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

[Tiberion]

So my DSL line was offline for almost 2 days, so it was just me, KSP and Blender together to pass the time.

Decided to work on the OMS pods for the shuttle:

It works pretty well, its long enough to radially attach to the fuel tank in front of the engine mount, and once I turned off fuel flow in the mount, that meant that the main engines quit working once the external tank is jettisoned, leaving the OMS alone to maneuver in space.

..except it doesn\'t work at all, actually, because the radial engines are asymmetrical, only on top of the fuselage. Which means it tries to push the nose down instead of pushing the whole ship forward. And try as I might, no amount of thrust vectoring can offset it.

So, I am not sure how to make it work. I can certainly make an OMS module to replace the main engines for the Buran configuration, but I\'m not sure how to make it work for a NASA-style shuttle.

[Guest Flixxbeatz]

Gimbal range: 30

Me:

[Tiberion]

Heh actually on my internal dev version the main engines are only 15 degree gimballed now, with the other 15 percent permanently built in with thrustVector. It works a lot better, I think everyone will like how much better it handles. You can even steer it without ASAS, if you keep a hand on the controls. I can\'t remove gimballing completely, because of the weight shifting that occurs as the tanks drain.

I actually had some good luck with the orbital engines this evening, and its flying in orbit fairly well now.

Still something weird going on with the thrustvector though, as it seems to be vectored on both the X and Z axis, though I only intended for it to be affecting X.

Example pics in the spoiler

red is X, blue is Y, green is Z (for KSP purposes)

vectoring on the Z axis (not intended)

and on the X axis as intended.

thrustVector = 0.423, 0.906, 0

25 degrees off of vertical

[Guest GroundHOG-2010]

Thrust Vector 90. Epic is the word.

[Tiberion]

nah, .904 is Cosine(25) and .423 is Sine(25) -its how you define a thrust vector (think of a line leading in a direction in 3d space)

Yay Trigonometry!

[Tiberion]

Got a lot of flight tuning done today, redid the fuel load in the external tanks and textured up the OMS engines.

I also decided to rework the engine mount and make it an RCS thruster block, like the nosepiece, so you can theoretically launch without any attached RCS blocks.

Gotta redo the RCS numbers and then set the fuel usage for the OMS engine to something reasonable, then I can release 1.3, which is going to bring a pretty big change in how the shuttles launch and fly.

Hopefully tomorrow

[Tiberion]

I was re-doing the Buran launcher .craft today and decided that I have some more work to do (the energia engine needs tweaking, and those Solid boosters (my 1st scratch model) just aren\'t cutting it anymore.

So, maybe another day or so, since I am short on time today. Sorry!

[Tiberion]

So, the brownish launcher skin had a good run, but its done; I also made a new model for the Buran-style style main engine, its now somewhat like the Energia engine.

And I am gonna use the booster model from NP, since I already use the other SSRB model, they sort of go together, ya?

Of course the orange NASA skin is still there, too.

[Tiberion]

Lots of flight refinement today, and I added a separate OMS for your Buran-type shenanigans; For now you have to use a fuel line to direct fuel from the shuttle tank to the engine mount (since it has fuelflow disabled for the NASA-style launcher, and I don\'t want to duplicate parts)

Once we get a handle on .14, perhaps we can disable an engine mid-flight instead of turning off fuel flow. It works for now, though;

Won\'t release anything yet, need to test things on new version, and such.

[DeCi]

Lots of flight refinement today, and I added a separate OMS for your Buran-type shenanigans; For now you have to use a fuel line to direct fuel from the shuttle tank to the engine mount (since it has fuelflow disabled for the NASA-style launcher, and I don\'t want to duplicate parts)

Once we get a handle on .14, perhaps we can disable an engine mid-flight instead of turning off fuel flow. It works for now, though;

Won\'t release anything yet, need to test things on new version, and such.

0.14 is here bud! Now get working on shit!

Since there is Retract/deploy funtionality in the game now make a cargo bay to launch sattelites from

[Guest meteorite 101]

KSP win .14 has been released

[mincespy]

KSP win .14 has been released

[Tiberion]

So, back to work on Tiberdyne. I still have a lot of changes I made that I never released, but now that .14x is stable-ish I\'ll do a little more work and get an actual new version how, should be pretty much a new experience.

I\'m gonna whip up new configs to turn the nosecap of the shuttle into a Mechjeb instead of ASAS, as it makes a planned ascent much easier.

The very 1st thing I did was remodel the wing;

The old one was really rough and was bugging me. This looks nicer, though it isn\'t permanent since proper plane building is coming soon, we won\'t need to make wings with rotation-symmetry, so we can have different L and R wings. But that is for .15 and beyond

More later

[Tiberion]

While I was working on wings, I decided to make a version to use without the Bearcub engines and the wingtanks; it can\'t really fly very well as a spaceplane without those engines, but it can launch and return properly, landing under glide.

Here\'s the new wings and the new Energia/Buran launch configuration.

Also I don\'t think I posted the pic of the shuttle landing using the C7beta wheels;

I was hoping to get a special set for the shuttle, but given the end of the C7 pack, I don\'t think we\'ll see them finished.

That also means that there probably aren\'t a whole new set of shuttle parts coming from C7, so the current Mark3 parts are it for now.

And I saw sarkun\'s shuttlebay; Wouldn\'t that be cool?

Shouldn\'t be too long for a release now.

[madmat]

i Really can\'t wait for the latest release, as i\'m in the process of updating ALL my packs for maximum compatibility. And this pack is one of my Fav\'s.

[Tiberion]

Classified images leaked from TiberDyne Aerospace\'s development facilities:

Insider intelligence suggests that functional prototypes are near completion, and will begin testing within days

[madmat]

Long live insider intelligence!!Looks good,particularly the 'built in' landing gear.

[Tiberion]

Okay guys, Version 2.0 is out!

Check out the first post for the download link and some basic info

It\'s been a lot of work, and it isn\'t perfect yet, but its way better than it used to be. I\'d love to hear how it works for you, what you like and what you don\'t. It flies totally differently now, so try it out

[ultrasquid]

Sorry to see the cargo pod is absent in the new version. I really liked that one. I hope it feels better soon.

[tadeass]

Version 2.0 is really awesome, textured LG, cargo...

Thanks you a lot, really good pack.

[Guest]

Version 2.0 looks awesome, but has a problem. The Buran doesn\'t use SRBs. Energia is an all-liquid booster, like most Soviet designs. Also, shuttle\'s main engines have three nozzles, but one particle generator, which doesn\'t look good up close.

Could you fix that? Also, could you add parachutes to NASA SRBs?

Another thing that bothers me is that SRB decouplers are not powerful enough and the main tank decoupler is a bit wobbly, not to mention it leaves some pieces on the bottom of the shuttle.

[Tiberion]

Yeah I am aware the strap-ons are Liquid engines, but KSP currently doesn\'t support single-part liquid boosters, it would have to be a tank+engine setup. It wouldn\'t add anything, so we\'re going to pretend they\'re liquid boosters for now.

I switched to these old SIDR models because I didn\'t like the ones I had modeled at all. I might make another attempt at them some day.

I can try out making 3 particle trails, see if it adds too much lag (since too many separate trails can eat framerates)

I had a radial parachute for the SRBs for testing, but didn\'t like how it worked, so it needs work; Question though: since we can\'t recover things yet, do we really want to land the boosters to sit around on the ground/in the ocean as debris? If that\'s something people want, I\'ll go ahead with it.

The SRB decoupler feels right to me, they aren\'t supposed to be ejected far away, they fall away due to gravity (typically they were still moderately thrusting when jettisoned in real life)

The tank decoupler is just a stock radial decoupler; the little pieces it leaves behind actually despawn if you swap vessels. I might replace it someday, but its low on the priority list; I did notice that the struts I have between the shuttle and the tank\'s nose were disconnected in a couple of the craft files for some reason, so that is probably why it was wobbling; just reconnect them and re-save

So, how is it flying? Everyone able to get to orbit alright? Anyone managed to do an orbit and land back as KSC? For a real challenge, take a satellite up in one flight, return and land, and then go back in a separate flight, rendezvous with the satellite and re-capture it in the shuttlebay. Still working on that myself

[RichieD76]

I love the pack. I noticed the single trail from the main engines..not a biggie for me. I attached a radial parachute from another pack to the SRBs and they disapeared anyway not again not much point untill we can reused them. It would be nice to see ejection rockets from the SRBs but i think until a process of having lower thrust (like a burn out period) rarther than a 100% to 0% thrust as SRBs are now there is no need. Only thing i have a problem with is getting so close to landing then having it flip over on me. Either way keep up the great work.

[Guest]

I can try out making 3 particle trails, see if it adds too much lag (since too many separate trails can eat framerates)

I had a radial parachute for the SRBs for testing, but didn\'t like how it worked, so it needs work; Question though: since we can\'t recover things yet, do we really want to land the boosters to sit around on the ground/in the ocean as debris? If that\'s something people want, I\'ll go ahead with it.

So, how is it flying? Everyone able to get to orbit alright? Anyone managed to do an orbit and land back as KSC? For a real challenge, take a satellite up in one flight, return and land, and then go back in a separate flight, rendezvous with the satellite and re-capture it in the shuttlebay. Still working on that myself

3 trails lagging? KSP would be pretty much unplayable on such machine, since most rockets that make it past orbit have a lot more than 3 engines. 7 engined configurations run without lag for me. Since the shuttle engine isn\'t going to be mounted in groups, 3 trails will be fine.

We can\'t recover things yet, but we may, in the future. Plus, it may look cool to see chutes deploying after dropping the SRBs.

And yes, I\'ve achieved orbit with this, even deployed a satellite. Currently, I\'m trying to launch a KOSMOS pack MIR and fly the shuttle to it (MIR is really hard to get off the ground though). I\'ve even made a docking module (using KOSMOS parts) that the shuttle can launch.

[Shadowsun]

This pack has been absolutely amazing since the update and has allowed me to perform my first runway landing, my only gripes with it are the lack of landing gear on the Buran and how the NASA Orbiter seems to control very finicky in upper atmo while the tank is still connected, more than a few times it\'s caused me to go into an accidental spin that I can\'t get out of.