Spin-off craft with proper control

[Madmak]

Hello!

I was hoping that the lovely denizens of the forums (you all) would be helpful enough to help me figure out how to do something with ksp.

I am trying to build a craft that will go into Munar orbit and then release a cluster of small child craft that will each be able to move under a good amount of control and conduct orbital maneuvers and eventually land under their own power.

The mods I\'m using are:

Mechjeb

Muon detector

Novapunch

My craft consists of:

First stage to get into LKO, drops a couple boosters, then TMI burn and then circularizing burn. I detach when in LMO.

The upper stage consists of a small LFT, a LV909 engine, 1 RCS tank with 6 thrusters, ASAS, a short range muon detector and a side mounted mechjeb. Four radial decouplers attach the child craft and a standard decoupler atop holds a FL-R25 fuel tank with RMA-3 Orbital achievement engine, mechjeb pod and 3 landing legs. The child craft each consist of a single FL-R25 LFT, RMA-3 LFE, 3 landing legs, a short range muon detector, top mounted small mechjeb and nosecone.

(for the record this last image was -before- mechjeb crashed it into the surface under landing autopilot.)

Now, I can get into LMO, establish a circular orbit of 7km, and then detach each child craft individually as I change my inclination so as to scan a wider area of the surface. The problem I have is that when I then focus on the individual child craft, I have almost no control whatsoever. I can\'t move the navball reliably at all and when I fire the engine it just starts spinning uncontrollably.

Then, when I focus on the original craft and my original pod, equipped with even less control surfaces and equipment, the thing flies like a beauty. I can change the inclination and land the pod no problem.

I know that pods have more control built in but is it possible to get the same control in my little child satellites that I have in my pod? I\'ve tried using SAS, nano-SAS and RCS. I don\'t really wanna sock on all the weight of an ASAS when I don\'t think it\'ll really do anything.

Any ideas?

Madmak

[Fortunateson1969]

I tried doing something similar with the BigTrak. To the best of my knowledge, you need to have multiple command pods on the craft, one for each one you want to control. Something about how rcs/sas won\'t work unless they\'re attached to a pod.

I\'m not sure how this is done (I\'m waiting with bated breath for WinterOwl\'s video series to tell me ) but apparently it is possible.

[wildkittyv1]

I tried doing something similar with the BigTrak. To the best of my knowledge, you need to have multiple command pods on the craft, one for each one you want to control. Something about how rcs/sas won\'t work unless they\'re attached to a pod.

I\'m not sure how this is done (I\'m waiting with bated breath for WinterOwl\'s video series to tell me ) but apparently it is possible.

If what Fortunate says is true then I might have a possible solution for your ASAS needs. In the Kosmos pack there is an ASAS module (and one with mechjeb capabilities with an identical mesh) that weighs .01 and attaches to the front of pretty much anything, is hardly noticeable, and if that is just a nosecone on the tips of your children satellites, then you should be able to attach them by just removing them, placing the ASAS modules, and then replacing the cones.

There\'s also a few RCS tanks of varying sizes in the Kosmos pack and at least one of them should fit your smaller pods; they are also pretty nice looking and have a smaller vertical profile than many of the other RCS tanks I\'ve seen. Add on to that that there\'s a lot of fun stuff to mess around with in the Kosmos pack and I recommend you grab it. You could use the different modules and adapters for the different craft to give each satellite a different look and 'purpose' You shouldn\'t have to worry about the weight much, as I managed to land about 10 tons of 'dead' weight on the Mun as a habitation/research vessle that was composed mostly of Kosmos parts and used mostly its rockets with some help from NovaPunch adapters and boosters.