Orion aka "Ol' Boom-boom"

[The Right Trousers]

Update: I got a 500 ton payload to Duna. I had to redesign the "Tangerine Terror" stations to be more compact so they fit just under the roof of the VAB. It's not ideal, but it's a workaround.

Everything else seems to be working fine on 0.21: animation, action keys, etc.

Edit: You said a while back you wanted to see screenshots of big payloads. Here's one to warm the cockles of your heart as you chase the problem down:

It was supposed to be a little heavier, but halfway to Duna, the Orion drive lost its connection with the docking port I was using to connect it to its payload. (Unlikely to be your problem. Heavy stuff just falls apart in KSP.) I had to aerobrake and use liquid engines to establish orbit.

One more edit, just for fun: the new reaction wheel system makes turning these beasts a lot easier. I put 12 on that sucker, and it maneuvers like a gymnast. Well, more like a fat gymnast, but between that and physics warp it handles fine.

Edited August 9, 2013 by The Right Trousers
Warming cockles

[nyrath]

This might help: it seems if you lift the engine far enough off the ground before launch, it won't explode. This, for example, lifts off just fine:

I raised it all the way to the VAB ceiling. I don't know if it needs that much space below at launch (I was too excited to share this new information to test more ), but it's enough.

Theory: due to KSP changes, the first charge is just above ground level when it goes off. Detecting whether the plate is too near the ground and doing something different (e.g. don't detonate the charge, but subtract one anyway) might be enough to fix this.

Thank you, that certainly seems like you've found the problem. I'll focus on fixing it.

Currently each nuclear charge travels to a point 23 meters below the pusher plate before exploding. This means that if you start with no launch struts and the plate flat on the launch pad, the charge travels 23 meters into the ground before detonating.

You said a while back you wanted to see screenshots of big payloads. Here's one to warm the cockles of your heart as you chase the problem down:

OMG! That's gorgeous!

Edited August 9, 2013 by nyrath

[nyrath]

Yes, it is definitely the nuclear charge. I set it so the charge blows up at the bottom of the pusher plate (instead of 23 meters below it) and it lifted off just fine.

I tried removing the collision mesh for the charge (and set it for 23 meters below the pusher plate) but it still blew up the entire rocket.

I am currently coding it so the plugin scans along the trajectory of the nuclear charge, and if there is any obstruction the charge will stop short and explode in front of the obstruction.

This is not easy. But I love the charge animation so much I'm willing to do the work.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

I've made more progress with building a system to service my primary cruiser.

The series of photos above shows the L(ish)KO station (it's 200km up, on a similar orbit to cruiser, whilst my other vessels are on 100km orbit) in assembly. The magazine core was launched on a simple Orion booster, then the fuel for the orbital maneuver engines, and finally the engines themselves were each boosted into orbit by standard (albeit large) chemical lifters.

An airship to transport to Laythe is in its testing phase, whilst said airship's orbital maneuver/reentry system is currently in development. I've got a crew bus that I have confidence in (see below), so the only section of the Laythe mission left to sort out is the surface habitation block (which will double as crew quarters on the flight out).

[Markarian421]

Yes, it is definitely the nuclear charge.

Excellent. I look forward to being able to revive my Orion based single stage to Eve and back lander!

[Gringalf]

I was wondering if nukes would give you enough thrust to land on the sun. So I built a spaceship and tested it. And I found out: they do! Theoretically, at least. Unfortunately, the sun turns out to be surprisingly hot, so everything that comes too close simply explodes. (~1300 m) It was still fun!

Here are some pictures: (gallery)

[pina_coladas]

So I went on an expedition, and to make a long story short, the rim of the mo-hole destroyed my ship. I tried to land on the pusher plate (under rocket power, no bombs) and the whole thing exploded on contact in the exact same way as when fire a bomb with the pusher plate on the ground. I figured it would be fine if I didn't launch any bombs too close to the ground but there you go. Hope this helps!

[nyrath]

I was wondering if nukes would give you enough thrust to land on the sun. So I built a spaceship and tested it. And I found out: they do! Theoretically, at least. Unfortunately, the sun turns out to be surprisingly hot, so everything that comes too close simply explodes. (~1300 m) It was still fun!

Here are some pictures: (gallery)

Whoa! That's heavy-duty. Just when I think I've seen all the crazy things people do with the Orion mod, somebody like you invents an entire new category.

So I went on an expedition, and to make a long story short, the rim of the mo-hole destroyed my ship. I tried to land on the pusher plate (under rocket power, no bombs) and the whole thing exploded on contact in the exact same way as when fire a bomb with the pusher plate on the ground. I figured it would be fine if I didn't launch any bombs too close to the ground but there you go. Hope this helps!

Sorry about that. Blasted bomb explodes 23 meters under the pusher plate, if the ground is closer than that the ship goes kablooey.

I've spent the entire freaking day trying to make my "Physics.RayCast" hack work. There is a lot of math in there.

Just about five minutes ago I finally figured out how to derive all the myriad factors needed, and the raycast finally detected the launch pad grate. And there was much rejoicing.

Hopefully that was the hard part.

Edited August 12, 2013 by nyrath

[The Right Trousers]

I was wondering if nukes would give you enough thrust to land on the sun. So I built a spaceship and tested it. And I found out: they do! Theoretically, at least. Unfortunately, the sun turns out to be surprisingly hot, so everything that comes too close simply explodes. (~1300 m) It was still fun! (gallery)

Huh. That didn't happen on my expedition to the sun, probably because I went at night.

Nyrath, thanks for slaving over a hot whatever-it-is-you-slave-over-to-do-this just so we can have fun.

[Jahulath]

Genius, I read a Dan Simmonds book once that employed one of these, so simple and elegant and in such a dirty brute force way!

[nyrath]

New Version Up at first post

Hopefully this will fix the "blowing up on the launch pad" problem. This fix might break other things so be on alert for strange behavior.

Please read the bug fix notes as there is still a way to explode it on the pad

[Markarian421]

One "strange behavior" note -- on my first test takeoff, well above the atmosphere, for a while the explosions were happening within the body of the Orion, up to directly below the command module. Nothing bad happened other than it looking odd and the explosion happening almost as soon as I hit the key. I tried to get a screen shot, but of course as soon as I started trying to hit z - F1 it quit doing it and completed the full animation before the explosion.

(And thanks again for creating this!)

Edit: Got a screen shot. It seems to happen right after the camera shifts from planet to orbit view.

(Yes I'm experimenting with absurdly giant legs. Again. It's more difficult in 0.21, everything acts like it's attached with rubber bands.)

Edited August 13, 2013 by Markarian421
more info

[Dispatcher]

Keep up the good work, Nyrath! I'll have to try out your newer version of course. Yes, I finally joined the forums here, so you don't have to get so many emails from me. :-)

[nyrath]

One "strange behavior" note -- on my first test takeoff, well above the atmosphere, for a while the explosions were happening within the body of the Orion, up to directly below the command module. Nothing bad happened other than it looking odd and the explosion happening almost as soon as I hit the key. I tried to get a screen shot, but of course as soon as I started trying to hit z - F1 it quit doing it and completed the full animation before the explosion.

Yes, I noticed that myself. I'm looking into it.

What is happening is that the plug-in thinks it is detecting an obstacle in the bomb path. I'll have to see what it thinks is in the way. I suspect that it is some sort of virtual object, like an invisible barrier between atmosphere and space, or the barrier between planet & orbit view or something like that.

When an obstacle is detected, the bomb explosion site is altered to be 1 meter in front of the obstacle. It appears that somehow the obstacle's edge is inside of the vessel.

I'll do my best to fix it. But at least the Orion is no longer blowing up on the launch pad.

[nyrath]

Nothing bad happened other than it looking odd and the explosion happening almost as soon as I hit the key.

That is because if there is an obstacle, the plug in does not bother doing the bomb-in-motion animation.

Ordinarily the bomb-in-motion animation means about a third of a second delay until the blast. Without the animation the explosion is almost instant.

[The Right Trousers]

Works like a charm. I now have head room in the VAB for making bigger things, so... here's the Tangerine Terror 2:

At launch:

KSP seems to be a lot happer with big Orion payloads if you put big ol' rocket holders on 'em. It requires a fewer struts between the payload and the drive to keep them from falling apart. Once in the air, the connection between Orion and the payload doesn't seem to need to be as strong as on the launchpad.

[nyrath]

Works like a charm. I now have head room in the VAB for making bigger things, so... here's the Tangerine Terror 2:

KSP seems to be a lot happer with big Orion payloads if you put big ol' rocket holders on 'em. It requires a fewer struts between the payload and the drive to keep them from falling apart. Once in the air, the connection between Orion and the payload doesn't seem to need to be as strong as on the launchpad.

Excellent! That's a monster!

Interesting about the rocket holders. I had good results with putting about 16 or more LT-2 Landing Struts at the base of the pusher plate, and frantically deploying them with the G key when the physics kicks in on the launch pad.

The thing about TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancers is that you can only use them when launching from Kerbin. If you land on another planet or moon, things might fall off when you lift off.

The bug Markarian421 notices was as I thought, the plug-in figured the bomb path intersected a collider called "Kerbin". I'm mulling over my options.

[Markarian421]

With KSP 0.21 physics of holding things together being so squirrely, Orion landers are pretty hard now. With much of a load you can't put the weight on the pusher plate any more, and I'm having a hard time coming up with landing gear strong enough to hold the thing. It doesn't fall over, but it continuously squirms, and I haven't been brave enough to send anyone out. This isn't an Orion problem, something has changed in KSP -- small landers are trickier now as well.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

A little update on the colony ship to Laythe I was assembling. I've finished building it, it's fully fueled, the crew is aboard and it's ready to fly next transfer window (I'm sticking to hohmann transfers for efficiency). Anyway, without further ado, presenting this as-yet unnamed behemoth:

Bonus docking photo:

[nyrath]

SufficientAnonymity, lordy look at the size of that thing! Nice engineering.

[CattyNebulart]

Hmm I am using the .18 Orion and I find it to be very unstable and slipery on the launchpad, complete with the occasional random explosion (before I turn on the engines) but that is really annoying is how the ship just tends to explod when I try to resume from the space center. This esspecially tends to happen on the first time I launch, but for launches I can just use resume from launch and I can continue, for the space center I am out of luck. This is really annoying as I want to use my orion as a shuttle veryring smaller landers to various planets, here is a pic of it, with 6 landercans ready to be dropped and plenty of fuel to refuel them, as while it is not visible a central spacestation section to house all the kerbals.

[czokletmuss]

This may be a silly question but does the Orion work in KSP 20.2?

[nyrath]

Hmm I am using the .18 Orion and I find it to be very unstable and slipery on the launchpad, complete with the occasional random explosion (before I turn on the engines) but that is really annoying is how the ship just tends to explod when I try to resume from the space center. This esspecially tends to happen on the first time I launch, but for launches I can just use resume from launch and I can continue, for the space center I am out of luck. This is really annoying as I want to use my orion as a shuttle veryring smaller landers to various planets, here is a pic of it, with 6 landercans ready to be dropped and plenty of fuel to refuel them, as while it is not visible a central spacestation section to house all the kerbals.

Nice ship!

I find that the ship tends to walk on the pad if you do not use either TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancers or LT-2 Landing Struts that have been extended by pressing the G key.

Can you please go into more detail how the Orion self-destructs when you resume from launch?

I made an Orion ship and launched it into orbit. I used the ESC key to exit to the launch center, then quit the program.

I re-ran the program, entered the tracking station, selected the Orion in orbit and hit the "fly" button. I was transferred to the Orion, and it did not blow up.

I need to have a sequence of steps to reproduce the bug before I can fix it.

I'm sorry you are having trouble.

This may be a silly question but does the Orion work in KSP 20.2?

Arrrgh, I have no idea. I'm on Steam, so it auto-updates me to the latest version of KSP.

[CattyNebulart]

Can you please go into more detail how the Orion self-destructs when you resume from launch?

I made an Orion ship and launched it into orbit. I used the ESC key to exit to the launch center, then quit the program.

I re-ran the program, entered the tracking station, selected the Orion in orbit and hit the "fly" button. I was transferred to the Orion, and it did not blow up.

I need to have a sequence of steps to reproduce the bug before I can fix it.

I'm sorry you are having trouble.

I'll see if I can screen capture it, but as soon as I load the ship parts are flying everywhere and I se eno orion engine and that is roughtly where the explosion happened... I get the same when launching a ship, as soon as the camera's show the kerbals, whihc I think is then the physics kicks in right?

anyway the ship does not explode if I revert to launch, after it explodes I can also go to the spacecenter and load the ship without an explosion... I'm using the linux version if it matters. it seems like it might be a KSP bug, or maybe one of several mods interfering with the orion one. I will try to investigate more when I have time.

And it is no problem just tying to give helpful feedback, if no-one else has the issue it might be something unique to my local setup or maybe my craft. will try alternate orions, and removing mods, probably tomorrow.

[czokletmuss]

Arrrgh, I have no idea. I'm on Steam, so it auto-updates me to the latest version of KSP.

Oh. Well, I guess I'll have to do some tests than; I'll share my results here.