[wip] rcs rv-105-180

[Skalou]

Hello,

I'm working in my second mod (the first was never released, a kind of test),

It's a rcs block derived from the original RCS-block-RV-105.

here it is:

you can try it!

Download from CurseForge

the idea come from the fact that to have a full control of a ship we need 4 rcs blocks, or with 2 we will need to rotate each time 90°, but

it miss only one axis to have a full control,

so why not make this kind of thruster?:

With it we can have all the translations exept one, but it can be balanced with the main engine if you are a good pilot.

after i saw this on the thread WIP-RCS-Pack...

...it has become an evidence, i have to do it!

But i want to keep the stockalike style,

and after a hard day of work, tadaaaam!

the best is it use the original texture and so save a bit of ram.

However i have some stuff to do before a release and questions for you guys:

-is it ok to use a derived stock part? who can i ask for this? : i think yes, because the mod "Ven's part revamp" do it.

-what kind of licence should i use considering this (i have no particular request on my side).: CC 4.0 .

-how to give the credits to the original workers?: in the config file.

-i will look to make it compatible with AVC-cheker,

-and C-kAN too.

an other question relative to this:

as you can see despite the angled nozzles at 105°, the effective thrusts are at the perpendicular of the stock part (bottom part on the image),

on mine i gave the real 105° and 180° accortding to the nozzles, what do you think about it?

edit:

The angled nozzle give artifacts:

If i want to push on the right, it will also activate the to thruster and make you going down a bit due to how KSP make the RCS work,

so i think i will come back to the original orientation.

-also, english is not my native language ,so if you see somethink in the part description i should change or somethink more fun, don't be ashamed to tell me.

edit:

I know a 5 way modded rcs exist, but from a space point of view: save weight where u can!

and from a gameplay point of view, less weight( you can use only 2 rcs block now) but you will have to be carefull with the throttle, to don't crash on your station ,

it has also less height to go under the fairings.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Skalou
download link

[_Augustus_]

Interesting.

[problemecium]

The thruster is a neat idea, but the photo you linked isn't what you apparently think it is. On the Apollo lander, the RCS ports are parallel going up and down, but angled 45 degrees to the sides so that by placing them at 45 degree angles they provide orthogonal thrust as a set of four. Some other RCS mods have covered that, and your thruster is completely different.

[MaverickSawyer]

Okay, I see where this can be useful... You'd need to run it in fore/aft sets, with the aft set rotated 180 degrees from the fore set, but a full set of 8 thrusters (4/4, fore/aft) will provide 6kN thrust in lateral divert thrust, versus 4kN thrust fore/aft thrust. Traditional RCS quads provide 4/8 in the same situation, and the 5-way units are 6/8. I think this would actually be more useful for docking than the standard setup.

[Skalou]

The thruster is a neat idea, but the photo you linked isn't what you apparently think it is. On the Apollo lander, the RCS ports are parallel going up and down, but angled 45 degrees to the sides so that by placing them at 45 degree angles they provide orthogonal thrust as a set of four. Some other RCS mods have covered that, and your thruster is completely different.

You are totaly right, i just saw what i dreamed on this real photo.

Also i cheked the others mod and found the great RLA Stockalike and Modular Rocket Systems have the 45° and more.

With 2 rcs-blocks having 2/4 nozzles at 45°, you can have a full control at the cost of efficiency, but it can gives you control on the rotation too.

But there isn't some using the principe i want. In KSP it's ok with it, you can control the rotation with the SAS and translate with the RCS and the main engine with a good tweak of the thrust limiter. From a gamelay point of view il like it, it needs a bit more skill to pilot and save a bit of weight (100kg of rcs block and perfect efficiency) a bit of drag too and fit better in spaceplane-bays.

However there is a weak thrust in the 180° oriented nozzle direction (1 nozzle is pushing instead of 2 in the others) and the 180° nozzle is not perfectly aligned with the other nozzle's line of thrust.

I also updated the others thrust vectors back to 90° instead of 105° due to how KSP makes the RCS works.

An Automated Tranfert Cargo Ship for a Kerbin's station using it.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Skalou

[Misucat]

Very good job Skalou

[problemecium]

There remains one flaw, which I cited in an earlier thread about a 5-way RCS block:

When moving up, down, or backward on the demo craft in the OP, each axis has two thrusters pointing along it. When moving left or right, however, there is only one. In order to have equal thrust in each direction, your thruster would need an additional "sideways" port. Here's the diagram I posted for the five-way block - hopefully you can see how it relates here:

Yours would of course simply do away with one of the original four thrusters. Alternately, you could scale up the sideways port and make it twice as powerful instead of having two.

[Skalou]

Very good job Skalou

Your remind me someone... ; thank's

parameciumkid, really nice picture and idea, i thought about this too, but the benefits are balanced by these points:

-more drag and height of the part,

-the mass, but still better than 4 stock rv-105

-price: a bit less than ~50% more i could say compared to rv-105 (i think it's great to give less mass to rcs block with more nozzles, to show the weight saved by having less fuel pipe and structure)

-no rotation control on 1 axis.

It's a neat idea however, with his own advantages (perfect balanced thrust on ALL axis, only plugged on 2 side of the ship) and inconvenients.

Have you seen it in any mod yet? will you use it if it exists?

which design will you prefer?

-2 standards nozzles: more weight.

-1 bigger nozzle: less weight but more expensive.

(from what i know to do on RCS, the bigger nozzle thrust will be 2 standards vectors at the same place)

Edit:

this can do the trick too: (found on the web)

Edited August 17, 2015 by Skalou

[Skalou]

works for KSP 1.3 ( but not translated)

[majNUN]

Nice little mod. Is it not being updated to 1.4.x?

[Stone Blue]

10 minutes ago, majNUN said:

Nice little mod. Is it not being updated to 1.4.x?

Does it not work in 1.4.x?