Asteroid Day high gain antenna hinge design "puzzlement"

[Wallygator]

Can anyone explain the logic behind the physical hinge design of this part?

The lower hinge hardly moves at all.

Considering the idea of weight savings, why would someone include such a useless hinge?

OR... perhaps the lower hinge should ALSO have up to 170ish degrees of motion? Hmmm, that would be nice---> lower hinge moves first to full extension, then upper hinge ---> or better yet, let the player tweak the range of motion of each hinge?

IDK - just seems to be a real puzzle unless I'm missing something.

Regardless, the mounting and deployment of this part is problematic for me as it stands today.

Discuss? (Apologies if this is an old "already beaten to death" discussion point, but didn't see anything similar posted recently)

Edited September 6, 2015 by Wallygator

[MaxwellsDemon]

At a guess, it was a compromise between the real B612 plans and what could be Kerbalized.

I don't know how current this image is, but here's the real B612 "Sentinel":

[Wallygator]

Can't see your reference image but a prior search showed nothing similar to the B612 idea except for a "dish". So the in-game dual-hinge idea is clearly a dev construct. And it makes no sense.

[EdusacconBR]

that antenna is good for fitting inside mk3 and maybe mk2 cargo bays too since it deploys like that

[Wallygator]

Yes but two hinges are not necessary for such use.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Ah-- sorry you can't see the image. Here's the URL in case that helps: http: //i.space.com/images/i/000/018/850/i02/sentinel-space-telescope.jpg (remove the space after http: )

Suffice to say the dish antenna appears much simpler than the Kerbalized version.

[Wallygator]

Yes you are correct - however, regardless of the intended B612 design, what I'm puzzled about in this post is the Kerbal version.

The KSP part seems poorly designed from an engineering perspective.

[RoverDude]

The dual hinge is there to swing that dish out of the way of the various dangly bits people will likely have on a 1.25m stack while remaining parallel to the vessel like the original Sentiel (otherwise I would have had it just stick out perpendicular). It collapses so that it will still actually fit in a 2.5m fairing when stowed.

So while it may not make any sense to you, it does make perfect sense given it's purpose and design constraints.

[Wallygator]

OK. Thanks. I'll just ask that the thread be closed. I'll flag it as answered, just.

Two hinges are likely not required to achieve the 180 degree unfolding as exhibited IMHO - and its only an opinion.

This is definitely NOT a game play issue, its just curiosity. No worries. Absolutely no need to pursue this further.

Frankly, the fact that Roverdude took a minute away from 1.1 to even consider this very minor question is nice to know. :-)

There is probably a nasty bug that remains out there that could have been squashed with that "minute of attention" and now its partly my fault! Argh!