Airship Adventures!

[Angelo Kerman]

35 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

That would be... interesting to try and do.  Those airships are actually pretty heavy.

Take a look at the Skydancer in the sample craft folder...

[DerekL1963]

5 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Take a look at the Skydancer in the sample craft folder...

I have, I couldn't get it into orbit.

[Angelo Kerman]

38 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I have, I couldn't get it into orbit.

The trick is to lighten it up as much as possible... crank up the lift force to max. I can do it but barely..

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Angel-125 said:

The trick is to lighten it up as much as possible... crank up the lift force to max. I can do it but barely..

Ah, didn't try altering the buoyancy.  Might take a stab at it while I'm waiting for Nert's mods to updated for 1.4.1.

[guesswho2778]

this is cool all i have to do now is figure out why imgur isnt working so i can see the adventure

Edited March 22, 2018 by guesswho2778

[DerekL1963]

On 3/20/2018 at 8:50 PM, Angel-125 said:

Take a look at the Skydancer in the sample craft folder...

Loaded her up...  and man, I'd forgotten what a lagfest she is on the pad. 

As soon as I figure out how I borked the installation (the motor controls show up, but the buoyancy panel does not), I already have some ideas on how to improve it.  Just swapping in 5x Vectors on each booster in place of the Mammoths made a huge difference.  (IIRC .9 t/w off the pad on the Vectors alone, no solids and no buoyancy!) 

But first, housework, errands, and making some notes for tomorrow's post on my anime blog.

12 hours ago, guesswho2778 said:

this is cool all i have to do now is figure out why imgur isnt working so i can see the adventure

I hope you can figure it out!  When you do be sure and let me know what you think!

[guesswho2778]

you inspired me to have my own airship adventure

and i managed to land a plane on it

Edited March 22, 2018 by guesswho2778

[DerekL1963]

8 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

As soon as I figure out how I borked the installation (the motor controls show up, but the buoyancy panel does not), I already have some ideas on how to improve it.  Just swapping in 5x Vectors on each booster in place of the Mammoths made a huge difference.  (IIRC .9 t/w off the pad on the Vectors alone, no solids and no buoyancy!) 

Yeah, on Vectors she flies really sweet...  And firing the nukes when you shed those solids helps too, gonna carry 'em might as well use 'em.  (At a minimum, it helps offset the awful t/w ratio loss...)

 

53 minutes ago, guesswho2778 said:

you inspired me to have my own airship adventure

and i managed to land a plane on it

Coolness!  Be sure and post pics on the Heisenberg thread and in "What did you do in KSP today" on the main forum so everyone can see.

[DerekL1963]

I've been spending far more time than I should playing with the Skydancer sample craft in Angel-125's Heisenberg Airships mod...  There's a lot of room for optimization, and I love almost nothing in KSP more than tweaking the behavior of a vehicle so that it's just so...

I sense a new Airship Adventure coming on...

[Angelo Kerman]

26 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I've been spending far more time than I should playing with the Skydancer sample craft in Angel-125's Heisenberg Airships mod...  There's a lot of room for optimization, and I love almost nothing in KSP more than tweaking the behavior of a vehicle so that it's just so...

I sense a new Airship Adventure coming on...

Important safety tip: airship hulls don't like heat, so be sure to slow down as much as you can before hitting that atmosphere, and maximize your lift force too.

[DerekL1963]

17 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

Important safety tip: airship hulls don't like heat, so be sure to slow down as much as you can before hitting that atmosphere, and maximize your lift force too.

Thanks!  I've tried re-entering on Kerbin a couple of times, and I found that re-entering butt first lets the nuclear engines take the brunt of the heat.  You can also fire 'em to help slow down...  You've brought 'em and their fuel along you might as well use them.

[DerekL1963]

Development testing on a new version of the Norge.  This version is nuclear powered and much more capable than the old, but dang if she doesn't look naked without her signature solar panels.

Here, a static balance test...  It shows -2.1 degrees in the picture, but after a bit of oscillation it eventually stabilized at -0.6 degrees. 



Some engineering development on lift motors for a possible Duna Dirigible.  According to the Hooligan build assistant, she should float on Duna - but her buoyancy is scary low and her equilibrium altitude is only 100m ASL (I.E. below ground level most places on Duna).  So, some form of augmentation is going to be a must.  The motors come from the Buffalo mod, they're positioned where they are because of the need to keep the sides of the vehicle clear for the orbital boosters. 

[Angelo Kerman]

Looking forward to seeing the new airship! Hopefully the latest update will help with your endeavors.

[Mark Kerbin]

I personally am working on a large carrier airship to serve as a mobile base to launch aircraft for survey contracts. That was a long sentence. 

Hopefully ye olde aircraft carrier accessories still works properly 

[DerekL1963]

This is turning into something of a dev blog between adventures, but honestly I spend as much time and have as much fun doing engineering development as I do flying/adventuring.



Still working on a potential Duna Dirigible...  Because of Duna's thin atmosphere, gasbags can't really lift a vehicle on their own.  Some kind of powered vertical lift is absolutely required.

I outfitted my Norge prototype with tilt rotors from Angel's Buffalo mod and headed out to the runway.  They worked surprisingly well, the four tiltrotors are bearing the entire 50 odd tons of vehicle at about two-thirds throttle (based on my manual testing).  There's no lift contribution from the gasbags at all.  I'd forgotten that Angel provides his own VTOL manager, which is nice because it separates the lift engine and drive engine controls.  This makes the pilot's life so much easier and means I don't need a separate throttle mod.



The latest release of Angel's Heisenberg mod, which provides the dirigible parts, included some powerful new lift fans. (Think S.H.E.I.L.D. helicarrier or small island sized vehicles.)  I'm testing the tilt-rotors first because they consume less power and even with the latest patch to Heisenberg (which vastly increased the power of the reactors) power and weight are still a consideration.  The weight margins on the Duna Dirigible are very narrow.  If the tilt-rotors don't work, then I'll try the fans.  (Plus, to be honest, I prefer the aesthetics of the tilt rotors.)

At this point, it's probably time to develop the Duna Dirigible itself...
 

[Ixamus]

This thread has been a major inspiration to me. Eagerly waiting for your interplanetary airship adventures. I have been thinking about sending an airship to Eve, because it would be the coolest imaginable way to explore the purple planet. I have not yet attempted this or even played with the mod, but I'm highly interested to know whether or not it is plausible to send an large airship to space and make it to re-enter Eve's atmosphere without making a firework show.

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Ixamus said:

This thread has been a major inspiration to me. Eagerly waiting for your interplanetary airship adventures. I have been thinking about sending an airship to Eve, because it would be the coolest imaginable way to explore the purple planet. I have not yet attempted this or even played with the mod, but I'm highly interested to know whether or not it is plausible to send an large airship to space and make it to re-enter Eve's atmosphere without making a firework show.

Thanks!

It's not easy, but it is doable...  There's an example craft (Skydancer) in the Heisenberg mods folders, but (with apologies to Angel-125) it needs a lot of work.  I've flown one to Duna but I haven't mastered re-entering and shifting to hull borne flight there yet.  (Though I've done so on Kerbin.)  Eve...  With it's dense atmosphere should be easier to design a craft to fly in, but reentries there tend to be pretty hot.  I have no idea how to manage it.  And I don't know how you'd get your crew back.  (I don't like stranding crew, but others feel differently, to each their own I say.)

So, why not give it a shot!  And be sure post pics in the "what did you do in KSP today" thread in the KSP discussion forum.  Folks like to see cool/hard accomplishments.

[Angelo Kerman]

2 hours ago, Ixamus said:

This thread has been a major inspiration to me. Eagerly waiting for your interplanetary airship adventures. I have been thinking about sending an airship to Eve, because it would be the coolest imaginable way to explore the purple planet. I have not yet attempted this or even played with the mod, but I'm highly interested to know whether or not it is plausible to send an large airship to space and make it to re-enter Eve's atmosphere without making a firework show.

One thing I'm experimenting with is an inflatable envelope. Just tack one onto some gondolas along with a couple of rudders, add a ton of heat shields, then send it to Eve. You sacrifice modularity for an inflatable non-rigid blimp hull.

31 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Thanks!

It's not easy, but it is doable...  There's an example craft (Skydancer) in the Heisenberg mods folders, but (with apologies to Angel-125) it needs a lot of work.  I've flown one to Duna but I haven't mastered re-entering and shifting to hull borne flight there yet.  (Though I've done so on Kerbin.)  Eve...  With it's dense atmosphere should be easier to design a craft to fly in, but reentries there tend to be pretty hot.  I have no idea how to manage it.  And I don't know how you'd get your crew back.  (I don't like stranding crew, but others feel differently, to each their own I say.)

So, why not give it a shot!  And be sure post pics in the "what did you do in KSP today" thread in the KSP discussion forum.  Folks like to see cool/hard accomplishments.

Admittedly the Skydancer is a starting point and hopefully inspirational in making something that would work much better.

[Ixamus]

9 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

And I don't know how you'd get your crew back.  (I don't like stranding crew, but others feel differently, to each their own I say.)

Instead of thinking the crew stranded, I prefer to talk about long term deployment. :-) Usually I send a separate return vehicle to get  my crews back, since my initial launches carry lot of hardware like rovers or bases.

[DerekL1963]

5 hours ago, Ixamus said:

Instead of thinking the crew stranded, I prefer to talk about long term deployment. :-) Usually I send a separate return vehicle to get  my crews back, since my initial launches carry lot of hardware like rovers or bases.

If you can return a crew from Eve, you'll have accomplished the hardest single challenge in the game.  This isn't meant to discourage you!  My hat is off to anyone who can manage it.

 

14 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

Admittedly the Skydancer is a starting point and hopefully inspirational in making something that would work much better.

That's one way of looking at it!  It might discourage newer players though...  OTOH, the argument could be made that by the time they're ready to go interplanetary with a blimp, they've got the experience needed to rework Skydancer and her booster system.  (Though you might pop in and look at/replace the HL-10L segments, I bet they're bugged.)

Sorry for going kinda dark after all the intensive work, but it's the end of one anime season and the start of another and that means I have a lot of writing to do.  KSP is but one of my hobbies, and unlike my anime blog - one not driven by an external schedule.

Did get some high altitude testing on Kerbin done (equiv of 2km on Duna) and I've already discovered my radiator system needs beefing up...  But that's why I do these tests before committing to the final mission.

[DerekL1963]

Got today's writing done, and I could resist no more...  Slapped a prototype drive package (not so different from Skydancer's) on the tail, hyperedited into Duna orbit and.....



Success on the first try.

Still a ton of practical problems to work out before an actual mission, but here is proof that the concept is sound.  Thanks a ton to @Angel-125 and his work and patches to Heisenberg over the last week.

[DerekL1963]

It's a massive pain and a nail-biting ride to orbit... But orbit it does.

Which means I've now tested (individually) each phase of the mission - launch, trans-Duna injection and cruise, Duna capture, and reentry and recovery to hullborn flight.



Touching down on Duna...  Not going so well.     (Though I know what I did wrong there...)

So, now for an integrated end-to-end test.  Once that's successful, really the only thing standing in my way is Squad fixing the bugged landing gear so I can recover my crew.

Some notes on performance:

With 160 units of nuclear fuel onboard, she has approx 200 (Kerbin) days of flight endurance...  I'll be bored of flying around Duna long before the powerplant dies. 



This is a SCANSat map of Duna, with terrain over 6km (for a safety factor) in white.  With a service ceiling of 7-8km, over 90% of the planet's surface is accessible.

[Ixamus]

Looking forwards to see your actual mission.

[Triop]

I love this story so much, this blimp needs a bumb.

Edited July 27, 2018 by Triop

[DAL59]

Any progress?