[1.0.5] GravityTurn version 1.3.1 - Automated Efficient Launches (1.1 pre-release available)

[Westrum]

Is this dead ? The 1.1.3 link is atleast... Me sad

Edited August 5, 2016 by Westrum

[FrontLineFodder]

2 hours ago, Westrum said:

Is this dead ? The 1.1.3 link is atleast... Me sad

The link from @Teilnehmer should still be working,

page 15

 

[teej9]

Anyone having an issue with non 0° inclination launches? I am running it with 64K, and anytime i try to launch into a polar orbit it goes a bit wonky. It will change the inclination to about 30ish°, then do an insane turn at around 30KM up, and try to fight its way back to 0°. It usually ends up around 16°

[FrontLineFodder]

2 hours ago, teej9 said:

Anyone having an issue with non 0° inclination launches? I am running it with 64K, and anytime i try to launch into a polar orbit it goes a bit wonky. It will change the inclination to about 30ish°, then do an insane turn at around 30KM up, and try to fight its way back to 0°. It usually ends up around 16°

Polar orbits have never really worked great. I believe the best approach is 5-10 degrees shy and correcting in space

[Beetlecat]

What's the basic methodology for fine-tuning the Gravity Turn performance? I have a rocket I'm trying that Gravity Turn is failing to get to orbit on the first go-- do I hit abort and just revert? Do I need to let it crash? Do I need to "load previous best?"  What's a stepwise process for training the mod for a particular rocket design?

I've used this mod a bunch, but I guess this is the first time it's ever not worked out-of-the-box with a design that's right on the edge of needing to be really efficient in launch profile.

 

[StickyScissors]

6 hours ago, Beetlecat said:

What's the basic methodology for fine-tuning the Gravity Turn performance? I have a rocket I'm trying that Gravity Turn is failing to get to orbit on the first go-- do I hit abort and just revert? Do I need to let it crash? Do I need to "load previous best?"  What's a stepwise process for training the mod for a particular rocket design?

I've used this mod a bunch, but I guess this is the first time it's ever not worked out-of-the-box with a design that's right on the edge of needing to be really efficient in launch profile.

 

I've found that actually letting it crash into the ground/water after it messes up triggers it to re-calculate when you revert. If it's flying poorly but doesn't actually wreck, and i revert, it has always not re-calculated until it actually crashed/was destroyed.

[StickyScissors]

Alright, well, Overengineer1 is never going to update this, and it is hemorrhaging NRE's any chances it gets, so goodbye to this mod.

[Ryusho]

If thats the case, I'm sad, this was one of my favorite mods since I was kind of bored of manual launches all the time to very precise orbits.

[AndyMt]

I've recompiled this mod for the 1.2 preview. There are quite some substantial changes I had to get around:

Download

I just did a very basic check and launched a basic rocket into orbit which worked well :).

License: same as authors, GPL V3

I'll try to commit the changes to GitHub this weekend - in case anyone else wants to fiddle around with it.

[StickyScissors]

46 minutes ago, AndyMt said:

I've recompiled this mod for the 1.2 preview. There are quite some substantial changes I had to get around:

Download

I just did a very basic check and launched a basic rocket into orbit which worked well :).

License: same as authors, GPL V3

I'll try to commit the changes to GitHub this weekend - in case anyone else wants to fiddle around with it.

I'm glad someones paying attention to this mod. For some of my rockets, it's either launch with this this, or manual flight, and i have slowly gotten worse at gravity turns and maneuvers since i started doing automated stuff a long time ago.

[AndyMt]

I plan to look a bit more into this addon in the future and started a thread in the "Add-on Development" forum:

GravityTurn continued

Please comment there .

[John Cochran]

On 1/14/2016 at 2:29 PM, vardicd said:

I've been using this mod and playing around with it, and my rockets keep flipping out on those shallow ascents. Is there any guidelines to rocket building to make this mod work? every rocket I've built that flips out with this mod, I can get to orbit with a steeper ascent profile, so not sure what's going on. Any suggestions you can offer would be great.

I know that I'm fairly late to this thread, but the issue with your rocket flipping is that your center of gravity is getting behind your center of pressure. Combine that with the rather shallow ascent and this is happening when there's still significant aerodynamic forces acting upon the rocket. With a steeper accent, the atmosphere gets so thin that you have negligible aerodynamic forces acting upon your rocket by the time the CG shifts behind the CP and so your rocket remains "stable". For 1.1.3 and earlier version of KSP, this situation is made worse by having the fuel burn from the front towards the rear causing the CG to move aft during accent. One way of mitigating this if you're using asparagus staging is to have the fuel transfer pipe connected to the top of the earlier staging so that fuel is being pulled from both the top (because of the engine attached to that stage) and the bottom (because of fuel being drawn from that stage to feed the other engines in use. For 1.2 and above, the problem is mitigated by the fuel priority tweak.

I would suggest that when designing your rocket, have both the CG and CP visible and see if the CG remains forward of the CP as you empty the fuel tanks in the order that they would be emptied in flight. You don't need to worry about the CG and CP relationship however, if that stage is only used in vacuum.

[okder]

recompiled for 1.2PRE and merged with AscentStartTime (but probably less changes in GravityTurn, than inside AscentStartTime,

@AndyMtplease update top post(ask moderators to do so), if you going to support it (i will move back to mechjeb plugin with my Ascent StarTime, as soon as mechjeb would be available for 1.2) i did missed your updates completely, or we could coordinate how to make my plugin(Ascent StarTime) to both addons same time .

Edited October 4, 2016 by okder

[Starlionblue]

I understand this still works in 1.3 but I don't get the Gravity Turn icon in the toolbar. Any help appreciated.

EDIT: Aha! There's a new version! 

Apoligies for necro-thread.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Starlionblue