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[1.3.0] Inline Ballutes [IB] (v1.2.8) [30.05.2017]

riocrokite

By riocrokite
in KSP1 Mod Releases

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goldenpsp

goldenpsp

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, bobbiac said:

Not getting these parts to show up in my parts list. I see the material in real chutes for some reason.. Any suggestions? 

You seem new here.  First suggestion is more information.  Your question is much like "my car won't start, any suggestions?"

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
DerGolgo

DerGolgo

Posted
Posted

Love them inline ballutes! Love 'em!
One thought, though. If I may suggest/request, as presumptuous as it may be.
A ring-shaped ballute case, matching the ring shape of the ballute proper. With a CLS passable center section. So as to attach a docking port, or an inline cockpit or some such. I miss my ballutes when I build a return capsule that needs a docking port at the nose.

Apart from that, I cen see nothing about this mod that's not ossum. LOVE the visuals on reentry!visuals.png

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  • 3 months later...
linuxgurugamer

linuxgurugamer

Posted
Posted (edited)

I've tried contacting the author, and have not gotten a response.  The mod hasn't been updated in over 2 years, and there is a pull waiting from user @eberkain,  The last activity from the author on this thread seems to be June, 2017, when he updated the OP to say 1.3, but didn't bother to update the .version file.

It's a great mod, and I don't want to see it die.

I've forked this and merged the PR, and will be reviewing the configs in regards to any updates needed for 1.3/1.4. 

The fork is available here:  https://github.com/linuxgurugamer/InlineBallutes

Any/all contributions would be gratefully accepted (ie:  translations, cfg updates, etc)

Hope to release in a few days.

Edited by linuxgurugamer
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KSPrynk

KSPrynk

Posted
Posted (edited)

I can say that the 1.25m and 2.5m parts seem to function without anomalies, but here’s some food for thought regarding the drag modeling/parameters.

On KSP 1.4.2, with stock atmosphere and 100% re-entry heating, and using an ~11.64t wet mass craft, 2.5m in diameter, with exposed engine and no heat shield, while dropping from ~2,400,400 km Apoapsis near edge of Jool SOI (most velocity I could get to simulate an interplanetary capture) I got the following:

1) With the 1.25m ballute, the lowest Periapsis I could enter at (9,534m/s orbital speed) was about 194km, which resulted in a drop of only 547,400 km from my Apoapsis.  This is with the temp warning gauges at about 95%.  I was doing 0.5 km increments – below this, my craft turned to popcorn.

2) With the 2.5m ballute, the lowest Periapsis I could enter at (9,534m/s orbital speed) was about 194km, which resulted in a drop of 821,900 km from my Apoapsis.  This is with the temp warning gauges at about 90%.

Since this wasn’t even close to getting me within the orbit of the smallest moon, I decided to upgrade early to Realistic Atmospheres, which sets the atmospheric height of Jool at 400km, while maintaining the same datum pressure.  My logic being this would extend the time I spent in the safe air density region.

With the 2.5m ballute, the lowest Periapsis I could enter at (9,384m/s orbital speed) was about 380km, which resulted in a drop of 1,464,226 km from my Apoapsis.  This is with the temp warning gauge on my exposed engine reaching 80% of the overheat value, without thrusting.  Better, but still leaves me ~5x farther than Pol’s Semi-Major Axis.

I haven’t tried Duna, Eve, or Kerbin yet.  Looking back through the thread, it sounds like Jool was always the tough nut to crack. If the local KSP astrophysicists think I’m expecting too much of the ballute, I’d appreciate some background info and perhaps some better tactics, techniques, and procedures that show that the mass carried – versus extra fuel – is worth it.  On the other hand, it looks like the modeling discussion was from the KSP 1.2 era, so I’m wondering if the drag physics have changed significantly enough since then that a re-balance would be required.

EDIT: Oh, forgot to ask - was there a 0.625m ballute part coming?  I saw it mentioned in the devsite, but didn't see it in the download files.

EDIT 2: Sorry to re-start an apparently long running physics discussion.  I probably should stick to making sure there's nothing seriously broken before it's officially out....

Edited by KSPrynk
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KSPrynk

KSPrynk

Posted
Posted

I did a new test in Sandbox mode focused on functional checks, rather than performance.  I took an ~120t craft with one of every size ballute stacked on top of each other (largest closest in, smallest furthest out), then dropped from edge of Kerbin SOI to 65km.  I deployed each ballute in sequence, without any problems.  Nesting the ballutes seems to not cause any conflicts, but I didn't evaluate whether they were "shadowing" each other or whether cumulative stacking was adding greater effects.  Apoapsis was dropped significantly, without taking the craft parts into heat warning territory (although the ballute parts did trip the gauges for a bit).

In any case, an engineer on EVA was able to repack each ballute afterward and I came back around for another 65km dive.  I deployed the ballutes in reverse order without issue.

One interesting thing I saw: the Min Pressure slider is set to 1E-06 as default.  Messing with the slider doesn't allow the user to put it back, but it can be set to 0.  I did another quick run with two of the four ballutes set at 0 and two at default.  It didn't seem to make a difference, but does make me wonder why it was set at 1E-06 to begin with.

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linuxgurugamer

linuxgurugamer

Posted
Posted
On 4/8/2018 at 7:44 PM, KSPrynk said:

EDIT: Oh, forgot to ask - was there a 0.625m ballute part coming?  I saw it mentioned in the devsite, but didn't see it in the download files.

EDIT 2: Sorry to re-start an apparently long running physics discussion.  I probably should stick to making sure there's nothing seriously broken before it's officially out....

No idea about the 0.625m part, if it's not there, then it's not available. However, it won't be too hard to tweak a model down to that size

Re. the physics, please do.  I haven't yet looked at the part, other than to see they were syntactedly ok.  What I can say is this:

  • The 1.25m part has a default open altitude of 10,000m
  • The 2.5m part has a default open altitude of 100,000m
  • The 3.75m part has a default open altitude of 10,000m
  • The 5m part has a default open altitude of 10,000m

So, first off, the 2.5m needs to be fixed, I've fixed it on my system

And some of the other values don't make that much sense either.

4 minutes ago, KSPrynk said:

I did a new test in Sandbox mode focused on functional checks, rather than performance.  I took an ~120t craft with one of every size ballute stacked on top of each other (largest closest in, smallest furthest out), then dropped from edge of Kerbin SOI to 65km.  I deployed each ballute in sequence, without any problems.  Nesting the ballutes seems to not cause any conflicts, but I didn't evaluate whether they were "shadowing" each other or whether cumulative stacking was adding greater effects.  Apoapsis was dropped significantly, without taking the craft parts into heat warning territory (although the ballute parts did trip the gauges for a bit).

In any case, an engineer on EVA was able to repack each ballute afterward and I came back around for another 65km dive.  I deployed the ballutes in reverse order without issue.

One interesting thing I saw: the Min Pressure slider is set to 1E-06 as default.  Messing with the slider doesn't allow the user to put it back, but it can be set to 0.  I did another quick run with two of the four ballutes set at 0 and two at default.  It didn't seem to make a difference, but does make me wonder why it was set at 1E-06 to begin with.

I think that's used by KSP to automatically open when the air pressure gets to that level.  In other words, anything greater than 0.  I believe that is used when you arm a parachute.

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KSPrynk

KSPrynk

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, KSPrynk said:

Nesting the ballutes seems to not cause any conflicts, but I didn't evaluate whether they were "shadowing" each other or whether cumulative stacking was adding greater effects.

ANNND I just did evaluate it.  I let the craft fall back to the ground and the ballutes acted as parachutes.  Slowed me down to about 54m/s.  When I cut the second-to-largest ballute, my speed spiked up a bit.  I'll try again, just to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

5 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

So, first off, the 2.5m needs to be fixed, I've fixed it on my system

I haven't evaluated each ballute individually to see if there's any inconsistencies.  From what I gather from the early history, it's probably Kerbin and Duna that should be the test cases.  To do Eve, I should probably revert back to stock atmosphere.  To REALLY do it right, I'll probably need to do real missions that have me coming in at interplanetary insertion speeds, to see if I can go from hyberbolic to capture.

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KSPrynk

KSPrynk

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, KSPrynk said:

To REALLY do it right, I'll probably need to do real missions that have me coming in at interplanetary insertion speeds, to see if I can go from hyberbolic to capture.

It occurs to me that the MH mission builder may be VERY useful in setting up test cases.  Now I'll have to learn how to use it....

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