Flight plan

[CyclonicTuna]

I was trying to built myself a shuttle the other day with a mix of B9 and KW rocketry parts. But it didn't really work out because of the shift in how the fuel was distributed. In order to lift of sort of balanced I put a big rocketengine under the fuel tank, sort of Buran style. That same fueltank I was also using to drain fuel from for the shuttle engines.

However with shift in balance, a big rocketmoter firing, in tandem with two big solid boosters, made that after about 100 meters of flight the tank was so light, and the shuttle still so heavy full of fuel, that it just filpped over.

I'd like for squad to implement a way for me to make a simple flight plan which lets me control the thrust of multiple rocket engines at the same time.

Or better still, make that the SAS doesn't only control the flightsurfaces and reactiontwheels, but also distributes the thrurst in such a manner that the center of lift, gravity and thrust are alligned at all times.

[romanyk]

I like the idea of a flight plan that would let you plan the entire flight before taking off like pilots do a real life. I also believe there should be some randomness that would require intervention.

[samhuk]

Hi Cyclonic Tuna,

Try making an engine with a 10.5 degree gimbal like the real shuttles.

I have made a thread about a really good shuttle I made not too long back.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55733-Half-Stock-Half-KWRock-Realistic-Good-Lookin-Space-Shuttle

It is very hard to make them, but it is possible without thrust altering mods, just lots of trial and error and rocket-smarts!

Sam

[CyclonicTuna]

Hey Sambo,

Yeah, I'm now trying a design which basically straps two huge liquid boosters on either side of the shuttle. That way its a lot more symmetric. But I'll give your design a shot too .

[samhuk]

Yeah, I tried to stick to as many real-world shuttle aspects as possible, I first tried to get the main tank with no engine, but in KSP Buran-style with an engine on the main tank is the only way to make it work without employing giant gimbals that are just inefficient and looks rather odd.

If you don't mind going off the conventional design, straping two SRB's on the side of the space-plane is a lot easier, as there is pretty much (like you said) no uneven thrust vectors. TBH I don't fly my shuttle too much, it is very sensitive to errors and adding on little bits onto the shuttle, I prefer to SSTO with SABRE engines...Like in this...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/56427-Crew-Visit-Module-Single-Stage-to-Orbit-Spacecraft

There is a lot more freedom in an SSTO spaceplane IMO, you can add all sorts of junk everywhere on it and it'll still crawl it's way to orbit somehow...

Anyway hope I have helped somewhat, oh, and when I said make an engine with a 10.5deg gimbal, I meant simply just copy and paste a part, rename it somehow, and edit the part.cfg file, changing the gimbal value to 10.5 or something, it's what I did with a novapunch bearcat engine .

Sam

Edited November 13, 2013 by samhuk

[CyclonicTuna]

Yeah....

Well maybe we'll someday get a flightplan, but again. I think it would be possible for Squad to implement a feature that balances the center of mass, lift and thrust into SAS. That would solve a lot of problems.

[samhuk]

I would like that too, but in real life you can't just move fuel around at mad-quick paces like in KSP in real life. On the NASA shuttle for example, the orange tank is feeding the shuttle engines, then it runs out, then burns it's on-board fuel, and is only one way, and the flow is not controllable. However, in-flight, engine-discrete, thrust altering, is a real desperate need for KSP, as everything has to be perfectly symmetrical and even, or have gigantic gimbals (seen the Tiberdyne shuttle gimbal? LOL!). Although there are mods out there for it, they can't get 'round SRB's and other things, so they don't really work for much.

I hope too that they develop some kind of other control other than SAS torque, however something tells me it is low-priority/not-planned since they may think that this would make things too easy if everyone could design some horribly asymmetrical spacecraft and it still fly because of discrete-thrust-altering SAS.

Don't forget, there is great fun in achieving something difficult, like building a working KSP shuttle. If it was easy, would it be as fun when we get one eventually working?

Hmmm indeed.

Sam