Wobbly rockets - Now 1.09 - 2 metre parts, verniers, payload fairings, MUCH more

[Sunday Punch]

New version of my parts pack!

New in version 1.05:

- Jettisoning RCS module no longer kills crew

- Improved LES effects

- New part, small fuel tank

- New part, retrorocket module

- New part, nuclear thermal rocket engine. Heavy, low thrust, high fuel efficiency.

- New part, medium sized liquid rocket engine. Lower thrust & similar fuel efficiency as the standard liquid engine, but has a superior thrust/weight ratio.

-You can now safely use the RCS modules without killing the Kermans when you jettison it. I bumped up the crash tolerance so it can even survive falling from orbit.

-Put the retrorocket on top of your stages, just beneath a decoupler. Then when you want to separate stages, fire the retros, then the decoupler. This backs off the separating stage so it doesn't get blown up by your engines.

-The NTR engine is intended for use on upper stages, and is most useful in orbit. It's not great at getting off the ground because it's thrust/weight ratio is poor.

-The medium liquid engine is pretty self explanatory.

-The small fuel tank and retrorocket pack behave very strangely when two of them are adjacent. You'll see what I mean. I'm including them in the pack because they work OK so long as you keep them apart.

Full listing of v1.05 contents

*1 metre to 3 metre adapter

*3 metre to 1 metre adapter

*Aerodynamic nosecone

*3 metre decoupler

*1X3 metre to 5X1 metre coupler

*3 metre engine cluster

*Dual coupler, 2 versions

*Quad coupler

*Escape tower

*3 metre fuel tank

*Lateral coupler, 2 versions

*Medium liquid engine

*Medium solid motor

*NERVA engine

*RCS module

*Retrorocket module

*Small fuel tank

*Small solid motor

Get them all here:

http://www.multiupload.com/CDK90686JU

Please don't tell me 'hey the fuel tanks and retros blow up all the time,' believe me, I know . I've tried everything I can to stop them doing that, if someone knows a way to fix it, I'm all ears.

[Capt'n Skunky]

Without a doubt, the best mod pack out there!

Thanks Sunday, your shizzle rocks!

[Satellife]

Loving the small fuel tank- perfect for high altitude orbital maneuvers.

[Aralonia]

Minor suggestions:

You have 4x the fuel capacity of the normal solid in your larger solid boosters, for 2x the mass. Something's gotta give there.

At the same time, you have 3x the fuel capacity of the normal liquid tank in your super large size tank for 2.4x the mass.

Also, is there any way you could reduce the thrust of the escape tower stage while retaining its effectiveness? I understand that you're going to need a lot of thrust for at least a decent amount of time to get the capsule out of the way before it gets caught in an explosion, but somehow I feel giving the escape tower like 1.4x the thrust of the solid rocket booster seems excessive.

The 4x liquid thruster could also do with additional mass; while you have 3.3x the thrust, you have 2x the mass.

I like balance! Your parts look good, but somehow I feel that, compared with what we're given at base, they should fly about the same, too.

[Plaetoniu]

'At the same time, you have 3x the fuel capacity of the normal liquid tank in your super large size tank for 2.4x the mass.'

Not necessarily unrealistic - larger tanks are more mass efficient than multiple small tanks. Not sure how this compares to RL, but the improvement there is not huge. The others I agree are probably too good.

[Aralonia]

'At the same time, you have 3x the fuel capacity of the normal liquid tank in your super large size tank for 2.4x the mass.'

Not necessarily unrealistic - larger tanks are more mass efficient than multiple small tanks. Not sure how this compares to RL, but the improvement there is not huge.

Density remains constant as volume increases. I suppose I should be more looking at the fuel fraction as opposed to total mass, let's see...

1500 units of fuel for 5 units of mass for the large fuel tank versus 500 units of fuel for 2.2 units of mass. Correctly scaled, this means that the mass of the large fuel tank should be 7.6 units (as it weighs 1 unit of mass, dry).

[13:51] Number_Muncher: 'but somehow I feel giving the escape tower like 1.4x the thrust of the solid rocket booster seems excessive.' <= the Orion escape tower (which this should be based off, since we use SRBs as primary stages), did a 15G escape burn with the capsule

[13:51] Number_Muncher: this was because the Ares was an SRB, so you couldn't turn it off

[13:51] Aralonia: okay, 15G = 147 m/s^2

[13:52] Number_Muncher: meaning that the thrust divided by the mass of the capsule should be that

[13:52] Aralonia: command pod: 0.4 mass units; parachute: 0.3 mass units; escape tower = 0.05 mass units

[13:53] Aralonia: total mass: 0.75 mass units

[13:53] Aralonia: 147 = thrust / 0.75 -> 147 * 0.75 = thrust = 110.25

[Capt'n Skunky]

If you add a retro module to your stack and follow it with either SAS or DeCoupler, you can't add the other.

Example:

Retro -> SAS !> DeC

Retro -> DeC !> SAS

This is with 0.8.5 experimental release.

[Brigs]

By far the best modder so far, keep up the good work.

[Pablo49]

Retro rockets are greatly appreicated.

also, thanks for keeping the version number in the thread title. Nice being able to check for updates on a glance.

[Plaetoniu]

Density remains constant as volume increases.

It isn't a cylinder of pure fuel floating in space. The ratio of structural mass to actual fuel decreases. Consider the difference between 3x 330ml coke cans stacked on top of one another vs a single 1ltr bottle of coke. Which has more structural material?

That said, it doesn't justify anything like the first example of a 100% increase in fuel-to-mass ratio.

[Warringer]

Say... How different is your NERVA from my Nuclear Solid Core Engines?

[BurningSky93]

The FL-R25 Fuel tank (small orange one) is a bit... temperamental.

Only seems to be happy when connected directly to the command module, other wise it explodes violently even when sitting on the pad.

[Baker Easy]

Oh god that NERVA engine is smexy.

[ContiX]

I've had lots of problems trying to use the retrorocket in construction; quite often, parts won't attach to it or other parts...I can sometimes circumvent the problem by connecting the parts in a different order, but generally, if the retro is anywhere on my rocket, things don't work right...

EDIT: Also, it seems that if the retro touches the ground at all, even if I simply put a retro on the bottom of the command pod and don't launch it, it asplodes.

...actually, it seems to asplode no matter what, if it's the only thruster at all.

Further EDIT: Correction; if the rocket has only one stage, it blows up. Or at least falls apart. Also, the 3m-to-5m converter thing tends to 'Structurally fail' quite often. Not a complaint, actually, it's quite funny to watch four boosters tear right through the rest of my ship on the launchpad.

Ok, I can't seem to figure it out; I build a rocket, it launches fine, gets into space fine...I managed to get to 20,000k with 6 full tanks for my ion thrusters. I was impressed. Then I load up the rocket now, and despite being exactly the same rocket with no changes, the 3-to-5 converter fails every time.

[duke_luke_em]

Success!

It only took about 150 tries. Liftoff to about 40m/p or 250m rotate 180 degrees and fire the 2 retrorockets at about 130m. Timing and absolute precision in aligning the rocket is crucial.

The small fuel tank has some serious issue. If you stack some it blows up and when you try to remove them, it highlights parts above the mouse cursor and wont select the part. The 3 meter fuel tank and X3 metre to 5X1 metre coupler keeps falling of or blows up.

Keep up the awesomeness

[oniontrain]

I figured out the problem. There was some weird stuff going on with the collision meshes for the small tank and the retro causing it to flip out. Here's some fixed DAEs 'till Sunday Punch gets my message. Just copy these over the ones in your ksp/parts/retro pack and small fuel tank folder:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21315217/Retro%20pack.DAE

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21315217/small%20fuel%20tank.DAE

[Jouzu]

Minor suggestions:

You have 4x the fuel capacity of the normal solid in your larger solid boosters, for 2x the mass. Something's gotta give there.

At the same time, you have 3x the fuel capacity of the normal liquid tank in your super large size tank for 2.4x the mass.

Also, is there any way you could reduce the thrust of the escape tower stage while retaining its effectiveness? I understand that you're going to need a lot of thrust for at least a decent amount of time to get the capsule out of the way before it gets caught in an explosion, but somehow I feel giving the escape tower like 1.4x the thrust of the solid rocket booster seems excessive.

The 4x liquid thruster could also do with additional mass; while you have 3.3x the thrust, you have 2x the mass.

I like balance! Your parts look good, but somehow I feel that, compared with what we're given at base, they should fly about the same, too.

I approve of this man's message. I will have to mod at least the fuel tank to 7.6 weight units, otherwise it is cheating.

[titan]

Hmmm Escape tower you say?

[duke_luke_em]

Hmmm Escape tower you say?

That's hilarious.Its like an wild angry snake with an itch.

[Aralonia]

It isn't a cylinder of pure fuel floating in space. The ratio of structural mass to actual fuel decreases. Consider the difference between 3x 330ml coke cans stacked on top of one another vs a single 1ltr bottle of coke. Which has more structural material?

That said, it doesn't justify anything like the first example of a 100% increase in fuel-to-mass ratio.

MATHS TIME

The surface area of a cylinder 2 meters tall and 1 meter in diameter (about the same dimensions as the liquid fuel tank) is 7.854 square meters. This means that the material mass of the fuel tank itself is (about) 0.038 mass units per square meter.

The large fuel tank appears to be 5 to 6 meters tall (let's go with 5.5, I'm eyeballing it anyway, what the hell) and has been labeled as 3 meters in diameter. This gives a surface area of 66 square meters. Multiplied by the mass per square meter, we have... 2.508 mass units.

Crap.

BUT WAIT LET'S COMPARE VOLUMES! The volume of a cylinder 1 meter in diameter and 2 meters tall is 1.571 cubic meters, giving us that much volume for 500 liquid units of fuel. (I know the fuel tank doesn't take up the entire inside volume of the visible cylinder, but I'm going with what I can work with.) Also, the volume of a cylinder 3 meters in diameter and 5.5 meters tall is 38.9 cubic meters. Not bad! That means that we can fit about 24.76 times more fuel in the big tank, which gives us... 12380 liquid units of fuel, for 54.472 units of mass.

So, if we were going with physical size, this fuel tank should weigh something like 57 mass units.

But really, a simpler option is to just scale the objects appropriately by performance (change mass to 7.6 mass units, due to fuel being 2.2 mass units per 500 volume units) as opposed to physical size. Visual sometimes > gameplay, but in the interest of fairness, gameplay counts too.

oh no am I going to end up making a post for density of substances and scaling? eventually

EDIT: I would also like to note that I would totally not hate a far larger single nozzle (1 meter/standard width) with logical thrust and fuel consumption for use as a first-stage engine. Or maybe a cluster, Falcon style! Anything goes, I just need something visually different to be big and intimidating.

[nicholas482109]

I use this mod, obviously, but i have no idea what the tower is really for or what the retro pack does, can someone explain?

[innociv]

I think having them be perfectly balanced for mass vs. performance is better because it makes it harder to do the 'wrong' thing.

It also means you can make the rocket that looks how you want, instead of having to use the best performing parts so it flies right.

When they're perfectly ability, it's more truly about your design, and not your cherry picking the best parts.

I stopped using mod parts, most of the time, because they feel unfair in my quest for speed. The fun is there, but the challenge is not.

I hope they get some adjustment for balance before being added officially.

[feldopropane]

Please don't tell me 'hey the fuel tanks and retros blow up all the time,' believe me, I know . I've tried everything I can to stop them doing that, if someone knows a way to fix it, I'm all ears.

dont worry about it ! it would not be KSP if things would not blow up

thanks for the update sunday punch !

[Sunday Punch]

Thankfully that message is now redundant because there's a new version.

No new parts in this version but the collision issues are fixed for all the parts! This means small fuel tanks and RCS modules won't randomly explode, the centre node on the 5X1 coupler works properly, etc. THANK YOU oniontrain for helping track it down to a problem with exporting with the Collada format.

Look! It's not blowing up! Hooray!

Get 1.06:

http://www.multiupload.com/IVBHCQBO80

[feldopropane]

nice ill get 1.06