Space Shuttles made Easy with Kerbal Engineer!

[GusTurbo]

Recently, Kerbal Engineer added a torque display to its already very useful VAB/SPH display. I discovered that this torque display can be very helpful in conquering one of KSP's greatest challenge: creating a NASA-style Space Shuttle. The biggest challenge with the Shuttle is that it can be hard to line up the center of thrust with the center of mass and keep them aligned throughout the flight. With the stock tools, you can get some idea of how it will fly by trying to line up the CoM and CoT overlays, but it's really imprecise.

I've created a mini-tutorial showing how to use this torque display to your advantage to get your shuttle to fly correctly!

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Let me know if you have any questions or points I can clarify!

Link to Kerbal Engineer:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/18230-0-25-0-90-Kerbal-Engineer-Redux-v0-6-2-12%280-25%29-and-v1-0-14-1%280-90%29

Edited February 6, 2015 by GusTurbo

[Woopert]

Copied from the WIP thread just so people can see it, if they need to.

That's a cool feature! I always use Kerbal Engineer; it's a necessity for building predictable craft in my opinion. I notice that the SRB's on the Space Shuttle are moved in towards the Orbiter. Was this intentional? I believe the real Space Shuttle did this as well, so props for making it like that.

[GusTurbo]

It wasn't intentional from an aesthetic point of view, actually. I used offset to move the boosters in an attempt to reduce torque, and that position helped keep torque down.

[Slam_Jones]

Okay, so I sort of understand, but I do have a question: what is the ideal amount of torque? Judging by the progression of pics, we want a low amount of torque. If the torque is 0, does that mean it's perfect?

[GusTurbo]

I would say yes, 0 torque is ideal, because it means the force is acting in a straight line with no offset. As a disclaimer, I will say that this is merely based on my experimentation, and I don't know about the inner workings of KER.

[Slam_Jones]

Cool, good to know. I've been using KER and had noticed the "Torque" line, but just ignored it til now.

Thanks!

[GusTurbo]

As inigma pointed out in the reddit post I made on this (http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/2v1et7/space_shuttles_made_easy_with_kerbal_engineer/), the torque numbers only measure the stage at the beginning, so the torque will change as the fuel is used up. In my example shuttle, the torque right before booster separation gets pretty high, but can be overcome with the use of RCS and vernors until the boosters drop and torque returns to a manageable level. Torque also increases later when you're flying just with the external tank but you can just throttle down to keep that under control.

[LABHOUSE]

Time to update it I guess!

Now to wait for .90 so the wings are bigger...

[Tank Buddy]

I found that RCS Build Aid also has similar functionality that works pretty much the same. I never thought of using KE for that.

[Specialist290]

Ooh, this looks handy. One for the Drawing Board