BRING BACK MK1-2 MODULE

[Geonovast]

Now that I finally got to play around with it a bit last night:

Pro: I do like the new hatch location.  Makes more sens with the way I design my rockets.

Con: I've yet to find a good way to position radial parachutes on the thing that doesn't cover up the hatch or windows and make sense to me.  Probably more of a personal hangup.

1 hour ago, Temeter said:

Except that the new pod looks far superior from the outside and evenmoreso from the inside.

In this case, yeah.  I was more rebutting the idea that new is always better.  It's just not always the case.  "Just accept it because it's new" is not an attitude I share.

 

Is the Mk1-3 objectively better than the Mk1-2?  Is most ways it appears so.  Knowing myself, I'm going to prefer the Mk1-2 until I get used to the Mk1-3.  Then I'll like that one better.

[MythicalHeFF]

There should be a Mk 1-2 Pod memorial statue next to the Mk1 Pod’s..

RIP

MK 1-2 POD

2012-2018

[Wjolcz]

7 hours ago, Jack Joseph Kerman said:

There should be a Mk 1-2 Pod memorial statue next to the Mk1 Pod’s..

RIP

MK 1-2 POD

2012-2018

And everything else because there's never enough statues.

[Texas Tim]

The MK1-2 pod always struck me as (to put it kindly) "ugly". I really like the new MK1-3 pod and view it as an improvement.

[Zeiss Ikon]

Given how easy it is to restore the Mk. 1-2 pod to visibility, I'm not sure what all the wrangling is about.  If you prefer the old pod, then use it.  I bet it'll be equally easy to pull the discontinued parts out of the old versions once Squad/Take Two pull them out of the stock game.  They're just parts, people add parts to the game all the time, and all the bits and pieces (models, textures, skins, config entries) are present in the old games.

For myself, I'm interested in how the RCS on the Mk. 1-3 was used to deorbit -- I tested the thing in orbit (in 1.4.0) and didn't see any way to thrust forward or  backward.  It rolls beautifully, translates (JIKL keys) fairly well (with some pitch and yaw mixed in because the ports are behind the COM; I used that to align retrograde for reentry with a dead battery), and I couldn't find any way to apply pure pitch or yaw, never mind translate forward or backward, in my testing.  Mind you, I tested for a few minutes in 1.4.0, before installing 1.4.1 and MH, and I'm not sure Advanced Tweakables was turned on; those directions might have been disabled, and I was short on playtime so didn't get to check.

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

For myself, I'm interested in how the RCS on the Mk. 1-3 was used to deorbit

Easy, point the pod normal/antinormal, use the "sideways" translation to de-orbit, then point back retrograde.

[Zeiss Ikon]

3 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Easy, point the pod normal/antinormal, use the "sideways" translation to de-orbit, then point back retrograde.

With the amount of coupled pitch/yaw I experienced, if you have a dead battery, this probably wouldn't work.  Not to mention that since there are no pitch or yaw ports, you couldn't point reliably either normal/anti-normal or radial in/out if you started prograde or retrograde, nor get back to retrograde after maneuvering.  A pod with built-in RCS ought to at least be able to pitch and yaw as well as roll.  All it would take is four more ports at the nose, pointing radially outward, to get pitch/yaw and JIKL translation.  I'll probably have to make a subassembly with a set of "anywhere RCS" sunk in to the nose.

[Geonovast]

2 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

With the amount of coupled pitch/yaw I experienced, if you have a dead battery, this probably wouldn't work

Well if you have a dead battery and are miraculously pointing retrograde, all you have to it wait anyway, and you'll start pointing radial in, in which case, you can do the same method as pointing normal or antinormal.  The pod's not going to stay retrograde with a dead battery.

I agree that it should have a full RCS suite... not sure why they bothered to do it halfway, and the wrong half at that.

Of course, you could always get out and push...

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 minute ago, Geonovast said:

Well if you have a dead battery and are miraculously pointing retrograde, all you have to it wait anyway, and you'll start pointing radial in, in which case, you can do the same method as pointing normal or antinormal.  The pod's not going to stay retrograde with a dead battery.

The problem is, the pod's not going to stay in any heading while translating with the built-in RCS -- try it for yourself with your reaction wheel disabled.  There's enough pitch/yaw coupled with the translation that I doubt you could manage enough dV that way to even get a "just barely" decaying orbit starting from my usual height of ~85 km.

As for getting out and pushing, every time I've ever tried that, all I managed to do was induce a tumble (making it impossible to re-board) and have to reload a quicksave made before going EVA.  Unless there's a pilot or probe core on board, no SAS; no SAS, you can't push in a chosen direction because the craft will rotate as soon as you make contact to push.  With no instruments in the suit helmet, you can't even attempt to stabilize the tumble and be reasonably sure you're pushing in the right direction if you succeed.

[sevenperforce]

16 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I agree that it should have a full RCS suite... not sure why they bothered to do it halfway, and the wrong half at that.

Of course, you could always get out and push...

Purpose was to have the pod coupled to a service module, which performs fore/aft translation, docking, and deorbit maneuvers, with the roll, pitch, and yaw on the pod assisting the SM for docking (having that authority up front means you only need one ring of quads at your CoM). The pod thrusters also control attitude on entry; you don't need translation there.

This isn't a Dragon 1/2, where everything you need is on the pod itself.

9 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

As for getting out and pushing, every time I've ever tried that, all I managed to do was induce a tumble (making it impossible to re-board) and have to reload a quicksave made before going EVA.  Unless there's a pilot or probe core on board, no SAS; no SAS, you can't push in a chosen direction because the craft will rotate as soon as you make contact to push.  With no instruments in the suit helmet, you can't even attempt to stabilize the tumble and be reasonably sure you're pushing in the right direction if you succeed.

Odd, I've never had a problem with it. Line up in the direction you want to go, EVA jetpack to right behind your heat shield, and come in very very gently. Then just sit there and hold W. 

Of course I have usually tried with largish vehicles, so if you are dealing with a tiny pod you may need to use slightly smaller RCS inputs.

[Zeiss Ikon]

3 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Purpose was to have the pod coupled to a service module, which performs fore/aft translation, docking, and deorbit maneuvers, with the roll, pitch, and yaw on the pod assisting the SM for docking (having that authority up front means you only need one ring of quads at your CoM). The pod thrusters also control attitude on entry; you don't need translation there.

This isn't a Dragon 1/2, where everything you need is on the pod itself.

Odd, I've never had a problem with it. Line up in the direction you want to go, EVA jetpack to right behind your heat shield, and come in very very gently. Then just sit there and hold W. 

Of course I have usually tried with largish vehicles, so if you are dealing with a tiny pod you may need to use slightly smaller RCS inputs.

Okay, the SM point is sensible.  The only time the Apollo capsule operated independently was the last few minutes after staging off the SM.  OTOH, during that last few minutes, it used pitch/yaw as well as roll to orient for reentry.  They did not orient and then stage the SM, from what I recall -- that would have required fairly immediate translation to ensure the SM didn't strike the CM when air drag started to build up.  Once they entered the plasma fireball, they did use only roll to orient the COM of the capsule for cross-range and up-down trajectory control -- the aerodynamics dictated the pitch/yaw orientation from the point where they started to build up sensible deceleration.

I have a suggestion for you: put a Mk. 1 in orbit, and try to get out and push.  Hint: quicksave before you let go of the hatch.

[GoSlash27]

If you really like the deprecated parts, be sure to set a copy of their part files aside for later use.

Best,
-Slashy

[Zeiss Ikon]

2 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

If you really like the deprecated parts, be sure to set a copy of their part files aside for later use.

Best,
-Slashy

Or just keep the downloaded files for the old game versions.  I've got 1.2.2, 1.3.0, and 1.4.0 set aside for "future use."

[sevenperforce]

35 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Or just keep the downloaded files for the old game versions.  I've got 1.2.2, 1.3.0, and 1.4.0 set aside for "future use."

Or just go back to ksp's website and and grab the old game versions if you want to redownload them.

[Geonovast]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

Or just go back to ksp's website and and grab the old game versions if you want to redownload them.

If you got it from the store.  From what I understand, it's a bit of a hassle to get older versions from Steam, and GoG only provides the most recent version for download. 

Never depend on a download repository having what you want, just ask anyone who wanted old Linksys firmware starting a few years ago.  For awhile, you could get nearly any firmware version for any device.  Then one day, *poof*, gone.  Googling for it pretty much just yields results with links to the download page that no longer exists.

 

On a side note, the Mk 1-3 pod works just fine in 1.3.1 with the IVA patch..

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 minute ago, Geonovast said:

On a side note, the Mk 1-3 pod works just fine in 1.3.1 with the IVA patch..

Can't say that's surprising.  There's no code to it, it's just parts, and unless it has a parameter that was added for 1.4, it should work as far back as 1.2, maybe even older.

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

I have a suggestion for you: put a Mk. 1 in orbit, and try to get out and push.  Hint: quicksave before you let go of the hatch.

....okay.

Done. Deorbited from a 86 km circular orbit, in one go, with no problem. Plenty of fuel left to get back in the capsule too.

Your issue may be that you're trying this from an off inclination. EVA kerbals can only thrust in the equatorial plane, so if you have an inclined orbit you'll almost always end up tumbling your vehicle.

[Zeiss Ikon]

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

EVA kerbals can only thrust in the equatorial plane, so if you have an inclined orbit you'll almost always end up tumbling your vehicle.

Okay.  How would anyone know that?  And I'm pretty sure it isn't true, anyway, at least on a local basis: I can EVA a Kerbal and fly around the vessel in any direction.  A couple times recently, I've had to fly around to the far side of the rescue vessel to get the rescued Kerbal to a hatch.  Up and down, right and left, after going forward (and occasionally back); they can thrust in any direction.

It wouldn't make any sense to only able to thrust in one plane...

[sevenperforce]

16 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

Okay.  How would anyone know that?  And I'm pretty sure it isn't true, anyway, at least on a local basis: I can EVA a Kerbal and fly around the vessel in any direction.  A couple times recently, I've had to fly around to the far side of the rescue vessel to get the rescued Kerbal to a hatch.  Up and down, right and left, after going forward (and occasionally back); they can thrust in any direction.

It wouldn't make any sense to only able to thrust in one plane...

Well, to be accurate, you can thrust in the equatorial plane or normal to it. So you can fly in any direction, but that doesn't mean you can thrust in any direction.

The RCS jetpack allows a Kerbal in orbit to go straight up, straight down, forward, backward, left, or right. So in theory, you can thrust in any direction, right? Nope, because the Kerbal's orientation in space never changes. Jeb's head is always "north" and his feet are always "south" relative to the planet he's orbiting, no matter what his orbit's inclination is. So even though you can point in an infinite number of directions, all those directions lie along a 360-degree circle parallel to the equatorial plane. WASD will only thrust in that plane, and Shift/Ctrl will only move you up and down perpendicular to that plane. 

Unfortunately, this means that an inclined orbit is going to be hard to change with the "get out and push" approach. An inclined orbit's prograde vector continually changes relative to the orbital plane.

I once did a Minmus EVA landing with Jeb from a highly inclined, highly eccentric capsule. It was a nightmare because I could never just thrust in the direction I wanted; I had to constantly switch between thrusting along the plane and thrusting vertically,

[tater]

On 3/14/2018 at 9:32 PM, Capt. Hunt said:

easy fix.  Find

	TechHidden = True

and change it to false

For anyone who remains upset, just do this in the Mk1-2 part cfg file.

[Zeiss Ikon]

10 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Well, to be accurate, you can thrust in the equatorial plane or normal to it. So you can fly in any direction, but that doesn't mean you can thrust in any direction.

The RCS jetpack allows a Kerbal in orbit to go straight up, straight down, forward, backward, left, or right. So in theory, you can thrust in any direction, right? Nope, because the Kerbal's orientation in space never changes. Jeb's head is always "north" and his feet are always "south" relative to the planet he's orbiting, no matter what his orbit's inclination is. So even though you can point in an infinite number of directions, all those directions lie along a 360-degree circle parallel to the equatorial plane. WASD will only thrust in that plane, and Shift/Ctrl will only move you up and down perpendicular to that plane. 

Unfortunately, this means that an inclined orbit is going to be hard to change with the "get out and push" approach. An inclined orbit's prograde vector continually changes relative to the orbital plane.

I once did a Minmus EVA landing with Jeb from a highly inclined, highly eccentric capsule. It was a nightmare because I could never just thrust in the direction I wanted; I had to constantly switch between thrusting along the plane and thrusting vertically,

Seems to me I recall E and Q (roll, for spacecraft) having some effect too.  And there's a setting that, if "on", causes the EVA Kerbal to reorient to the camera view, so you're always "behind" the Kerbal regardless how you orient your camera.  Move the camera, tap S or W, and the Kerbal reorients to head-up, back to the camera.  I normally have that setting turned on, so my Kerbal orientation (hence thrust directions) is arbitrary.  The issue I have is and has always been the spacecraft tumbling as soon as I touch it.  Maybe this is because there are no orbits without some kind of inclination -- but inclination relative to what?  Why should Kerbin's equator matter in space?

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

And there's a setting that, if "on", causes the EVA Kerbal to reorient to the camera view, so you're always "behind" the Kerbal regardless how you orient your camera.  Move the camera, tap S or W, and the Kerbal reorients to head-up, back to the camera.  I normally have that setting turned on, so my Kerbal orientation (hence thrust directions) is arbitrary.

That setting is the default. Kerbal always reorients back to camera view whenever S/W input is given. That being said, the Kerbal's angle to the equatorial plane always remains zero, and so thrust is always equatorially coplanar.

[Dafni]

29 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

That setting is the default. Kerbal always reorients back to camera view whenever S/W input is given. That being said, the Kerbal's angle to the equatorial plane always remains zero, and so thrust is always equatorially coplanar.

That always perplexed me a bit. So is this true and confirmed now that a Kerbal is always perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic? No matter how you tilt your camera and orient it, or whatever setting you use in the options menu?? That is a bit strange. Why did they do this? Why not giving the Kerbals complete freedom on EVA? I mean they have a yaw pitch and roll command in the settings menu.

Was this done to make it less confusing for beginners? I just dont see the reasoning behind this, and wished many times it were different. It would be nice if a Kerbal on EVA would just behave like a craft in orbit, with full freedom to rotate whichever way we want.

[sevenperforce]

7 minutes ago, Dafni said:

That always perplexed me a bit. So is this true and confirmed now that a Kerbal is always perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic? No matter how you tilt your camera and orient it, or whatever setting you use in the options menu?? That is a bit strange. Why did they do this? Why not giving the Kerbals complete freedom on EVA? I mean they have a yaw pitch and roll command in the settings menu.

Was this done to make it less confusing for beginners? I just dont see the reasoning behind this, and wished many times it were different. It would be nice if a Kerbal on EVA would just behave like a craft in orbit, with full freedom to rotate whichever way we want.

Well, it should be noted that this changes between orbit and non-orbit. If you're on the surface of a world small enough to fly around on (Mun, Minmus, Duna, etc.), then your Kerbal is initially oriented radially, with feet toward the ground and head toward the stars. This means you can thrust upward, away from the ground, or you can thrust parallel to the ground, but you cannot perform any sort of gravity turn. If you want to go to orbit on EVA from the surface of Minmus, you have to mash Shift to get some upward clearance and then hold W (while, hopefully, pointed East) to get up to orbital speed. 

Once you reach a closed non-decaying orbit, however, the "EVA mode" switches, and your Kerbal suddenly reorients from being pointed radial-out to being pointed normal to the equatorial plane of that particular body. This can be a jarring transition.

I think they kept a locked orientation for EVA in order to make maneuvering around between vehicles a little less challenging. For one thing, allowing non-fixed orientations would require the addition of Kerbal-rotation RCS controls in multiple planes, making EVA much harder to control. And when you're in EVA on a planet/moon surface, you really do want a horizon reference.

[LoSBoL]

2 hours ago, Dafni said:

That always perplexed me a bit. So is this true and confirmed now that a Kerbal is always perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic? No matter how you tilt your camera and orient it, or whatever setting you use in the options menu?? That is a bit strange. Why did they do this? Why not giving the Kerbals complete freedom on EVA? I mean they have a yaw pitch and roll command in the settings menu.

Was this done to make it less confusing for beginners? I just dont see the reasoning behind this, and wished many times it were different. It would be nice if a Kerbal on EVA would just behave like a craft in orbit, with full freedom to rotate whichever way we want.

No, its not true. You can yaw, pitch and roll your kerbal in any direction you want, and use its thrusters without your kerbal resetting its orientation. You indeed have to turn of the 'EVAs Auto-Rotate to Camera' setting in the main settings menu.
After doing so you can roll and pitch your kerbal by selecting the kerbal (clicking and holding the mouse button) and draging the kerbal up/down or left/right. The kerbal wont reset its orientation when using its thrusters, unless you hit the spacebar (which then does reset the kerbals orientation.)

Edited March 19, 2018 by LoSBoL