implies that Mk1 fairings are approximately 2 times heavier than they should be, assuming they should weigh the same as a structural fuselage, which is doubtful. I think they should weigh less.

The large Mk3 cargo bay (CRG-100) is 6 tons. A similarly-sized fairing is about 5.5 tons. This implies the Mk2 fairings are about where they should be, assuming they should weigh the same as cargo bays.

The small Mk3 cargo bay (CRG-25) is 6 tons. A similarly-sized fairing is 7.5 tons. This implies the Mk3 fairings are about where they should be, assuming they should weigh the same as cargo bays.

Conclusion: Based on the larger parts' similar masses, I'm leaving fairings alone. However, I'd be interested in hearing arguments that fairings should mass significantly less (say, half or more) of the cargo bays. It feels to me like they possibly should, but also that they possibly shouldn't.

[Sky_walker]

The base should have very low mass. The mass should be almost entirely in the fairings. But I wouldn't recommend making it thinner now, since people already have it in their 1.0 designs. But, yes, I wish they would have made it thinner to begin with.

People always "already have something in designs". It never should be a reason to stop progress.

[sal_vager]

Imagine it's hollow instead.

[Brotoro]

People always "already have something in designs". It never should be a reason to stop progress.

While I would have agreed completely back in Alpha, I would expect Squad to do less of that kind of thing now that KSP is at 1.0.

[Sky_walker]

While I would have agreed completely back in Alpha, I would expect Squad to do less of that kind of thing now that KSP is at 1.0.

I wouldn't, seeing how they rushed the release and how little testing or feedback have been done to the new parts - and fairings are a new part.

[Jolbucley]

KSP’s fairings aren’t perfect, but they do a great job solving that problem of spacecraft disintegrating in the upper atmosphere, which is a very relevant problem for me. They also do a decent job of delaying disintegration during reentry, although I probably should never have tried this.