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

[ayana]

Extraplanetary Launchpads is making HX ships much more interesting. Building a titanic station to hold the million rocket parts I'll need, it's probably going to rival any ships it'll end up constructing. I'm probably inviting the kraken and sending my framerate down to the single digits.

[Virtualgenius]

Really love the new release, I dont like the the dependency on FAR or Near tried using both just dont do well with it installed. I take it I can use it with out if I dont ask for support, what was the reasoning for abandoning the stock aerodynamics as I am sure I am not the only one that has never used or wanted to use either of the dependencies as they just dont interest me. Please dont take offfense as you have my highest respect for the amount of work put into this, i have just returned from 2 months OS with work and didnt really want to read 100 pages so i apologize if its already been covered.

VG

[BudgetHedgehog]

what was the reasoning for abandoning the stock aerodynamics as I am sure I am not the only one that has never used or wanted to use either of the dependencies as they just dont interest me.

From memory, something like: B9 is dedicated towards spaceplanes and fairly balanced/realistic parts. Kerbins stock souposphere is neither. Also, from the OP FAQ - "balancing anything against awful stock "aerodynamics" amounts to torture with some designs".

[W1ntermute]

Thanks for this, I find this version really stabilizes memory usage. To explain, after loading KSP with any version of B9 (right up to 5.2.2) it would start on roughly 5.3Gb Ram and expands to around 6.5 - 7Gb over extended play. This version, however, loads me on 6.1 - 6.3Gb of Ram at game start and stays roughly around there rather than fluctuates up and down. It also cuts up to 30 seconds off from the initial mod load-up before the game starts. This is also on x64 version of KSP btw

[DanTheGamer11]

Any plans for anything faster than the sabre engines(scram since sabre(ram) is close to m6)? Got to 3.17 and 5.7 with the 2d vectoring engine and the sabre smalls > FAR mod is cool, nothing like Kerbals with no hope

[Sufficient Anonymity]

Ok...weird bug,

But my textures for the HX parts are all screwy....it's like some one uv mapped them wrong...any thoughts?

I'm getting some weird translucency on HX as well. Tidus, you ever work out if it was a particular mod interfering?

[Tidus Klein]

No when I downloaded the new version it cleared it right up... I was just getting missmatched textures almost like an urban camo effect, not transparancy, uninstall b9 then reinstall see if that helps if not redownload, hope that helps

[Sufficient Anonymity]

No when I downloaded the new version it cleared it right up... I was just getting missmatched textures almost like an urban camo effect, not transparancy, uninstall b9 then reinstall see if that helps if not redownload, hope that helps

Ah okay, will give a wipe/reinstall a go. Will have to wait a few days; away from my place and fibreoptic :/

[Taverius]

Any plans for anything faster than the sabre engines(scram since sabre(ram) is close to m6)? Got to 3.17 and 5.7 with the 2d vectoring engine and the sabre smalls > FAR mod is cool, nothing like Kerbals with no hope

None whatsoever, for a number of reasons:

1. All SCRamjet research is top-secret, nobody has idea about the true stats except a very few things that can be gleaned from what we've seen of the tests, these being:
   
2. You build the plane around the engine, not the other way around.
   
3. The thrust is too low, fuel usage too high to use in SSTOs, so they're only really useful for low-payload surface-to-surface applications.
   
4. The /minimum/ velocity at which they work is (quite a bit) higher than Kerbin's orbital speed. By the time you're going fast enough to light them, you're in orbit already.
   

Anyway who tells you he's working on scrams does not understand what he's talking about.

Well, unless you assume what little we've seen was all misdirection and the governments actually have awesome scrams that do everything including make coffee & fries and we just cant see them - but you can argue for anything if you're willing to put up with such silliness.

[ayana]

Can anyone explain how the resource switching works? I want to add electric charge to some of the S2 parts to get inline batteries. So far it hasn't worked at all.

[Taverius]

You probably want the Firespitter docs

[DanTheGamer11]

None whatsoever, for a number of reasons:

1. All SCRamjet research is top-secret, nobody has idea about the true stats except a very few things that can be gleaned from what we've seen of the tests, these being:
   
2. You build the plane around the engine, not the other way around.
   
3. The thrust is too low, fuel usage too high to use in SSTOs, so they're only really useful for low-payload surface-to-surface applications.
   
4. The /minimum/ velocity at which they work is (quite a bit) higher than Kerbin's orbital speed. By the time you're going fast enough to light them, you're in orbit already.
   

Anyway who tells you he's working on scrams does not understand what he's talking about.

Well, unless you assume what little we've seen was all misdirection and the governments actually have awesome scrams that do everything including make coffee & fries and we just cant see them - but you can argue for anything if you're willing to put up with such silliness.

Well to be honest I think the HX parts are a tad more far cry than a scram jet But whatever, I didn't know this was space sim and not KSP

[Taverius]

Well to be honest I think the HX parts are a tad more far cry than a scram jet

Nah.

1 Upscaled Mainsail

1 Upscaled LV-N

Both using the same exponents Squad uses, and with a mass penalty on top of the combined mass.

There's just a lot of technobabble description, and the extra mass of the upscaled LV-N is split into the generator so you can go conventional-only, but the numbers are boring like baby food.

[K3-Chris]

Hopefully KSPi/NFP makes MM patches for the HX to make it more "interesting" but yeah it's just a fancy model on top of pretty hum-drum numbers, more efficient weight wise to use mainsails and LV-Ns instead, if not part-count wise, same as the sabre is similar to turbojet + rocket engine.

[DanTheGamer11]

Nah.

1 Upscaled Mainsail

1 Upscaled LV-N

Both using the same exponents Squad uses, and with a mass penalty on top of the combined mass.

There's just a lot of technobabble description, and the extra mass of the upscaled LV-N is split into the generator so you can go conventional-only, but the numbers are boring like baby food.

Right, but is this in development like SCRAMs or not irl?

[K3-Chris]

Mainsail is just a chemical rocket same as we've had forever and ever, LV-N is a NERVA which NASA proposed putting on the Saturn 5 as an upper stage, NERVAs haven't flown in space to my knowledge but they're well tested on the ground and a proven concept.

Reason they haven't been used in reality I think is that we kinda abandoned long range space-travel after Apollo and the whole nuclear material in space thing.

The HX has sci-fi styling and flavor text, but it's actually just a chemical rocket and thermal rocket in one package, strictly speaking it doesn't even need to be some fancy hybrid between the two, can be two or more completely or partially separate engines in the same external housing.

[DanTheGamer11]

Right, but is there a real life example of it the HX part? SCRAMs are somewhat tested and proven too(also real life examples), just needs more research.

[dzikakulka]

If we're into ramjet/scramjet discussion, if anyone tried to make up one (from whatever model, could be from B9) please post config cause it's really hard for me to balance it out. Ofc not around any real parameters, just so it would fit KSP gameplay and fill hypersonic niche.

[Taverius]

If we're into ramjet/scramjet discussion, if anyone tried to make up one (from whatever model, could be from B9) please post config cause it's really hard for me to balance it out. Ofc not around any real parameters, just so it would fit KSP gameplay and fill hypersonic niche.

Its easy - a scramjet produces 0 thrust until you're going mach 8, and peaks at about mach 20. So they'll start producing thrust when you're about 30km outside kerbin's atmosphere. The TWR is about 2 orders of magnitude less than the turbojet, and the fuel consumption about 2 higher.

Right, but is this in development like SCRAMs or not irl?

The 1960s are waving at you, and want their tech back. Its just packages in a funky-looking mesh, but its the same old .... Von Braun and crew were working on back then. Its all been made, tested, fired, and in the case of the close-cycle mode, flown thousands of times.

Don't be an child, SCRamjets are useless in KSP (and real life, it looks like) unless you make them magical friendship-powered unicorn-riding engines, and badgering us over and over won't change that reality.

If you want magical engines that work like a fairytale, this ain't the mod for you.

Edited September 28, 2014 by Taverius

[K3-Chris]

Right, but is there a real life example of it the HX part? SCRAMs are somewhat tested and proven too(also real life examples), just needs more research.

The part itself? No obviously not, the engines inside? Yes, plenty. NERVAs are a very feasible technology that has been tested successfully, there is plenty of data on them from NASA.

B9 doesn't want to bundle yet another plugin which is why we didn't do anything too fancy with the HX, as said I'm hoping NFP/KSPi at some point MM's in more fancy mechanics for it, if not I could probably do it by scaling some already existing KSPi/NFP parts's specs keeping it in-balance.

But the part as it stands is pretty sensible already, if a bit simplistic, and we're using electricity from the reactor to power the NERVA mode instead of a more realistic heat, but the stock game doesn't have any thermal energy resource.

Edited September 28, 2014 by K3|Chris

[Tex_NL]

You probably want the Firespitter docs

This is EXACTLY the answer I was hoping for when I asked nearly the same question a week ago.

Funny how you give this answer now and last week you said I had to use ModularFuelTanks.

[DanTheGamer11]

Its easy - a scramjet produces 0 thrust until you're going mach 8, and peaks at about mach 20. So they'll start producing thrust when you're about 30km outside kerbin's atmosphere. The TWR is about 2 orders of magnitude less than the turbojet, and the fuel consumption about 2 higher.

The 1960s are waving at you, and want their tech back. Its just packages in a funky-looking mesh, but its the same old .... Von Braun and crew were working on back then. Its all been made, tested, fired, and in the case of the close-cycle mode, flown thousands of times.

Don't be an child, SCRamjets are useless in KSP (and real life, it looks like) unless you make them magical friendship-powered unicorn-riding engines, and badgering us over and over won't change that reality.

If you want magical engines that work like a fairytale, this ain't the mod for you.

If it's useless then why do space/defense agencies continue research? Do you think that going faster whilst air breathing is a bad thing?

Calling people a child doesn't make your point any more valid. I guess if I want "magical engines" I'll just look at real life

@K3|Chris , I know the tech is there, but that doesn't mean a product is feasible yet.

Edited September 28, 2014 by DanTheGamer11

[K3-Chris]

If it's useless then why do space/defense agencies continue research? Do you think that going faster whilst air breathing is a bad thing?P

Most projects on the topic have been canned or scaled back, and yes it's a bad thing at some point, the speed means you need to slow down the intake air which compresses it which makes it very hot, that's the primary problem with SCRAMJets, since heat tolerance pretty much scales with weight at some point you have reached a point where using a rocket engine with oxidizer onboard is lighter even if you need more fuel.

Calling people a child doesn't make your point any more valid. I guess if I want "magical engines" I'll just look at real life

I apologize on his behalf, he didn't specifically aim that at you, but we've had a ton of requests for unrealistic air breathing engines like the stock turbojet and Taverius is keen on realism, he's getting tired of people asking us for engines that gets you from the ground and to space on near no fuel needed, only situation a air breathing engine that performs at higher speeds than the turbojets would be interesting would be ramjets, but they have limited utility, they're only good for flying very fast in the atmosphere, you need something else to get you up to altitude and speed, and the added mass makes them pretty pointless on SSTOs since they need chemical engines anyway once in space, adding a tiny bit of fuel extra to kick you from turbojets to space is lighter than adding a second kind of jet engine to do it.

I think the problem is that people have gotten used to the stock turbojets that get you from the tarmac to space in no time at all with ease, in a completely unrealistic fashion, we don't think that's fun, because it removes all challenge and makes having different jet engines with different optimal uses pointless, problem is that stock only has 2 jets and they're not really for different uses, just different levels of tech in the tree, turbojet is better than the basic jet in pretty much every way, it's a bit heavier but it also has a lot more thrust, no real reason to use the basic jet once you get the turbojet, and in reality there isn't a flat out better jet engine, they're optimized for different uses.

Edited September 28, 2014 by K3|Chris

[Taverius]

This is EXACTLY the answer I was hoping for when I asked nearly the same question a week ago.

Funny how you give this answer now and last week you said I had to use ModularFuelTanks.

Because you're shooting yourself in the foot. FSfuelSwitch does not lend itself to being edited via MM, unless you're a grandmaster of MM 2.4.x variable references and regular expressions.

Use MFT, and it will already be done for you.

Or, y'know, enjoy reinventing the wheel and maintaining stuff like this:

eChargeAmount = #$resourceAmounts[2,;]$
@eChargeAmount *= 60
@resourceNames ^= :$:ElectricCharge:
@resourceAmounts = #$resourceAmounts[0,;]$; $resourceAmounts[1,;]$; $resourceAmounts[2,;]$; $eChargeAmount$
eChargeMass = #$eChargeAmount$
@eChargeMass *= 0.162
@tankMass = #$tankMass[0,;]$; $tankMass[1,;]; $tankMass[2,;]; $eChargeMass$
@tankCost = #$tankCost[0,;]$; $tankCost[1,;]; $tankCost[2,;]; $eChargeAmount$

Edited September 28, 2014 by Taverius

[dzikakulka]

@Taverius

From what I've read (mostly on Wikipedia), scramjet test we're performed around much much lower speeds:

The X-51A was carried aboard a B-52, accelerated to Mach 4.5 via a solid rocket booster, and then ignited the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne scramjet engine to reach Mach 5 at 70,000 feet.

I've thought about duct taping ramjet and scramjet configs to some models for my main playthrough and thought it would be reasonable to have Mach 2-4 "ramjet" (cite - Ramjets work most efficiently at supersonic speeds around Mach 3) and Mach 4-7 "scramjet" with intentional gap between the two so it wouldn't be like 'strap few of both and attach SRB for 2.5km/s'.

I know that name is going to be only realistic part of the engine but I think there is still some niche in KSP for things like that.

Edited September 28, 2014 by dzikakulka