[Old Thread] KRE - Kerbal Reusability Expansion

[Damon]

53 minutes ago, EmbersArc said:

I'll take some time to add missing parts to Ven's Stock Part Revamp next (mostly wheels).

After that, which part do you want me to overhaul the most? Thinking about making some drastic changes to the ITS Landing Gear now that SpaceX has ditched that design. Probably with some inspiration from the lander in the Mars series:

A newer version for the BFR legs would be really nice!
Also want to thank you again for the grid fins. These are by far the best I've tried so far, really gives you the control you need.

Bonus video:

Spoiler

 

 

[StevieC]

@damonvv where can I download that landing-zone?

n/m I found it

Edited February 4, 2018 by StevieC
answered my own question

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

What about legs for horizontal landing?

[eberkain]

2 minutes ago, Z3R0_0NL1N3 said:

What about legs for horizontal landing?

I'm not following?  If you mean to use with the fold out wings I'd say just use regular aircraft landing gear. 

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

1 minute ago, eberkain said:

I'm not following?  If you mean to use with the fold out wings I'd say just use regular aircraft landing gear. 

I mean to use without the wings, something like the Energia landing gear:

[BananaTime101]

Great mod @EmbersArc thanks for all your work. One thing, I was attempting to do a Falcon Heavy a-like mission and when I separated the boosters, they flipped out and exploded. I traced it back to the landing legs and saw that their colliders were bigger than the actual legs. I was wondering if there was any way you could fix this. Thanks.

[EmbersArc]

On 2/8/2018 at 12:10 AM, Z3R0_0NL1N3 said:

I mean to use without the wings, something like the Energia landing gear:

Not sure if that's worth it. Seems like a boring way to land a rocket and the stock landing gear should be okay for that. Sorry..

On 2/13/2018 at 2:03 PM, BananaTime101 said:

Great mod @EmbersArc thanks for all your work. One thing, I was attempting to do a Falcon Heavy a-like mission and when I separated the boosters, they flipped out and exploded. I traced it back to the landing legs and saw that their colliders were bigger than the actual legs. I was wondering if there was any way you could fix this. Thanks.

Thanks for the hint. That collider could be better. It's currently just a big box collider. Will be fixed in the next update.

[BananaTime101]

5 minutes ago, EmbersArc said:

Thanks for the hint. That collider could be better. It's currently just a big box collider. Will be fixed in the next update.

Awesome! Thanks.

[EmbersArc]

As promised, here's what I've been working on recently.

I wrote a 2D Falcon 9 landing simulation and trained an AI to land the rocket safely while using as little fuel as possible.

Was as much fun as it was frustrating at times.

A basic explanation for those interested:
In reinforcement learning we have an agent (The "AI") that is interacting with an environment (The Falcon 9 falling from the sky). It starts knowing absolutely nothing about the environment and just tries new things until it gets better at it. It gets feedback about how good some taken action was in the form of a reward. Here, it gets rewarded for slowing down, getting closer to the ship and finally for a nice touchdown. It gets punished for taking too much time, which is equivalent to using too much fuel (a quicker descent without hovering is more efficient). So based on that feedback it will do the things more often that lead to a higher reward and avoid less successful moves.

This particular agent took 200'000 tries over the course of 12 hours. I'm quite happy with the result:

https://gfycat.com/CoarseEmbellishedIsopod

 

Edited February 19, 2018 by EmbersArc

[Barar]

The new Titanium Grid Fins are awesome. I don't know if you take suggestions or ideas.

Would it be possible to have a grid fin with a deploy-able fairing over it,  or a retractable shroud/cover for reusability. Just like lowering the wind resistance of my rockets and giving a aerodynamic look and feel. Or If anyone knows of a mod that has fairings that can be mounted on the side of rockets that I could stuff this into, that would be great too. 

 

[macenkodenis]

On 08.02.2018 at 2:10 AM, Z3R0_0NL1N3 said:

I mean to use without the wings, something like the Energia landing gear:

I think you need L.C.A. project mod

(Gif from LCA mod page)

Edited February 23, 2018 by macenkodenis
Adding text

[EmbersArc]

There are conflicting reports on Reddit whether the mod is working with 1.4 or not. I haven't had time to test it yet. Has anyone found something that's not working yet?

I'll release a 1.4 version later that uses the new native texture switching function.

[Damon]

1 hour ago, EmbersArc said:

There are conflicting reports on Reddit whether the mod is working with 1.4 or not. I haven't had time to test it yet. Has anyone found something that's not working yet?

I'll release a 1.4 version later that uses the new native texture switching function.

It works totally fine, the only thing that's not working is the texture switch on the landing legs, even with the updated firespitter. 

Nope, nvm. Works great! 

Edited March 9, 2018 by damonvv

[EmbersArc]

Update 2.6.1

• Falcon Leg texture can now be changed without additional mods (FS texture switch support has been removed)
• Reduced control authority of Aluminium Grid Fins
• Fixed Falcon Leg collision mesh

[lushr]

I'm having some issues with the grid fins and FAR (note: using 1.3.1 still). Neither appear to meaningfully effect Cm, dCm/AoA, or the position of the center of lift in comparison to a flat panel of similar size. For example,

 

 

vs.

For comparison, here's a stock AV-T1:

I *think* what's happening is that the grid fins are being approximated by the voxel-based aero model, but the voxel grid size is too coarse to discover the holes between their constituent fins. To evaluate this hypothesis, here is the debug voxel display of all three evaluated aerodynamic surfaces:

Something rather strange is going on with the grid fin compared to the traditional control surface and panel, though what precisely is not clear, and it's clearly much more holey than the flat panel. Are there any ideas for how to fix this?  

[Wildcat111]

@EmbersArc I love how almost all my SpaceX style landings depend on 4 waffle irons.

[Starwaster]

9 hours ago, Wildcat111 said:

@EmbersArc I love how almost all my SpaceX style landings depend on 4 waffle irons.

If you run out there really fast before they cool down, you can make waffles!

[Dafni]

Thanks again for keeping this lovely mod up to date @EmbersArc !  I know you have a lot of things going on, but maybe when you can find the time you could hammer out a 5m version of the stage legs and gridfins. That would be super nice.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

Anyone else getting oversized RCS FX on the SuperDraco pods and thrust 180 degrees in the wrong direction in 1.4.1?

EDIT: The cold gas thrusters seem to be working correctly, however - seem to remember some difference in the past with how KSP handles monopropellant and bipropellant RCS and their thrust transforms - wonder if that's what's going on here. Also seems I'm wrong about the thrust being in the wrong direction - just the FX is, as best I can tell.

Edited March 20, 2018 by SufficientAnonymity
further details

[wojo1210]

7 hours ago, SufficientAnonymity said:

Anyone else getting oversized RCS FX on the SuperDraco pods and thrust 180 degrees in the wrong direction in 1.4.1?

Most of my mod RCS FX are backwards or oversized

[infinite_monkey]

Are grid fins working fine for you guys? If I remember correctly, in 1.3.1 they were able to slow my rocket down to like 250 m/s, but now they're unable to slow it down to subsonic speeds - except for small grid fins on a Mothra/Falcon 1. Ghidorah and Gojira seem to be too heavy for the medium/large fins.

One minor thing: the default orientation of the fins is always upside down.

[mostlydave]

I also have the oversize RCS, it seems like it only the superdracos that have it oversize

[Serenity]

The best legs in the mod world!You rock!!Thank you so much for updating!

[Starwaster]

On 3/18/2018 at 10:15 AM, infinite_monkey said:

Are grid fins working fine for you guys? If I remember correctly, in 1.3.1 they were able to slow my rocket down to like 250 m/s, but now they're unable to slow it down to subsonic speeds - except for small grid fins on a Mothra/Falcon 1. Ghidorah and Gojira seem to be too heavy for the medium/large fins.

One minor thing: the default orientation of the fins is always upside down.

I thought they were mostly for steering... though Stage Recovery does see them as being able to slow my stages so I stick them on for that little bit of extra deceleration that they provide. Can't say it's ever made the difference between recovering a stage and not, but I figure every little bit helps.

[EmbersArc]

On 3/14/2018 at 7:36 PM, Dafni said:

Thanks again for keeping this lovely mod up to date @EmbersArc !  I know you have a lot of things going on, but maybe when you can find the time you could hammer out a 5m version of the stage legs and gridfins. That would be super nice.

Should I add another size? The 5m parts are part of the DLC right? So I would prefer not adding them in that size. But if you need them it should be no problem with tweakscale.

On 3/13/2018 at 6:31 AM, lushr said:

I'm having some issues with the grid fins and FAR (note: using 1.3.1 still). Neither appear to meaningfully effect Cm, dCm/AoA, or the position of the center of lift in comparison to a flat panel of similar size.

They are not specifically FAR compatible. Maybe the addon that makes them deployable is confusing FAR as well. In my experience they work fine with FAR but don't have as much drag as with stock aero. Does the steering work as expected?

On 3/16/2018 at 3:40 AM, wojo1210 said:

Most of my mod RCS FX are backwards or oversized

I'll see what's going in here.

On 3/18/2018 at 3:15 PM, infinite_monkey said:

Are grid fins working fine for you guys? If I remember correctly, in 1.3.1 they were able to slow my rocket down to like 250 m/s, but now they're unable to slow it down to subsonic speeds - except for small grid fins on a Mothra/Falcon 1. Ghidorah and Gojira seem to be too heavy for the medium/large fins.

I reduced the drag coefficient quite a bit. But the majority of the drag has so far come from the enlarged drag cube when they are deployed anyway.

Should I increase the drag again?

On 3/18/2018 at 3:15 PM, infinite_monkey said:

One minor thing: the default orientation of the fins is always upside down.

That's consistent with all control surfaces in KSP and it's how the system works. You would have to rotate every control surface for this application because you're basically flying backwards.