The Kerbodyne tanks

[Red Iron Crown]

Another question, with the new "KS-25-X 'Vector'." Will they be changing the model on the Mammoth engine to have 4 of them? Or due to the fact that this is the 'X' version, the Mammoth will stay the same? Or perhaps just putting the engines in the 'corners' (There are no corners on circles, but you know what I mean), making it easier to place boosters that wont possibly collide with the engine, after separation.

I don't think that has been officially mentioned, I would guess that the Mammoth will remain unchanged.

[NecroBones]

Never ever noticed this before

Guess never using that particular smallest 3.5m tank is the culprit to my problem

Sadly they're all out of alignment, it's just that the smaller tank is the most egregious of them. (OK, the middle one doesn't have stripes, so it gets a pass).

[Renegrade]

IIRC the misalignment was a conscious choice because hahahahahahahahaha it's so Kerbal!

...really? UGH. #lolsokerbal :C

Even if you tweak the rotation a little to make them match each other, they all start out a few degrees off from the cardinal directions. That the error is a little different from one tank to the next, in addition to that. It drives me batty, and was one of the things that convinced me to make Color Coded Canisters sooner rather than later. Nice straight stripes.

I'm actually checking out Color Coded Canisters right now thanks to your post here

(I'm 100% with you on this issue, by the way)

If I remember correctly, german engineers liked having some highly visible black/white patterns on their rockets to be able to visually check if the rocket was spinning.

Which is quite wise. Sometimes, adding a few telltales can help enormously when it comes to the 'learning from mistakes' result

(that works in programming as well as engineering~)

But I REALLY want the new SLS SRB Paint Job. The tanks don't need to change (what alignment problem are you guys talking about?)

http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-102215c-lg.jpg

Indeed; that looks quite spiffy. Are they actually going to fly it that way though?

[Deadpangod3]

I work on the SLS, but I gotta say I prefer the old paint job. I'm pretty sure they're making it orange to save hundreds of pounds of payload due to paint.

Does paint actually weigh THAT much?

[Parkaboy]

Does paint actually weigh THAT much?

Not if it's a light color.

[Wolfos31]

Does paint actually weigh THAT much?

A typical gallon of household paint weighs about 10 pounds and covers about 300 square feet with one coat.

The SLS is a cylinder with a radius of 14 feet and a height of some 250 feet before it tapers (I am MASSIVELY averaging here just for simplicity's sake)

So the surface area of the SLS main stage is about 23,000 square feet. Divide that by 300 gives us 77 gallons needed for 1 coat. This would weigh 770 pounds. It's not insignificant.

Some things to consider is that they'll probably be using nicer paint then you slap on your living room wall, in other words lighter and stronger. That said they would still probably need more than one coat if they wanted the paint to look nice/perform it's protective function. I'd say by stripping out the paint they may have saved between 500-1000 pounds on the launch vehicle. Possibly much more. This seems tiny compared to the weight of the vehicle which is over 2 million pounds but as we should know saving a little weight can make a big difference in where you can go.

[Deadpangod3]

A typical gallon of household paint weighs about 10 pounds and covers about 300 square feet with one coat.

The SLS is a cylinder with a radius of 14 feet and a height of some 250 feet before it tapers (I am MASSIVELY averaging here just for simplicity's sake)

So the surface area of the SLS main stage is about 23,000 square feet. Divide that by 300 gives us 77 gallons needed for 1 coat. This would weigh 770 pounds. It's not insignificant.

Some things to consider is that they'll probably be using nicer paint then you slap on your living room wall, in other words lighter and stronger. That said they would still probably need more than one coat if they wanted the paint to look nice/perform it's protective function. I'd say by stripping out the paint they may have saved between 500-1000 pounds on the launch vehicle. Possibly much more. This seems tiny compared to the weight of the vehicle which is over 2 million pounds but as we should know saving a little weight can make a big difference in where you can go.

Oh wow, I did not know that, thank you for enlightening me

I clearly havn't had much experience with paint

[ShadowZone]

I can't tell you how much that paint misalignment bothers me.

But I would not want the S3 tanks to change to orange. That would mess up a lot of my designs, visual wise.

I second the idea of orange 5m parts. But then I'd also like some fat new engines