Realism Overhaul Discussion Thread

[itsthatguy]

UPDATE!!!!: For some reason it worked after I tried it for about the 10th time, so no halp needed!

Ok, so downloaded everything via ckan and it worked fine, but I noticed I didn't have engine igniter for some reason. Naturally, I went and downloaded it, but it didn't work with any of the engines. I figured I must've accidentally de selected it when selecting the recommended mods, and it would only work with the engines from realism overhaul if I downloaded that way or something like that.

So I deleted that version of the game and ckan, and I started from scratch. I noticed engine igniter in fact wasn't on the list, so I figured it just wouldn't work with the engines from the pack, and dismissed it. I re did everything and it was all going fine, until I got about 5 error messages in a row saying something about "unable to download". Then, the download stopped and it hadn't installed anything. I've tried multiple times, but the same thing happens.

HALP ME (what is this, the 3rd time I've needed help? lol)

Edited December 6, 2014 by itsthatguy
Problem Solved

[TeeGee]

Balloon tanks are the opposite of pressurized, they don't even have a rigid structure Pressurized tanks are rigid, plus they have additional tanks of gas (usually helium) that is used to fill up the vacuum left by used-up fuel, and thus keep the rest of fuel under pressure. This makes them heavier, but allows for pressure-fed engines, which are much more reliable in weightless conditions than other engine types.

As far as Procedural Parts are concerned, only tanks set as service module are pressurized. Other than that, appropriate tanks from mods are defined to be pressurized as well, e.g. the Apollo Service Module from the FASA mod is a pressurized tank.

Awesome thanks for the reply!

[Hattivat]

Awesome thanks for the reply!

No wait, the balloon tank would collapse if it wasn't pressurized, so it must be pressurized. Oh dear, that was a brain fart on my part, sorry about that.

I was pretty sure that you can't attach a pressure-fed tank to a balloon tank and have it work just a few minutes ago, but I'm not so sure now. Logically it should work. Guess you'll have to wait for someone more knowledgeable than me to explain this beyond any doubt.

[EDIT:] Researched it, and it's like this:

Balloon tanks are pressurized to keep them from collapsing, but this pressure is not enough to feed the engine. So although balloon tanks are technically "pressurized", you do need a Service Module tank in order to feed a pressure-fed engine.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Hattivat

[NathanKell]

It's not just that--*all* propellant tanks are pressurized. Ullage would work less well, and pump-fed engines' pumps would have to work much harder, were that not the case. See the iconic spheres next to the J-2 engine on pictures of the S-IVB? Pressurant. (IIRC)

(Thus all tanks are pressure vessels and thus tank dry mass scales with volume, not surface area, incidentally.)

What's different about the tanks used for pressure-fed engines is that they're *highly* pressurized. To do that, you need very strong walls, and that's where the extra mass comes in. Solid rocket motors are the ultimate example of this: their entire structure is a combustion chamber of very high pressure, so they need incredibly strong walls.

What's different about balloon tanks is that their walls are so thin that they will collapse if they are ever under no pressure at all.

[thyriel]

Can the Mercury-Redstone 3 flight be reproduced with RO (suborbital flight, 187km apoapsis, 500km distance between starting and landing only) ?

I tried a couple of times now, and it seems deadly reentry is preventing this very effectively. Lowest G-force during descent i had was 23G, which is "slightly" too much for Jeb and even Bill.

[NathanKell]

Hmm. I know that in real life the descent G max was 11 on the suborbitals. When you splash down, is it a 500km ground track? Do you do retrofire slightly after apogee, at the fire attitude? Are you using the Mk1 pod (with what chute(s)?), or the FASA Mercury with the parachute and cap?

[thyriel]

Firing the small solids under the Mercury pod retrograde did the trick i was missing thanks (wondered all the time what they really where for ^^)

Built it with FASA parts like the original:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/539634458020889117/20038A3E43020CB8DCA1DA1E5714A6BBC9F042D4/

Flightpath (425km distance according to log later) - http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/539634458020916075/938F896D8E2654B339D2F9FF3A9BC33628D843E1/

Missionlog, 9.2G now (even a bit too low lol) - http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/539634458020950454/CF19C8C552C1FBE43AF212C3C718AE78AF21CA2A/

[Robotengineer]

Does anybody have a list of interplanetary transfer phase angles for RSS?

[Fizwalker]

Wewt! First kerballed orbit of Terra! Bob, Frank and Edfal Kerman are now national heroes!

[NathanKell]

thyriel: glad it works! 425km is a good bit short, my guess is if you go the full 500km after retro-fire you'll be right about 11G.

Robotengineer: Yes, NASA does.

(Seriously, you can use genuine mission planning software with RSS, because the orbits aren't made up. )

[Blipser]

I made a Ariane 5 ECA which is as good as I can get it to the real specification but im finding it really hard to get to orbit even with light (sub 5 tonne) payloads im struggling to get into orbit with the very low TWRs before falling back into the atmosphere, and I can only do far too steep assents because it has an initial TWR of 1.8 (once the boosters sep. after 1m 32s its 0.7, and the second stage at 9m is 0.27). Ive tried looking for information on the ascent profile for it, but all I can find is that it reaches approximately 250km before the short drop on the HM-7B burn. Does anyone have any info on how to launch it, or how to launch rockets with strange TWR combos in general?

[Hattivat]

I just saw one launch today (on streaming of course, not in person), and one thing I can tell you for sure is that the drop is quite large, it fell all the way to something like 140 km before climbing back up to GTO.

[Robotengineer]

Robotengineer: Yes, NASA does.

(Seriously, you can use genuine mission planning software with RSS, because the orbits aren't made up. )

Is gmat the correct software to use?

--Edit--

After spending a couple hours trying to build gmat, and failing, are there any alternatives?

Edited December 7, 2014 by Robotengineer

[thyriel]

I made a Ariane 5 ECA which is as good as I can get it to the real specification but im finding it really hard to get to orbit even with light (sub 5 tonne) payloads im struggling to get into orbit with the very low TWRs before falling back into the atmosphere, and I can only do far too steep assents because it has an initial TWR of 1.8 (once the boosters sep. after 1m 32s its 0.7, and the second stage at 9m is 0.27). Ive tried looking for information on the ascent profile for it, but all I can find is that it reaches approximately 250km before the short drop on the HM-7B burn. Does anyone have any info on how to launch it, or how to launch rockets with strange TWR combos in general?

See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99966-0-25-0-Realism-Overhaul-7-0-2-22-Nov-2014/page38

and following pages. There seems to be some problem with deadly reentry making ascents harder then they should be, especially for real life rockets that have high TWR.

[Blipser]

See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99966-0-25-0-Realism-Overhaul-7-0-2-22-Nov-2014/page38

and following pages. There seems to be some problem with deadly reentry making ascents harder then they should be, especially for real life rockets that have high TWR.

Ahhh, that'll explain my Titan IV launch failures too. I've dropped the DRE multiplier and things are looking a lot more promising now as im able to get some horizontal speed whit the SRMs. When I'm done is this thread the place to post RSS crafts right now? Or should I just put it in the spacecraft exchange?

[icecreamberni]

Every time I start a save there is just the Background. No KSC or anything. The only thing i can do is rotating the camera.I am using Linux 64-Bit.

[Felger]

Every time I start a save there is just the Background. No KSC or anything. The only thing i can do is rotating the camera.I am using Linux 64-Bit.

That's a bit odd. Have you tried re-installing the mods? Sounds like perhaps you've forgotten to install the RSS textures, try installing via CKAN - it'll install everything correctly.

[icecreamberni]

I installed it via CKAN. I also tried reinstalling.

[NathanKell]

icecramberni: Welcome to the forums!

In order to get you the help you need, can you follow the guidelines in this sticky? Thanks!

[thyriel]

Ahhh, that'll explain my Titan IV launch failures too. I've dropped the DRE multiplier and things are looking a lot more promising now as im able to get some horizontal speed whit the SRMs. When I'm done is this thread the place to post RSS crafts right now? Or should I just put it in the spacecraft exchange?

Another thing you could try i didn't saw before myself, in the DRE thread is a cfg file for RSS that is not installed via CKAN. When i used that config file now even a TWR of 1.8 (1600m/s @47km) was surviveable.

[Felger]

Another thing you could try i didn't saw before myself, in the DRE thread is a cfg file for RSS that is not installed via CKAN. When i used that config file now even a TWR of 1.8 (1600m/s @47km) was surviveable.

Good catch, we'll have to get that installing right via CKAN.

[Fizwalker]

Another thing you could try i didn't saw before myself, in the DRE thread is a cfg file for RSS that is not installed via CKAN. When i used that config file now even a TWR of 1.8 (1600m/s @47km) was surviveable.

Is that cfg in the OP of the DRE thread, and is it new?

[thyriel]

Is that cfg in the OP of the DRE thread, and is it new?

From http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54954-0-25-Deadly-Reentry-v6-3-2-Beta!-Nov-25-2014

last point of the FAQ spoiler.

[Sethur]

Hey fellow RO-players, since I spent a few hours now trying to get this to work, I thought I'll try my luck with the forum: I'm currently attempting to rebuilt the FASA Saturn V with all required and recommended RO mods installed, but the order of modules around the CSM is very much different from the stock FASA Saturn V and I can't seem to figure out how to do this.

In Stock, the assembled LM is only (via a small decoupler) attached to the FairingPlateApollo375m, but this part does not exist in RO, instead you seem to need two parts, a Lunar Module Adapter Base and (below that) a Gemini 260" Payload Fairing (or similar). The problem is that there never seem to be enough nodes to attach everything correctly without the LM clipping into the CSM engine on top of it.

Could somebody tell me the correct order of parts here? Or even better, point me to a finished craft file working in RO?

[Yaivenov]

Unsure about the protocol for this sort of suggestion, but the guy who did the GPS mod has basically put it out there to be picked up and integrated into other mods. I've been playing with it in RSS/RO and it seemed like it'd be a good fit.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/24646-0-25-Figaro-Global-Navigation-Satellite-System-Launch-a-Working-GPS-System