"hidden" fuel tanks?

[strider3]

In an effort to save drag, I have 6 RCS tanks "hidden" under a Rockomax adapter. But because I can't "see" them, I have been unable to transfer fuel from them to a docking ship (what a maroon!). Is this a "no go" or is there a way around this? I really like having the tanks tucked away.

Edited November 17, 2016 by strider3

[Starhawk]

This configuration will not save drag.  These RCS tanks will be exposed to drag just as if they were out in the airstream.

In order to be shielded from drag, they need to be in a fairing or in a cargo bay.

Happy landings!

[DD_bwest]

9 minutes ago, Starhawk said:

This configuration will not save drag.  These RCS tanks will be exposed to drag just as if they were out in the airstream.

In order to be shielded from drag, they need to be in a fairing or in a cargo bay.

Happy landings!

do you know if hidden srb's will behave similar?  by that i mean using the rotate function to have the radially attached boosters essentially inside the core they are attached to?  that core itself  being an srb lol

[Starhawk]

Just now, DD_bwest said:

do you know if hidden srb's will behave similar?  by that i mean using the rotate function to have the radially attached boosters essentially inside the core they are attached to?  that core itself  being an srb lol

Yeah, same as above.  The drag calculation system depends on which nodes things are attached to.

If they are radially attached, it doesn't check whether they are clipped inside something else or not.

Happy landings!

[DD_bwest]

Just now, Starhawk said:

Yeah, same as above.  The drag calculation system depends on which nodes things are attached to.

If they are radially attached, it doesn't check whether they are clipped inside something else or not.

Happy landings!

thanks, that explains my results today with building a rocket to get to orbit with starting tech lol

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Even if you just do it to look nice, you can still use them. Just zoom your camera in enough and it will clip inside the adapter and you will be able to click on the tanks.

[strider3]

18 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Even if you just do it to look nice, you can still use them. Just zoom your camera in enough and it will clip inside the adapter and you will be able to click on the tanks.

Starhawk> HMmmm, I did not realize that an adapter like that wouldn't be the item in the airstream (not the tanks). That seems a might unrealistic but...we roll with it.

Epic> OK, I'll give that a shot...thank you.

[pincushionman]

21 hours ago, Starhawk said:

Yeah, same as above.  The drag calculation system depends on which nodes things are attached to.

If they are radially attached, it doesn't check whether they are clipped inside something else or not.

Happy landings!

…unless you're using FAR. Then it will make an enormous difference.

[Tex_NL]

20 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Even if you just do it to look nice, you can still use them. Just zoom your camera in enough and it will clip inside the adapter and you will be able to click on the tanks.

Yes, this will work.
And for those that do not shy away from using mods, there is always TAC FuelBalancer.

Another stock option is to not completely clip them inside. Leave just enough exposed to click them. Some exposed bumps and lumps often make a craft look more interesting as well.

@Victor3 Just an FYI: Maroon is a colour. You're probably looking for the word 'moron'.

[strider3]

47 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

@Victor3 Just an FYI: Maroon is a colour. You're probably looking for the word 'moron'.

No sir. I'm going to date myself here, but...Bugs Bunny used the term many times...

https://youtu.be/C_Kh7nLplWo?t=4

Hit replay button...didn't load right for some reason.

 

Edited November 18, 2016 by strider3

[Palaceviking]

Ok....more complex, I'm clipping nukes attached to mk0 tanks + fuel lines into a mk3 liquid fuel tank..this wouldn't normally fit inside the fairing but it does now, drag or no drag?

[GluttonyReaper]

1 hour ago, Palaceviking said:

Ok....more complex, I'm clipping nukes attached to mk0 tanks + fuel lines into a mk3 liquid fuel tank..this wouldn't normally fit inside the fairing but it does now, drag or no drag?

Fairings are a special case - if something looks like it's in a fairing, then it shouldn't produce any drag at all. Pictures would be nice to confirm though

[Starhawk]

25 minutes ago, GluttonyReaper said:

Fairings are a special case - if something looks like it's in a fairing, then it shouldn't produce any drag at all. Pictures would be nice to confirm though

This should be correct.  To confirm this, you can enter flight mode and open the debug menu (Alt+F12 on windoze) and under the 'Physics' section open the 'Aero' subsection.  If you click 'Display Aero Data in Action Menus' then you will get a load of info appear in the action menu of parts you click while in flight.  This includes the 'Shielded' flag which the game uses to determine whether or not a part is exposed to the airflow. .

Happy landings!

[Palaceviking]

ta much

Edited: yep, tried a twr 3.5 lift and used f12, no drag!

 

Clipsters Forever!!  

Edited November 18, 2016 by Palaceviking

[Andersenman]

On 11/17/2016 at 2:37 AM, Starhawk said:

This configuration will not save drag.  These RCS tanks will be exposed to drag just as if they were out in the airstream.

Goddammit, why is this a thing? How is a normal user supposed to know this? How can a user be expected to find out only through debug tools?

I thought KSP was supposed to be out of beta?

[bewing]

1 hour ago, Andersenman said:

Goddammit, why is this a thing? How is a normal user supposed to know this? How can a user be expected to find out only through debug tools?

I thought KSP was supposed to be out of beta?

Why should a user expect that cheating by clipping parts inside other parts would actually work to reduce drag? If you cheat, you should expect surprising results.

 

[Mahnarch]

Da Cheat never wins and winners never Da Cheat, or something.

[fourfa]

Back to the OP - you can save the drag on the RCS tanks by replacing the adaptor with a 2.5m fairing.  You'll need a central 'pillar' to mount the docking port on, and you will be able to close the fairing on the pillar or the port itself.  My advice - make the pillar a stack of 1.25m RCS tanks (which have better tankage per mass and lower part count anyway) and hide other bits and bobs inside the fairing.  If you like, you can hide the RCS thrusters from drag in there, and pop the fairing once you get to space.

[Signo]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

Why should a user expect that cheating by clipping parts inside other parts would actually work to reduce drag? If you cheat, you should expect surprising results.

 

I am not saying that I support part clipping, but if you imagine the tanks under a hollow and empty "mk2 to mk1" adapter they should be shielded and they should have room where to belong.

Some parts, especially adapters, need a few tweaks like "stock configurable fuel", and Mk1 parts might enjoy a little bit of extra love like a longer cargo bay.

However, this is a little bit rhetorical, due to the fact that the kerbal law is the law. At least until next patch.

 

[Andersenman]

What Signo said.

3 hours ago, bewing said:

cheating by clipping parts inside other parts

OP placed the tanks on top of the probe body, then covered it with an adapter. What now, is the player supposed to assume that the adapter is solid (why would it be?) so as to satisfy the "clipping inside" part in that, thereby telling the player that doing it this way is bad and verboten?

This is unfit for purpose and unintuitive to the player. The whole point in these adapters is to provide aerodynamic transitions between body sizes. Now, if using them comes at the price of A) dead, unusable volume, and B) the need to fall back to either putting the parts that could be stowed at drag-inducing locations OR putting them in one more compartment (with its own drag and additional weight), the user may as well just forego using them at all.

Be it adapters, nose cones, or similar stackable items with no other excuse than their shape for the volume they occupy; if they look like they would cover items, they should do so, especially when the model clearly suggests they are hollow.

Edited January 3, 2017 by Andersenman

[HalcyonSon]

54 minutes ago, fourfa said:

Back to the OP - you can save the drag on the RCS tanks by replacing the adaptor with a 2.5m fairing.  You'll need a central 'pillar' to mount the docking port on, and you will be able to close the fairing on the pillar or the port itself.  My advice - make the pillar a stack of 1.25m RCS tanks (which have better tankage per mass and lower part count anyway) and hide other bits and bobs inside the fairing.  If you like, you can hide the RCS thrusters from drag in there, and pop the fairing once you get to space.

Ehhh... yes and no.  That works, of course, but with 1.2 fairings you won't need a central "pillar."  You could just use a 2.5 m RCS tank and mount the basic docking port inside the fairing rather than the shielded.  The port would be covered for launch, providing smoother airflow in the same height with no extra part count, and you get even better RCS volume to mass.  Pop the fairing after leaving atmo, and that removes extra mass and height.

Edited January 3, 2017 by HalcyonSon

[swjr-swis]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

Why should a user expect that cheating by clipping parts inside other parts would actually work to reduce drag? If you cheat, you should expect surprising results.

A bit of an odd argument.

One could just as well legitimately ask why or how a user should expect that building according to known or expected aerodynamic principles would actually have no effect whatsoever on the drag (or in fact make it worse!). That placing parts in ways the in-game physics allow, and in which the game engine does in fact shield them from heating, still exposes them to 'magical' solid-traversing drag anyway.

Would it not in fact be more 'surprising' from an in-game physics research point of view to discover experimentally that particles in a rather high density atmosphere are somehow dualistic in nature, both massive and massless in behaviour at the same time? That despite the derived aerodynamic laws, an atmosphere appears to actually behave more like a field than a molecular gas?

Conversely, it seems rather odd to me to matter-of-factly term it 'cheating' when after one discovers experimentally that physics allow solid parts to phase through each other and take the same space at the same time, to then ignore that rather paradigm-shifting fact and not make use of it. In the world we call reality, doing such a thing would be termed 'applied physics' and considered brilliant engineering. How many things have we invented and made to work in 'magical' ways after discovering and understanding quantum physics? Are we cheating Real Physics(tm) because we make use of the practical aspects of experimentally derived results even though we can still not entirely explain them theoretically?

I feel like I need Mr. Spock here raising his eyebrow. "Fascinating." Humans react so illogical...

 

On 11/17/2016 at 2:31 AM, Victor3 said:

But because I can't "see" them, I have been unable to transfer fuel from them to a docking ship (what a maroon!). Is this a "no go" or is there a way around this? I really like having the tanks tucked away.

Like (the surprisingly un-troll-like ) EpicSpaceTroll139 said, you can zoom in all the way into the center of the part the camera is aimed at (right click menu), which allows you to see tanks that are clipped inside others the way you describe.

Add a nose cone in front and behind of the clipped RCS tanks to at least minimize the drag incurred at very little added mass.

And feel free to make up your own mind about what is or is not 'cheating' in this game, and under what self-imposed circumstances. There is nothing inherently or morally 'wrong' with using what we learn of the in-game physics to our advantage when applicable, or even to compensate for other physics quirks of the kerbal reality.

[fourfa]

56 minutes ago, HalcyonSon said:

Ehhh... yes and no.  That works, of course, but with 1.2 fairings you won't need a central "pillar."  You could just use a 2.5 m RCS tank and mount the basic docking port inside the fairing rather than the shielded.  The port would be covered for launch, providing smoother airflow in the same height with no extra part count, and you get even better RCS volume to mass.  Pop the fairing after leaving atmo, and that removes extra mass and height.

Good points, many ways to skin this cat.

As to the rest of the hand-wringing in the thread, man it hardly matters.  We have cargo bays, service bays, and fairings when we need to shield drag.  For launching what looks like a space station module that will experience atmo exactly once, the drag of exterior parts is pretty irrelevant to the big picture.  So you reach orbit with 100m/s left over in your second stage instead of 110m/s, who cares?  Optimizing beyond that level probably belongs in the Challenges section, not Gameplay.  Gripes about how the game should be rather than how it is, there's a Suggestions forum for that.

Me personally... I routinely clip into the "empty" space of adaptors, for cosmetic reasons - particularly for pure spacecraft that don't experience drag (and I zoom in and rotate the camera to access the parts).  I usually try to make real-looking rockets - space station parts get fully enclosed in a fairing, despite the mass of the fairing probably costing more dV than the drag of the bare payload.  Spaceplanes get lots of cargo bay space, and all draggy odds and ends go in the bay.  

 

[Andersenman]

18 minutes ago, fourfa said:

We have cargo bays, service bays, and fairings when we need to shield drag.

Not when, but if.

Those items aren't plentiful very early, so it's only reasonable resort to things like nose cones and (visibly hollow) decouplers to form shielded bays. That is, if they actually worked like that and didn't just mislead the player into thinking so.

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

3 minutes ago, Andersenman said:

Those items aren't plentiful very early,

True, but it seems like in the screenshot that it is sandbox or a developed career/science mode, and as for them not being plentiful, the 1.25 m faring is unlocked relatively quickly in the tech tree if playing career or science. A 1.25 m faring can easily be worked to conceal fuel tanks.