[1.3.1] Ferram Aerospace Research: v0.15.9.1 "Liepmann" 4/2/18

[BudgetHedgehog]

does anyone have version 0.13.1 for 23.5, i have literally looked everywhere and cant find it

From the OP:

Other Recent Versions

Don't know if you missed it or just didn't look, but that has versions all the way back to 0.9.3.

[Drew Kerman]

Btw, what is the problem with the tail?

the tail has an extended section of fuselage (the part I X'd out). It would be better off as just a tail, since the amount I had to move the horizontal stabilizers forward is about equal to the length that would be cut off by that fuselage extension bit

[tetryds]

the tail has an extended section of fuselage (the part I X'd out). It would be better off as just a tail, since the amount I had to move the horizontal stabilizers forward is about equal to the length that would be cut off by that fuselage extension bit

Ahh, okay, that makes sense.

I don't have any similar design to test, but I believe that simply putting 5 degrees of dihedral on those horizontal stabilizers will solve your sideslip issue.

If you try it, let me know please.

[Dirt Diver]

when i look at that i dont see anything in it, do i have to sign up on that website to see it, and yes i looked, looked at curse, looked through almost every thread

[Drew Kerman]

I don't have any similar design to test, but I believe that simply putting 5 degrees of dihedral on those horizontal stabilizers will solve your sideslip issue.

Didn't solve it, but did slightly improve my red numbers at mach .1 and got me up to mach .55 before showing red sideslip. Also looks cool so I will def keep it Note the main wing is slightly anhedral

[tetryds]

Didn't solve it, but did slightly improve my red numbers at mach .1 and got me up to mach .55 before showing red sideslip. Also looks cool so I will def keep it Note the main wing is slightly anhedral

Okay, then try to move it a bit backwards, and increase dihedral again if needed.

But avoid going for more than 10 degrees on it, if you do test to see if it won't be roll-happy.

You probably need more 5 degrees to compensate the main wings anhedral.

[Dirt Diver]

no i didnt miss that, for me it doesnt show anything as far as files go,

[BudgetHedgehog]

when i look at that i dont see anything in it, do i have to sign up on that website to see it, and yes i looked, looked at curse, looked through almost every thread

Strange. Does this link work?

[Drew Kerman]

Okay, then try to move it a bit backwards, and increase dihedral again if needed.

yea, moving back doesn't help at all. the extra 5 degrees further improved stability up to mach .59, had no serious effect on the red numbers at mach .1

Really tho, I've not had any trouble using rudder to manage the take off roll, and don't plan to fly fast enough to cause issues at that end of the envelope either. What I'd like to focus on is my pitching moment... would be nice to keep the yellow line lower at the beginning of the graph too right?

[Dirt Diver]

yes, that one worked great, lolz, i dont know why it wasnt seeing the website

[tetryds]

yea, moving back doesn't help at all. the extra 5 degrees further improved stability up to mach .59, had no serious effect on the red numbers at mach .1

Really tho, I've not had any trouble using rudder to manage the take off roll, and don't plan to fly fast enough to cause issues at that end of the envelope either. What I'd like to focus on is my pitching moment... would be nice to keep the yellow line lower at the beginning of the graph too right?

If you want stability lower than Mach 0.2 you should go for an ultra light instead, or get three times more wing.

The numbers will go red when too slow, and also when too fast, that is normal.

Can your propeller plane go faster than 0.59 without nosediving from very high with stalled engines and not losing wings?

Because if it was made to fly on the Mach 0.2~0.6 range you should not really bother.

Or maybe you can go for some severe trial and error, save the current version and create a new one where you mess with the wings until you get the results you want, if they are possible.

[Drew Kerman]

last revision of the day:

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Somehow I got the green line to curve way up. I think it was after I moved the main wings just a smidgen back to allow the air stair better access to the hatch. It wasn't the science pods, I re-analyzed with them off and got the same performance. Crazy - I now have so little drag I've had to do power-off approaches and install air brakes.

I've also gone and added little details, like nav/strobe/landing lights.

The science drop probes function well, but I'm still working on an issue:

For some reason I have yet to ascertain, the left inner-most drop pod's probe core will get ripped off (but remain contained within the pod). When I click on all 4 drop pods I get "Parts Shielded: 16" on all of them. After the one probe core goes, the outer two pods still show 16 shielded parts but the left inner one then says 14 and the right inner one says 15. The two outer and two inner are placed via symmetry. I've tried deleting the inner ones, alt+click copying the outer ones and placing two on the inside - but the same thing happens. The inner-most probe core on the left side gets ripped off. Even when I'm traveling faster after takeoff, none of the other probes have a problem. Any ideas? Won't be able to do any more serious work until Monday

Edited September 26, 2014 by Gaiiden

[iamzac]

Reducing the thrust of air breathing engines at half is very good at balancing the performance planes and spaceplanes vs the stock aerodynamics where the drag is much higher but there are two problems with this:

1) You should not reduce the thrust of hellicopter rotors and VTOL engines by 50% since they gain nothing from FAR during low speed hovering and become almost useless after such a large thrust reduction.

Maybe reduce their thrust with a lower value like 10% or 20% so they will not be too fast when not hovering but not 50%.

They can be excluded easy from the general filter because they usually have the words rotor, helicoper or vtol in their name or description.

2)Rockets are still overpowered vs. the stock game and it feels a bit like cheating if you are playing with FAR without RSS. The simplest way to fix this would be to reduce the atmospheric ISP for all rockets, this way they will work the same in space or on planets with no atmosphere where FAR doesn't change anything but where you use FAR you will need more fuel which will balance the lower drag.

Especially going to EVE for a return mission with FAR feels cheaty because you can get a huge reduction in the required dV if using FAR to launch a rocket from there.

[Deep silence]

I found a bug on the spoilers : the enabled spoilers are not restored after a save/reload.

On a fresh linux install, with only FAR : create a plane with a wing and a control surface, enable spoiler and set it to 85%, launch, apply the brakes, F5, F9, then the gear's brakes are enabled, but not the spoilers. Disabling the brakes enable the spoilers, making the plane impossible to reuse...

Anyway, thanks for this great mod!

[tetryds]

2)Rockets are still overpowered vs. the stock game and it feels a bit like cheating if you are playing with FAR without RSS. The simplest way to fix this would be to reduce the atmospheric ISP for all rockets, this way they will work the same in space or on planets with no atmosphere where FAR doesn't change anything but where you use FAR you will need more fuel which will balance the lower drag.

Especially going to EVE for a return mission with FAR feels cheaty because you can get a huge reduction in the required dV if using FAR to launch a rocket from there.

But that is not what FAR is for, it is for better atmospheres not all the rebalances that have to come with it.

There is a good solution to that, if you don't want to break the balance of the game use this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52882-0-24-2-Kerbal-Isp-Difficulty-Scaler-v1-4-8-14-14

I understand what you mean, it seems that it makes atmospheric launches too easy, but the thing is that the stock aerodynamics is what actually makes it too hard.

With the mod above you can do what you are asking for too, by the way.

Hope it helps.

[iamzac]

But that is not what FAR is for, it is for better atmospheres not all the rebalances that have to come with it.

There is a good solution to that, if you don't want to break the balance of the game use this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52882-0-24-2-Kerbal-Isp-Difficulty-Scaler-v1-4-8-14-14

I understand what you mean, it seems that it makes atmospheric launches too easy, but the thing is that the stock aerodynamics is what actually makes it too hard.

With the mod above you can do what you are asking for too, by the way.

Hope it helps.

FAR already does some rebalances for jet engines, modifying not only thrust but also the velocity curve for some of them, what I was suggesting is that it should also do the rebalances that are available in the Kerbal Isp Difficulty Scaler as "FAR to Stock KSP, Atmosphere only" to complete somehow the partial basic rebalancing of the jet engines.

And also undo all or some of the rebalancing for helicopter rotors and VTOL engines because like I said I don't think that the effect it has on them is in line with the reason it was done for all the other engines, as they are a special kind of engines that are not affected very much by FAR (or not at all when only hovering).

[forsaken1111]

But that is not what FAR is for, it is for better atmospheres not all the rebalances that have to come with it.

If that were true then it wouldn't be mucking with engines at all.

[tetryds]

If that were true then it wouldn't be mucking with engines at all.

But ferram was very reluctant to nerf the engines, only did it because FAR is already hard, without the nerf it gets nearly unplayable for most people.

Now, after the nerf, less people have troubles with it than before.

I agree about the VTOLs, though.

[dzikakulka]

So recently I've been bulding stuff meant to fly in atmosphere and discovered that FAR doesn't like my contraptions, especially placing size2 parts on s2 parts from B9 aerospace, screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/8nK4h

Is that part totally out of option as for attaching non-s2 stuff on s2 node? It looks so good and makes perfect multi engine mount with different sizes

Can this be easily fixed somehow (if it's a bug)?

[ferram4]

@iamzac: Only going to be done for rotor or helicopter. VTOL engines are otherwise just jet engines, and they should keep the nerf that they have had.

KIDS will not do its stuff by default for FAR. Re-balancing rocket engines is not within FAR's scope.

@forsaken1111: FAR modifies drag parameters. Jet engines are balanced to counter drag parameters. Ergo, modifying jet engines is within scope, though I would prefer to simply break them completely and require the use of AJE instead. Jet engines only had the properties they had because Squad doesn't know what they're doing with respect to aerodynamics or engine performance.

@dzikakulka: That's just the drag from the engine itself. The sudden contraction and all the messy garbage for the nozzle makes it pretty draggy; that's supposed to happen.

[The Space Man]

Anyone else getting this null reference exception

(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Transform:INTERNAL_CALL_TransformDirection (UnityEngine.Transform,UnityEngine.Vector3&)

  at UnityEngine.Transform.TransformDirection (Vector3 direction) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.WingCentroid () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARControllableSurface.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Transform:INTERNAL_CALL_TransformDirection (UnityEngine.Transform,UnityEngine.Vector3&)

  at UnityEngine.Transform.TransformDirection (Vector3 direction) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.WingCentroid () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARControllableSurface.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Transform:INTERNAL_CALL_TransformDirection (UnityEngine.Transform,UnityEngine.Vector3&)

  at UnityEngine.Transform.TransformDirection (Vector3 direction) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.WingCentroid () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARControllableSurface.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Transform:INTERNAL_CALL_TransformDirection (UnityEngine.Transform,UnityEngine.Vector3&)

  at UnityEngine.Transform.TransformDirection (Vector3 direction) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.WingCentroid () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARControllableSurface.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

(Filename:  Line: -1)

NullReferenceException
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Transform:INTERNAL_CALL_TransformDirection (UnityEngine.Transform,UnityEngine.Vector3&)

  at UnityEngine.Transform.TransformDirection (Vector3 direction) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.WingCentroid () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARWingAerodynamicModel.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at ferram4.FARControllableSurface.FixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

[ferram4]

Well, no. And context-less NRE's are absolutely useless as far as bug reports go.

How about you start at the beginning by following the steps outlined here.

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

I've been having something very strange happen:

While attempting to reenter with the first stage of a reusable launcher in RSS (tall skinny rocket, tail-heavy due to engines and LOX tank being at the back), the vehicle has attempted to fly sideways. Not nose-first, as I would expect if the vehicle was unstable, sideways. It refuses to remain pointing retrograde, and instead falls at an angle of attack of up to around 30 degrees! With Laztek's Falcon 9 landing legs attached and folded, it falls at an extreme angle of attack even at hypersonic speeds (and as a consequence breaks up due to a combination of heating, aerodynamic failures, and G-forces. With the landing legs removed, it falls at a survivable but still significant AoA at hypersonic speeds, and then increases to around 30 degrees at subsonic speeds. At less than 150 m/s, the rocket is approximately horizontal, and the prograde vector is about 30 degrees below the horizon. It stays in this orientation all the way to the ground. There are no asymmetric protrusions or anything strange other than a Mechjeb unit which is shielded from the airflow by an interstage fairing.

Obviously the rocket is generating quite a bit of body lift which prevents its descent angle from approaching vertical, but that shouldn't affect its aerodynamic stability, right? Do you have any idea what might be causing this behavior?

[ferram4]

Yeah, it's unstable in a straight-on orientation but stable in that sideways orientation, likely because of part masses being balanced for magical KSP-land rather than as the real thing would be balanced, which should be stable.

Nothing I can change, it's not my problem, it's the stage's mass distribution.

[Chezburgar7300]

Good evening/morning! I was just wondering if there was a working KSO config? I'm not exactly 'cheery' to go through all 583 pages to look for it. If anyone knows that there is one in this thread or there is one in the KSO thread, I'd be happy to hear and go searching. Anyway sorry if this isn't meant to be here, I didn't know which to post this in.