Landing Struts not long enough for the Nuclear Motor

[bainbridge]

Neither extend beyond the length of the engine which is why I've not used it yet.

Any ideas?

PS I'm running the game unmodded.

[sjwt]

An easy fix, take the Hydraulic Detachment Manifold (the long thin radial decouper) and place one at the bottom of the fuel tank, overhanging down, then place another one on that Decoupler, keep going until you reach long enough for the legs to go all the way down, you may want to strut the legs to something and each other..

[Nibb31]

Do you think it's a good idea to land on irradiated soil?

[Jesrad]

Is irradiated soil safe ?

The exhaust from a NERVA is not radioactive, as the radioisotopes do not leave the reactor. The exhaust is your typical rocket fuel, only it has been superheated by the nuclear fission reactions. Now, there is certainly some radiation that leaks out, in the form of gamma rays (photons: light), while the engine is running, but those do not "stick" nor turn ordinary matter into dangerous radioactive poison - at most it might ionize some molecular bonds (which helps sterilizing it, actually ! ) but there won't be transmutation. Irradiated ground is no more raodiactive than your microwave meal glows in the dark after cooking it. And I suspect the amount of gamma rays from the NERVA that hit the ground, is very low compared to the amount of gamma rays from the sun that do too.

So, irradiated soil is safe, yes. Safer, even, if you take into account the sterilization effect.

[BillWiskins]

Do you think it's a good idea to land on irradiated soil?

Tee hee.

It's not really a landing engine, is it? Land on them anywhere with much gravity and they'll soon be overwhelmed, unless you have a lot of them, which sort of defeats the point. If you were determined to use them, though, you could mount two or more symmetrically high up on the lander, on radially mounted tanks. That way they'd be out of the way, and you could use landing legs as normal.

[spl1nt]

or http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/5316-0-17-Gaby-s-Quick-And-Dirty-Miscellania-v1-0-We-like-big-LFT-s-and-we-cannot-lie

has superlegs

[EndlessWaves]

An easy fix, take the Hydraulic Detachment Manifold (the long thin radial decouper) and place one at the bottom of the fuel tank, overhanging down, then place another one on that Decoupler, keep going until you reach long enough for the legs to go all the way down, you may want to strut the legs to something and each other..

That will make them significantly weaker, though. I was using that method myself and I couldn't land on eight landing legs attached like that while 3 attached normally worked fine. I haven't actually tried structural fuselages but using them instead might be stronger and they're the same weight (although of course you can't dump them for the return journey).

Personally I would move the LV-N higher up the stack and put the displaced fuel tanks on the side and either land directly on them if there are enough or put them landing legs on them (I'm assuming this is a fairly heavy vessel with multiple tanks, the LV-N's weight penalty eclipses it's efficiency for small landers).

The exhaust from a NERVA is not radioactive

The exhaust from the real world NERVA isn't, but the exhaust from the in-game LV-N is, it says so right on the (100% recyclable) packaging:

Despite this big scary trefoil painted onto the side of this engine, it's radioactive exhaust, and tendency to overheat, the LV-N Atomic rocket motor is harmless. Mostly.

[maltesh]

Tee hee.

It's not really a landing engine, is it? Land on them anywhere with much gravity and they'll soon be overwhelmed, unless you have a lot of them, which sort of defeats the point. If you were determined to use them, though, you could mount two or more symmetrically high up on the lander, on radially mounted tanks. That way they'd be out of the way, and you could use landing legs as normal.

On my Duna returner, I used one NTR on the lander (which came down primarily on three large chutes to save fuel)

(Edited to fix the spoiler. Blast it, I was just told about that yesterday)

It returned to Duna Orbit primarily powered by the aeropikes. I then decoupled off the aerospikes and the landing legs, leaving the NTR as the sole active engine. It rendezvoused with the spacecraft of a previous Duna astronaut and rescued him, then the two of them returned to Kerbin with plenty of fuel.

It should be noted that the NTR /really/ doesn't like shear forces, so if you're going to stack it under anything massive, you're probably going to have to strut it something fierce.

Edited October 2, 2012 by maltesh

[bsalis]

maltesh... the spoiler no like the single quotes. Heres your wide legged lander pic that the javascript is down with.

This is another way. Put them on a central tank with the NERVAs up higher on side attached tanks.

Note that my design may not work so well on larger designs.

[BillWiskins]

This is another way. Put them on a central tank with the NERVAs up higher on side attached tanks.

Aye, precisely what I meant.

[draeath]

This is another way. Put them on a central tank with the NERVAs up higher on side attached tanks.

Note that my design may not work so well on larger designs.

I'd like to see the launch vehicle for that beast. That looks heavy.

[sal_vager]

You could also use the small pylons, they are nice and strong so make good mounting points for the legs.

[EndlessWaves]

I'd like to see the launch vehicle for that beast. That looks heavy.

Looks to be around 60 tons, if that's the interplanetary stage as well then that's not too bad.

[Markus Reese]

I also follow the center tank. For myself, any nuclear engines are mounted to supports high on the rocket and hang down. This allows the core of the rocket to be a large and jettisonable tank or lander stage. Ecspecially good design if you do any form of atmospheric landing where you don't want to use the nucs because of the fuel consumption of them

[Fendleton]

There's also the option of having side-mounted landing engines/fuel pods using the smallest available LFE. Having those hang down past the NERVA lets you mount the legs on those, use them as a descent/first part of ascent stage without smashing the NERVA into the ground, then eject them on the way up again, thus not having to drag the extra mass back home. it also allows for fuel-crossfeed to the main NERVA engine/s for the flight to your destination.

Also, I'm no nuclear engineer (I'm an ecology student! *crazed look*), but wouldn't radioactive exhaust indicate either a really MASSIVE amount of stray neutrons flying around the reactor......or that parts of the fuel rods are being dissolved into the fuel as it travels through the reactor? Both seem likely to me, but the latter sounds far more Kerbal (and more consistent with the fact that the engines aren't actually *that* prone to exploding). It would be just like them to pump some hideously nasty solvent through a nuclear reactor to see if it worked better than just burning it.