totm apr 2024 [1.12.x] Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit | Stockalike Space Shuttle Orbiter! | (Tubes!) | v1.1.8

[YourAgony]

Hi, great job ... I have a question about APAS .... do they only work with each other or do they work with other APAS from other mods? I tried to dock with the IDA from the CST-100 mods, but somehow it seems to collide and then docking is impossible .... Please for a short info Many thanks in advance

[Spaceman.Spiff]

5 minutes ago, YourAgony said:

Hi, great job ... I have a question about APAS .... do they only work with each other or do they work with other APAS from other mods? I tried to dock with the IDA from the CST-100 mods, but somehow it seems to collide and then docking is impossible .... Please for a short info Many thanks in advance

I don't believe they work with any other ports at the moment. You must use these ports to dock.

It's possible the author of the other mod might add compatibility.

[SpaceFace545]

1 minute ago, Spaceman.Spiff said:

I don't believe they work with any other ports at the moment. You must use these ports to dock.

It's possible the author of the other mod might add compatibility.

To continue on to what spaceman.spiff said, The Benjee10 APAS has an extendible soft docking ring which automatically clamps to other Benjee10 APASs before docking, so there is a physical barrier.

[OrdinaryKerman]

1 hour ago, YourAgony said:

Hi, great job ... I have a question about APAS .... do they only work with each other or do they work with other APAS from other mods? I tried to dock with the IDA from the CST-100 mods, but somehow it seems to collide and then docking is impossible .... Please for a short info Many thanks in advance

No. Benjee10 APAS uses a unique docking node type (B10_APAS), unlike some other modded APAS/IDS which are Clamp-O-Tron compatible, and as SpaceFace said above the Benjee10 APAS port has physical, collideable alignment petals, again unlike most other docking ports which have merely cosmetic alignment petals. Also, irl IDSS/IDA is incompatible with APAS-89/95 despite being very similar in size, shape, and mechanism.

Edited March 24, 2021 by OrdinaryKerman

[Razgriz1]

23 minutes ago, OrdinaryKerman said:

No. Benjee10 APAS uses a unique docking node type (B10_APAS), unlike some other modded APAS/IDS which are Clamp-O-Tron compatible, and as SpaceFace said above the Benjee10 APAS port has physical, collideable alignment petals, again unlike most other docking ports which have merely cosmetic alignment petals. Also, irl IDSS/IDA is incompatible with APAS-89/95 despite being very similar in size, shape, and mechanism.

IRL most docking mechanisms are only compatible with one other type of docking port  Often times there's even the added constraint of active vs. passive ports.

[SpaceFace545]

So hey @benjee10, the shuttle is super unstable right now I'm not using FAR. Its the tail is way heavier than the nose. When on a runway it ends up nosing up and. And when reentering it points retrograde or goes in a flat spin. I've tried doing this multiple times with completely empty fuel tanks but still it ends up in a tail spin.

[Razgriz1]

Edit: Good job me clicking submit instead of add image...

On 3/18/2021 at 12:24 AM, Razgriz1 said:

Fortunately for the RS-25, the stock vector has a wonderful plume found in Stock Waterfall Effects, and since this one just uses that same model, it's pretty easy to copy the config and edit it to apply to this one instead.

The config for the O-10 "Puff" works decently for the AJ-10 as well, though that one requires a bit of scaling to work correctly.

I'm glad benjee added the RCS waterfall configs, it makes the whole thing look so much better when maneuvering. I was planning on making some myself but he beat me to it 

Here are the plumes I was talking about, now that I have a chance to actually fire up the game again.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Razgriz1

[benjee10]

6 hours ago, SpaceFace545 said:

So hey @benjee10, the shuttle is super unstable right now I'm not using FAR. Its the tail is way heavier than the nose. When on a runway it ends up nosing up and. And when reentering it points retrograde or goes in a flat spin. I've tried doing this multiple times with completely empty fuel tanks but still it ends up in a tail spin.

Check the mass of the engines you’re using. SOCK reduces the mass of the stock SSMEs to a more realistic 1.2t each, but it’s possible you are either using another engine or have a mod conflict which overwrites the patch.

[DJ Reonic]

15 hours ago, Razgriz1 said:

 

For those of you who use Kerbal Operating System, I wrote a function that calculates the angle offset between the ship's center of thrust vector and it's forward facing vector, and then uses that to adjust a steering direction you input so that the thrust vector points through the center of mass in the same direction as your input direction. It should even be able to handle OMS engine out scenarios, though I have not really tested that yet.

//lib_shuttle_mnv.ks
@lazyGlobal off.

function shuttleSteerDir {
    //Returns a direction that aligns the thrust vector through the center of mass toward the input direction
    parameter steerDir.

    local thrustAng is round(vang(ship:facing:forevector,centerOfThrust()),2).
    local rotationAxis is vcrs(ship:facing,centerOfThrust).

    local newDir is angleAxis(thrustAng,rotationAxis)*steerDir.

    return newDir.
}

function centerOfThrust {
    //Calculates the center of thrust for currently active engines. Returns a vector in ship-raw coordinates
    local eList is list().
    local avgPos is V(0,0,0).
    local maxT is 0.
	list engines in eList.
	
	for eng in eList {
		set avgPos to avgPos + -eng:POSITION * eng:MAXTHRUST.
		set maxT to maxT + eng:MAXTHRUST.
	}
	SET avgPos to avgPos / maxT.
	
return avgPos.
}

This is part of an attempt to completely fly a mission with the shuttle autonomously and return. Reentry is proving to be somewhat challenging though 

At one time I looked into KOS for a good reentry script, but I couldn't find the time to focus on how to make it do S-turns and AoA calculations on the fly. Somebody had a shuttle reentry script for Stock scale, but I was going to try to make it work for JNSQ and FAR. I may try to crack that open again, but my time is limited as work is extra demanding as of late. If you need a tester for a reentry script I'd be happy to assist.

[Razgriz1]

11 minutes ago, DJ Reonic said:

At one time I looked into KOS for a good reentry script, but I couldn't find the time to focus on how to make it do S-turns and AoA calculations on the fly. Somebody had a shuttle reentry script for Stock scale, but I was going to try to make it work for JNSQ and FAR. I may try to crack that open again, but my time is limited as work is extra demanding as of late. If you need a tester for a reentry script I'd be happy to assist.

I think you're probably referring to Relatively Adequate Mission Planner and yeah I started out by attempting to adapt that into what I wanted, but it turned out to make too many assumptions and simplifications. I'm still using the Approach and Landing script from that script pack for final approach and landing but once I sort out reentry a little better, I plan on writing my own version of that too.

Right now, I have the capability to target deorbit burns from an inclined orbit, and perform roll reversals during reentry when crossrange gets too high. I'm currently trying to work out a good way of using roll angle to control downrange instead of alpha modulation, as that's how the real shuttle did it, but that's proving to be a very complicated task lol. Unfortunately the Trajectories mod does not seem to account for roll angle in its calculations, so it assumes the lift vector is vertical. When trying to use roll, even just to correct crossrange error, the Trajectories prediction is off.

I may just switch to only using roll to correct crossrange and then using alpha modulation with trajectories to control downrange but I want to avoid that if I possibly can. I have lots of data logs from a lot of flights that I have pulled into Matlab at this point lol.

[DJ Reonic]

47 minutes ago, Razgriz1 said:

I think you're probably referring to Relatively Adequate Mission Planner and yeah I started out by attempting to adapt that into what I wanted, but it turned out to make too many assumptions and simplifications. I'm still using the Approach and Landing script from that script pack for final approach and landing but once I sort out reentry a little better, I plan on writing my own version of that too.

Right now, I have the capability to target deorbit burns from an inclined orbit, and perform roll reversals during reentry when crossrange gets too high. I'm currently trying to work out a good way of using roll angle to control downrange instead of alpha modulation, as that's how the real shuttle did it, but that's proving to be a very complicated task lol. Unfortunately the Trajectories mod does not seem to account for roll angle in its calculations, so it assumes the lift vector is vertical. When trying to use roll, even just to correct crossrange error, the Trajectories prediction is off.

I may just switch to only using roll to correct crossrange and then using alpha modulation with trajectories to control downrange but I want to avoid that if I possibly can. I have lots of data logs from a lot of flights that I have pulled into Matlab at this point lol.

The math is extremely complex. I tried mapping out what equations were needed but my brain exploded. 

[Razgriz1]

22 minutes ago, DJ Reonic said:

The math is extremely complex. I tried mapping out what equations were needed but my brain exploded. 

KSP drag is not the easiest thing to wrap your mind around either. I might be able to get Close Enough™ by just getting a "nominal" altitude/downrange relationship and using roll angle to follow that. That's the next thing I'm going to try. As long as it's close, the Approach & Landing phase should be able to handle quite a bit of error.

Once I've got something good working decently, I definitely plan on sharing it here. I've put too much time into this now to not 

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

On 3/23/2021 at 9:02 AM, Ollz said:

Would you Consider a Block II Orbiter after Buran.

I know that Comerant has a Block II Shuttle, but a SOCK Block II Shuttle would be so cool

Putting in my vote that I'd like to see one also. But, no rush.

[chris-kerbal]

SOCK made it into the KSP official Twitter

https://twitter.com/KerbalSpaceP/status/1375115282230939661

Edited March 25, 2021 by chris-kerbal

[SpaceFace545]

On 3/24/2021 at 4:44 AM, benjee10 said:

Check the mass of the engines you’re using. SOCK reduces the mass of the stock SSMEs to a more realistic 1.2t each, but it’s possible you are either using another engine or have a mod conflict which overwrites the patch.

So yeah, the Stock SSMEs for some reason are still at 3.7t.

[Emilius73]

On 3/16/2021 at 10:52 AM, Emilius73 said:

Been building a station with Shuttles and HabTech2 parts over the past few weeks

The station is finished!

The crew of Inspiration doing a heatshield inspection backflip (or "rendezvous pitch maneuver" as boring people call it)

The utilities module carried up on said shuttle mission

[DirtyFace83]

I absolutely love this mod. I don't really like using craft files though, and I'm having a lot of trouble snapping the landing gear into their correct places.

Outside of using the craft files, any tips on how I should be attaching them?

[DirtyFace83]

1 hour ago, DirtyFace83 said:

I absolutely love this mod. I don't really like using craft files though, and I'm having a lot of trouble snapping the landing gear into their correct places.

Outside of using the craft files, any tips on how I should be attaching them?

NVM - Basically everything is easier to attach if you're in the SPH or you orient the shuttle horizontally in the VAB

[Cheesecake]

5 hours ago, DirtyFace83 said:

I absolutely love this mod. I don't really like using craft files though, and I'm having a lot of trouble snapping the landing gear into their correct places.

Outside of using the craft files, any tips on how I should be attaching them?

If you holt the ALT-Tab everything will snap to the next node.

[DirtyFace83]

5 hours ago, Cheesecake said:

If you holt the ALT-Tab everything will snap to the next node.

How is it that I'm only just now learning this? Thx!

[Cheesecake]

2 hours ago, DirtyFace83 said:

How is it that I'm only just now learning this? Thx!

Learning never stops.

[Jebediah Kerman 13]

Is there a 1.11.0 version of this mod?

 

[benjee10]

13 minutes ago, Jebediah Kerman 13 said:

Is there a 1.11.0 version of this mod?

Check the title of the thread  

[Adam-Kerman]

Is there a mod for the sparks that go before the SSME's start?

[SpaceFace545]

5 minutes ago, Adam-Kerman said:

Is there a mod for the sparks that go before the SSME's start?

I do believe that modular launch pads has those pyrotechnic starters