[Airships in 1.12.3] HooliganLabs Mods

[Smurfalot]

You might want to spell out "Hooligan Labs" in the title of the thread instead of abbreviating as "HL". It will make it easier for people to find it.

Edit to avoid a double post

Are there supposed to be end caps for all of the sizes of or just the one size? Is it supposed to tweakscale or something?l

Edit2: What is the "Lead Envelope"? Does that effect stearing or something? Should it be the biggest envelope or the one that is literally in the front of the craft?

Edited July 25, 2014 by Smurfalot

[Smurfalot]

You might want to spell out "Hooligan Labs" in the title of the thread instead of abbreviating as "HL". It will make it easier for people to find it.

Edit to avoid a double post

Are there supposed to be end caps for all of the sizes of or just the one size? Is it supposed to tweakscale or something?l

Edit2: What is the "Lead Envelope"? Does that effect stearing or something? Should it be the biggest envelope or the one that is literally in the front of the craft?

Anybody Home?

[JewelShisen]

Anybody Home?

Well I don't use the HOME mod myself...

Anyways in all serious I didn't see the edits so let me clear it up.

1. The end cap is just one size as it was a placehold while I made new parts that will be tweakscale.

2. I am not sure what the 'Lead Envelope' is about though I think it is more the first airship part you place. So basically... I must do research!

[Smurfalot]

Well I don't use the HOME mod myself...

Anyways in all serious I didn't see the edits so let me clear it up.

1. The end cap is just one size as it was a placehold while I made new parts that will be tweakscale.

2. I am not sure what the 'Lead Envelope' is about though I think it is more the first airship part you place. So basically... I must do research!

As near as I can tell from digging through the old thread, it has something to do with with Buoyancy GUI. I have tried manually editing the craft file to make the 'right' balloon the lead, but it just reverts next time I launch the ship, so it is something in the .dll changing it back. That is all I know.

Also, do you know if there is there any good way to get around the 'a part can only have one parent part' limitation when connecting the long envelopes to a craft besides using a .... ton of struts? Having only 1 point of contact makes the balloon floppy on one end.

[JewelShisen]

As near as I can tell from digging through the old thread, it has something to do with with Buoyancy GUI. I have tried manually editing the craft file to make the 'right' balloon the lead, but it just reverts next time I launch the ship, so it is something in the .dll changing it back. That is all I know.

Also, do you know if there is there any good way to get around the 'a part can only have one parent part' limitation when connecting the long envelopes to a craft besides using a .... ton of struts? Having only 1 point of contact makes the balloon floppy on one end.

Part parenting is a limit from KSP. Kerbal Joint Reenforcement may help but as far as i know you can't do multiple parent parts.

The lead envelope is something left over from the old balance adjustment and i believe is supposed to be the envelope closest to the center of lift for the ship.

[Smurfalot]

Part parenting is a limit from KSP. Kerbal Joint Reenforcement may help but as far as i know you can't do multiple parent parts.

The lead envelope is something left over from the old balance adjustment and i believe is supposed to be the envelope closest to the center of lift for the ship.

Yeah, I have a configuration with a large "Ray" at the COM and 4 of the small "Una" envelopes at the corners, but for some reason it keeps picking any Una attached on the corner of craft as lead before the Ray even if I systematically remove them or manually edit the craft file.

[JewelShisen]

Yeah, I have a configuration with a large "Ray" at the COM and 4 of the small "Una" envelopes at the corners, but for some reason it keeps picking any Una attached on the corner of craft as lead before the Ray even if I systematically remove them or manually edit the craft file.

Yea at this time I don't think the Lead Envelope does anything so it is safe to ignore.

[Galane]

If it was a lead (led) instead of lead (leed) envelope... Mythbusters made a helium balloon out of lead and IIRC someone back in the 1970's also did it. Very fragile and completely impractical, but it works if made large enough so the volume of the gas can overcome the weight of the metal.

Which makes me think of another crazy technology I'd love to see in this mod. Vacuum airship parts. What weighs less than hydrogen, the lightest element? Nothing, that is a vacuum, consisting of nothing at all, weighs less than hydrogen.

A balloon "full" of vacuum would have quite a bit more lifting power than one of the same volume full of hydrogen or helium, 14% more than helium. The problem is creating a vessel strong enough to keep the atmospheric pressure from crushing it AND light enough that the non-contents can float the container in the atmosphere. Not even a container made of homogenous diamond can withstand the pressure AND be light enough.

Perhaps a "honeycomb" or other porous material, with impermeable inner and outer skins, pressurized with hydrogen between the skins, could be strong enough to contain a vacuum while being light enough for the vacuum to lift and outperform a conventional envelope of equal displacement filled with hydrogen.

An airship envelope of a given size always has the same theoretical lifting power, no matter what it's filled with. To get the usable lifting capacity, calculate the volume of air displaced (thus how much maximum weight can be lifted) and subtract the weight of the filling (and the envelope). That pretty much leaves four choices, in order of decreasing weight. Hot air, helium, hydrogen, vacuum. There are others that have been used but have less lift capacity and/or are flammable and/or toxic.

I wonder if anyone has tried hot helium or hot hydrogen? In "The Clouds of Saturn" by Michael McCollum, he had floating cities on Saturn using double layer dome envelopes. The inner layer held a heliox atmosphere (like what deep ocean divers breathe) because the 70% of normal air that is nitrogen is *heavy* and between it and the outer layer was heated hydrogen. If the city builders hadn't wanted an "outdoor" space they could have just used a smaller amount of heated hydrogen to carry the same load. And yes, everyone talks in a high pitched voice.

People have been trying to do vacuum airships, with zero success, since the 1600's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship But in a computer simulation it's easy to have fictional materials with the right properties to make it work.

This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_gas says vacuum is 7% lighter than hydrogen and %16 lighter than helium. Yet again conflicting data on two Wiki articles on the same subject.

[JewelShisen]

Well I don't think i will be doing that one but it would be interesting.

[Hooligan Labs]

The unfortunate thing about the Airship mod is that it is how I taught myself object oriented programming AND Unity. My apologies to all, a lot of what you are looking at is something made by a complete scripting amateur.

I'm taking a look at the references to lead envelope in the source code and it looks like it doesn't really do anything other than control if the GUI is displayed or not. What was the specific question?

If it was a lead (led) instead of lead (leed) envelope... Mythbusters made a helium balloon out of lead and IIRC someone back in the 1970's also did it. Very fragile and completely impractical, but it works if made large enough so the volume of the gas can overcome the weight of the metal.

Yeah that was a great episode, and they brag about it incessantly now.

Which makes me think of another crazy technology I'd love to see in this mod. Vacuum airship parts. What weighs less than hydrogen, the lightest element? Nothing, that is a vacuum, consisting of nothing at all, weighs less than hydrogen.

When I last did the buoyancy to weight calculations, all the envelopes were assumed to be sealed vacuums. If you can find my old thread I did a giant post on it.

[JewelShisen]

The unfortunate thing about the Airship mod is that it is how I taught myself object oriented programming AND Unity. My apologies to all, a lot of what you are looking at is something made by a complete scripting amateur.

I'm taking a look at the references to lead envelope in the source code and it looks like it doesn't really do anything other than control if the GUI is displayed or not. What was the specific question?

Yeah that was a great episode, and they brag about it incessantly now.

When I last did the buoyancy to weight calculations, all the envelopes were assumed to be sealed vacuums. If you can find my old thread I did a giant post on it.

I am likely going to end up using this to do the exact same think. I would love your opinion on the new part models and your help with learning the code.

[Hooligan Labs]

The models look great! I know Firespitter has code for flipping objects over depending on which side of the craft they are on. Maybe that would help with the upside down octopuses.

[JewelShisen]

The models look great! I know Firespitter has code for flipping objects over depending on which side of the craft they are on. Maybe that would help with the upside down octopuses.

Thanks. Trying to keep your mod clean of others though I may work with Sojo to see about adding that to the Airship code.

[Hooligan Labs]

It's not too crazy, just a cross product of the envelope position compared to the vessel's axis to determine if it is on the right or left side.

[JewelShisen]

It's not too crazy, just a cross product of the envelope position compared to the vessel's axis to determine if it is on the right or left side.

Good point. Though I may also work on just doing the textures right to prevent that anyways. Now to figure out setting up Visual Studio so I can get into the code.

[Smurfalot]

The models look great! I know Firespitter has code for flipping objects over depending on which side of the craft they are on. Maybe that would help with the upside down octopuses.

Octopus? Really? I always thought it was the stylized head of a Mind Flayer.

[JewelShisen]

Octopus? Really? I always thought it was the stylized head of a Mind Flayer.

I always assumed it was this:

[Hooligan Labs]

Oh absolutely those inspired the logo too. But octopus are very real, very smart and can do amazing things. They can be inspirations to us all.

Speaking of which, here is some new research on the kind of stuff that future airships (and spaceships) could be made of: http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=49884

[JewelShisen]

Oh absolutely those inspired the logo too. But octopus are very real, very smart and can do amazing things. They can be inspirations to us all.

Speaking of which, here is some new research on the kind of stuff that future airships (and spaceships) could be made of: http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=49884

Just a note to you and anybody else interested I am going to start digging into the code and start looking to see if I can add an auto leveling feature to adjust the envelopes on the fly to keep a zero pitch and roll.

EDIT: The plan is for it to be a radio button like the auto speed control already in the GUI except it will cause the ship to start adjusting envelope fill to bring the ship back to level roll and pitch without altering the heading. Should help for those who build their ships a little off center.

Edited July 30, 2014 by JewelShisen

[Neowulf]

So in the karbonite thread it was pondered if there was a way to have a ship stay in the atmosphere of Jool long term for mining purposes. That spawned this idea, and I was wondering if it would be possible.

A station keeping part (big ol' fan?) that can be activated on an airship with a low enough surface velocity (less than 1m/s), causing it to root the ship in place (marked landed) in exchange for a large amount of EC/s (amount dependent on vessel mass?). If the station keeping module deactivates from either user interaction or lack of resources, it disables the lock so the ship is flying again.

[JewelShisen]

So in the karbonite thread it was pondered if there was a way to have a ship stay in the atmosphere of Jool long term for mining purposes. That spawned this idea, and I was wondering if it would be possible.

A station keeping part (big ol' fan?) that can be activated on an airship with a low enough surface velocity (less than 1m/s), causing it to root the ship in place (marked landed) in exchange for a large amount of EC/s (amount dependent on vessel mass?). If the station keeping module deactivates from either user interaction or lack of resources, it disables the lock so the ship is flying again.

That may be possible. I'd need to code a custom module for it but I don't see why that shouldn't be possible. However at the moment that won't be happening as I am working on adding TweakScale support and doing a part design overhaul.

To that extent what does everybody think of me adding a new drone control part that will fit the envelopes? Something made to fit seamlessly with them.

[JewelShisen]

Is anybody interested in trying out the new Airship Rework parts? I'm about to post them up on Curse.

[sargunster]

I noticed the title here says [0.24] but the download on the Curse page is tagged for v23.5. Does that download work fine on .24?

[JewelShisen]

I noticed the title here says [0.24] but the download on the Curse page is tagged for v23.5. Does that download work fine on .24?

Yes. I just haven't changed the Curse page. Airships and Squid are the only ones I have tested though.

[sargunster]

Awesome, thanks for the speedy reply!