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LT-2 Landing strut weakness


E. F. Kranz

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Don\'t get me wrong, I\'m happy to have it!

But this is an ongoing problem that really isn\'t specific to the LT-2. ALL landing legs seem to suffer from the same weakness - the point of attachment.

They act like they\'re attached with drywall screws and duct tape.

Struts, you say? That\'s all well and good, except you can\'t attach one leg to another. And of course then there\'s the whole 'the VAB ate my struts and I didn\'t notice until I got to the Mun' thing.

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Struts, you say? That\'s all well and good, except you can\'t attach one leg to another. And of course then there\'s the whole 'the VAB ate my struts and I didn\'t notice until I got to the Mun' thing.

You lose struts in the VAB and still make it to the Mun? You\'re doing it wrong!

It should explode on loading if even one strut goes missing!

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So true sjwt. Although, sometimes the struts only effectg particular stages. For example, my lunar rocket, the third stage has some SRB\'s on it. If they arent strutted together, the entire rocket will start to oscillate back and forth to the point where it will eject the srbs and start into a death spiral. However, notghing goes wrong on the earlier stages without those struts.

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You lose struts in the VAB and still make it to the Mun? You\'re doing it wrong!

It should explode on loading if even one strut goes missing!

I\'m an engineer. I\'m guilty of overdesigning my crafts. That\'s probably why I\'m irritated when a 'landing strut' can\'t hold up to 2m/s ground contact.

My latest monstrosity, the HoveRover is a dual-lander design with fuel for days:

33zbtdc.jpg

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Whats got me, is not that lander legs break, nor the speed they do it at, its that they are 100% explosive! even if they come off sliding down a hill at 0.5m/s. What do those Kerbals make them out of, nitroglycerin?

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We\'re sort of running into a limitation of KSP here; No matter how high you crank up the attachment strength, its still dictated by the engine somewhat, and is affected by a part\'s mass; So when you have a light part supporting a heavy part (or group of parts) the mass difference in them can make the connection weaker.

One could make the legs heavier of course, but that doesn\'t seem like a good idea for parts you\'re lofting to the Mun.

The stock leg was indeed a bit weak by default even in the config, I had turned it up at one point when I was using it a lot. I haven\'t specifically tested the NP legs under such heavy weights, I\'ll make a note to look at those during the next update.

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But this is an ongoing problem that really isn\'t specific to the LT-2. ALL landing legs seem to suffer from the same weakness - the point of attachment.

They act like they\'re attached with drywall screws and duct tape.

Your complaint is irrelevant. They are, in fact, attached with drywall screws and duct tape. They were on sale at the local hardware store.

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