[1.12.5] Cormorant Aeronology - Mk3 Space Shuttle

[HoveringKiller]

How do you guys counter the angled thrusters on the OMS pods for docking and not rolling when trying to rotate your craft?

[Spartan-S63]

2 hours ago, HoveringKiller said:

How do you guys counter the angled thrusters on the OMS pods for docking and not rolling when trying to rotate your craft?

I haven't fixed this problem yet, but I would imagine using something like RCS Build Aid, you could balance the RCS by adding a few more thrusters around the body of the craft to make sure that no weird torque (I think?) is being applied while using the built-in RCS thrusters.

[HoveringKiller]

3 hours ago, Spartan-S63 said:

I haven't fixed this problem yet, but I would imagine using something like RCS Build Aid, you could balance the RCS by adding a few more thrusters around the body of the craft to make sure that no weird torque (I think?) is being applied while using the built-in RCS thrusters.

What have you found to be the best angle for the main engines? Maybe it's because I didn't roll it over but it kept wanting to pitch backwards on me. I think rolling it over should help though since it'll be pitching up instead of down. Is this the case for you?

[Spartan-S63]

24 minutes ago, HoveringKiller said:

What have you found to be the best angle for the main engines? Maybe it's because I didn't roll it over but it kept wanting to pitch backwards on me. I think rolling it over should help though since it'll be pitching up instead of down. Is this the case for you?

For balancing the main engines, I use Kerbal Engineer and continue rotating them until I get as close to zero torque as possible. The mod shows you how much torque is created by the offset thrust. Also, draining fuel from the bottom first and then the top (which I haven't quite figured out yet) will help you when it comes to keeping the stack balanced as you drain fuel. You want to keep your CoM as high as possible for as long as possible so the thrust vector doesn't have to be too terribly far off center. It also helps to drain the bottom fuel tanks if you don't need them for deltaV.

[HoveringKiller]

47 minutes ago, Spartan-S63 said:

For balancing the main engines, I use Kerbal Engineer and continue rotating them until I get as close to zero torque as possible. The mod shows you how much torque is created by the offset thrust. Also, draining fuel from the bottom first and then the top (which I haven't quite figured out yet) will help you when it comes to keeping the stack balanced as you drain fuel. You want to keep your CoM as high as possible for as long as possible so the thrust vector doesn't have to be too terribly far off center. It also helps to drain the bottom fuel tanks if you don't need them for deltaV.

I did that but I didn't do roll over so my orbiter was still under the fuel tank and it was wanting to pitch down but if I roll over it should then be wanting to pitch up from the torque generated. I'll test that out and see what happens. 

[Spartan-S63]

9 minutes ago, HoveringKiller said:

I did that but I didn't do roll over so my orbiter was still under the fuel tank and it was wanting to pitch down but if I roll over it should then be wanting to pitch up from the torque generated. I'll test that out and see what happens. 

Yeah, you should definitely roll and pitch up once your above most of the atmosphere. The torque pushing your nose up is favorable versus the alternative of pushing your nose down. That said, I'm still working on mastering the roll maneuver without introducing yaw or pitch.

[MrMeeb]

1 hour ago, Spartan-S63 said:

Also, draining fuel from the bottom first and then the top (which I haven't quite figured out yet) will help you when it comes to keeping the stack balanced as you drain fuel.

I've done this in all my shuttle designs, and it really helps! The way to do it is to built the tank as normal, and then put a part with no crossfeed between the ET and its top-most tank. Offset to your liking, and then link the rest of the ET to the top-most tank using a fuel line. Once you've done this, run a fuel line from the top tank to the orbiter. That way, the orbiter's SSMEs will be fueled by the top tank, and the top tank will be fueled by the rest of the ET. If you've done it right, the ET will drain from the bottom up, instead of the top down. If you're having trouble, I'd recommend you download my shuttle mentioned here, and see how I've done it  

Happy piloting!  

[Spartan-S63]

3 hours ago, MrMeeb said:

I've done this in all my shuttle designs, and it really helps! The way to do it is to built the tank as normal, and then put a part with no crossfeed between the ET and its top-most tank. Offset to your liking, and then link the rest of the ET to the top-most tank using a fuel line. Once you've done this, run a fuel line from the top tank to the orbiter. That way, the orbiter's SSMEs will be fueled by the top tank, and the top tank will be fueled by the rest of the ET. If you've done it right, the ET will drain from the bottom up, instead of the top down. If you're having trouble, I'd recommend you download my shuttle mentioned here, and see how I've done it  

Happy piloting!  

Excellent, I'm definitely checking this out! Edit: Checked it out. Wow, your TWR on the shuttle is ridiculously high. There's no issue with that, but I totally underestimated how aggressive my gravity turn should be. That thing flies like a bat out of hell, wow!

Perchance, did you do "drop tests" with your shuttle orbiter to test the glide characteristics? If so, did you build a shuttle carrier? And if you did that, how'd you build it? I'm still having trouble making my shuttle a sub-assembly that I can attach to a larger jet-propelled aircraft or whatnot. Any advice would be awesome!

Edited May 30, 2016 by Spartan-S63

[TimothyC]

11 hours ago, HoveringKiller said:

How do you guys counter the angled thrusters on the OMS pods for docking and not rolling when trying to rotate your craft?

I place a probe core at a 15 degree incline on the tail when I fly the orbiter. This lines up with the OMS engines, and I use "Control from here". This also place the control axis near the thruster axis, which improves control. For terminal docking, I control from the docking port, and make slow, methodical adjustments. MechJeb likes to eat the RCS on docking if you let it. The key here is to make sure that you are aligned while some distance away, and that your docking port is close to your CoM, which is determined by how much stuff you have in the cargo bay, and strapped to the back of the orbiter.

[MrMeeb]

8 hours ago, Spartan-S63 said:

Excellent, I'm definitely checking this out! Edit: Checked it out. Wow, your TWR on the shuttle is ridiculously high. There's no issue with that, but I totally underestimated how aggressive my gravity turn should be. That thing flies like a bat out of hell, wow!

Perchance, did you do "drop tests" with your shuttle orbiter to test the glide characteristics? If so, did you build a shuttle carrier? And if you did that, how'd you build it? I'm still having trouble making my shuttle a sub-assembly that I can attach to a larger jet-propelled aircraft or whatnot. Any advice would be awesome!

I didn't do drop testing with that shuttle, but I did do it in my RSS shuttle development:

The way I did it was to start with the shuttle and then attach a decoupler then a load of fuel tanks, some wings and some engines. That portion was unmanned so I'd just drop it and let it crash

[Checker_guy]

- deleted - 

Edited May 31, 2016 by Checker_guy
stupidity

[Pak]

I couldn't find who mentioned the attach node on the shuttle bottom, but good call. I happened to be working on this which will add a node on the bottom piece.

Besides that I've been finishing up the shielded wings and doing some little tweeks.

On 5/26/2016 at 11:20 AM, Grunf911 said:

Hi @Pak would it be possible to add Buran cockpit or a nose mask same as you did for the shuttle ?

I think that is the only thing needed to make a Buran, there is already Energia rockets modm and all other your parts are similar

I don't know too much about the Buran. It looks like the RCS are in similar enough places. Would a retexture be enough there or is there some capability that it would be missing when compared to the US shuttle? It could be a good project for me to learn the IFS texture switcher and move the whole pack out of firespitter. I was thinking of doing this for the wings as well so there's not two parts that are almost the same.

 

If you're having issues with the power of the OMS or fuel capacity (I might add a little more, but not much) I would take a good look at your ascent profile. Other good folks have posted explanations of it here and elsewhere so I won't get into it, but I do all my testing with 18t in the cargo bay. It should only take about 60 m/s to finish an orbit of 80/20. These engines are definitely not capable of shoving a shuttle into orbit.

This leaves you with about 350ish (I don't really remember) dv to get to where you're going and plenty more to get home after dumping your cargo. I'm probably going to bump the fuel up so a standard shuttle will have a little over 400dv after insertion.

Good luck, all!

I really appreciate all the pictures and videos and ideas. I'll get to more ideas when I can

 

Oh yeah I forgot. I had a chance to actually play kerbal a bit (weird right?) and find myself making independant fuel cells a lot by segregating an oscar-b and fuel cell with a panel so engines don't eat up all my fuel. I'll be putting together a simplified version of this shuttle fuel cell. Hopefully I can get it to work as one thing with no fuel crossfeed into the ship. It'll be a bit smaller and provide less charge than a standard fuel cell but have its own small fuel supply. Could be useful for other things like CSMs and landers too.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Pak

[Sgt.Shutesie]

Is the shuttle-ET attatchment thing based off a 5 meter ET or a 3.75 meter ET?

Edit: Instead of putting in the Oscar B-fuel cell setup, I just wrote code into the airlock config for one, could we have something like that while we wait for the fuel cells?

Edited June 1, 2016 by Sgt.Shutesie

[Pak]

3.75m. If I can figure out texture/mesh switcher I'll move bits around to make it work with 5m as well. That's what the DIRECT ET size is, right?

[Sgt.Shutesie]

Just now, Pak said:

3.75m. If I can figure out texture/mesh switcher I'll move bits around to make it work with 5m as well. That's what the DIRECT ET size is, right?

Yep, 5 meters.

[Grunf911]

5 hours ago, Pak said:

 

I don't know too much about the Buran. It looks like the RCS are in similar enough places. Would a retexture be enough there or is there some capability that it would be missing when compared to the US shuttle? It could be a good project for me to learn the IFS texture switcher and move the whole pack out of firespitter. I was thinking of doing this for the wings as well so there's not two parts that are almost the same.

 

 

Hi,

Here is although low-res picture of side by side: 

Buran in front, shuttle in back.

Some differences i noticed

1. Cockpit - paint and windows - texture switch should work here

2. Rear - RCS looks the same. IMHO just make a duplicate rear RCS unit just without the OMS pods.Here is a good pic of Buran-'s rear

 

3. Lifting body - just switch texture to display Buran in cyrilic:  Бура́н

4. Wings- also texture switch from USA to CCCP - so it kinda fits the theme

 

So overall i think that is it, not too many changes, but would be cool to get that one

[sharpspoonful]

So taking Pak's suggestions of using the Direct mod, I was able to get a 200 km x 20 km initial ascent orbit. To add to that, there was still some LqdHyd/Ox left in the EFT! No OMS needed. I needed less than a short OMS circularization burn, and that's with a full HabTech module, 4 EVA packs, Airlock, Truss and Canadarm in the payload bay! 

 

Great mod suggestion, @Pak. I'll upload the craft file on KerbalX later

Edited June 1, 2016 by sharpspoonful

[Pak]

@Grunf911 Thanks for the post. Sounds like a plan. I'll see how much of it I can do without adding new texture maps and go from there. I probably wouldn't mess with the cockpit though to avoid compatibility issues with other mods like ASET and stuff.

 

@MrMeeb Great shuttle and pictures. Really like the hybrid thing you've got going on. Keep it up!

I looked into the angled engine mount again. I couldn't find what the actual angle is on the real one, but it looks less than the 15 degrees we'd need for general kerbal use. I moved the back around on my model so it has a 15 degree angle just to see and it looks a bit less ridiculous than I thought it would. Could end up being a mesh switcher option.

 

[MrMeeb]

3 hours ago, Pak said:

@MrMeeb Great shuttle and pictures. Really like the hybrid thing you've got going on. Keep it up!

I looked into the angled engine mount again. I couldn't find what the actual angle is on the real one, but it looks less than the 15 degrees we'd need for general kerbal use. I moved the back around on my model so it has a 15 degree angle just to see and it looks a bit less ridiculous than I thought it would. Could end up being a mesh switcher option.

 

Thanks, appreciate it! There certainly will be more shuttle operations in the new future. I just need to decide whether I want to use my shuttle or the realistic design. All will become clear soon

With regards to the new engine mount, I'm excited to see how it looks. Mesh switch would be a good idea, along with texture switch for the tiled wings! Keep up the good work!

[StevieC]

1 hour ago, Pak said:

15 degree angle

Personally I use a ten-degree angle, since the main-engines aren't as far off the centerline as the OMS engines.

[Grunf911]

2 hours ago, Pak said:

@Grunf911 Thanks for the post. Sounds like a plan. I'll see how much of it I can do without adding new texture maps and go from there. I probably wouldn't mess with the cockpit though to avoid compatibility issues with other mods like ASET and stuff.

Then may i suggest you do the same thing you did for shuttle nose, adding just slightly different texture, or make your existing shuttle nose just to support slightly different paint scheme by using texture switcher, i think that should do it. The biggest giveaway between the 2 (if you ignore windows) is that shuttle has circular nose black paint while Buran has white in straight line best visible in pic 2. I think your nose with different texture should do the trick

Keep up the great work, Love the mod, and the fact it adds up to stock Mk3 parts

I am preparing KSP 1.1 playthrough starting mid-june and would love for this mod to be a part of it. That being said i have another small request. Can you make sure it is ETT compatible ?, as this is something i am planning to use

BTW made a Buran video with Energia, will post it soon here. I was hiding OMS pods from Shadow Works, but if you would be able to deliver the RCS pods and cockpit soon and provide it for test, i might re-shoot the video. Not trying to put a preassure on you, but I just wanna make really cool Buran

Edited June 1, 2016 by Grunf911

[Pak]

Yep. That's what a mean, Grunf911

It would end up being a little retexturing on the nose, mostly unchanged body, new aft RCS part, an O-90 engine without the offset, and the domed bit on the back.

I think I'll do this after the wings update. Shouldn't be too much trouble since I have most of the bits and textures already

[Snark]

Hi folks,

Several posts have been pruned from this thread.  A gentle reminder that it is never appropriate to post unconstructive criticism about a mod in that mod's thread.  Mod authors put lots of hard work into giving others shiny toys for free, asking nothing in return, and it is grossly inappropriate to be rude to them.  If you don't have a use for a particular mod... just don't use it.  Perhaps you can go off and write something better yourself.

We now return you to the discussion of this mod kindly provided to us, for free, by yet another public-spirited, hard-working mod author. 

[Pak]

Thanks @Snark

Dudes

It works and it was surprisingly easy. I'm suspicious

Not the most glamorous solution but it's done in stock. Works normally as yaw control and deploys out with an action group

 

[StevieC]

1 hour ago, Pak said:

All riiiiiiiiight!