Reaction Torque for EVA Kerbals

[ZooNamedGames]

Lately I've had this realization in my head that Kerbals are way physically under powered compared to humans. Specifically, humans can impart force on a craft they are on, whether this be leaning, pushing or pulling on it. By doing these actions they impart torque on it. 

Now this doesn't have to be a huge change to the gameplay mechanics, just add torque to EVA Kerbals. If people may think it's too much, like crafts they can disable it. This torque doesn't need to be high, just what is sufficient. 

Thats my thinking anyway.

[SchweinAero]

What uses do you have in mind for the torque? Would it extend to, say, kerbals in external seats? Walking and jetpacking ones already impart torque as well as linear force upon collision.

[swjr-swis]

7 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Lately I've had this realization in my head that Kerbals are way physically under powered compared to humans.

Because we humans can get a multi-tonne ship into space by walking a ladder and bumping it with our heads, or flip it upside down by standing up while underneath it?

I honestly don't think we need even more phantom forces to haunt our craft, at least not until Squad has fully figured out where the current ones come from and how to keep them under control.

Also having a bit of trouble imagining how this would be implemented practically: we already need all the directional controls for the Kerbal's attitude and moving, we'd need a third hand and controller/key set for the torque we want them to impart at the same time? Can you explain how you envision this?

I guess if a practical control method can be devised, it doesn't cost much dev effort, and it's made fully optional, I'd be curious to see what it adds to the experience.

[ZooNamedGames]

26 minutes ago, SchweinAero said:

What uses do you have in mind for the torque? Would it extend to, say, kerbals in external seats? Walking and jetpacking ones already impart torque as well as linear force upon collision.

That was the intended idea.

[eddiew]

Humans in microgravity can only impart torque by pushing themselves off one end of an object.

If you want to stay attached to it (because it's your spaceship), then as soon as the slack in your rope is taken up, both you and your craft are going to stop again, with the only difference being the gap between you and it. Pull the rope, and the craft will pivot, until you reach it, at which point momentum will cancel out again. The ship will be back at the angle it started.

You also can't spin yourself around in space without either RCS jets or reaction wheels in your suit. There is no physical medium on which to impart a force, so turning would be gaining free energy/momentum. You can look over your shoulder, but you can't then have your torso follow your head to turn. edit: I was disproved later in the thread. TIL. The question of whether you can induce permanent rotation is still ongoing though.

On the ground however, kerbals are highly capable of pushing craft around

Edited September 26, 2016 by eddiew

[ZooNamedGames]

2 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

Because we humans can get a multi-tonne ship into space by walking a ladder and bumping it with our heads, or flip it upside down by standing up while underneath it?

I honestly don't think we need even more phantom forces to haunt our craft, at least not until Squad has fully figured out where the current ones come from and how to keep them under control.

Also having a bit of trouble imagining how this would be implemented practically: we already need all the directional controls for the Kerbal's attitude and moving, we'd need a third hand and controller/key set for the torque we want them to impart at the same time? Can you explain how you envision this?

I guess if a practical control method can be devised, it doesn't cost much dev effort, and it's made fully optional, I'd be curious to see what it adds to the experience.

Torque would be the same as any normal SAS torque while in EVA chairs. You could say use it to try to flip your craft over should it fall sideways without needing a reaction wheel.

[swjr-swis]

1 minute ago, eddiew said:

or reaction wheels in your suit

Tease. Now I want.

[eddiew]

Just now, swjr-swis said:

Tease. Now I want.

But why? They have RCS jets which do the same job plus translation   Unless you just want to have a cloud of rapidly spinning kerbals without wasting fuel  

[ZooNamedGames]

2 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Humans in microgravity can only impart torque by pushing themselves off one end of an object.

If you want to stay attached to it (because it's your spaceship), then as soon as the slack in your rope is taken up, both you and your craft are going to stop again, with the only difference being the gap between you and it. Pull the rope, and the craft will pivot, until you reach it, at which point momentum will cancel out again. The ship will be back at the angle it started.

You also can't spin yourself around in space without either RCS jets or reaction wheels in your suit. There is no physical medium on which to impart a force, so turning would be gaining free energy/momentum. You can look over your shoulder, but you can't then have your torso follow your head to turn.

On the ground however, kerbals are highly capable of pushing craft around

This concept would be more for Kerbals in EVA chairs.

Just now, eddiew said:

But why? They have RCS jets which do the same job plus translation   Unless you just want to have a cloud of rapidly spinning kerbals without wasting fuel  

Why? Because you can save money and mass by not needing a reaction wheel to save your rover which flipped over on Minmus. 

Again, mostly for EVA chairs.

[eddiew]

9 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

This concept would be more for Kerbals in EVA chairs.

Again, mostly for EVA chairs.

Sort of sounds like what you want is torque added to command seats   But they have no structural volume to them, so it's hard to justify...

Edited September 26, 2016 by eddiew

[ZooNamedGames]

4 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Sort of sounds like what you want is torque added to command seats   But they have no structural volume to them, so it's hard to justify...

You can yank the seat can't you? I can lean a bicycle left and ride by using my mass.

It would be a small amount of torque for smaller crafts. It wouldn't move your 50t behemoth but it would rotate your .65t rover on Minmus.

[SchweinAero]

1 minute ago, eddiew said:

Sort of sounds like what you want is torque added to command seats   But they have no structural volume to them, so it's hard to justify...

Or the ability to use a seated kerbal's suit jets for attitude adjustments. Which I'd say is a plausible if a bit niche concept.

Also, iirc, one proposal for an Apollo lunar escape module was to be steered by an astronaut leaning around on top of a thruster, thus imitating thrust vectoring to a degree. That would be very hard to convey to a player without a pile of new animations, and I doubt someone could actually do it while strapped to a chair.

[ZooNamedGames]

2 minutes ago, SchweinAero said:

Or the ability to use a seated kerbal's suit jets for attitude adjustments. Which I'd say is a plausible if a bit niche concept.

Also, iirc, one proposal for an Apollo lunar escape module was to be steered by an astronaut leaning around on top of a thruster, thus imitating thrust vectoring to a degree. That would be very hard to convey to a player without a pile of new animations, and I doubt someone could actually do it while strapped to a chair.

You don't need the animations. Just explaining of the features existence would do. 

The idea is viable. 

[swjr-swis]

16 minutes ago, eddiew said:

But why? They have RCS jets which do the same job plus translation

Because the KSP code is Kerbals are very wasteful when using EVA prop for attitude corrections. The same reason I tweak RCS thrusters on smaller craft to only be used for translation, and let the reaction wheel take care of rotations - especially now we can set its authority.

[The_Rocketeer]

I like the idea of kerbals being able to lift or push part assemblies around a little bit more than just walking into them, but I think this is pretty niche - most crafts are so large and heavy that the strength of even a group of Kerbs would be insubstantial. As for physically manipulating the vehicle from the command seat, I don't think that makes much sense. If your command seat is so exposed that you can do that, in most cases you would have been thrown or knocked out of it by the crash.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, The_Rocketeer said:

I like the idea of kerbals being able to lift or push part assemblies around a little bit more than just walking into them, but I think this is pretty niche - most crafts are so large and heavy that the strength of even a group of Kerbs would be insubstantial. As for physically manipulating the vehicle from the command seat, I don't think that makes much sense. If your command seat is so exposed that you can do that, in most cases you would have been thrown or knocked out of it by the crash.

But Kerbals don't get knocked out. Besides we're referring to say if your .65t rover flipped over while it was being offloaded from its descent vehicle. So the Kerbal jumps in- HNNNNNNNNNNNG and uses the torque they can push with it so it can flip back over. 

Maybe it is niche but it's nice to have as a back up, not to mention potentially saving you from having to build in a reaction wheel module if you don't want one. 

[swjr-swis]

6 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I can lean a bicycle left and ride by using my mass.

Using your mass that way implies homeworld-level gravity. In a command chair in orbit, or even in the tiny gravity of Minmus, this would not have the effect you expect.

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, swjr-swis said:

Using your mass that way implies homeworld-level gravity. In a command chair in orbit, or even in the tiny gravity of Minmus, this would not have the effect you expect.

The uses are still many. 

[Red Iron Crown]

23 minutes ago, eddiew said:

You also can't spin yourself around in space without either RCS jets or reaction wheels in your suit. There is no physical medium on which to impart a force, so turning would be gaining free energy/momentum. You can look over your shoulder, but you can't then have your torso follow your head to turn.

This is not correct. You cannot impart a net change in angular momentum but reorientation is possible by using limb movement. There's some video of astronauts doing drill-style 90-degree turns in microgravity when not touching anything else but I'm having trouble finding it (it was on Skylab I think).

[SchweinAero]

5 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

You don't need the animations. Just explaining of the features existence would do. 

The idea is viable. 

The way to do this, then, would be giving the KerbalEVA module the ability to adjust its CoM in response to input. Is that technically possible?

1 minute ago, Red Iron Crown said:

This is not correct. You cannot impart a net change in angular momentum but reorientation is possible by using limb movement. There's some video of astronauts doing drill-style 90-degree turns in microgravity when not touching anything else but I'm having trouble finding it (it was on Skylab I think).

Are you sure it works in a vacuum?

[eddiew]

1 minute ago, Red Iron Crown said:

This is not correct. You cannot impart a net change in angular momentum but reorientation is possible by using limb movement. There's some video of astronauts doing drill-style 90-degree turns in microgravity when not touching anything else but I'm having trouble finding it (it was on Skylab I think).

I'd be interested in seeing that if you find it  

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, SchweinAero said:

The way to do this, then, would be giving the KerbalEVA module the ability to adjust its CoM in response to input. Is that technically possible?

Are you sure it works in a vacuum?

That could work.

Why wouldn't it? If I were to put my hands on my toes and then throw them up above my head and behind me, the force I would be apply would put me into a spin without needing to touch anything. Vacuum or not.

[SchweinAero]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

That could work.

Why wouldn't it? If I were to put my hands on my toes and then throw them up above my head and behind me, the force I would be apply would put me into a spin without needing to touch anything. Vacuum or not.

I'd be more worried about what happens when you pull those hands back to a normal position to, say, operate a jetpack. It seems to me that reactionless attitude control in a spacesuit would either be highly finicky or more abstracted and automatic than reaction wheels.

[swjr-swis]

8 minutes ago, eddiew said:

I'd be interested in seeing that if you find it  

This one maybe (check at 5:45):

@Red Iron Crown, this the one you meant?

Edited September 26, 2016 by swjr-swis

[The_Rocketeer]

7 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

But Kerbals don't get knocked out.

I meant knocked out of their chair, but actually I've definitely had (in my years of playing) unresponsive Kerbs who eventually came around. How exactly that happens I don't know.

I get the idea, but it is so niche that it won't happen. Giving all chairs reaction torque would be OP and unrealistic, and it's already easy to work around that just by adding a small reaction wheel or torque-capable probe core. Besides, there can't be that many part combinations that result in a 0.65t rover, so how many cases, as a percentage of all cases involving rovers, do u think this would ever be useful for?

Nice idea, but imho not worth the devtime.