[WIP] German WWII rockets including never built absurdities

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Some progress.

The A-10 rocket is mostly done.  I need to add texturing and some small tweaks to the model for the engine.  And the semi-fairing pieces are reluctant to decouple in any direction except up.  Which tends to lead to running into them, so sub-optimal.  It turns like a train again. No control surfaces and big fins.

The A-9 wings are behaving better, but still stupidly.  I need to do more tweaks on the aero CoXOffsets and so on.  I don't mind if they're useless, but they behave very strangely at the moment.  I do have Blender stage A-4b wings as well, just need to turn them into Unity wings and then KSP wings.  And I started, restarted, and restarted again on the A-9 cockpit.  This time starting with the inside, working my way out.  Seems to be a good way of building the IVA into the design.

 

[Bleddyn]

The A-10 is looking excellent. Thank you for the updates!

[halowraith1]

didn't the A-10 have guide vanes at the exhaust to help with maneuvering? you can see it on some 3D renderings, they're sort of like black plates right after the rocket nozzle.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

9 hours ago, halowraith1 said:

didn't the A-10 have guide vanes at the exhaust to help with maneuvering? you can see it on some 3D renderings, they're sort of like black plates right after the rocket nozzle.

Yep, and I'm modelling that using gimbaling (plus some modeled guide vanes).  The guide vanes I have in are currently just the A-4 vanes scaled up.  It's one of those model tweaks I need to add to the engine before it's releasable.  But the effect of those guide vanes is already on the part, and it's still pretty sluggish at turning.  It does turn though.  For turning, the wings look like they're drawn in on several diagrams with exhaust nozzles running through them.  Presumably a proto-RCS type system using the steam output from the hydrogen peroxide steam generator.  Although I'm guessing wildly here.  So, I've added RCS to the wings using the dual fuel for the moment.  But that's arranged to only give a small control boost.

It does all "kind of" work though.  Here's Jeb going up (there's no provision for coming back down) in my early A-9 cockpit, with A-6 wings on the top of an A-10.

 

Edited May 22, 2016 by TiktaalikDreaming

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I've finished revising the 3d model for the A-10 engine.  So, it needed the control vanes to not just be A-4 control vanes, the A-10 vanes are huge.  And the existing steam exhaust needed revising to not clip and show outside the wing body.  I still need to unwrap and texture the engine though.  I haven't had a lot of time recently, but I should have an uploadable A-10 done fairly soon.  With A-4b, A-6, and A-9 wings for the A-4.

 

[halowraith1]

hey, are these meant to work with FAR? in both stock ksp and RSS, the CoL is almost at the nose cone of the V2 if it's in a normal configuration. this basically makes it flip over when its fuel is depleted (more noticeable in rss).

[TiktaalikDreaming]

2 minutes ago, halowraith1 said:

hey, are these meant to work with FAR? in both stock ksp and RSS, the CoL is almost at the nose cone of the V2 if it's in a normal configuration. this basically makes it flip over when its fuel is depleted (more noticeable in rss).

The centre of mass, lift, drag are all fairly badly wrong.  I've fixed them in my dev edition, mostly because all that completely stuffs up everything when it's multi-stage.  I'll be updating once I have a few textures done.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

OK, I've updated the current version to 0.11, which now includes the A-4, A-4b, A-6, A-9 and A-10, plus the Redstone A-6.

I haven't really exhaustively tested the parts, but the aero should be a lot better than previously (although I made a completely unchecked change to the Redstone fins).  There's no decoupler, but the small stock decouplers work for A-4<->A-10 decoupling.

All stock sizing is now 64% of real-life.

There's still a bunch of things to adjust and I don't promise later changes won't break stuff, but the parts should all be basically usable. 

A-1 and A-2 partly done, but not in this pack yet.  They'll be curios at best.  I'll get around to the A-3 and A-5 at some stage.  And then on to the A-11 and A-12

[Wolf Baginski]

On 18/05/2016 at 7:03 AM, TiktaalikDreaming said:

0.64x?  OK.  I've gone with 0.703x on the Redstone so far to get a 1.25m rocket, but .64x would be pretty close.  Close enough to not look totally out of place.  I can pretty easily convert seeing as most of my blender models are full scale and then I rescale later.

o,64x looks good as an ideal scaling, but that slightly larger scaling for a Redstone to get to 1.25m is a very defensible choice. That x1.1 linear difference cubes out at x1.33 volume, and that could be applied as a correction for mass/fuel numbers, if you wanted to be picky.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

3 hours ago, Wolf Baginski said:

o,64x looks good as an ideal scaling, but that slightly larger scaling for a Redstone to get to 1.25m is a very defensible choice. That x1.1 linear difference cubes out at x1.33 volume, and that could be applied as a correction for mass/fuel numbers, if you wanted to be picky.

I've found the 64% edition is close enough to 1.25m that you don't really notice.  It does struggle lifting stock KSP pods due to their mass, but it works if you drop the fuel a bit, tweak a few things etc.  But it wasn't really designed to lift pods so much as warheads.

Anyway, here's a shot to match the 50% vs 70.3% examples from last page;

 

You can see there's a slight difference in diameters, but it's not enough for me to worry about.

[He_162]

Can you modify the op to include the following? I'd just like to know what's in the latest updates, etc.

-Parts list

-Planned changes & additions

-Known major bugs

 

Thanks!

Edited July 13, 2016 by He_162

[TiktaalikDreaming]

4 hours ago, He_162 said:

Can you modify the op to include the following? I'd just like to know what's in the latest updates, etc.

-Parts list

-Planned changes & additions

-Known major bugs

 

Thanks!

Nooo, people must read all 5 pages of cra//// posts.

Oh, OK

[He_162]

8 hours ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Nooo, people must read all 5 pages of cra//// posts.

Oh, OK

Yeah, I know a lot of people who don't download the mod unless they can get a clear idea of what all is in it, and so forth. You might get more downloads and stuff if you have a section at the bottom of the OP that lists all the parts, and has a picture for each of them, I recommend just links to the pictures, or a single spoiler with the part list and pictures.

[halowraith1]

i think the a10 needs a little less fuel, it can almost get to orbit by itself in stock ksp.

+a couple more RSS issues

-V2 rocket flips 180 degrees when engine cuts out; the CoL is far in front of the CoM

-A9 cockpit, ablative nose cone, A6 wing, A4 wing, A10 fuel tank, A10 fins and A10 fairing are stock-sized

[TiktaalikDreaming]

5 hours ago, halowraith1 said:

i think the a10 needs a little less fuel, it can almost get to orbit by itself in stock ksp.

+a couple more RSS issues

-V2 rocket flips 180 degrees when engine cuts out; the CoL is far in front of the CoM

-A9 cockpit, ablative nose cone, A6 wing, A4 wing, A10 fuel tank, A10 fins and A10 fairing are stock-sized

The A-10 needs more work.  I copied the ISP and so on from the A-4, but the A-10 was going to run on diesel oil and nitric acid, which would mess with the ISP quite a bit.

Many of the newer parts (pretty much those mentioned) don't have working MM conversions for RSS or RealFuels yet.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

21 hours ago, halowraith1 said:

i think the a10 needs a little less fuel, it can almost get to orbit by itself in stock ksp.

I checked and double checked, Fuel and thrust are about right.  Mass is not.  Mass of the fuel tanks is 0.2 but should be about 4.45

[halowraith1]

also for future reference, apparently the A-10 stage was going to be modified for use in some way for the A-11 and A-12 stacks (i know wikipedia isnt famed as a good source of information).

[TiktaalikDreaming]

2 hours ago, halowraith1 said:

also for future reference, apparently the A-10 stage was going to be modified for use in some way for the A-11 and A-12 stacks (i know wikipedia isnt famed as a good source of information).

Yeah,

A9/A4/A4b

===

A10

===

A11

===

A12

is the final goal of the mod, and probably the VonBraun Moon rocket idea if I stumble over some time warp that lends me massive chunks of spare time.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

17 hours ago, halowraith1 said:

also for future reference, apparently the A-10 stage was going to be modified for use in some way for the A-11 and A-12 stacks (i know wikipedia isnt famed as a good source of information).

My understanding is the A-10 engine was to be used for the A-11 and A-12 stages, just more of them.  The tankage and thrust structure would change, but it was the engines and controls that were sinking a lot of development time and money, so they were planning on just more engines.

[CobaltWolf]

22 minutes ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

My understanding is the A-10 engine was to be used for the A-11 and A-12 stages, just more of them.  The tankage and thrust structure would change, but it was the engines and controls that were sinking a lot of development time and money, so they were planning on just more engines.

how did they plan on controlling them? Carbon vanes? I imagine that would be harder with four engines.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 minute ago, CobaltWolf said:

how did they plan on controlling them? Carbon vanes? I imagine that would be harder with four engines.

For all I know, black magic.  There was no functional throttle on the engines, so differential throttling wouldn't have worked.  It was pretty clear by the time they got to functional A-4s that the little flaps on the wings were woefully inadequate.  Maybe they were hoping the control vanes would still work sufficiently when spread over multiple engines.  And maybe they were hoping for Grampus to steer.  I should make a guestimate of the A-11, just to see.  I expect hilarity.

[halowraith1]

couple of A-11 pics

this one fits the tubby looking rocket in the OP. notice how the a-9 stage is completely faired over. maybe those were the modifications that article was speaking of? (for some reason i also believed they might have removed the A-10's fins, just a wild thought though)

 

second one looks a little more like a rocket than an ice cream cone, apparently an artist's impression. no idea about the validity of the first pic, though.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

There's a few sources of info on the A-11 and 12, and they mostly disagree on several factors.  Still, I grabbed the approximate dimensions from http://weebau.com/rocket/a11.htm.  But, basically, if it shows the swept wing A-9 and says 34 engines, instead of the A-4b style wings, and 6 A-10 engines, then it's based on early work, rather then the later estimates.  I'll end up taking masses and thrusts etc from http://www.astronautix.com/a/a9a10a11a12.html

But, I've been looking into the A-12, and there's some packing constraint issues with 50 A-10 engines in an 11m diameter, so I may end up ignoring their dimensions.  50 circles is quite plainly a pain in the rear end.  I'm probably going to go with four expanding circles of engine mounts, each circle with evenly spaced mount points, which will force it into something of the order of 32m diameter.  And ice-cream cone looking.  For about the thrust of a Saturn V using WWII era rockets, it'll be impressive.

Anyway, I put in some work and got a basic A-11 (which is less ice-cream-cone-constrained) and ran a test flight or two.  There's no texture, no fairing, or anything but a blankish part, but it flies;

It's pre-wing, but it's surprisingly stable using just the thrust vectoring on the 6 A-10s.  Due to the A-10 sitting on top of, instead of inside of, the A-11 separation works nicely.   At least until I get them fairings.  :-)  A-4 from A-10 separation is still a recipe for exploding parts of course.

[halowraith1]

is the a-9/a-10 separation issue fixable, or is that just an inherent bug due to the way collision works?

[TiktaalikDreaming]

7 hours ago, halowraith1 said:

is the a-9/a-10 separation issue fixable, or is that just an inherent bug due to the way collision works?

It's inherent in the crazy A-10 tank design.  But, it's avoidable by having as close to zero rotation as possible during separation.  Which of course is easier said than done with no reaction wheels, little atmosphere and no RCS.

When I get around to making a decoupler to match (so far I've been using stock parts for that), I'll experiment with higher or lower decouple forces.  I suspect a good kick to get it free before rotation has it collide with the inside walls of the A-10 tank will mitigate somewhat.

Finished some math on circles of circles and packing 50 engines into a symmetrical pattern.  I'll be going with concentric circles to enforce balance, with circles of 2, then 8, then 16 then 24 engines.  That'll make the outside diameter of the craft about 8.7 time the diameter of the A-10 engine.  So the outside diameters of those engine rings will be 8.2m, 14.8m, 25.1m and 35.5m.  So about 3.5 times as wide as a Saturn V.  Then I'll scale to 64% for KSP of course, so it'll be 22.7m in (stock) game.

Edited August 14, 2016 by TiktaalikDreaming
Pix!