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

[777-300ER]

Using the B9 pack I presume...find the Deadly Reentry mod, download newest version, overwrite the ExurgentEnginnering folder in your GameData with the one from Deadly Reentry.

The lack of an ExurgentEngineering folder in DeadlyReentry confuses me.

[Silenvo]

Can someone direct me, if no one can help me with my problem (installation or configuration, detailed on page 61), about where I can go to get this mod working?

I would really appreciate it. There isn't a readme or any tutorial that seems to help. The few times someone has even remotely mentioned a similar issue, is two

people on the mod download comment section and BOTH said "nevermind." afterwards, and didn't explain what they did. I -really- want to use this mod! But if

no one is willing to help me, how am I supposed to get anywhere?.. Gah!

I'm sorry if I seem impatient, I just want to play with the mod and have not been having any luck finding what I need. Google is not helping.

Edited June 14, 2013 by Silenvo
Fixing Ugly Text.

[ferram4]

@Everyone having GUI errors: I assume you're all using B9 Aerospace. Check out the first post of this thread, under FAQ for your solution. Download the latest version of Deadly Reentry from the thread linked in the FAQ and the ExsurgentEngineering folder in the zip will have the dll replacement.

@Chestburster: Could you provide a craft that is having that problem? I believe that I've fixed most of the problems involved with that and I'd like another data point.

@Autochton: A positive Xw means that (for whatever reason) your vehicle has less drag when its angle of attack is increased from the angle of attack used for your set point. I don't know how you did it, but you did. I'd suggest playing around with the parts used on the vehicle to see which one is causing this; I may be accounting for drag improperly somewhere.

@m4ti140: Uh, so they did. Oops, I re-downloaded the whole thing when I didn't have to. The game should have been updated properly then. To clear out FAR 0.9.4's changes, you'll have to restore from a backed-up Parts folder to use the patcher to repair KSP.

@Weatherman159: When flaps deploy on planes they do tend to make it pitch down a bit; most pitch control surfaces are actually designed with the intent to keep the plane at a proper angle of attack with the flaps deployed. You need to think about these things when designing planes.

@Volt: Issue confirmed and believed fixed; hotfix should be up soon to remedy the problem.

@g_audio: The Vonnegut is unstable with FAR installed. You'll have to change its design to make it fly properly with FAR. It's not designed with FAR's aerodynamics in mind, so it probably won't fly properly with those aerodynamics turned on.

[Fortunateson1969]

Ferram, if you could take a moment out of your busy schedule creating air particles and other Godlike things to help me for a mo that would be much appreciated.

Using B9, MechJeb and FAR (No deadly) my SSTO spaceplane program was going incredibly well. I'd just clocked my biggest guy at carrying 100T to 100km orbit and able to safely return. I was almost done with my production save and ready to move on to a career save.

Then I noticed that I had FAR 9.4 installed, so I went to install 9.5. Came back in, and several things were pretty borked. The SABRE engines from the B9 pack would go to infinite thrust, while not actually doing anything. Re installed B9 which fixed it-launched and found that I could only get to about half that launch profile before running out of fuel-while before I had plenty left, even with no cargo.

I'm assuming that this is YOUR FAULT (haha just kidding) because I can't see why B9 or Jeb would have anything to do with air intakes or such-especially because I didn't update B9, just went off of an older (current) download I had.

My question to you is-has anything changed since 9.4 that would cause more fuel usage or...something? It's really vexing me...this spaceplane was perfect man! Thanks in advance for your help.

[ferram4]

@Fortunateson1969: It's quite possible that something in your design wasn't properly aerodynamic and you just found out; 0.9.5 accounts for some more sources of drag, so it's possible that you're running into those problems now. Post a picture of it, that should sort out some problems.

[Fortunateson1969]

http://imgur.com/a/Xn4BC#0

And hey-while I have you, if you see any of the dumbest engineering choices ever (like the way those jet engines on the sides might be blocked by the b9 wide body thingey there...idk how KSP treats that) and want to point them out to me that'd be grand.

Oh and the wheels on the bottom are placed upon those square b9 intakes. But that's about it.

Edit: It's a significant difference in how far the same amount of fuel gets me now. Difference between ~1/4 left at 100x100 and empty at a parabolic 60km rollercoaster ride.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Fortunateson1969

[ferram4]

Get rid of the side-mounted jet engines, since they probably aren't much use with those 3 SABREs at the back.

The way FAR treats body flaring now the cockpit, the intake section behind it and the ultra-wide section at the back will add more drag than they did previously. A lot more. You'll need more fuel I'm afraid.

Version 0.9.5.1 is up, fixing the Kerbal log spamming bug and getting killing a source of nullspace errors.

Edited June 13, 2013 by ferram4

[Volt]

@ferram4: Rapid fix for the win. Operation Surveyor will fly again!

Also, that point about body flaring causing more drag probably explains why my Atlas needs so much thrust to get anywhere. The horrible lumps around the tail section of the smaller B9 cargo bay parts must be causing some problems. And there's not really an alternative to it... damn.

[Fortunateson1969]

1.) The side mounted jets seem to do okay, the 3 SABRES have trouble in the respect of their fuel-hoggery. It's better to use less fuel and ride out the atmo as much as I can before switching to rockets. Fuel economy stuffs. I can see if relocating them would help though.

2.) Interesting fact-I realized that I actually HAD updated to a new version of b9. My bad-sorry. Keeping 0.9.5 FAR and going back to R3.1c B9 seems to have fixed the problem (seems to have being the key word there). His changelog is vague as to any changes he's made to the jets or SABRES Isp or what have you...apparently I was wrong to blame all of my problems in life on you.

I'll have to keep the flaring thing in mind though. I might be back here sobbing to you when that starts to mess up my stuff

Thanks for the great great mod man you're a star!

[ialdabaoth]

@Everyone having GUI errors: I assume you're all using B9 Aerospace. Check out the first post of this thread, under FAQ for your solution. Download the latest version of Deadly Reentry from the thread linked in the FAQ and the ExsurgentEngineering folder in the zip will have the dll replacement.

NOTE: Deadly Reentry 2.2 is waaaay alpha; I would prefer people who just want to fly planes (as opposed to people who want to help me test DRE) just download my fixed version of ExsurgentEngineering.dll, and replace their copy in GameData/ExsurgentEngineering/Plugins/. I have careo's permission to redistribute.

[Clamps]

Do I need the ModuleManager.dll for FAR to work? Can I just ignore it?

[ferram4]

If you ignore it the stock wings will not have their physics updated, nor will the stock jet engines be rebalanced so they aren't super-overpowered. So yes, you need it; I wouldn't have included it if you didn't.

[MR4Y]

As for a question, is SAS and ASAS tweaked on FAR? I'm asking this because they are pretty much useless when FAR is present. Rocket's wobble like crazy, even the ones that come with FAR. This wobble has the potential to make bigger rockets tip to one side and rotate uncontrolably. Same for planes. when I have FAR on, I have to literally launch rockets and pilot them manually.

[taniwha]

MR4Y: SAS is fine (afaik), but ASAS is completely inappropriate for FAR unless you really cut back the maximum deflection of your control surfaces. For some of my recent rockets, I've actually given up on control surfaces and rely on pod torque and gimbals for steering. I just make sure the CoL is behind but close to the CoM. I also tend to have my first staging event above 30km.

Actually, even if you don't use ASAS: cutting back the maximum deflections of control surfaces on a rocket makes the rocket easier to fly with FAR.

[ialdabaoth]

MR4Y: SAS is fine (afaik), but ASAS is completely inappropriate for FAR unless you really cut back the maximum deflection of your control surfaces. For some of my recent rockets, I've actually given up on control surfaces and rely on pod torque and gimbals for steering. I just make sure the CoL is behind but close to the CoM. I also tend to have my first staging event above 30km.

Actually, even if you don't use ASAS: cutting back the maximum deflections of control surfaces on a rocket makes the rocket easier to fly with FAR.

I've been considering playing with the Kp/Ki/Kd values on ASAS until I find something sensible for FAR, then posting a cfg file in this thread.

[MR4Y]

MR4Y: SAS is fine (afaik), but ASAS is completely inappropriate for FAR unless you really cut back the maximum deflection of your control surfaces. For some of my recent rockets, I've actually given up on control surfaces and rely on pod torque and gimbals for steering. I just make sure the CoL is behind but close to the CoM. I also tend to have my first staging event above 30km.

Actually, even if you don't use ASAS: cutting back the maximum deflections of control surfaces on a rocket makes the rocket easier to fly with FAR.

That halts half of my lauching methods and makes gravity turns almost impossible.

[ferram4]

I'll be honest, I don't understand how people can stand to use ASAS in atmosphere at all. Even without FAR, it makes rockets wobble all over the place like a piece of spaghetti.

Just make your rocket aerodynamically stable and fly a gentle gravity turn. You don't need ASAS until you're in space to hold orientation for a long burn.

If you do want to try tuning the ASAS values, try reducing all the values, but lower Kp and Ki more than Kd; this should cause the response to be over-damped rather than under-damped or unstable.

[MR4Y]

I'll be honest, I don't understand how people can stand to use ASAS in atmosphere at all. Even without FAR, it makes rockets wobble all over the place like a piece of spaghetti.

Just make your rocket aerodynamically stable and fly a gentle gravity turn. You don't need ASAS until you're in space to hold orientation for a long burn.

If you do want to try tuning the ASAS values, try reducing all the values, but lower Kp and Ki more than Kd; this should cause the response to be over-damped rather than under-damped or unstable.

I use ASAS to hold my crafts in one position. The trimming method is too slow to both activate and might end in disaster when deactivating. Even fine controls are not as fine as I would like them to be. There are no other options for holding a ship's position with stability other than ASAS.

[taniwha]

MR4Y:

That halts half of my lauching methods and makes gravity turns almost impossible.

Gravity turns impossible? Well, if you can call that "go vertical to 10km and then turn 45 degrees" a gravity turn, sure. However, that's not a gravity turn, it's a bad joke. I start my turns at about 200m and might have pitched to 45 degrees by the time I hit 10km, often running at about 400m/s (depends on the rocket's TWR).

FAR will get your rocket to LKO for about 3400m/s delta-v, but that 1km/s delta-v savings comes at a cost: you need to build your rocket such that it's streamlined, and you have to learn how to do a real gravity turn: turn early, turn slow.

[camlost]

Have been using the "ascent guidance" in MJ and it worked. All you need to do is to tune down the Kp and Kd values of MJ.

[Silenvo]

ferram4 Said: @Everyone having GUI errors: I assume you're all using B9 Aerospace. Check out the first post of this thread, under FAQ for your solution.

Download the latest version of Deadly Reentry from the thread linked in the FAQ and the ExsurgentEngineering folder in the zip will have the dll replacement.

I do not have B9 Aerospace, I have still tried your suggestion installing ExsurgentEngineering after unpacking appropriately into gamedata folder. No effect, I also tried

it in the plugins folder, again no effect. (I am restarting the game every time to test, and even remaking my profile in there.) Given these failures I tried just installing

the total of deadly re-entry mod, again to no successful end. The Gui simply refuses to show and the planes still refuse to operate as they should. I'm at a loss here...

I tried even the one guy's suggestion/alternative version to the exsurgentengineering.DLL.

I am just trying to install this mod -alone-, there is NOTHING else I'm trying to install right now, I just want THIS-ONE-MOD to work. From there I can start trying to

make everything else work. In case if its still needed here is my computer specs, again.

Game Specs: (Steam Version) - v0.20.2.186

Computer Specs: Windows 7 Home Premium, i7 CPU 975 @ 3.33 GHz 3.33 GHz, 6.00GB RAM, 64-bit Operating System.

Controls: Razor Lycosa Keyboard, and Razor Death Adder Mouse. (These two only, no joystick.)

[MR4Y]

MR4Y:

Gravity turns impossible? Well, if you can call that "go vertical to 10km and then turn 45 degrees" a gravity turn, sure. However, that's not a gravity turn, it's a bad joke. I start my turns at about 200m and might have pitched to 45 degrees by the time I hit 10km, often running at about 400m/s (depends on the rocket's TWR).

FAR will get your rocket to LKO for about 3400m/s delta-v, but that 1km/s delta-v savings comes at a cost: you need to build your rocket such that it's streamlined, and you have to learn how to do a real gravity turn: turn early, turn slow.

ALMOST impossible. Read the entire sentence.

Now let's discuss your method for gravity turns:

-To turn slowly, I would need something finer than fine controls. Since ASAS just makes the rocket wobble, that's not possible for me.

-FAR will get my rocket to LKO at 1 Km/s less, if it doesn't make the rocket wobble all the way. And the same holds for stock FAR rockets as well. So that 1 Km/s gain is more or less wasted correcting the rocket throughout it's entire trajectory, especially considering I can't hold the rocket's position with ASAS, like you can with stock KSP.

[ferram4]

Post a picture of one of your rockets so we can figure out what's wrong with it. Without any pictures though, I'd guess that either you have too much control authority or you need to strut up your rocket.

[camlost]

Ferram:

How did you tune the aerodynamics of transonic realm? Seems to me at M0.8-1.1 the control surfaces are less efficient, and the CoL of wings moved forward.

[MR4Y]

Post a picture of one of your rockets so we can figure out what's wrong with it. Without any pictures though, I'd guess that either you have too much control authority or you need to strut up your rocket.

I was trying to do rockets with payloads and fairings, either using CORE Anvil, KW Rocketry or the new AIES.

Using the proper gravity turn (turning gradualy so you end at 45 degrees by the time you arrive at 10 Km) seems to work better, although it's really hard to it with FAr Orbiter 1, as it wants to wobble and deviate from the trajectory.

Here's the craft I tested. It's loosely based on Scott Manley's tutorial launcher. only change so far was adding nosecones. I don't have any screnshots of it, but by the time I arrived at 10 Km after doing a proper gravity turn, it had an Ap of 145 Km:

So using the proper gravity turn seems to work better, but still, ASAS should be able to hold the ship in position without making it wobble.