[1.1.x] Space Shuttle Engines (2016-07-03)

[dtobi]

do you need FAR for the example crafts? i tried to fly the Atlantis B and always got into a flatspin after reentry..

or am i simply unable to fly

Its supposed to work without FAR. Were the tanks empty? Did you use the airbrakes?

[dtobi]

Flameout detectors is what I needed all my life. Have yet to use them, but these will be EXTREMLEY helpful.

I thought so, too. Actually they were super easy to make. And they work likea charm.

[The Destroyer]

On the FSX3 engine, can I disable overheating on it? So far 20 laucnhes and the lives of 50 kerbals have been claimed to overheating engines.

[dtobi]

On the FSX3 engine, can I disable overheating on it? So far 20 laucnhes and the lives of 50 kerbals have been claimed to overheating engines.

That's not too hard. You can do it yourself. Go to the CFG file in the parts folders and change the values for maximum heat tolerance and heat production to your liking.

Or try to throttle down a bit.

[acc]

maybe to much mass for the engine to lift, try a biger or more engines.

[dtobi]

I finished the inspirational album. Thanks to everyone who posted their pictures here. Post pictures of your designs here to have them included.

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[FenixD802]

Warning this file have bugs and problems!!! please fix it!

Klockheed Martian Engine Manufacture - Spaces shuttle engine pack Version 0.8

This pack adds the following parts:

* X0, X2 and X3 Space Shuttle Engine for small to large shuttles

* Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) Engine

* Double - Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) Engine

* Shuttle Shoulders attachment point for OMS

* Two big 2m engines. One can rotate (check action groups and context menu)

* Four tank shapes in four different sizes (16 parts in total)

* Four fuel breakers for controlling fuel flow

* Two fuel controllers for controlling the flow of fuel lines

* Four automatic staging and action group devices

* Radial mount for shuttle engines

* A number of example vessels

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About the pack:

The goal was to make the parts to build shuttles by only using this pack, B9 aerodynamic parts, and stock parts.

The engines are made to be combined with the bi, tri, and quad-couplers (apply many many struts for the stronger X3 engine). A NASA shuttle-like appearance can be achieved with the tricoupler.

The packs comes with two weaker engines for orbital maneuvers since the shuttle main engines will be useless once you drop the main tank and the center of mass moves into your vessel. The OMS drives are useless in atmosphere.

The fuel tanks come in four sizes. This allows to build a large variety of asymmetric rockets that look shuttle-alike but are not copies of the NASA shuttle.

To better control the fuel flow, you can use the fuel flow breakers. Use these if you want to drain your tank with several fuel lines to balance your CoM.

You need to consider the center of mass (CoM) carefully. Depending on the weight and vertical position of your tank, the CoM is more or less in line of the center of thrust. The power of your engines and the power of the boosters also plays an important role. The large gimballing of the engine helps to stabilize the shuttle but it can't do wonders for shuttles with crazy CoMs.

I tried hard to make the engine no "magical wonder engine". It is still tough to design a proper spaceship that flies well. There are some challenges when using this package: the main engines don't fly straight with the CoM right above them. The main engines tend to overheat on full throttle. You need to throttle them down.

How to use the Fuel Breakers and Fuel Controllers (check example craft Explorer and Falcon)

Tanks that consist of several elements drain into the direction of the attached fuel line or engine. In some cases, draining a huge tank from top to bottom or bottom to top can significantly change the CoM of your vessel, making it hard or impossible to control.

Fuel breakers and fuel controllers offer a solution for this. These devices allow to control the fuel flow by using action groups and the context menu. With fuel breakers, you can also break one large external fuel tank into several segments that you can individually drain with fuel lines. The overall CoM will shift far less if you do it like that.

How to use the Auto-Stagers (also check example crafts Firefly and Explorer)

The Auto Stagers must be attached to a fuel tank (L, LFO or solid). The device detects when the fuel tank (just the tank that it is attached to, not several attached tanks!) has drained. As soon as this is the case, it can stage or fire an action group, depending on the type of device.

You can use these devices to fire stages when external tanks drain without the need to manually check the fuel level in the tank. You can also make staging indicators by using assigning an action group to a light and automatically trigger that action group from the proper stager.

There are four types of Stagers:

a) Stager (same as pushing SPACE)

Action group 1 (same as pushing 1)

c) Action group 2 (you know it already, right?)

d) Action group 3 (...)

I can make some for more action groups if people request it. I left it at three because its quite some work.

How to use the Timer

----------------------

Release 0.8 adds a timer device that can trigger a delayed staging event. The staging event is executed on the vessel the timer is attached to. So you can even trigger a timed action on an _inactive_ vessel (e.g., a separated booster). You can use the timer to start a retro rocket on a spent stage after a time or to delay the release of a parachute on a decoupled booster (no more dancing detached parachuted booster stages).

Changelog:

V0.1 Initial release

V0.2 Parts and tech Tree

* Added tech tree integration.

* Slightly changed the appearance of the "shoulder" radial connector.

* Added Big Bang rotating 2m engine.

V0.3 Gimbal animation, limited yaw range and balancing

* Complete visual overhaul of the BB engine. It looks more shuttle-like now.

* Added gimbal animation. Now the X2 and BB1 engines gimbal correctly.

* Increased atmospheric efficiency of OMS engines

* Increased thrust of the X2 engine (three X2s can now lift a shuttle plus payload)

* Limited strong gimbaling to pitch axis

* Removed heat animation from BB1 engines (it gets stuck whenever the engine rotates)

V0.4 External tank system and slight graphical overhaul of the BB engine (it has additional static shadows now)

* 16 Tank elements for shuttles of many sizes

* 4 Fuel flow breaker elements to separate one tank into several independent pieces

* Some minor improvements of the BB engine's visuals

* The X2 engine was moved from "heavier rocketry" to "heavy rocketry"

* Tech tree integration for the new tanks

* Spellchecked this document

* Added example crafts: Explorer and Atlantis. Both require B9. Atlantis also requires Procedural Dynamics (Wings)

V0.5 New engines and radial mount options

* Two new engines (X0 and X3) for smaller and larger shuttles

* Two radial mount points that make clusters of engines easier

* Two new example craft files: Firefly and Endeavour (stock and B9 as well as Procedural Dynamics)

* Added Atlantis B craft as alternative NASA Shuttle like craft

V0.6 BB2 Non-rotating Big Bang Engine

* Added non-rotating BB engine. Maybe this solves the lag problem.

V0.7 Automatic staging and action groups plus minor fixes

* Added staging and action group trigger thingys (see pictures)

* Removed surface attachment property from fuel breakers

* Adjusted drag values for fuel tanks and caps a bit until I found out that all values of the stock parts are bogus. If someone wants to make a sane suggestion - go ahead.

V0.8 Performance improvements and new automatic parts

* Reduced the size of the textures to save a total of 200MB RAM

* Replaced many colliders with box colliders - easier to compute, lighter on the CPU

* Removed an unnecessary collider from the BB1 engine. It should perform better now.

* Added fuel controller. It can turn on and off the fuel crossfeed. It is used with fuel lines.

* Added fuel controller functionality to in-line fuel breaker. They can now control the fuel flow, too

* Moved in-line fuel breakers tu Utility section in the editor

* Added timer device. It can even trigger actions on separated stages! Control it with action groups.

* Added Flameout detector. This should make building spaceplanes with more than one jet engine easier.

* Added an example vessel Falcon to show the new functions.

Here are some pictures of the xample craft included in the pack.

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Here is an inspirational album of some users' designs. Admirable work!

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gE06r

------------------------------

Credits

careo // ExsurgentEngineering.dll plugin

Firespitter Plane parts and Helicopter Rotors by Snjo.

[email protected]

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This work is shared under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

Author: dtobi

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DOWNLOAD LINK: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3061183/Space-shuttle-engines-2013-11-24-v0.8.zip

[dtobi]

Warning this file have bugs and problems!!! please fix it!

Would you please tell me which bugs and problems you refer to? Your post leaves me clueless.

[Netris]

Warning this file have bugs and problems!!! please fix it!

Come on, don't quote that big of a message. It's pretty annoying and take a lot of place !

[The Destroyer]

Yea I was just wondering what cfg file it was - haven't done cfg editing in awhile.

[dtobi]

Yea I was just wondering what cfg file it was - haven't done cfg editing in awhile.

It is "GameData\Klockheed_Martian\Parts\Shuttle Engine X3\part.cfg".

You can change the line

heatProduction = 630

to a lower value. That will result in less heat.

[wasmic]

Hey dtobi, I've found a bug in the X3 engine. Its Vacuum Isp is 280 where it should be 380.

[Sporkmonger]

Probably something everyone has already noticed and/or reported, but 'countdown' is spelled incorrectly.

Also the AG9 flameout detector has the wrong description, should say action group 9, not 8. Flameout detectors also have the wrong diameter for mounting above both the default jet engines and the B9 jets; rescaleFactor should probably be 0.795, not 0.75.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Sporkmonger
Another bug.

[RoboRay]

I also think breaking these staging and action group control parts out into their own mod separate from the shuttle engines and fuel tanks might give them more visibility and attract more users. They're fantastic tools.

I would love to have a part equivalent to the Apollo LEM contact sensors...

They wouldn't need to be part of the landing gear, of course... just something like a telescoping rod (similar to the existing antenna) that can be attached to the bottom or side of the craft and extended downward past the footpads of the landing gear. When it touches the ground (and possibly breaks), it trips an action group that we could assign to cut the engines.

No more floaty bounces on the landing because we didn't cut the throttle at just the right moment.

Edited December 13, 2013 by RoboRay

[RoboRay]

I finally got a chance to build a shuttle with your engines. I decided to do things a little differently, though, and included a jet engine for powered landings:

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I made it into orbit on the first test, but it was an abort-to-orbit situation... When jettisoned, the boosters smashed the wings. I still made orbit, but had to send a rescue craft up for the crew as landing without wings would be challenging.

This led to a bit of a redesign. Test #2 was a perfect success. I should have brought along some cargo.

Edited December 14, 2013 by RoboRay

[astropapi1]

Warning this file have bugs and problems!!! please fix it!

Come on, did you really have to quote the entire OP?

[RoboRay]

Innovation: After wrestling with the craft's offset axis of thrust for setting my pitch attitude, I stuck a probe pod on the external tank and tilted it 20 degrees.

Selecting "Control From Here" on the probe pod prior to launch puts the NavBall orientation pretty close to the actual thrust vector. When the ET is jettisoned, control automatically switches to the cockpit and the NavBall jumps to the new in-line thrust axis.

I did a test launch letting MechJeb's autopilot fly the ascent, and it had no trouble flying the craft with the offset control angle. It took it a couple of seconds to adjust to the new angle when control switched to the cockpit, but it figured it out.

A new control pod that's designed to radially attach at the angle of your shuttle engines might be worth looking into, though it is pretty easy to set it up manually as I did.

Edited December 14, 2013 by RoboRay

[dtobi]

A new maintenance release is out.

It fixes the following things:

V0.8.1 Maintenace update

* Corrected spelling mistake in countdown counter

* Corrected wrong Isp setting for x3 engine

* Corrected wrong size of flameout detectors

* Improved visual appearance of flameout detectors

* Corrected heat animation of OMS engine

* Updated Falcon example craft

Thanks to everyone who proposed improvements!!! I really appreciate the feedback.

Also: I am working on separating the staging an action group gadgets. However, I'd like to wait for the .23 release and its tweakable goodness to take advantage of it first. Suggestions for action group thingies are very welcome, though.

[dtobi]

A new control pod that's designed to radially attach at the angle of your shuttle engines might be worth looking into, though it is pretty easy to set it up manually as I did.

Neat idea. I wonder at which angle to put it because depending on the CoM the angle will change during flight.

[dtobi]

I would love to have a part equivalent to the Apollo LEM contact sensors...

I was working on an altimeter trigger for soft landing rockets. This (LEM sensors) should be fairly easy to do. I'll try to do it after the 0.23 update because I would like to let people configure the trigger height in the editor wit the tweakables.

[dtobi]

Hey dtobi, I've found a bug in the X3 engine. Its Vacuum Isp is 280 where it should be 380.

Fixed. Thanks for the hint! I put the values in the vector in the wrong order.

Edited December 14, 2013 by dtobi

[dtobi]

Probably something everyone has already noticed and/or reported, but 'countdown' is spelled incorrectly.

Also the AG9 flameout detector has the wrong description, should say action group 9, not 8. Flameout detectors also have the wrong diameter for mounting above both the default jet engines and the B9 jets; rescaleFactor should probably be 0.795, not 0.75.

These should be all fixed now (see update log). Thanks for your suggestions!

[RoboRay]

Neat idea. I wonder at which angle to put it because depending on the CoM the angle will change during flight.

Well, not only will the CoM change somewhat during flight, the ideal angle of the control pod will also vary with craft design. There's probably a good compromise angle somewhere in the middle, though.

What is the actual base angle of your engines? It should be a little less than that, so that the control angle isn't too far off with boosters attached.

Edited December 14, 2013 by RoboRay

[dtobi]

Well, not only will the CoM change somewhat during flight, the ideal angle of the control pod will also vary with craft design. There's probably a good compromise angle somewhere in the middle, though.

What is the actual base angle of your engines? It should be a little less than that, so that the control angle isn't too far off with boosters attached.

The base angle is 15 degree but depending on the thrust of the boosters (or the lack thereof after separation), the resulting direction of movement will be rather different (by up to 15°).

[dtobi]

BTW: Has anyone tried the small X0 engines and built a craft with it. I keep seeing images of vessels with X1 and X2 engines here. I'd love to see some smaller shuttles. Any feedback on the X0?