Supporting a Cargo Bay Load.

[Clipperride]

After finally getting chance to have a proper play with some of the new 1.5 parts, I tried building a fairly simple, vernier propelled rover as well as a stationary Mk3 Command pod -> Cargo bay -> Ramp, test rig with landing gear and a docking port connecting the Rover to the rear Command pod hatch.

The problem is the rovers weight pulls it down so, as soon as the physics kick in, it droops, clipping through the cargo bay and ramp. Is there a way to get the cargo bay floor to give support to what's inside? My end goal is a mining rig with deployable survey rover exiting and redocking via the new ramp. Any tips?

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I got a rover to work in a service bay by suspending in the middle of the bay, by hanging it from a docking port attached to a girder segment.

[Geschosskopf]

Hmmm..... I hadn't yet messed with the ramp so your question got me to do it. And I've decided it's about useless. But that's beside the point.

To answer your qestion, I had no rover sagging through the bay floor. I built the rover as a subassembly, including both dociking ports already hooked together at the front: Docking Port A is the one on the rover, Docking Port B is the one that will eventually be attached to the Mk3 cockpit, so its inner side is exposed. I then attached a box girder to Port B's inner end, changed the root part to Port B, and saved the rover as a subassembly. Then I added this subassembly to the ramp test rig so that Port B was attached to the wall of the Mk 3 pod at a height so that the rover wheels were barely touching the floor of the cargo bay.

Once on the runway, there was a tiny bit of rover wheels clipping through the bottom of the bay but I think that's unavoidable. Anyway, I released the docking ports, drove the rover back and forth in the bay, and docked it again. No problem with any of that.

HOWEVER, the ramp has a couple of features that makes it essentially useless. First, there's no "give" in the ramp, which means the landing gear has to be arranged so that the belly of the plane is EXACTLY the same height as the ramp sticks down at full extention. If the landing gear is any shorter than that, the end of the ramp hits the ground and jacks the tail of the plane off the ground. OTOH, if the landing gear is too tall, then there's a gap between the end of the ramp and the ground, which is difficult if not impossible for a rover to climb to get onto the ramp.

The other problem is that only a Rovemate with the tiny wheels on it can even fit on the ramp to get back up it. Any rover using the medium-size wheels, even if its body is no wider than a box girder, is too wide to sit on the flat floor inside. Its wheels will be up on the curved sides above the flat floor. You can get such a rover out of the bay but it won't go back in. This is because the curved sides taper down to points at the end of the ramp. Thus, if you have the rover centered on the ramp, the wheels will be beyond the edges of the ramp and won't go up it, so the nose of the rover rams into the ramp. OTOH, if you angle the rove so that 1 wheel will go up the ramp, the other will hang over the other side and get hung up on the upturned edge of the ciuved side of the ramp as the rover moves up the ramp. Then it gets stuck on the hydraulic cylinder near the top of the ramp.

So, the ramp seems only useful for RoveMate rovers, which are ridiculously small to carry around in a Mk3 plane. For any bigger rover, you need wheels that can retract inboard to make the thing narrow enough to get in and out, but still work in the retracted position so it can move. Maybe Infernal Robotics would help there. But otherwise I don't see much use in the ramp.

[sal_vager]

Nevermind, it suddenly stopped working.

You have to use Kerbal joint reinforcement or Kerbal attachment system. Edited November 16, 2015 by sal_vager

[Clipperride]

Interesting feedback thanks. The amount of travel on the ramp is tweakable, but it would still mean deploying on a flat surface such as the Minmus Flats. I've yet to try to see if you can set the ramp to open a few degrees then tweak it down so it just touches the floor. But if you can only use small rover wheels it does seem very limited.

[Clipperride]

I've had a bit more chance to play with the new parts now. The only way I can get it to work is to build a small rover, roll it off the runway, then launch my plane with ramp. Once you get the angle of the ramp correct, you can drive the rover up the ramp, close it and take off. The problem is still the small size of rover you can fit onto the cargo ramp.

Any one else found a way around it?

[Vegetal]

You can use struts, as always. When you detach the rover, it will become another vessel and won't clip through, even if you dock it again. Then you won't need struts anymore.

[Wanderfound]

[quote name='Clipperride']I've had a bit more chance to play with the new parts now. The only way I can get it to work is to build a small rover, roll it off the runway, then launch my plane with ramp. Once you get the angle of the ramp correct, you can drive the rover up the ramp, close it and take off. The problem is still the small size of rover you can fit onto the cargo ramp.

Any one else found a way around it?[/QUOTE]

Yup.

[imgur]sg45D[/imgur]


Craft file at [URL]https://www.dropbox.com/s/xemlcqls4bjcsfw/Kerbodyne%20Ducktail.craft?dl=0[/URL]

Built for FAR, but the rover mounting tricks should apply in stock. Basically: belly or roof docking, some way of getting over/up to the docking ports, and enough grunt in the wheels (or thrusters) to get up the ramp. Four Rovemax wheels will struggle, but six do it fine. Edited November 21, 2015 by Wanderfound