parts [1.10.x] SDHI Service Module System (V4.0.4 / 11 October 2020)

[Ser Brynden]

Still using Sum Dum!

(at least the parachute docking port since the capsule shroud and heat shield are broke in 1.0.5)

Download craft here: http://kerbalx.com/Ser_Brynden/Apollo-Saturn-V-Plus-with-Stock-Lander

 

[StevieC]

Small suggestion: Move the panel textured to say "avionics access" to the side OPPOSITE the umbilical port, so that people trying to symmetrically arrange parachutes or retractable RCS thrusters on the avionics ring can do so without blocking access to the avionics hatch. Minor aesthetic nitpick, I know, but it's only a suggestion.

[sumghai]

10 minutes ago, StevieC said:

Small suggestion: Move the panel textured to say "avionics access" to the side OPPOSITE the umbilical port, so that people trying to symmetrically arrange parachutes or retractable RCS thrusters on the avionics ring can do so without blocking access to the avionics hatch. Minor aesthetic nitpick, I know, but it's only a suggestion.

Noted. Thanks!

[StevieC]

Presently, the SDHI service module has so little mass that the center-of-mass is too far forward for any RCS to provide useful maneuvering capability without putting at least two thruster groups on the command-module. This is proving most problematic.

[sumghai]

10 hours ago, StevieC said:

Presently, the SDHI service module has so little mass that the center-of-mass is too far forward for any RCS to provide useful maneuvering capability without putting at least two thruster groups on the command-module. This is proving most problematic.

Please provide a screenshot to elaborate on your report.

[Curiosity7907]

On 1/1/2016 at 1:22 AM, sumghai said:

Please provide a source to back up your claim.

Also, the SDHI SMS is not meant to be a faithful reproduction of the Orion/SLS, but rather, a stockalike analogue, so it doesn't really matter how many drogue or main chutes I choose to have.

I mean orion has 3 sets of chutes.

first one has 3 drouge chutes which separate in half a second.Then,2 main drouge chutes deploy which last for couple of second.Then,the main big 3 parachutes deploy.

[Bomoo]

On 5/01/2016 at 9:02 PM, sumghai said:

Did a quick experiment with making the IACBMs only dock at 90 degree increments, using more new stock parameters coded in by @NathanKell. Initial tests seemed to work well, but I'll need to adjust the acquireMinRollDot and captureMinRollDot values to make the system a little more lenient on misalignments. I'm also wondering if tweaking parameters such as minDistanceToReEngage, acquireRange and captureRange and doing some clever trickery with invisible animated colliders would make the system much easier to use. Unfortunately, this means I may need to redo the IACBM models for both SDHI and FusTek based on newer understanding of the real-life ISS CBMs, which means limiting IACBM docking orientations will probably not make it into the next update for SDHI SMS. Might have to shelve this idea for another time.

That sounds very intriguing. I'll have to play around with adding those lines to stock docking ports, or looking for a mod that does. The lack of port alignment drives me nuts when trying to put together stations or multi-part interstellar craft.

Edit: Gah, this new forum's horrible, horrible text processor. This must be how old people feel trying to play 3D games.

Edited January 17, 2016 by sumghai
Fixed quote

[StevieC]

Will get a screenshot out this afternoon.

[sumghai]

9 hours ago, Curiosity7907 said:

I mean orion has 3 sets of chutes.

first one has 3 drouge chutes which separate in half a second.Then,2 main drouge chutes deploy which last for couple of second.Then,the main big 3 parachutes deploy.

Again, you need to provide actual proof (e.g. NASA press release, technical documentation).

7 hours ago, Bomoo said:

That sounds very intriguing. I'll have to play around with adding those lines to stock docking ports, or looking for a mod that does. The lack of port alignment drives me nuts when trying to put together stations or multi-part interstellar craft.

Edit: Gah, this new forum's horrible, horrible text processor. This must be how old people feel trying to play 3D games.

I might have to touch base with @curtquarquesso after v3.1 to seek advice regarding colliders and docking alignments. My previous attempts for FusTek didn't turn out too well.

[StevieC]

ok here's a link to my screenshot

http://imgur.com/gallery/EzEAD

[sumghai]

2 minutes ago, StevieC said:

ok here's a link to my screenshot

http://imgur.com/gallery/EzEAD

That is definitely unexpected, at least in my own test environment.

Were you able to reproduce this issue in a separate KSP installation with no mods other than SDHI SMS, its basic dependencies and RCS Build Aid?

[StevieC]

4 minutes ago, sumghai said:

That is definitely unexpected, at least in my own test environment.

Were you able to reproduce this issue in a separate KSP installation with no mods other than SDHI SMS, its basic dependencies and RCS Build Aid?

not yet, I'd need to safely set my current install aside and I don't have quite enough disk-space available to do that right now.

[Bomoo]

1 hour ago, sumghai said:

I might have to touch base with @curtquarquesso after v3.1 to seek advice regarding colliders and docking alignments. My previous attempts for FusTek didn't turn out too well.

Oh my, dat soft docking tutorial of his. Super hot.

P.S. Thanks for fixing those double quotes in my post.

[Bomoo]

Was doing a casual SDHI capsule launch for funs, and I ran into a persistent issue. Namely that the pod cover explosively detaches when staged, and usually rips any surface attachments off the capsule underneath. My capsule's got a bunch of crap all over it, but I don't think that's it as the problem repeats on a perfectly clean Mk1-2 both with a standard clampo and with the SDHI parachute version. The SDHI clampo, however, tends to survive the violent jerk better than the standard.

[sumghai]

1 hour ago, Bomoo said:

Was doing a casual SDHI capsule launch for funs, and I ran into a persistent issue. Namely that the pod cover explosively detaches when staged, and usually rips any surface attachments off the capsule underneath. My capsule's got a bunch of crap all over it, but I don't think that's it as the problem repeats on a perfectly clean Mk1-2 both with a standard clampo and with the SDHI parachute version. The SDHI clampo, however, tends to survive the violent jerk better than the standard.

Try the latest development build of SDHI SMS from GitHub, along with the 1.2.2-beta of AnimatedDecouplers.

[Bomoo]

30 minutes ago, sumghai said:

Try the latest development build of SDHI SMS from GitHub, along with the 1.2.2-beta of AnimatedDecouplers.

Will do, thanks.

EDIT: Yeah, that seems to have done it. By the way, I quite like the new separation motors. I mean the old ones were great, but these are spiffy also. There does appear to be about a half-second delay between firing the Abort action group and SDHI adapter collar decouple, however. Is that intentional? It's certainly not a big problem by any stretch.

EDIT2: What I'm noticing is that the decouple action appears to be taking place at the end of the umbilical swing-away animation rather than at the beginning as before.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Bomoo

[sumghai]

12 hours ago, Bomoo said:

What I'm noticing is that the decouple action appears to be taking place at the end of the umbilical swing-away animation rather than at the beginning as before.

This is intentional - I didn't like how the pod would clip through the umbilical in the previous version.

[Bomoo]

44 minutes ago, sumghai said:

This is intentional - I didn't like how the pod would clip through the umbilical in the previous version.

Fair enough.

[Synthesis]

On 12/24/2015 at 11:42 PM, sumghai said:

Okay folks, so I got SDHI SMS set up in KSP 1.0.5, and so far I've picked out the following issues in my install:

 - The Parachute-equipped docking ports are missing the parachute staging icon, although parachute deployment, docking and toggleable lights seem to work fine. This was due to changes in docking port behaviour in 1.0.5, where they now have the option of being stageable - by default, this is false, so the corresponding staging icon is hidden, even if the part contains a stock or RealChute parachute PartModule. Toggling the corresponding option in the right-click context Menu unhides the staging icon. (Note: When the parachute is staged, anything attached to the docking transform of the docking port will also be decoupled, but that is understandable given that there shouldn't be anything docked to the Mk1-2 after-reentry.)

 - Decoupler forces seem to be much stronger now, to the point that jettisoning the BPC or side panels causes explosions that often damage other parts of the craft; this is particularly strange as the BPC actually has a decoupler force of zero. Several part colliders needed overhauling for compatibility with KSP 1.0.5/1.1's new convex collider rules. The side fairing decoupling behaviour also needed reworking to jettison sideways more consistently.

 - The umbilical seems to work fine with Animated Decouplers 1.2.1

I'll keep you guys posted.

Anyone else still having trouble with the side-mounted fairings? They seem to always knock off loudly and with a bang, and half a 50% chance of ripping off any solar panels underneath them. 

EDIT: Ah, I see--the new parts and dll seem to do the trick, however, they also break previous ships designs, so I'll hold off until I can update everything. Looks good though!

Edited February 2, 2016 by Synthesis

[sumghai]

43 minutes ago, Synthesis said:

EDIT: Ah, I see--the new parts and dll seem to do the trick, however, they also break previous ships designs, so I'll hold off until I can update everything. Looks good though!

Yep, @Kerbas_ad_astra's DLL works nicely - just waiting on @Starwaster to accept the pull request(s) and push out an official release.

Of course, there's also the matter of tweaking RealChutes to be compatible with the updated staging system (which @stupid_chris will look into once he gets hold of a replacement laptop), and fixing the umbilical port model on the command pod being toggleable in the wrong scenes (currently corresponding with @NathanKell).

[Synthesis]

19 hours ago, sumghai said:

Yep, @Kerbas_ad_astra's DLL works nicely - just waiting on @Starwaster to accept the pull request(s) and push out an official release.

Of course, there's also the matter of tweaking RealChutes to be compatible with the updated staging system (which @stupid_chris will look into once he gets hold of a replacement laptop), and fixing the umbilical port model on the command pod being toggleable in the wrong scenes (currently corresponding with @NathanKell).

Oooh...well, that's certainly good to know. I'm in no rush, my "solution" was to basically quicksave before discarding the fairings, do it, see if anything broke off in the explosion, and reload it if it did (not perfect, but it works).

I'll want to make sure everything works before having to redesign all my SDHI using ships (somewhat inconvenient but, eh, what can you do?). The annoying part is that installing the update breaks the existing designs in VAB as well--so if I want to swap the parts, I'm probably going to have to install both versions at the same time and swap the parts out of the design one by one (I could also turn the rest of the spacecraft AFTER the module into a sub assembly, but that would kind of mess things up too.....hmmm....). Maybe use the design merging feature? 

Eh, progress comes at a price. Hopefully this new version will be less likely to rip off the parachute off when you eject the LES/aerodynamic nose sheath during launch. You could do that back in 0.90 or earlier, I remember. 

[speedwaystar]

20 hours ago, Synthesis said:

EDIT: Ah, I see--the new parts and dll seem to do the trick, however, they also break previous ships designs, so I'll hold off until I can update everything. Looks good though!

are the new parts and dll available as prerelease? i can't see anything on github.

[sumghai]

25 minutes ago, speedwaystar said:

are the new parts and dll available as prerelease? i can't see anything on github.

A few posts up:

On 30/01/2016 at 8:07 PM, sumghai said:

Try the latest development build of SDHI SMS from GitHub, along with the 1.2.2-beta of AnimatedDecouplers.

As for the prerelease SDHI SMS of the parts themselves, go to the repository and click Download ZIP.

[speedwaystar]

great! it's all working nicely now. the only minor quibble is that the SM Fairings detach with a worrying explosion, even if nothing is stowed under them. it seems to be a cosmetic issue, though, since in a second test with stowed solar panels and RCS nozzles everything survived the experience unscathed.

[sumghai]

6 minutes ago, speedwaystar said:

great! it's all working nicely now. the only minor quibble is that the SM Fairings detach with a worrying explosion, even if nothing is stowed under them. it seems to be a cosmetic issue, though, since in a second test with stowed solar panels and RCS nozzles everything survived the experience unscathed.

I changed the fairing attachment points around in this prerelease, so for best results when testing new releases, always rebuild your SDHI SMS stack from scratch rather than using an existing assembly.