[0.21] Hooligan Labs - Airship, Submarines and More

[Hooligan Labs]

No worries There are many occasions where i wish i could pause time, or go back.. Yeah sure! I could add two decks a door and two chairs and make it a command dome, dodac dome hehe ofc i will give you credit =) I also started on a asterioid, i was thinking of having that as a part, and then you can place those dodac domes and on the asteroid and have a s big colany as you want cheers for the reply

I've been playing around with Hyperedit a bit. That may be perfect for putting some asteroids into orbit.

Roboray that looked like a fun trip:) Any video?

You should think about doing your own video channel with these designs, Robo.

[RoboRay]

I've thought about it... but I just don't have the time for editing, captioning, scoring, etc. It's all I can do to sort through my screenshots and upload the best ones to Imgur albums.

[Mihara]

Thank you for the wonderful mod. It took me a while to design something that was practical, and it was slightly late for the Duna mission, but I sent it after them anyway.

~3 tons, lands on what remains of it's transfer stage, it's the lightest effective airship I managed to produce. At 50m/s permanently sustained top speed in Duna atmosphere, it beats the pants off any exploration rover, and can actually cover significant fractions of the globe in reasonable time.

I want more and different shapes of deployable semi-rigid envelopes. A bigger one, that would not be designed to be used as a parachute, but at the same time, would not necessitate designing the entire transfer craft around it would be very useful.

[Hooligan Labs]

~3 tons, lands on what remains of it's transfer stage, it's the lightest effective airship I managed to produce. At 50m/s permanently sustained top speed in Duna atmosphere, it beats the pants off any exploration rover, and can actually cover significant fractions of the globe in reasonable time.

I want more and different shapes of deployable semi-rigid envelopes. A bigger one, that would not be designed to be used as a parachute, but at the same time, would not necessitate designing the entire transfer craft around it would be very useful.

I will think about it. I was considering asking for the models used in the bac9 pack and re-skinning them to make them into rigid shapes. But honestly, they are really hard to use! All the textures are about the same and many parts don't connect. I spent three days trying to make a VTOL with no success.

[RoboRay]

I would love to see more deployable options, too. I can work with the parachute design, and I do like it, but variety is nice. Maybe something new could be a more traditional blimp-style envelope, bigger than the parachute design, for larger airships... As is, even a moderate-sized craft needs multiple envelopes for Duna.

[Hooligan Labs]

You might be surprised at the amount of time it takes for me to roll out an update. Maybe I lack skillz, but it can take days to draft a design, model it, animate it, texture it, and code it. I will have even less time as I just started a quadcopter blog (controlledspin.blogspot.com).

I could look into getting a modeler, designer or developer onto the team to share in the heavy lifting. It's not due to any fault of the community, you guys are awesome and keep my going, but updates may be sloooooow.

[Devo]

You might be surprised at the amount of time it takes for me to roll out an update. Maybe I lack skillz, but it can take days to draft a design, model it, animate it, texture it, and code it. I will have even less time as I just started a quadcopter blog (controlledspin.blogspot.com).

I could look into getting a modeler, designer or developer onto the team to share in the heavy lifting. It's not due to any fault of the community, you guys are awesome and keep my going, but updates may be sloooooow.

woot another quad copter fan!!

sorry to go offtopic, ill go to your blog and check it out..

I just smashed my quadcopter into a nasty pole and took out the mainboard connector (the small 6 pin hard connector between the mainboard and the navboard) so I am re-soldering it this weekend, wish me luck, or im up for a new mainboard not cheap.. man i love my AR drone

I also take the small crappy cheap quads and convert them..

meet Hal, I made him a couple weekends ago. If you want to do cheap WIFI without an AR drone, buy a liquid image or similar GOPRO fake rip off. I got a 1080P go pro fake off ebay for $50, its a little heavy but the AR drone 2 lifts it no problemo, this little drone lifts it (its about 200 grams the camera, so twice the weight of the quad!) so it lifts and flies, but battery life is significantly shorter. the cam on this one is just a small 720p spy cam with a few hacks.

OK,

/ Thread back on topic..

p.s nice cat btw

Edited May 17, 2013 by Devo

[RoboRay]

You might be surprised at the amount of time it takes for me to roll out an update. Maybe I lack skillz, but it can take days to draft a design, model it, animate it, texture it, and code it. I will have even less time as I just started a quadcopter blog (controlledspin.blogspot.com).

I could look into getting a modeler, designer or developer onto the team to share in the heavy lifting. It's not due to any fault of the community, you guys are awesome and keep my going, but updates may be sloooooow.

Oh, it's not a "request for immediate action" or anything. But if you do ever find yourself in the "I want to make a new envelope, but which kind?" situation...

[Hooligan Labs]

p.s nice cat btw

Thanks, good luck with your repairs! I looked up the cost for AR blades and they're only $12, so I will probably just get spares at this point. I was going for a low-budget quad where I could focus on guidance, navigation and control (GNC).

I am going to poke around with blogspot and see if I can get it set for easy conversations like this. If not I'll start a thread in the off-topic here and link it.

Oh, it's not a "request for immediate action" or anything. But if you do ever find yourself in the "I want to make a new envelope, but which kind?" situation...

Well, something that was holding me back is figuring out how to make lift come from the center of a really big expanding balloon. But look at this...

http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Bounds-center.html

Problem might be solved. If I'm waiting for new blades to come in I will see what I can do.

Probably will look like a whale fin in the largest version.

[Hooligan Labs]

A grade school team at Robofest made robots to study buoyancy and torque!

[Mihara]

~1.2 tons, ~140m/s. Who needs boosters?

[Hooligan Labs]

~1.2 tons, ~140m/s. Who needs boosters?

Who needs seats?

Wait, is that a seat? Did I miss a KSP update....!?

Decided instead to have the next deployable look like this:

Each should have about 8x the lift of a Ray.

Edit: Whoops, meant to say 16x lift.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Hooligan Labs

[RoboRay]

Oooh, nice. Those will be awesome for Duna.

[Mihara]

Who needs seats?

Wait, is that a seat? Did I miss a KSP update....!?

Yes, that is a seat. No, you did not miss anything, this seat is part of a DEMV motorbike.

That one, you might have missed, but it was apparently around for quite a while, I was thinking of how to make an even lighter airship and remembered about it. :-)

Decided instead to have the next deployable look like this:

Each should have about 8x the lift of a Ray.

Edit: Whoops, meant to say 16x lift.

Sweet! :-)

[Galacticruler]

So its a Eve ballon?

is that Anno 20##'s case or a concept art?

[Mihara]

Oh, and speaking of buoyancy... I've been trying to work out an airship lander design that would be capable of escaping Eve. If my guess is correct, that means that it should also be SSTO on Kerbin without using jets, but every attempt so far has not been very satisfying -- I did get a design that sort of worked and it was both ridiculous and useless in practice -- which probably means I'm either not flying them right or missing something.

Any tips?

[Galacticruler]

I got nothing Mihara.

I can barely get a spaceplane to fly at all, let alone an airship.

[RoboRay]

I think "ridiculous" is pretty much required for any craft that can depart Eve.

If your craft can launch from Kerbin to LKO, land, then launch back to LKO, you might be able to make it off Eve. Maybe.

[Hooligan Labs]

So its a Eve ballon?

Eve has the most dense atmosphere outside of Jool. Check the front page, it's great for airships.

is that Anno 20##'s case or a concept art?

Ha, are you referring to the Anno video game? That is probably based on this very real proposal made for a luxury flying hotel, as pictured.

Oh, and speaking of buoyancy... I've been trying to work out an airship lander design that would be capable of escaping Eve. If my guess is correct, that means that it should also be SSTO on Kerbin without using jets...

I got nothing Mihara.

I can barely get a spaceplane to fly at all, let alone an airship.

I believe you are trying to make an airship that takes off and circles Kerbin using just airship and rocket parts? I think it's easier than a spaceplane! Here's an example of a near-SSTO:

And here is an SSTO (though it was really hard to control)

This one was easy to control, but a bit laggy...

But yes, it's possible that only an airship would be capable of escaping Eve's crazy atmosphere in a single stage.

[Galacticruler]

If it can get to Moho and back, it can make it to Eve and back...

Edited May 20, 2013 by Galacticruler

[Hooligan Labs]

If it can get to Moho and back, it can make it to Eve.

Not with the ISP loss that atmosphere causes.

[Mihara]

I believe you are trying to make an airship that takes off and circles Kerbin using just airship and rocket parts? I think it's easier than a spaceplane!

Actually... Once you remember that MechJeb can hold specific heading and pitch related to surface, spaceplanes become much easier. At least, I've been able to take stock Aeris, tweak it slightly and get it to orbit with some fuel left over -- probably enough for docking and refueling. But I haven't been able to combine that experience with an airship envelope yet. But to be precise, for starters, I am trying to make an airship that takes off and gets a stable above-atmosphere Kerbin orbit without dropping any pieces off and some fuel left over for docking. The Eve mission would be using a design derived from that as the main lander -- there should be no problems airdropping them fuel to refuel it on the ground after landing, or mining kethane on Eve itself and hauling it by smaller electric airships, etc, as long as a fully fueled lander can actually leave -- and then it can be reused.

Using a deployable envelope to boost a spaceplane up to about 10-12km on Kerbin and pretend I'm just starting off from a very high mountain does not produce particularly good results, it seems it hinders the takeoff more than it helps. A weird contraption with 20 tiny Rockomax engines (!) and a 3.75m tank strapped to a large rigid envelope had some of the best results in attempting to reach orbit, which is silly beyond belief.

I'm obviously doing something wrong, but I can't quite tell what.

[Hooligan Labs]

I am trying to make an airship that takes off and gets a stable above-atmosphere Kerbin orbit without dropping any pieces off and some fuel left over for docking.

Have you tried going straight up instead of doing an in atmosphere circle? Also noted that the inflatable parachute has high drag. Best to not fire your rockets until your net force is about 0. You can also post pics.

[Mihara]

Have you tried going straight up instead of doing an in atmosphere circle? Also noted that the inflatable parachute has high drag. Best to not fire your rockets until your net force is about 0. You can also post pics.

Didn't take any, I went through variations as fast as I could. And no, I did not yet try to go straight up, that seems counterintuitive after so much time spent fiddling with MechJeb ascent curves...

Actually, here is something I might be doing wrong. A day spent on all those tiny one-man airships brought the following experience points:

1. Thrust vector should be as close to going through the center of mass as possible, and the smaller the airship is and the higher the TWR, the more it matters.

2. Center of lift should be as close to being exactly above the center of mass as possible. But since KSP lies about the center of lift when both airships and control surfaces are involved, the best bet is to put the center of the envelope exactly above the center of mass.

My guess is that with much heavier rockets, some other rules of thumb are in effect which I'm not yet aware of.

[Hooligan Labs]

It seems like you have the right idea, Mihara.

Here's an envelope development update. Here is an image of the current shape before deployment. It is approximately the same size as an orange tank.

Once deployed, it unravels to be twice as wide and three times as tall.