[0.24.2] TiberDyne Aerospace R&D Division - Shuttle System 3.6 Career Update!

[Guest]

The canards most definitely are needed, as it won't pitch up without them, especially loaded with cargo.

My experiences with both Buran and CSS (and some elevon-based B9 designs, too) is that canards are completely redundant on a design like this. Perhaps lifting-only ones, as to approximate lifting body with stock aerodynamics, but that's it. And why would you want full cargo on return anyway? You could probably adjust wing COL a bit, but otherwise, canards should no longer be needed.

About the airlock, what do you mean by "features needed to make it work authentically"? The real thing doesn't even have an extending port. If you mean internal crew transfer, it'd probably come someday, right now, it can be done with Crew Mainfest. It'd beat having to lug around an airlock for missions that don't need it, that's for sure.

[Tiberion]

1. Both of those mods punted on the aerodynamics and just make the wings extremely overpowered so that the shuttle basically floats. They do not fly or glide in any traditional sense. Its very tempting to do that, and these shuttles exhibit infini-glide fairly severely anyway, but they still at least behave like a spaceplane for the most part. Take the canards off and you'll see there is no pitch control, you can ramp up the strength of the elevators as much as you want, but they just don't function well enough because they're close to the CoM on a tail-heavy shuttle. I spent 2 days adjusting the Center's of Lift and Mass when I redid the wings in 3.2 to have separate elevators again, and I definitely tried to eliminate the canards - it won't work.

1a. Both shuttles are functional out of the SPH in traditional take-offs. The Odyssey only has fuel for a short demo flight, but the intrepid has air-breathing engines with enough juice to get an unloaded shuttle up to about 18k and 1200m/s, which is more than enough to let the OMS engines boost it into orbit. It also gives it good range on re-entry, so being able to control pitch is important.

2. Yes, I was talking about crew transfer and management, and being able to make multiple airlocks per part. I can probably tweak the bay model to make the airlock a separate thing you can snap in, though I am not sure the real shuttles ever removed theirs, since it was the airlock and the only way to do emergency EVAs. I have tons of other stuff to do though.

3. The real shuttle absolutely had an extended docking port sleeve it used to attach to the ISS, they're called Pressurized Mating Adapters, and they were attached to the nodes on the iSS by the shuttle or station arms.

I can't assume that a player's station will have a docking adapter that could reach a docking port inside the shuttle bay, and the robot arms are not reliable enough to consider setting them up manually, so the only choice left is an extending port. It's entirely optional and people can make their own solution out of stock or other modded parts, but I certainly don't have a better solution in mind

[Tiberion]

Uploaded some new screens and made a new album;

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[wasmic]

I love your little comments.

[Wahgineer]

And while I'm soliciting volunteers, I'm always looking for someone who wants to tackle modeleing the 'new' shuttle Explorer

When (and if) I get my hands on blender and actually attempt to learn how to model, I might(heavy emphasis on might) try to make the Explorer shuttle. Have some ideas floating around in my head of a Shuttle II based system.

[Garek]

So, I just tried this mod and love the designs. But with FAR, the Odyssey really wants to fly backwards, which isn't really helpfull for landing. I don't actually know anything about (FAR) Aerodynamics or how to make a shuttle fly, so I thought I would ask if anyone got this to work with FAR, and how?

Also, the launch configurations seem to be rather overpowered (I blame FAR requiring less delta-V), maybe I'll tweak the engines a bit.

[Tiberion]

Yeah there's isn't really any FAR support built into the mod, and with FAR installed the balance numbers will be way off - there's another mod that is supposed to adjust that, not sure if its automatic or not.

Someone with some FAR experience might know what the deal with the shuttle is (probably weird drag settings causing it to go tail first?)

[DoubleOSeven1]

On launch with FAR installed the shuttles want to flip backwards at about 10km in preparation for a gravity turn.

[Garek]

If you want to get them into orbit with FAR, you have to be super careful with your gravity turn. Always stay in that yellow prograde circle until about 20 - 30 km. It's the same backwards-flying-issue I mentioned above, but during ascend it's not as bad as during descend. I would assume that's because the external tank and especially the boosters are FAR-stable in the right direction because they are more 'rocket-shaped'.

[DasBananenbrot]

The FAR-incompatibility is also the main reason, why I am not using it atm. Editing the engine stats a bit so they aren't so overpowered anymore isn't quite a huge task but that problem with the shuttle itself when landing it is kind of annoying..... Considering I also stumbeld about problems with FAR while using NP parts (mainly parachutes) and reported them to ferram, maybe I should ask again on the FAR thread. If we are lucky he can help us to make your parts more compatible with FAR....

[Tiberion]

Its probably node sizes, his mod relies on node sizes, which are otherwise meaningless. I haven't wanted to check the nodes on 150 parts yet for NP. Most of these should be right since I just redid them, but I imagine some of the shuttle parts are all small nodes

[frizzank]

The node size also effects snap distance, so if its thin and large it doesn't work so well with large nodes. The stock orange doughnut fuel tank is one example of something that's hard to place properly because of too big of node size.

[montyben101]

Iv got a problem: RCS fuel seems to be magically "disappearing" : its slowly "leaking" from the gauge any known fixes?

[Tiberion]

well, 3 things could be using RCS Fuel:

The shuttle orbital engines (Either Buran OMS, or those mounted on the NASA engine mount)

The RCS thrusters, if you have them enabled along with SAS

The Fuel Cell contained in the Cargobay - it takes MonoProp and turns it into Electricity. If you right click on the bay you can Toggle it on and off.

[montyben101]

OHH that makes sense now thanks! (Ill probably add a cylinder RCS tank to power it)

Plus: does the Mk 3 cockpit interior mod work with it?

[Tiberion]

Yeah it works, but with a couple of issues due to the cockpit being scaled up. It appears to be much smaller inside than outside, and the external monitor cameras you can use from the bottom seat are clipping through the shuttle a little. You can still see through the cameras, but it looks a little odd.

[montyben101]

This shuttle is the best mod I have used in a long time. It launches perfectly and can very very easily get down to the runway from orbit!! :wink:

[kristianj99]

Was there not a robotic arm in an earlier version of this? Or am I getting it mixed up with something else?

[Tiberion]

No, never one included. There's one in the Extras folder, but you need to download Romfarer's lazer plugin for it separately, and the plugin itself is sort of outdated which makes the arm not work so great (it shakes the shuttle when attached to something.

I played with the DR-based arms a little, but I wasn't able to build one that both fit in the bay and had the needed joints to function right. If someone figures that out, I could include the craft file for it.

[dtobi]

No, never one included. There's one in the Extras folder, but you need to download Romfarer's lazer plugin for it separately, and the plugin itself is sort of outdated which makes the arm not work so great (it shakes the shuttle when attached to something.

I played with the DR-based arms a little, but I wasn't able to build one that both fit in the bay and had the needed joints to function right. If someone figures that out, I could include the craft file for it.

I never got the dr based arms to work properly. They always put so so much pressure on everything once I attach a KAS grapple to it so that everything just falls apart.

[Wahgineer]

Any news tiberion?

[Tiberion]

Been a little busy with other stuff this week. In my free time I've been working on a new Command/Service module for NP:

It would probably be useful to launch on the new shuttle-derived launchers here though.

[azza276]

Hi Tiberion,

First of all I love your shuttles, they look exquisite and the best I've seen.

Unfortunately I have FAR installed (and love that too) which makes your shuttles unflyable in Atmo.

Well, just so you know, I tried playing with some of the part config settings and shuttle design to try to see if I can get your shuttle flying in FAR, as I'm sure there's a few of us out there that would like to get them both working in Harmony.

Well config file stuff, none of the changes I had made really did anything, but one thing I added was angulardrag for the wing/tail parts. seemed to make it little more stable to get off the ground but it still flipped out at speed.

After a bit more I was actually able to get a Tiberdyne Shuttle Flying! what I found was if you swapped the cargo module front to back, then put the wings and engines back on, it will fly. So from that, I can only conclude that there is something in your cargo module that is causing it to flip out. I tried adjusting it's setting as well as the "welded" RCS module, but no luck to date.

I hope you don't mind, but I posted in the FAR forum Thread asking Ferram for some help in getting your shuttles to fly forward. I will happily provide any findings back to you so you can incorporate them into your shuttles if you wish (I have no real interest in taking credit, I just want to use your shuttle with FAR). But I won't be able to test with Stock aerodynamics.

Let me know if you have any drama with this course of action.

Cheers

Azza

Edit: Oh yeah, also have an issue with loading Odyssey in the SPH. It seams I don't have the bearcat engines. Tried downloading again for both sources and Bearcat not in either. Where can I find this engine?

Edited December 12, 2013 by azza276
Asked a further question not worthy of another post.

[Tiberion]

Yeah one of the Odyssey craft files has the old engine from the previous download on it, guess I didn't hit save when updating it. If you have the old download, you can grab the engine out of it, stick in the Engines folder and load up the craft file so you can swap it for the new engine and resave. Or you can use the subassemblies pieces to put everything together again.

As for FAR, its almost surely an issue with the NODE sizes. Use smaller nodes on the nosecone and cockpit front, then graduate to bigger nodes on the bay and finally a large node on the engine mount. It should fly right then. you might also want to make the side nodes for the wing bigger than the front node of the cargobay.

[Chestburster]

*drools all over the place* That's a realy fine piece of art.