search

raveloda / Coatl-Aerospace

KSP Mod Repository
26 stars 22 forks source link

Landvermesser got no attitude thrusters (Surveyor had them) #80

Closed Gordon-Dry closed 3 years ago

Gordon-Dry commented 4 years ago

I just checked some tech specs for the Surveyor and it's clear: Surveyor landers got Nitrogen thrusters for attitude. Quote:

Nitrogen gas jets provided attitude control when the engines were off.

These attitude control jets have been near the foot pads at the landing legs. See page 2 of https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/NASA-SP-184.pdf

As stock KSP is not capable of using the 3 vernier engines for attitude control (as the mod ThrottleControlledAvionics would provide) these Nitrogen attitude thrusters should be added to the ca_landv_core as built-in stock MonoPropellant RCS thrusters.

I'm not sure if KSP is capable of having RCS thrusters at animated landing legs without specialized additional mods, so as an alternative they need to be emedded in the main lander core.

It's too much of a fiddle to find tiny-enough RCS parts that even have to be attached to the lander with the use of the move and rotate gizmos in VAB - so these thrusters need to be built-in for convenience. The mesh and the triangle footprint shape make attached parts float in weird angles. (And as it's even impossible to add RCS parts at the animated landing legs without specialized additional mods, this should be no option at all).

Gordon-Dry commented 4 years ago

Why is this an issue?

With MandatoryRCS (or old RWSaturatable or a patch that makes the reaction wheels have 5% of their original torque) the ca_landv_core can not be oriented quickly enough by MechJeb autoland so it just crashes.

(The stock reaction wheels are just too unrealistically powerful)

Gordon-Dry commented 4 years ago

Cross reference: https://github.com/raveloda/Coatl-Aerospace/issues/66

And (now just hypothetical): As soon as "stageable RCS" is added to KSP this added RCS staging to the ca_landv_core would PERHAPS trigger a new problem with the just-solved decoupling issue of the ca_landv_srm - because the decoupler for the retro srm is moved from the engine (where it just does not belong) to the lander.

raveloda commented 3 years ago

RCS will be added to any re-design or re-make of Surveyor. Currently, it would be a lot of work that would be better off just re-doing the craft