new motorized hinge system - now with a cargo spaceship, and a MK3 cargo bay

[sgt_flyer]

nice redesign i made this specifically for everyone to be able to do what they want with it for struts breaking, i'm currently designing a carrier sized hangar door - with one structural pylon on each side. i used a X pattern strutting between the two parts of the door - it holds nicely for the moment i guess you don't have 'closed' docking ports in this configuration ?

Edited July 14, 2013 by sgt_flyer

[Penguinhero]

give me like a day and ill make something with this technology and ill edit the post to show my work

[Jeb Cubed]

If you use jets or rockets instead of gears,1) it's more reliable than legs and 2) you have a jet propelled door:). This is usefull for rear doors on cargo planes,C-130&C-5. But then again you only have a limited number of openings.

[p331083]

If you use jets or rockets instead of gears,1) it's more reliable than legs and 2) you have a jet propelled door. This is usefull for rear doors on cargo planes,C-130&C-5. But then again you only have a limited number of openings.

Dont think that is really feasible on a spacecraft. Jet fuel and engines would eat up valuable space and weight.

Refined it a bit;

[sgt_flyer]

One additional problem with engines, especially on a two door cargo bay like this when you are in space, is you will end up with thrust - modifying your orbit (so, additionnal loss of delta-v when you will correct your orbit, and it's bad to timewarp with the structural pylon bent, be it with the legs or the engines, so imagine having to do heavy correction near your target ) engine based bending is more adapted to vtols and operations under gravity.

[Rune]

okay, newest thing it the cargo bay series :

MK3 cargo bay subassembly for your spaceplanes! (saved as a perfect subassembly by copying the .craft from the SPH to the subassembly folder - you can also put the .craft inside your SPH and build your spaceplane around the cargo bay)

the cargo bay has been tested using the gravity hack cheat. (i'm not a good spaceplane designer )

note : due to the miniaturization needed to go this small, one of the bay doors may fail to open on the first time. in this case, simply fold back the legs, verify that the still closed bay door is undocked, and unfold back. also, during closing, the doors will go back too fast, will go past the closed position, then go back an dock with it - during this time, it can clip through your payload - but as long as there is no part doing an animation at the same time on your payload, everything should be fine.

also, keep in mind of the landing legs closed position, when creating a payload for it. (a 1.25m diameter fuel tank connected to the standard docking port will still fit under the landing legs in closed position)

[snip]

MK3 cargo bay characteristics :

the cargo bay has 156 parts, and weights 9.39 tons. it has roughly the length of two MK3 fuselage.

it has 1 standard docking port and a JR docking port inside.

door operations : the door operations remain the same as the previous cargo bay : undock both doors, press G to deploy the legs, so they push the doors until they dock, when you finished your payload operations, retract the legs, then undock the doors so they close by themselves.

the .craft file : (you can put it either in your subassembly folder, or in your SPH for building a spaceplane around it)

http://www./download/m8ln4n0t9778cob/MK3_Cargo_Bay.craft

in the hopes that some of you can make a Spaceplane / shuttle around it

as always in KSP, have fun

note : with the current stock parts, i don't think it's possible to miniaturize the landing leg technique more than that - the landing legs will be too long after that (you'll have to use something more along the lines of giggleplex77 octopus system, by remembering that in orbit, the engines will modify your orbit during openings) - although you would really need small satellites for a smaller cargo bay than the MK3

That is exactly what I asked for. Thanks a bunch! I will definitely use this.

[p331083]

Refined it even further;

Use clipping to stack the tanks in the rear so that 1 = 4.

[sgt_flyer]

here's a new door : the Carrier Hangar door (in fact, i created a full carrier prow to house it... groumf it's forcing me to build the rest of the carrier now ! spent quite some time tweaking the placement of the various components) still WIP

for the moment, the prow is made of 163 parts, and weight 20 tons.

to give an idea of the size, the door itself is made of large structural panels, in a 3x2 configuration.

here's the images of the door in operation.

the docking ports can be directly accessed from the outside of the hull, for ease of use (you can undock the closed position from the forwardmost docking port, which is covered by a nose cone, and the same with the docking port in the open position, which we can see slightly clipping outside of the hull)

the main problem being, that those landing legs does not always move at exactly the same time.

the door is built in two parts, both having their structural pylon, so we have one hinge on each side. both are strutted together, with nothing more needed than the two crossed struts you can see from the rear shots.

[p331083]

Nice. I used two pylons to make a single door as well for my shuttle. How did you get the locking clamp o trons to recouple after the first opening? Ive tried lots of different alignments and they never recouple after the first opening.

Almost finished with my shuttle. Just need to finish the booster rocket design and fix fuel flow.

Edited July 16, 2013 by p331083

[sgt_flyer]

For locking back your docking ports, you need to either : dock another clamp'o'tron on it before closing (to reinitialize magnetism) or make the docking port move far away enough to reactivate it's magnetism to dock back when closing. And of course, proper alignment is required on the hangar door, which slams back at high speeds, i discovered that putting the docking ports very slightly apart from each other results in a much better catch.

Edited July 16, 2013 by sgt_flyer

[Benie]

Step 2 (undocking the JR ports inside the box, one by one, but it would be feasible to create a structure to have the ports outside the box):

-snip-

I find the Cargo Bay Door idea amazing. I'm thinking of something like this for my (mostly) stock Space Station. But I got a few questions about this picture.

What exactly is holding the I-Beams up that are holding the Landing Legs? Are they just "glued" to the side of cargo bay wall?

[Rune]

I told you I would be doing stuff with this:

It's not yet tested properly (no clue how it glides empty, for example) and I'm not playing (or releasing) much, what with 0.21 around the corner waiting to screw up my savefile. But thanks again for the cargo bay!

Rune. SSTO, of course, what else would I make?

Edited July 22, 2013 by Rune

[Mulbin]

How the hell have I missed this thread.

Wow... I mean... how the hell?... but...

Wow.

You've pretty much found the holy grail of two stage moving parts from stock... this is as big as stock bearings!

[sgt_flyer]

I find the Cargo Bay Door idea amazing. I'm thinking of something like this for my (mostly) stock Space Station. But I got a few questions about this picture.

What exactly is holding the I-Beams up that are holding the Landing Legs? Are they just "glued" to the side of cargo bay wall?

Yes, the I-beams are simply radially attached to the walls - it gives the landing legs slightly more elasticity to work with - which also helps to protect them.

@rune : awaiting to see more of your SSTO

@mulbin : if you wish , fuel tank based counterweights are enough to bend the structural pylons, at least under kerbin gravity (elevation control for rocket launchers is possible, by shifting fuel from one part to another, the pylon bending according to which side is heaviest )

Edited July 23, 2013 by sgt_flyer

[allmhuran]

Was trying something along these lines as a construction rover that can change its ground clearance, but could not get any kind of stock hinge based on landing legs to work. Came looking for solutions and found this thread. I tried some of the linked craft but they behave the same way as my experiments. Possibly this technique no longer functions in 0.21?

[kepicness]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I've been trying to make this for such a long time. This is so awesome, I can finaly make realistic cargo bays :').

Did I mention that this is awesome?

[Giggleplex777]

I don't think these work in 0.21 anymore. My helicopters and swivel jets don't work anymore.

[sgt_flyer]

i confirm that it's not working anymore - squad has removed the structural pylon elasticity - it's now almost unmovable (i've seen it by reloading my original stock hinge file, to see what's happening)

[kepicness]

i confirm that it's not working anymore - squad has removed the structural pylon elasticity - it's now almost unmovable (i've seen it by reloading my original stock hinge file, to see what's happening)

ugh, why did they remove this... Oh well, time to find an overly complicated design to replicate this...

[Rune]

I don't think these work in 0.21 anymore. My helicopters and swivel jets don't work anymore.

I found this out by trying to build my first helicopter. Dang it! I'm going to have to keep on using an absurdly more efficient VTOL jet.

And I had all the bugs ironed out, too, the SSTO with the cargo bay was flying like a charm in 0.21:

Rune. Sigh... It was fun while it lasted.

[Evan]

Too bad this doesn't work anymore! Good investigative work everyone. The challenge with stock hinges is mostly reliability, and this seems to have solved that problem.

On a side note, does anyone know of a mod that uses hinges? I've given up trying to make stock hinges that don't add 100+ parts to my spacecraft.

[Giggleplex777]

Too bad this doesn't work anymore! Good investigative work everyone. The challenge with stock hinges is mostly reliability, and this seems to have solved that problem.

On a side note, does anyone know of a mod that uses hinges? I've given up trying to make stock hinges that don't add 100+ parts to my spacecraft.

Inferno Robotics, I think.

[mardlamock]

Too bad this doesn't work anymore! Good investigative work everyone. The challenge with stock hinges is mostly reliability, and this seems to have solved that problem.

On a side note, does anyone know of a mod that uses hinges? I've given up trying to make stock hinges that don't add 100+ parts to my spacecraft.

Damned Robotics

[sgt_flyer]

i'm checking on the MK3 cargo bay in 0.21.1 - it seems that the I-beam / structural pylon couple still retain some elasticity - although not to the extent of 0.20 - which makes it unreliable for the moment (the legs tend to break in my mk3 cargo version)

[sgt_flyer]

here's a testbed for the I-beams / structural pylon couple, it's the most elastic version i found out - maybe you can try to remake your helicopters based on this (i tried, and it's spinning, but it's wonky to the point something will break ).

http://www./download/tb9kbr5qo5hx5sn/Stock_Hinge.craft