[1.2.2] B9 Aerospace | Release 6.2.1 (Old Thread)

[littlecheese999]

Im using a modded install, with quite a few mods, and i cant use the B9 Panels properly. They have connect points on the sides and the middle, the side ones work, but the ones in the middle dont, not matter what part i try attach them too. (There isnt another part blocking it) They dont even attach to them selves at the middle, just the sides im not really sure what to do :/

Using :

B9 5

Karbonite

BDArmory

NEAR

ExtraolantaryLaunchpads

Kerbin Side

KAS

Procidial Airships

Ship Manifest

and some other smaller mods

I've tried it on a stock install and it still doesnt work any help?

[K3-Chris]

Im using a modded install, with quite a few mods, and i cant use the B9 Panels properly. They have connect points on the sides and the middle, the side ones work, but the ones in the middle dont, not matter what part i try attach them too.

It's a limitation of how parts work in KSP, you can only connect 2 nodes to another part's node, try the stock 6 way hub and you'll see what I mean, you can only connect 2 opposite sides of it to a parent node, the 4 nodes pointing to the sides can't be used to mount the hub to a parent part, you can connect other parts to the 4 nodes and the spare top/bottom "main" nodes.

I think the panels come with commented out reversed nodes with the nodes on the center of the flat sides being top and bottom thus that you connect to a parent, perhaps we should include both node configurations as 2 alternatives? Hmm.

[Taverius]

The panels come with the primary nodes a size bigger, and that's as far as I'm going to go with them. Bug Squad to fix their awful node system.

[K3-Chris]

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Launching a fineprint mission satellite in a re-usable fashion, too bad you can't install new payload and re-fuel the same plane, I guess I'll have to pretend that's what happens each time I land back at KSC and recover it.

[Taverius]

http://imgur.com/a/kzkGd

Launching a fineprint mission satellite in a re-usable fashion, too bad you can't install new payload and re-fuel the same plane, I guess I'll have to pretend that's what happens each time I land back at KSC and recover it.

Yeah you can, just have to make yourself a loading gantry with IR and a refueling station with Karbonite/Kethane.

[Murph]

Launching a fineprint mission satellite in a re-usable fashion, too bad you can't install new payload and re-fuel the same plane, I guess I'll have to pretend that's what happens each time I land back at KSC and recover it.

To be honest, when you look at NASA's Shuttle operations, the recovery thing in KSP isn't too unrealistic. The extreme stresses on a space plane pretty much guarantee that there's never going to be a plane which just lands back at base, radios a fuel truck over, then moves on to the next mission. There's always going to be a major tech servicing aspect to them between missions, at least for the next century or so. So, to me, what we currently have in KSP meets or exceeds current criteria for reusable.

[K3-Chris]

Yeah you can, just have to make yourself a loading gantry with IR and a refueling station with Karbonite/Kethane.

Yeah but it would be more convenient if you could just roll your plane/rocket into the SPH/VAB as-is complete with spent fuel, current crew in the right seats etc and you can re-stock fuel, other consumables, attach a new payload etc and pay the difference, yeah I know that's basically the same as recovering the vessel and opening the saved version, but it doesn't feel the same, kerbals will have tracking of where they've been in .25, would be cool if vessels did as well, that'd require being able to actually re-use them like I described though.

To be honest, when you look at NASA's Shuttle operations, the recovery thing in KSP isn't too unrealistic. The extreme stresses on a space plane pretty much guarantee that there's never going to be a plane which just lands back at base, radios a fuel truck over, then moves on to the next mission. There's always going to be a major tech servicing aspect to them between missions, at least for the next century or so. So, to me, what we currently have in KSP meets or exceeds current criteria for reusable.

Well yeah, but it doesn't feel like the same plane anymore to me, with some realism mods you'd need to pay some to repair/restore damaged or simply used parts, like the engines, heat-shields or parts that take some heat damage during re-entry etc.

I know it's a very subjective thing but recovering a vessel and then launching the same saved craft file doesn't feel like using the same vessel to me.

And I think 90% or more of a SSTOSP could be re-usable, pretty sure NASA didn't strip the shuttle down completely between each flight, they inspected it and serviced the engines etc but not the whole thing. Pretty sure the dragon works like that as well, engines and heat-shield are the main points of fatigue/concern.

Edited September 13, 2014 by K3|Chris

[Taverius]

That's because NASA, not any real technical limitation. Government agencies, US ones particularly, are not a model to take about how to manage your budget.

[Ws60]

While your at it, check the S2 Wide body intake. It's not generating any intake air.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one with this issue. For whatever reason if I try to use the S2-W Intake version not only does it fail to work it appears to prevent any other intakes not directly attached to the engine(s) in question from working as well. Yet if I replace it with the S2-W solid variant, all else remaining the same, any other intakes that were previously non-functional where placed begin to work. Its sad really as I love the S2-W Intakes style and its theoretical output should be enough to keep even the largest of engines well fed without resorting to a forest of air intakes.

[Murph]

That's because NASA, not any real technical limitation. Government agencies, US ones particularly, are not a model to take about how to manage your budget.

I disagree. I was mainly thinking of engineering concerns, not government bureaucracy. If you were to design a real space plane which didn't need major tech servicing between missions, I think the weight penalty would be severe.

[K3-Chris]

It's a space plane!, redesigned it a bit, old design worked but it was pretty roll happy, and stock SAS couldn't deal with it, and I can't get MJ tweaked right atm, likes to over-correct and finally get you into a horrible spin, manually flew it most of the way to space and only 2 orange engines meant the acceleration was low enough that I'd need to spend a very long time manually flying the thing, so adjusted aerosurfaces to be less rolly and more chemical rocket thrust to get to space more sharpish.

Using a fuel cell that converts oxygen and hydrogen into water and power, it's like an RTG except it needs fuel to work and gives you water to drink, it's the universal storage modules in the front.

I disagree. I was mainly thinking of engineering concerns, not government bureaucracy. If you were to design a real space plane which didn't need major tech servicing between missions, I think the weight penalty would be severe.

Well the engines and any heat protection etc would obviously, but the overall plane? Don't think it would, needs some testing and inspections obviously to be sure metal fatigue etc isn't creeping in in but I think you could get a pretty reasonable turn-around speed, same way SpaceX does with their dragon capsules, they know roughly how many re-entries the heatshield can handle (5-6 I think) before they need to replace it, but they obviously inspect everything including tearing down the engines each time.

And those parts you know will need inspection/maintenance each flight could be designed to be somewhat easy to remove and replace and you have some in reserve, plane lands, remove engines, put on tested good ones, take your time to look over and service the used ones, have a clear indicator on the heat tiles if they're "spent" or not, replace ones too far gone.

Edited September 13, 2014 by K3|Chris

[Ws60]

To be honest, when you look at NASA's Shuttle operations, the recovery thing in KSP isn't too unrealistic. The extreme stresses on a space plane pretty much guarantee that there's never going to be a plane which just lands back at base, radios a fuel truck over, then moves on to the next mission. There's always going to be a major tech servicing aspect to them between missions, at least for the next century or so. So, to me, what we currently have in KSP meets or exceeds current criteria for reusable.

Economy of scale and tech maturity play heavily into that as its really no different than what modern commercial aircraft go through. The difference being that with modern aircraft we have a lot more practical experience regarding what does and does not work for a practical aircraft; along with a much larger economy of scale when it comes to spreading out research, maintenance and production costs. Now the shuttle was a white elephant, plain and simple, and never really delivered on what it was promised but many people forget it was also pretty much the first operational prototype for an entirely new type of vehicle and who's own origins date back to the late 60's. The fact that it delivered anything useful is nothing short of remarkable and on par with the original Write flyer being useful for more then a short hop.

That's because NASA, not any real technical limitation. Government agencies, US ones particularly, are not a model to take about how to manage your budget.

Government and private sector agencies are both tools in the same box, each have situations they are better suited for and one does not invalidate the other by mere existence. No more then a hammer invalidates a screwdriver. So an agency whose mandate is to perform pure science and initial research is not a case where the demand for profit at the end of each quarter at all costs is a good thing.

[Murph]

Well the engines and any heat protection etc would obviously, but the overall plane? Don't think it would, needs some testing and inspections obviously to be sure metal fatigue etc isn't creeping in in but I think you could get a pretty reasonable turn-around speed, same way SpaceX does with their dragon capsules, they know roughly how many re-entries the heatshield can handle (5-6 I think) before they need to replace it, but they obviously inspect everything including tearing down the engines each time.

And those parts you know will need inspection/maintenance each flight could be designed to be somewhat easy to remove and replace and you have some in reserve, plane lands, remove engines, put on tested good ones, take your time to look over and service the used ones, have a clear indicator on the heat tiles if they're "spent" or not, replace ones too far gone.

Yup, that's what I mean by "major tech servicing". It's major enough that I don't see it happening in the way that real atmospheric planes are serviced on the ramp, but always back in a major VAB/SPH type facility by people in lab coats rather than oily overalls. I'm not claiming that NASA's Shuttle methodology is the best or even current state of the art, that was mentioned just as an example. The time between missions does not necessarily need to be long, but I feel that it's always going to be a case of recovering used craft back to major tech base; where the various replaceable units can be swapped out, and safety inspections carried out in close to laboratory conditions.

[Taverius]

They didn't service the shuttle ... they pulled the damn thing apart into single components and rebuilt it every time. I find it hard to believe that's the only way to operate.

Anyway, that's hardly cogent.

You can have a craft in flight in KSP for game-years, in lots of different ways - hell just bring it back to LKO and refuel it by docking, and use it nonstop apart from that.

Why should I have to recover my SSTOs? That only makes sense if I also play with limited engine ignitions that cannot be reset in-flight and a host of other things.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Taverius

[sober667]

My engines starts activated not all only radial turbofans (both of them) its not normal?

[ModZero]

They didn't service the shuttle ... they pulled the damn thing apart into single components and rebuilt it every time. I find it hard to believe that's the only way to operate.

If I understand correctly, the hope with Skylon is that, being larger and/or lighter, it will have a lower reentry speed in the denser parts of the atmosphere, and thus they'll be able to get away with using less heat-resistant but also less fragile tiles. Also, the reuse count on a Skylon is quoted as "more than 200", which is both impressive and pretty sure less than on a 747.

Anyhow, look, a reactor!

It's still quite silly, also loses a tiny bit of mass because the liquid helium disappears (imagine "evaporates"), though that would make sense, I guess. Of course this makes it clearly weaker than RTGs (it currently has approximately 1377 Earth days of fuel on board, which may or may not be enough) - I guess this would be best balanced by nerfing and/or adding radioactive decay to RTGs (which would be a plugin, but I'm scared of what I imagine the debugging procedure on KSP would be, loading times are terrible enough when I'm messing with configs).

EDIT: oh, and the source of the ratios is FTT's reactor, which is RoverDude's authority as a nuclear engineer, which I hope is unquestionable.

[K3-Chris]

My engines starts activated not all only radial turbofans (both of them) its not normal?

I don't understand you, please try again.

[nli2work]

My engines starts activated not all only radial turbofans (both of them) its not normal?

you have KSPI? KSPI + Engines using FSpropellerSpinner are automatically activated on launch. not related to B9. not sure if there's fix.

[Hurry- Starfish!]

I have updated the front page FAQ, adding explanations on why we have replaced the stock jet engine configs, why we don't respect "stock balance" as the baseline, and why we are using realistic values while adding nonsensical sci-fi parts at the same time.

The current balance is there to stay. We can't please everyone, and the currently used values make the most sense to us.

Sorry, I wasn't actually planning to continue this discussion, but I've now read the FAQ update you mentioned and it states the following:

• Q: Why aren't stock jets giving me 2500m/s top speed like they used to?

Because stock jet engine configs are completely unrealistic, so they were reworked to match real-life turbojet performance. No, turbojets don't ever go to Mach 7. No, you can't call it a ram jet, they don't go that fast either (and don't go that slow either). No, you can't call it a Scimitar precooled engine, even that futuristic concept never gets above mach 5.5. [...]

I'm assuming that "2500m/s" and "Mach 7" aren't sarcastic exaggerations here, since you mention Mach 5.5 as a more or less realistic reference value. So now I am confused. Mach 5.5 corresponds to about 1800m/s and this value is in fact what NEAR caps the stock TurboJet's top speed to via velocity curve. FAR does the same. Given that you've stated this mod only supports NEAR/FAR installations now, might I ask where you're getting the 2500m/s from? I'm no modder, so this might just be me misinterpreting the configs, but then again as a NEAR user I've never been able to get any of my spaceplanes to go above 17**m/s on jet engine power. What am I missing here? How would one achieve Mach 7 with stock jet engines?

[ferram4]

By using them with the stock model, where they top off at that speed. FAR and NEAR make half-hearted nerfs to the velocity curves because reaching orbit on jets is stupid, but I didn't want to deal with the hell that would come from taking away the magical toys that everyone had gotten used to.

[Taverius]

Stock vCurve:

velocityCurve
{
    key = 0 0.5 0 0
    key = 1000 1 0 0
    key = 2000 0.5 0 0
    key = 2400 0 0 0
}

That's the stock curve.

At about mach 6 (at 20-ish k alt) you still have 50% power. 6.5 is trivial, since the tangents are flat.

---

FAR's vCurve:

velocityCurve
{
    key = 0 0.5 0 0
    key = 1000 1 0 0
    key = 2000 0.5 0 0
    key = 2400 0 0 0
}

Its the right shape, but its too lenient on the overspeed protection side.

---

Ours:

velocityCurve
{
    key = 0    0.56  0        -0.0005
    key = 200  0.52  0         0
    key = 600  0.7   0.0013    0.0013
    key = 950  1     0         0
    key = 1090 0    -0.017765  0
}

If you're hoping to argue us into changing it, give up, its not happening. What you get out of the stock turbojets with our curve is still something 100m/s more than the SR-71's airspeed record. Its staying as it is.

[K3-Chris]

I know it's a bit of a surprise on players used to magic stock jets, but B9 is about realistic airplanes, strapping stock turbojets to a B9 plane invalidates our efforts at balancing B9, yeah we might need to tweak what engines are on what nodes and perhaps add a ram/scramjet to fill that hypersonic void, but the basic premise of balancing the jet engines to make all of them useful for something isn't something people can argue with I'd think, stock turbojets without the B9 tweaks is just better than all other jets at pretty much everything, that isn't fun, that's boring, if stock had a rocket engine the weight of an ant, with the thrust of a mainsail and ISP of a NERVA that isn't fun, just makes all other engines pointless.

Problem is that stock only has 2 jets and they're not really separated by what they're used for, turbojet is simply better but on a higher tech node and more expensive, basic is only a bit more fuel efficient very near the ground.

B9 has several jet engines that are designed to be optimal for very different speeds and heights, but that's pointless if the stock turbojet just is universally good at everything.

[The Pink Ranger]

Presumably because OpenGL mode takes you below the 32bit process limit.

You mean it's only more stable because it's running within 32 bit constraints? As in there's no benefit so may as well go back to 32 bit?

[K3-Chris]

You mean it's only more stable because it's running within 32 bit constraints? As in there's no benefit so may as well go back to 32 bit?

Unityx64/KSPx64 on windows loads x32 stuff for some people and limits the process on the whole to 3.xGB same as x86.

[Tyren]

@Taverius: Thanks for the config explanation a few pages back to my engine plume problem...it seems to work now, didnt test all engines yet.