Air intakes ( the beginning)

[Tidus Klein]

I was wondering if it would be possible to make an air intake that sucked at low altitude and speed but was almost OP at high altitude and speed, some thing like a super ram air intake that gave you little to no air below 10,000 or 500 m/s but above that it made air like it was going out of style till 40,000 or 1,700 m/s .

Im new to modding (I've never done it) but I know how to edit CFGs for parts, and could I use the ISP key for engines in some way for the intakes?

Ps this may be in the wrong thread.

P.s.s I was also thinking of making an intake for kintake air, just as an fyi making it should not be to hard.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Tidus Klein

[Greys]

Not without a plugin.

Air intakes are just a bunch of static settings, you'd need at least one curve to make that work, as is air intakes produce an amount of air relative to velocity and atmospheric density but that amount is otherwise constant.

The plugin would have to either entirely replace ModuleResourceIntake, which won't be entirely easy given that ModuleResourceIntake accounts for the angle of intakeTransform to the direction of travel in calculating it's efficiency.

Or manipulate ModuleResourceIntake's area and intakeSpeed values based on a curve or two.

Do note, anything that matching what you've described will be highly unrealistic and will grossly unbalance the game.

Have fun.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Greys

[Tidus Klein]

Making the game unbalanced? Keep in mind that this intake will only work till 40,000 if that and would be useless any lower then 15,000 It will also need a decent amount of electricity to run and be heavier then a normal intake, I could balance it out.

Also I was going though the cfg's for the air ramps on the B9 mod pack and found that it uses some kind of math equation to multiply intake air.

But what I was wondering is if I could some how use the ISP curve of the engines, and copy that over then change the keys so that the intake performed better or worse at varying altitude.

I don't know maybe what Im saying can't be done, and I would need a plugin to vary the physics of just my intakes, If so

SOME ONE TELL ME HOW TO CODE KSP PLEASE!!!

and make plugins

[Greys]

B9 uses mods to do things that aren't normally allowed, and even if you put the curves from an engine into ModuleResourceIntake, it won't use them.

[Tidus Klein]

HAHAHA IT CAN BE DONE!!!!

I just made an Air intake ( with out using a plugin) that does the opposite of what I want it to do. UNlimited air below 20,000 but then almost none above I just have to mess with the code some more then find a modeling program to make a model for it.

IM half way there!

Edit: da crap now I can't get the game to use the normal ram intake its there in the SPH but when I put it on and launch a plane the game puts the one I made one it HELP!

Edited September 3, 2013 by Tidus Klein

[Captain Sierra]

Did you edit the .cfg for the stock Ram Intake? If the folder and part are named the same thing as the stock ram intake, then, in the game's eyes, you have two of the same part so it takes just one of them over the other. In this case, it took yours.

[Tidus Klein]

Yes all I'm doing is playing with the .cfg's but I did rename my Intake I just put aurora in front of it so that it reads Aurora Ram air intake. Ill try renaming the model to then work some more on the right curve. here is what I have so fair. ( I don't know how to do that little box for code so here it goes.)

(

// --- general parameters ---

name = Aurora AirIntake

module = Part

author = Tidus Klein

// --- asset parameters ---

mesh = model.mu

scale = 0.11

// --- node definitions ---

// definition format is Position X, Position Y, Position Z, Up X, Up Y, Up Z

node_stack_bottom01 = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0

// --- FX definitions ---

// --- editor parameters ---

cost = 1000

category = Aero

subcategory = 0

title = Aurora ram air

manufacturer = Aurora Areo tech

description =

// attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision

attachRules = 1,0,1,0,0

stackSymmetry = 2

// --- standard part parameters ---

mass = 0.02

dragModelType = default

maximum_drag = 0.3

minimum_drag = 0.2

angularDrag = 1

crashTolerance = 10

maxTemp = 4400

fuelCrossFeed = True

// ----- DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS POINT ,ha no ------

MODULE

{

name = ModuleResourceIntake

resourceName = IntakeAir

checkForOxygen = true

area = 0.03

intakeSpeed = 20

intakeTransformName = Intake

useVelocityCurve = True

atmosphereCurve

{

key = 0 100

key = 0.3 1500

key = 1 2500

}

velocityCurve

{

key = 0 -0.0 0 1

key = 1000 2 0 0

key = 2000 2 0 0

key = 2500 0.2 5

}

}

RESOURCE

{

name = IntakeAir

amount = 0.0

maxAmount = 0.5

}

}

(Feel free to tell me if any thing looks wrong or you actually know what the keys mean in the atmosphere curve! )

Edit: Hmm looking through my code I noticed something, I wonder if I can put the atmos curve where the area is and have it work that way so that the higher or faster you go the more area the intake has. EX:

(area = atmospheric curve

{

key = 1 200

key = 0.8 500

key = 0.5 1000

}

}

Or something like that.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Tidus Klein

[Torminator]

Air intake area will also increase your drag.

For the atm curve, the key goes from 0,vaccum, to 1,sea level.

[Tidus Klein]

o.0 OOO THATS GOING TO HELP A LOT! I thought it was the other way around. Thanks!

[zekes]

I think, we need, electric engines and propellors.

[Temeriki]

I think, we need, electric engines and propellors.

Ask and ye shall receive http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24551-Firespitter-propeller-plane-and-helicopter-parts-v5-0-%28May-25th%29-for-KSP-0-20-0

(its updated to .21 btw)

[Tidus Klein]

Umm I know a electric prop is in the fire-spiter mod, but making a turbo fan run off electricity wouldn't be a hard thing to do, unrealistic but very easily possible.

PS tried making an air tank out of the stratus v mono tank, Lets just say I now know that air in ksp weighs some thing and 10.000 units of it is close to 50 tons o.0. My poor little plane feel apart on the runway.

Edit oops I did'ent know I had two pages going but ya the link up tops what you want.

o ya by the way I have successfully made an intake for kintake air, not hard at all.

I will be downloading unity to day so that I can get this ball rolling for real!

Edited September 5, 2013 by Tidus Klein

[EatVacuum]

Do note, anything that matching what you've described will be highly unrealistic and will grossly unbalance the game.

Have fun.

It wouldn't unbalance the game if it has advantages in certain conditions but disadvantages in others. And it wouldn't be unrealistic necessarily - the US Airforce has been test flying hypersonic craft for years that use scamjets that are useless unless you can get get them up over the speed of sound and at high altitude before they will run. Conventional jets don't work well beyond about mach 2 and even to get that far they have to be engineered differently than subsonic turbofans. Scramjets only work at hypersonic. The only engine I'm aware of that can handle zero to mach five as a jet is the Sabre, which looks promising but is only at the point of static tests. And speaking of realism, is it more realistic to cram 4 or 6 intakes per jet engine to fly at 20000 meters? Last time I checked, planes like the SR71 and others only needed one intake per engine and flew fine at 26km altitude and were most efficient at high altitude and mach 3.2 (just a hair under the max speed), which is about 1100m/s. And, btw the problem wasn't getting enough air into the engines it was handling what got in - they used a sort of bypass system to move the excess air around the turbojet part of the engine and then fed it back in after it as a sort of ramjet.

Creating an engine that is more effective at high altitude than low is obviously realistic, in that it has been done in the real world. Pretty much any supersonic jet engine is optimized for high altitude, you don't tend to go mach 2 at sea level - even at 26km going Mach 3 causes huge heating problems, it would be way worse at lower altitudes.

And correcting the need to "airhog" (i.e. spam intakes) by building realistic intakes would be improving realism.

Edited October 29, 2013 by EatVacuum