Fairings Discussion

[GoldForest]

I feel like this needs to be discussed. I remember lots of talk about the fairing system when they redid it. 

I feel we need the old modular hard fairings back. Why? Recoverability. I want to be able to get 100% of my money back, and fairings do cost a pretty penny. 

But I know people kind of like the procedural fairings, so I say we keep them, but also add back the modular fairs, and also add mechanical fairings (What SpaceX has planned for the cargo version of the BFR, and formally ITX, and formally formally a Falcon 9 Satellite recovery/deorbiter.

[magnemoe]

An mechanical fairing will be an new cargo hatch, think of the tail door but with symmetrical profile like the starship hatch.
Having an split open fairing like the one seen in Moonracker would be easier to use especially if you dock with container in orbit and then land at base. 
This is an very realistic setting for building an colony on say Laythe

The old modular fairings is pretty obsolete on the other hand unless used as parts for this. 

[GoldForest]

21 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

An mechanical fairing will be an new cargo hatch, think of the tail door but with symmetrical profile like the starship hatch.
Having an split open fairing like the one seen in Moonracker would be easier to use especially if you dock with container in orbit and then land at base. 
This is an very realistic setting for building an colony on say Laythe

The old modular fairings is pretty obsolete on the other hand unless used as parts for this. 

I was thinking more like the Falcon 9 mechanical fairing concept where both halves would move to open up before closing up around the satellite. Or the Saturn I/V old Fairing where the four petals opened on hinges. 

[kerbiloid]

Telescopic ones + two reusable telescopic clamshells.

***

A reusable cryogenic upper stage: a conical capsule with, say, oxygen inner tank, inside and a Convair Nexus-like aerospike-looking engine below.

A telescopic, say, methane cylindric outer tank on top. Originally it's extended. Can be retracted into the oxygen tank (together with its roof) to fit the capsule.

A telescopic cylinder of lower part of shroud on top. Originally is extended and protects the lower part of the payload.

***

On top - two similar telescopic halves of upper shroud.

Each looks like a wide boat made of conic nose and short cylindric side. Both are heat-protected.
Inside the cylindric part - next telescopic cylindric section of same length but lesser diameter.
Inside that section - next telescopic section.

Two solid retrorockets inside (aside the top of payload).
Retractable fins to stabilize its aerobraking.

Command unit and a chute.

***

Once the upper stage separates from the (reusable, of course) first stage, the halves of the upper shroud separate.
Both "flying boats" retract telescopic sections inside the "uppest" and the widest one. And extend fins (or maybe they are fixed).

Then every of them rotate in the launchpad direction and makes a retroburn.
It makes a parabola, like the reusable first stage, aerobrakes (unprotected lower sections are retracted into the heat-protected ones), and deploys a chute, landing somewhere next to the launchpad.

***

Once the upper stage reaches the orbit, it retracts the cylindric lower shroud, pulling it onto the outer tank. (Cylindric tank inside cylindric shroud).
So, the payload gets naked.
The stage detaches from the payload and retracts the outer tank together with the pulled on lower shroud, into the inner tank (it's wider than both of them).

So, now the upper stage looks like a conica capsule with tanks and lower shroud one inside another.

It retracts the wide nozzle, the tiny exhaust nozzles get covered with caps.
So, the stage is now heat-protected.

It makes an orbit turn, deorbits with (maybe hypergolic?) landing engines, aerobrakes with heatshield on its wide aerospike nozzle.

After getting subsonic it deploys small chutes to slow down to 30 m/s instead of 150 m/s.

At 50 m above the ground it cuts off the chutes and lands on landing engines and legs.

[shdwlrd]

In all reality, I'd rather see the old procedural fairings mod become the new stock fairing. The current stock fairing is useable, but kind of a pita to use. The procedural fairings mod created the fairing automatically upon attaching the base. If you had to make changes to the payload, it would automatically adjust to fit the payload.

[Rejected Spawn]

The more that can be done with fairings the better. What I'd like to see more than anything else though is the ability to create "internal" spaces; the game actually understanding that something is sitting in a shielded spot and should not be affected by drag and stuff - without having to specifically put it inside a fairing or prefab cargo bay. Of course I still also want the "old fashioned" fairings and bays and stuff for convenience when making those simple rockets that just go somewhere and deploy something and they're done.

Why do I want to be able to build custom shielded interiors? Story time. Ever since I first threw my wallet at the screen when I found KSP on the Steam store it has been my dream to send a majestic carrier ship on a grand voyage to visit new worlds up close and have it launch a smaller ship for landing on planets with too unforgiving gravity for the carrier itself, however this smaller ship should also be powerful enough to get back off the surface and dock safely inside the motherships hangar. How close have I gotten to this in the years since? Not close at all. The first thing I learned was that a shielded interior volume is solely the privilege of cargo bays or fairings, crushing my hope of ever having a hangar actually do anything to the ships properties other than add dry mass. At least Breaking Ground added hinges so a hangar can have doors that open and close, but yeah...

Another thing that fairings can be used for is to create a little more freeform geometry, something I've appreciated in colony building - you can use massive fairings as really clean and beautiful exterior walls for buildings. Unfortunately really large fairings cause severe lag and trying to clip decor into them (a colony building without some windows is.... pretty dull) has wildly unpredictable results, anything between nothing bad whatsoever happening and extremely aggressive RUD. Yet another thing that can be done with fairings is to make them open ended; "close" them around some other round thing (if you use another fairing for this you can fine tune the width) and then move that thing out of the way and you have a big protected interior space. Unfortunately accessing this space can be... unpredictable at best. Sometimes you can get other things to go in there and sometimes the end is a solid invisible wall.

More freeform EVERYTHING! That would be my greatest wish today. I'll always want to build something far beyond what a game can handle but every step further down Freedom Road will bring me happiness. An array of procedural parts would be like 5 good leaps and an extra jump of joy.

[RocketBlam]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

In all reality, I'd rather see the old procedural fairings mod become the new stock fairing. The current stock fairing is useable, but kind of a pita to use. The procedural fairings mod created the fairing automatically upon attaching the base. If you had to make changes to the payload, it would automatically adjust to fit the payload.

Me too. The procedural fairings they introduced just never work right, to me. You have to click in some weird, odd place to get it to build. You can still get that old procedural mod, though. I still use it.

[Raptor9]

To be clear in this thread, there has only ever been one fairing system in stock KSP, the one introduced in v1.0.  That system evolved from the "potato-chip" jettison to allow the clamshell jettison, with additional features and behavior tweaked to allow for interstaging; but nevertheless there has only been one.

Unless you're referring to engine shrouds or the MH DLC's structural tubes (which I consider useless anyway since they don't occlude anything inside them from aerodynamic drag).  But I'm not familiar with the "old system of modular fairings" you are referring to, and I've been playing KSP since 0.13.  You might be thinking of a mod; Lord knows there were plenty of fairing mods back in the day.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Raptor9

[GoldForest]

On 8/29/2019 at 12:54 PM, Raptor9 said:

To be clear in this thread, there has only ever been one fairing system in stock KSP, the one introduced in v1.0.  That system evolved from the "potato-chip" jettison to allow the clamshell jettison, with additional features and behavior tweaked to allow for interstaging; but nevertheless there has only been one.

Unless you're referring to engine shrouds or the MH DLC's structural tubes (which I consider useless anyway since they don't occlude anything inside them from aerodynamic drag).  But I'm not familiar with the "old system of modular fairings" you are referring to, and I've been playing KSP since 0.13.  You might be thinking of a mod; Lord knows there were plenty of fairing mods back in the day.

I may be confusing mod fairings. 

When I talk about modular fairings, I meant like KW rocketry old style fairings or NovaPunch's fairings. 

[SpaceFace545]

Fairings look like this

https://imgur.com/a/6mmSwC5

not the paper thin sheets of metal that explode magically into millions of pieces