Antennae should be exempt from 'stowed' deployment rule.

[Alshain]

So, simply put.  Radio waves are not blocked by the materials that fairings are made from (typically cork I believe).  Having them not deployable while stowed is unrealistic.  Unless you are encasing it in thick heavy metals there is no reason it can't function inside an enclosure.  Even a cargo bay is probably not enough to block the signal significantly.  You could theoretically (with the coming system) have a slight range penalty for being obstructed by a cargo bay which would more likely be a thin aluminum, but it wouldn't be a huge impact anyway.  If you think about it, even your cell phones have internal antennas these days.

(Yes, I know this can be fixed with a MM patch)

[Red Iron Crown]

Not unrealistic, metal fairings and cargo bays are Faraday cages. Those metal-bodied cellphones always have a plastic section where the antennas are, otherwise they would work very poorly, if at all (an easy experiment is to wrap your phone in tinfoil and try to call it). Radomes on fighter aircraft are the same deal, never made of metal as that would interfere with the radar's signal.

[Mister Dilsby]

35 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

(an easy experiment is to wrap your phone in tinfoil and try to call it). 

So that's why tinfoil hats are so good at blocking government mind control signals! But does the hat need to be grounded to work properly? I'd hate to think I'd been doing it wrong all these years. 

[Alshain]

@Red Iron Crown Fairings aren't metal.  They are carbon fiber and cork, which will not create a Faraday cage and NASA, or whoever, receives telemetry from the rocket as it ascends, so yeah completely unrealistic.

(Trust me on this, I've been working with radio systems for the last 10 years in the natural gas fields of Colorado.  We installed antennas inside Stainless Steel boxes, you'd be surprised what doesn't create a faraday cage. The only time we ever had a design problem was when we were using an explosion proof enclosure... i.e. 3inch thick carbon steel... we solved it by having a glass end cap which also doesn't block transmission)

Edited December 2, 2015 by Alshain

[Red Iron Crown]

Today they are made of composite materials, true. But what were they made of back in the '60s, the era of spaceflight that KSP is supposedly analogous to? Plus the telemetry for real rockets is typically not part of the payload enclosed in a fairing (or bay with the Shuttle or X-37), but part of each rocket stage.

Realism aside, an honest question: What gameplay benefit is there to this?

[FungusForge]

I always thought Faraday cages were, well, some kinda cage. At the very least crumpling your tin foil before making your hat seems like it'd be more effective than smoothness.

Anyway, as for gameplay benefits. Maybe I'm sending a Rover to Duna or Laythe and want to snag a bit of extra science from my experiments without having to pack some redundant antennae to do so. Yeah, at best I'll only save 1100 funds, but still. And while not in mind for stock games, it would also help Remote Tech/Antennae Ranges folks so they don't have to crash/terminate debris trying to play relay.

[Alshain]

47 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Today they are made of composite materials, true. But what were they made of back in the '60s, the era of spaceflight that KSP is supposedly analogous to? Plus the telemetry for real rockets is typically not part of the payload enclosed in a fairing (or bay with the Shuttle or X-37), but part of each rocket stage.

Realism aside, an honest question: What gameplay benefit is there to this?

I just said what they were made of... cork.  In fact I said it twice.   Cork is not a composite, it's been around for a long time, and it's cheap, light weight, and ablative which is why they used it.

Gameplay benefit for the current version is just for mods, but it's also going to be needed for unmanned launching in 1.1 I believe because of the new system coming.  Antennas break when deployed in the atmosphere (I think that is true of stock, if I remember right, unless I'm getting confused and it's a remote tech only feature but in any case it doesn't really matter) and you need something to communicate with the ground.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Alshain

[Red Iron Crown]

It was my understanding that cork was used as an insulator inside a metallic shell on older fairings, but I certainly could be wrong and can't seem to find any references either way in a cursory search.

Somehow I think that 1.1's antenna system will support uncrewed craft and launchers, perhaps this is how it will be done. *shrug* As for mods, as you say this can be easily fixed by a MM patch.

[Alshain]

Well it does say it on that Wiki page (if you trust Wikipedia of course, I know it isn't always reliable, but I've heard it elsewhere before)

Quote

It is also a high strength-to-weight/cost ablative material for aerodynamic prototypes in wind tunnels, as well as satellite launch vehicle payload fairings, reentry surfaces, and compression joints in thrust-vectored solid rocket motor nozzles.

Anyway, all I'm saying is there is no real reason for the unnecessary restriction of deploying the antenna in a fairing. It's not a gameplay challenge thing, it's not a realism thing, it's really nothing, so why restrict it?  Instead of asking what does it do for gameplay, you should be asking what does the restriction do for gameplay?  If I want to do it I should able to.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Alshain

[kotomikun]

Does it let you pre-deploy the antenna in the editor, and put a fairing around it? I haven't tried that, but I did that with the wide-band resource scanner (so it would fit on the side of a probe inside a reasonably small procedural fairing) and it didn't complain. I think the reason it doesn't let you deploy antennas (or other things) while stowed is to prevent them clipping through the fairing as they extend, not because of radio-signal issues.

Though, there's the separate issue of the bug that sometimes doesn't let you deploy antennas that are outside the fairing. Not sure if 1.0.5 fixed that one.

[lrd.Helmet]

As far as I know fairings are not made of cork. Heat shields are though. Isn't cork way to weak to act as a structural element?

anyway ontopic:
As far as I'm concerned, the entire "stowed" thing should be removed. I've had too many engines not being able to activate, because they were "stowed" while they were not.

[panzer1b]

Why do you guys assume fairings/bomb bays are made of metal.  I always viewed KSP as more of a realistic physics sci-fi game anyways, since it isnt realistic on very many regards, why not have some alien plastic that can withstand 2500K or something?  Either way, regardless if you block the signal or not when in a closed cargo bay, blocking deployment is kinda odd since well you can always predeploy antennas in the enclosed spaces.

And as the above post, i agree that engines should be allowed to engage inside a bay, if you are crazy enough to actually engage it in there, your bay will explode from the thrust, but overall there is no physical law that states engines cannot fire inside an enclosure.  That, and you can always super quickly open bay, engage engine, close bay all within a fraction of a second to bypass this limitation anyways, so it seems to me as a bit pointless.  If anyone knows of a mod that disables this limitation please give a link.

[Superfluous J]

Not allowing engines to ignite while stowed is one of the least Kerbal things in this game.

7 nukes aimed directly at a command chair? Hop on in, Jeb. Unejected fairings around a Terrier? SAFETY VIOLATION.

[swjr-swis]

Chiming in on the 'Remove-the-stowed-limitation-please' thing for everything, not just the antennae. It's neither a realism nor a Kerbal thing. "Safety? We don't need no steenkeen' safety."

[Alshain]

4 hours ago, lrd.Helmet said:

As far as I know fairings are not made of cork. Heat shields are though. Isn't cork way to weak to act as a structural element?

anyway ontopic:
As far as I'm concerned, the entire "stowed" thing should be removed. I've had too many engines not being able to activate, because they were "stowed" while they were not.

No, but we aren't talking about cork material like you find on a elementary school cork board, we are talking about the plant tissue that cork board material is made from.  It can be used to make other things.  Early fairings were made from cork cambium, modern ones are carbon fiber or similar composites.  And I kind of agree, I had an annoying issue with RCS yesterday because the engine was mounted to the outside of a service bay.  Eventually I realized I could just open the service bay to fix my ship, but it took me a bit to figure out why they weren't firing.

Edited December 3, 2015 by Alshain

[Alshain]

3 hours ago, panzer1b said:

Why do you guys assume fairings/bomb bays are made of metal.  I always viewed KSP as more of a realistic physics sci-fi game anyways, since it isnt realistic on very many regards, why not have some alien plastic that can withstand 2500K or something?  Either way, regardless if you block the signal or not when in a closed cargo bay, blocking deployment is kinda odd since well you can always predeploy antennas in the enclosed spaces.

And as the above post, i agree that engines should be allowed to engage inside a bay, if you are crazy enough to actually engage it in there, your bay will explode from the thrust, but overall there is no physical law that states engines cannot fire inside an enclosure.  That, and you can always super quickly open bay, engage engine, close bay all within a fraction of a second to bypass this limitation anyways, so it seems to me as a bit pointless.  If anyone knows of a mod that disables this limitation please give a link.

Afraid I don't know how to do it with engines.  ModuleAnimateGeneric has "allowAnimationWhileShielded = False" that you can modify with a module manager patch, but engines do not as far as I can tell.

[Rath]

I don't like the stowed "mechanic".  It should exist on parachutes (maybe another thing or two) and nothing else

[wrcsubers]

I'll look into putting a plugin together to change this.  Engines and Antenna able to activate while stowed... Anything else?

[Skalou]

4 hours ago, wrcsubers said:

I'll look into putting a plugin together to change this.  Engines and Antenna able to activate while stowed... Anything else?

There is this one if it can help you:

Also , at least on the ariane 5, the fairing is made mainly of carbon-fiber (that is not good for radio waves), but there is some radio transparent windows made of glass fiber.

http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-ariane5/Ariane5_users_manual_Issue5_July2011.pdf

page 210/271, A6-2 , Figure A6.1

There is always a solution...

for the gameplay i also found it bad to block the antennae inside them,

but in counter-balance why not block them during the reentry with big plasma? ,

but i've read somewhere that chinese scientists(?) could make it possible even during this phase, but it needs test..:

hypersonic-spacecraft-communications-reentry-tech

maybe why not keep this for the lasts in thee tech-tree.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Skalou

[kerdansig]

On 12/2/2015, 10:30:35, Alshain said:

@Red Iron Crown Fairings aren't metal.  They are carbon fiber and cork, which will not create a Faraday cage and NASA, or whoever, receives telemetry from the rocket as it ascends, so yeah completely unrealistic.

(Trust me on this, I've been working with radio systems for the last 10 years in the natural gas fields of Colorado.  We installed antennas inside Stainless Steel boxes, you'd be surprised what doesn't create a faraday cage. The only time we ever had a design problem was when we were using an explosion proof enclosure... i.e. 3inch thick carbon steel... we solved it by having a glass end cap which also doesn't block transmission)

How did you find a glass end cap that is explosion proof?  Also, are we talking class 1 div 1?

[Alshain]

4 hours ago, kerdansig said:

How did you find a glass end cap that is explosion proof?  Also, are we talking class 1 div 1?

Lol, well a bit off topic, but it was sealed with neoprene and embedded into a carbon steel end cap which was sufficiently threaded, and yes it was Class 1 Div 1 Explosion Proof according to CSA.