Caesar15 Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 Is the nav ball used in RL? Cause while i was watching the avengers my friend pointed out that theres the nav ball in one of the jets, it looked exactly like the one in ksp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sss Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 idk.i watched the Avengers too, but didnt pay attention to that.well, i think the HUD is sorta like the nav ball. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UmbralRaptor Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 Yes, things like the navball are used in real life Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caesar15 Posted May 21, 2012 Author Share Posted May 21, 2012 Yes, things like the navball are used in real lifeI typed in nav ball on google and didnt fine anything, i guess thats not what they call it in RL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sal_vager Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 They are better known as artificial horizons, in spacecraft they are kept level with gyroscopes, while the spacecraft rotates around them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Barrett Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 Or navaids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 They are one of the main instruments that air present in all aircraft and spacecraft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest GroundHOG-2010 Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 They are better known as artificial horizons, in spacecraft they are kept level with gyroscopes, while the spacecraft rotates around them.That is 100% correct. They are used in aircraft as well (which they are commonly used to tell what angle the aircraft is at, as well as a few other things). They also go by the name of Attitude Indicator.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_indicatorSee also Turn Coordinator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temstar Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 The Apollo ones are called FDAI: Flight Director Attitude Indicator. The crews call it the '8-ball'http://www.space1.com/Artifacts/Apollo_Artifacts/FDAI/fdai.htmlThe Apollo crews had it hard. See that red area on their ball? That\'s the gimbal lock range where two axis of the gimbal are aligned and will cause the loss of attitude reference for one degree of freedom. The Apollo crews are trained to always avoid pointing their ship in this area. If gimbal lock does happen the crew will have to move the ship out of gimbal lock range (blindly, without a working FDAI) and reset the FDAI using stars as reference. Has this happened on Apollo 13 they would have been stuffed since all the debris floating around prevented them from seeing the stars properly.This problem could have been resolved with a 4th power driven redundant gimbal but MIT guys told NASA it wasn\'t worth the weight and complexity in their opinion. While Neil and Buzz were walking on the moon Mike Collins aboard the Command Module joked 'How about sending me a fourth gimbal for Christmas?'So yes, be glad our nav balls have a fourth gimbal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sal_vager Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 That is just gorgeous, I don\'t suppose you can find us a bigger version of that beauty? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temstar Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 If you go watch Apollo 13 again the FDAI and danger of gimbal lock came up a few times in the movie. If I understand correctly the ship is set so that gimbal lock range is set at the north and south poles of the ecliptic plane. That is the directly 'above' and 'below' the sun as viewed from the plane of earth\'s orbit around the sun. The idea is in a normal mission you should never need to point the Apollo spaceship directly 'up' and 'down' in respect to the ecliptic.Of course with Apollo 13 venting oxygen and RCS thrusters firing wildly trying to compensate for the venting the ship was tumbling all over the place. There\'s a scene where CAPCOM was telling Jim Lovell to 'watch that middle gimbal' and Jim who was frustrated trying to bring the ship under control was all 'Yes we\'re well aware of the GODDAMN gimbal, I\'ve got the damn thing right in front of me!'Fun fact: Jim Lovell, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and a few other Apollo astronauts came from the Gemini program, and just like our own Command Pod Mk1 the Gemini spacecraft DID have a 4th gimbal so it didn\'t have this gimbal lock problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarvesteR Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 In KSP, the NavBall is driven by Quaternions, so yeah, it\'s got 4 gimbals. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RC1062 Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 Do I sense the possibility of something that could be upgraded with research in campaign? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
life_on_venus Posted June 18, 2012 Share Posted June 18, 2012 Commonly used on boats... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlternNocturn Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 I have to admit, this thread caused me to do a bit more research on gimbals since I really love learning about gyroscope-based mechanisms. I\'m really glad our gimbals are quaternion since launching rockets in this game with anything else would be a lot more frustrating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thiel Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Commonly used on boats...Not quite. Gyro compases only work in two dimensions. Also, they\'re pretty much limited to professional applications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TestNameDoNotUse Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 I have to admit, this thread caused me to do a bit more research on gimbals since I really love learning about gyroscope-based mechanisms. I\'m really glad our gimbals are quaternion since launching rockets in this game with anything else would be a lot more frustrating.I'm relatively certain the Apollo astronauts were still allowed to launch their rockets pointing upwards. I think most of our astronauts would have been smart enough to reorient a nav ball if they needed to. It's not like the stars move around much, even when you're in space.Quaternions make no intuitive sense whatsoever - they're effective enough running in the background of a program, but try sticking a 4-dimensional rotation system representing 3-dimensions onto some sort of nav-ball and your brain will go wonky. Better yet, try to write a roll, pitch, yaw algorithm sometime and find out how annoying gimbals really are.For the rest of you... here's Buzz Aldrin sitting in the cockpit of some spacecraft with a clearly visible nav ball:http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0907/20apollo/07.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_Killed_Jeb Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 I'm relatively certain the Apollo astronauts were still allowed to launch their rockets pointing upwards. I think most of our astronauts would have been smart enough to reorient a nav ball if they needed to. It's not like the stars move around much, even when you're in space.Quaternions make no intuitive sense whatsoever - they're effective enough running in the background of a program, but try sticking a 4-dimensional rotation system representing 3-dimensions onto some sort of nav-ball and your brain will go wonky. Better yet, try to write a roll, pitch, yaw algorithm sometime and find out how annoying gimbals really are.For the rest of you... here's Buzz Aldrin sitting in the cockpit of some spacecraft with a clearly visible nav ball:http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0907/20apollo/07.jpgActually, per the explanation above, as the gimbal lock ranges were in the north/south poles of the ecliptic plane, when they launch pointing straight upwards they would be nearly 90 degrees AWAY from lock range. In our KSP nav balls the Apollo gimbal lock ranges would be centered around 0 and 180 degrees at the horizon. You can see that by looking closely at the Apollo ball, the red circle is half on the white and half on the blue hemispheres. They did of course have a star sextant in place in the capsule for nav purposes but gimbal lock would never have been necessary.Quaternions are very un-intuitive but they would be represented on a nav-ball just like a 3-gimbal system Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DisarmingBaton5 Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 I wonder if it would have been more mass-efficient to carry a fourth gimbal instead of a sextant. No downsides, or would the sextant be carried anyway as a contingency plan? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_Killed_Jeb Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 I think the sextant is necessary anyway for navigation purposes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vexx32 Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 Wow, this thread is old. Would you guys mind checking the dates before you resurrect a thread more than a year old next time? It's okay if you want to talk about it, but it's generally better to just make a new thread. If you feel the need, quote the important parts from the old one. Necromancy is frowned upon in most cultures I'll be locking this, guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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