Project Here goes nothing: The Delta-StarLiner G42

[Moach]

i have envisioned the G42 as sometthing that should be possible within the next 30 years or so.... none of the concepts used here are "far-fetched" or "whimsical".... there's no handwavium or unobtainium anywhere in the Starliner's contruction - the materials it's supposed to be made of are based upon realistic projections of current and emerging technologies of present day (we're already in the future, did you know?)


if something more urgent was at stake, or we had a war going on in space, i reckon a G42-similar vessel could be available within the upcoming decade....
stupid humans, they only put out their best when others are doing their worst :facepalm:


as for the cockpit, indeed, many many analog switchas aren't something one would expect to encounter in a futuristic cockpit.... or would it?

while usquanigo makes a good point, i can't help but to remember why the most modern M1A1 tanks have no automatic loading mechanism on that main gun.... it all comes down to one word - RELIABILITY
i guess the US military decided it was more reliable to have a single well-trained soldier loading shells by hand that it would be to depend on some contraption with hundreds of moving parts :hmm:

so although it would be possible to have the flight computer handle pretty much all aspects of the flight, it makes sense not to, sometimes.... which is why i imagine there would be a handful of switches in that cockpit....

it`s not a car... there's no point in having it's inner workings encapsulated beyond the pilot's concern, being that anyone qualified enough to be entrusted with a multi-billion dollar spaceplane wwould not have problems sorting out one or two less-than-automated proceedures....

this discussion goes on and on... it has dragged itself for many pages in the XR1 vs DGIV thread (which started with a simple "which one should i get first" post)....


somewhere in this very thread (some million pages back) someone posted a picture of the new airbus A380 cockpit - not surprisignly, even with the most advanced in Fly-by-Wire and avionics equipment, there are still as many switches and knobs as you can count in that cockpit


but don't worry - i too think the space shuttle has the most "OMG what the hell is going on here?!" type of cockpit - so rest assured it won't come to THAT :lol:

---------- Post added at 03:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:38 PM ----------

the little display in front of you is the master MCP (Mode Control Panel) -- it's where you control the autopilot - notice the wheel-shaped buttons - those are for prograde (up) retrograde (down) normal+ (left) and normal- (right) - the one to the side is for level horizon and the middle one is a redundancy for killrot - which is maily triggered by the "pinky switch" on the flight stick (i figure since i'm making this ship, i might as well model it matching my X52 setup, right? :lol


also, notice that it reads SAS ONLN in blue - that's the indicator for the FBW stability program being active.... (you will be able to turn it off at a later stage - although i think it's just a bad idea to do so unless you have an emergency)



that panel isn't fully functional (or functional at all) at the moment.... it's one of the items in my infinitely long "todo list" :tiphat:


there is a plenitude of gauges and displays that still need to be coded - the throttle position indicator is one of them....

and uhh, no the airbrakes should not be open the whole time (not widely at least) - it is normal for them to split a bit even without command, as the FBW system makes corrections - but if they're open all the way, then you're flying with the spoiler out
they are controlled by the "retro" axis... it is possible that i have them reversed.... try closing down the retro throttle and see if that helps :hmm:

have you mapped that to any joystick axis?

 

[Usquanigo]

It's not a car. But the car is a valid analogy because it's just technology.

Regarding the M1A1, that is an old design. There is a mobile artillery piece that can put like 6 shells in the air at the same time and have them all land on the same target, and that uses an auto-loader. So once more, we've crossed that reliability threshhold and it's not such a problem anymore.

As for the AirBus, look at the thinking that was pro-command line, there's still a lot of thought that everything is unreliable and nothing can be trusted, so people end up making things overly complex. And you also have engineers vs users. Engineers think in different ways and will often make something "complex" without meaning to or realizing they were. Doesn't mean it's the best solution, just what made sense/looked good to them (and was within budget).

Take a look at the F-35 cockpit.

Very clean. Also simpler and much more automated than the F-16. Which in turn shared a similar relationship/ratio with the F-4.

To look at another aspect - the further out we assume this to be, either from tech, or materials, or money, or politics, or anything... every year one waits to begin the design, everything in the field of switches, controls and computers advances, becomes cheaper, smaller and best of all, more reliable. For the space and weight of the 5 computers you have in the space shuttle, you could have hundreds of Droid 2.0 phones each of which would be more reliable than any of the shuttles systems, and far more powerful to boot. And through sheer volume and fail-over parallell processing/clustering, you could lose dozens and not have it impact anything.

That is the direction of computing. People have been saying it for decades and I didn't beleive it at first, but I see it happening all around me now. Obviously, they are increasing in power and shrinking, they are also decreasing in heat generation and power consumption, while at the same time getting more reliable. And best of all, they are getting cheaper. Ok, those are a given. But that means that you can then see computers put in everything imaginable, even clothes. So the computer becomes ubiquitous, and via that and size reduction, becomes invisible, and as reliable as anything we could concievably make.

Supplement that with Cisco (and others') focus on communication between all these devices - bandwidth increases, parallel processing becomes more common place, connectivity becomes ubiquitous, and it all means it's practically made for fail-over clustering/parallel processing in this way. (one small somewhat off-topic example, look at the new Droid X and it's mobile Wi-Fi feature. Imagine if everyone was a walking Wi-Fi hotspot, we'd have permenant web connectivity without having to crawl along at 3G speeds or pay exhorbitant 3G prices - no, it's not a plane or a space plane, but it is a real world example of miniaturized, potent, reliable computers with mass connectivity and parallel processing capacility (like a neural network of computers))

So.... yeah, 5, 10, 20, 60 years hence, I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be both rock-solid reliable and redundant enough to be safe without needing a million switches.


All that said.... flipping switches can be cool. And I think that's the drive for adding complexity, honestly. So I'm not saying I'm totally against it. I'm just saying, it ought to be balanced against real world advance factors so as to not end up like the Dragonfly (a futuristic vessel made from left over bits of the Appollo program apparently) or DG-IV (designed by early computer nerds in the 80s).

---------- Post added at 03:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:02 PM ----------

the little display in front of you is the master MCP (Mode Control Panel) -- it's where you control the autopilot - notice the wheel-shaped buttons - those are for prograde (up) retrograde (down) normal+ (left) and normal- (right) - the one to the side is for level horizon and the middle one is a redundancy for killrot - which is maily triggered by the "pinky switch" on the flight stick (i figure since i'm making this ship, i might as well model it matching my X52 setup, right? :lol

:lol: :thumbup:

BTW, that looked like it said gag to me on the display, not sas.

and uhh, no the airbrakes should not be open the whole time (not widely at least) - it is normal for them to split a bit even without command, as the FBW system makes corrections - but if they're open all the way, then you're flying with the spoiler out
they are controlled by the "retro" axis... it is possible that i have them reversed.... try closing down the retro throttle and see if that helps :hmm:

have you mapped that to any joystick axis?

I'm at work, so I'm using a keyboard only. Which retro axis are you referring to? All I did was use the INS and DEL keys to trim it.

 

[Moach]

man, that F35 pit is cool

less switches is a good thing, indeed... but too few switches goes full-circle and comes back around as a bad thing again :hmm:

i usually don't like those touch-screen cellphones.... it's sometimes counter-productive to not have a switch for direct control of a specific feature....

it's all about balance, i guess... what if you have an emergency in an all-glass cockpit and need to activate some system that's burried several pages away in some form of "menu"... it's not less troublesome than finding a switch amongst hundreds of others in an apollo-like panel


there's a middle-ground, i think... between digital and analog switches that make up for a well conceived interface.... (i consider myself as somewhat educated in interface design, being a game programmer, it's a large portion of my job)

i mean, you "could" operate your entire computer using only your mouse... quite clean, no? -- but how much faster and more comfortable it is not to work with a keyboard as well?

---------- Post added at 04:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:16 PM ----------

by "retro axis" i mean the axect same controls used to throttle the retro engines in the DG....

there may be some problem being caused by not having that controlled by a joystick axis, i assume.... i wouldn't have guessed it from my home rig, with the X52 and all


i'll check into that tonight :thumbup:

 

[Usquanigo]

Even at home, I use a Logitec Attack 3 and leave throttle to the KB.

As far as the interface goes, you hit it at the end there. It's not about reliability. It's about usability. I wouldn't suggest putting the high-beam switch on the I-Drive just because that's a function you want direct control of at a moments notice without having to thumb through menu's - but not for anything resembling concern of reliability. Ya know?

It's the same reason I'll press- Windows-E rahter than clicking Start, then Programs, then Accessories, then Explorer. But also the same reason you have KILLROT mapped to your pinky switch rather than pressing a KB button.

I think it can be safely said that anything where the displays or computers are too compromised to use would be analagous to any situation where the ship was too dangerous to remain in - if it's gone THAT wrong, you're hosed. If we assume a guage or switch in place of a glass display in those same circumstances, you're still just as hosed. Much the same as if you had an ejection system in an abandon ship situation, you'd still be just as hosed.

So.... yeah, it does come down to ergo-nomics. The unfortunate thing is, here you have to assume people are actually pointing and clicking rather than using a HOTAS as they should be. Because many things would be on a HOTAS, which itself can even have multiple modes (you should see my Cougar profile that I wrote for LOMAC, omg... it's a thing of beauty - I have 3 main modes with 2 over-arching modes above that, and all 20-some odd other buttons having 2 or more functions besides with almost everything short of landing gear mapped). So you might have to put a switch on a panel or in a display where you would ACTUALLY put it on the stick or throttle. But either way, it's still all about usability only.

Edit - I use my TM Cougar HOTAS only for combat air sims - FS-WWI, IL2, Strike Fighters 2, LOMAC, etc; and use the cheapy Logitech USB stick for everything else - Wing Commander, Babylon 5: I've Found Her, Orbiter, etc.

 

[Slice N Splice]

I like it. Once it is completed ill definetly get it.

Though i have some questions...

Is it going to have a virtual cockpit or a 2d cockpit?

Any special animation?

Any docking port so it can be docked with other ships and space stations?

But other than those questions i really like it.

Ill definetly download it once its done

 

[Usquanigo]

I like it. Once it is completed ill definetly get it.

Though i have some questions...

Is it going to have a virtual cockpit or a 2d cockpit?

Any special animation?

Any docking port so it can be docked with other ships and space stations?

But other than those questions i really like it.

Ill definetly download it once its done

Not to offend anybody, because I certianly don't mean to, but IMO, it's better now than many "completed" addons currently available. Don't deprive yourself.

Unless he's changed his mind (and I don't wish to try to speak for him), there will be a VC, and no 2D. (which rocks)

Animations - The split flap elevons are really neat. The windshield cover is pretty wild. And of course there's the gear and cargo bay doors.

 

[Moach]

yep, VC only - no 2d panel... (unless someone is willing to make one)

and there is a docking port inside the cargo bay - like the shuttle... the only thing is that it's not modelled yet, to it's invisible (to the naked eye) - it does work tho


i'm not sure when this thing is gonna be "done"... by any definition the word "done" can have... it's possible that i just keep adding more and more features and never really call it "done" ....

but i guess once it has all textures in place, and most of the cockpit and systems work - one could say it's "releaseable"... perhaps even "feature-complete"... but "done" is such a strong word... :hmm:

 

[Talon1]

Good lord, that thing is BEAUTIFUL! Keep up the good work!

My thought's exactly! :lol: :thumbup:

 

[DGIV2serverploblem]

Alaska,Sierra Leone now Texas? What the Heck?

 

[Moach]

ok.... yesterday i was modelling the docking assembly behind the cabin... and i noticed something strange....

i copyed the docking port mesh from the DG for use as a size reference.... but when i met with the ISS, it looked awful small :shifty: - in worry that my whole model could have been undersized all along, i docked a DG on the port nearby for comparison....
the DG also has a small docking port - way too small, actually - about half the radius of the PMA's on the default ISS... what gives?

so i figure i need to make me a bigger docking port :hmm:


otherwise, it's looking good.... i've done some more changes on the cockpit mesh (remodelled those side glareshields which looked funky going through the dash)... and i added some further detail to the payload bay

i then noticed that the G42's payload bay is considerably smaller than that on the shuttle.... no problems there, tho... it's not meant to be a heavy-cargo ship anyways....

and for realism's sake, i'm now thinking the cargo bay could not be that large in a vessel of this class (SSTO is a very tricky deal)... so i made a few experiments with a box that takes up part of the aft of the bay for fuel storage - yet leaving a little section above which would be used for smaller items :hmm:

not quite well decided on what will be of that yet....

 

[Moach]

update...

still working on the bay... i did manage to fit an URMS in there - quite cool :thumbup:

but i'm still uneasy about the size of the docking port....


from what it appears, the dock on the stock DG is similar in size to the "LIDS" (low impact docking system) used on earlier NASA craft... now, the PMA's on the ISS are APAS (androgenous peripheral attach system) - and those are NOT compatible.... :facepalm: kinda feels like trying to hookup an "old" printer to a new PC :lol:


anyways... i haven't been able to find any specs... can anyone confirm the size of the ISS ports? - i thank thee in advance

 

[Marcvs101]

I found this, hope it is useful

 

[T.Neo]

from what it appears, the dock on the stock DG is similar in size to the "LIDS" (low impact docking system) used on earlier NASA craft... now, the PMA's on the ISS are APAS (androgenous peripheral attach system) - and those are NOT compatible.... kinda feels like trying to hookup an "old" printer to a new PC

Actually the LIDS is the newest design, derived from APAS. APAS is an originally Russian design, first used for Apollo-Soyuz (APAS-75). Shuttle-Mir used APAS-89, and the current system on the shuttle to the ISS is APAS-95.

My recommendation is to import the models of whatever you want to find the docking port size of (Deltaglider, shuttle, etc) and measure them, but I wouldn't recommend actually using part the model without the permission of the creator.

 

[Moach]

Actually the LIDS is the newest design (...)

true! - i realised that shortly after posting :facepalm:... either way, they're still not compatible

thanks for the PMA diagram - i'll have a closer look at it later on :thumbup:

 

[GuiConteDGIV2X]

question:The G42 can have additional fuel tanks as a payload?

 

[Moach]

question:The G42 can have additional fuel tanks as a payload?

that's a definite YES! :thumbup:

i haven't got around to programming that feature yet - but it's surely in the plans...
additionally, you can also have external fuel tanks for launching with heavy loads... (which will require DARTs (Disposable Auxiliary Rocket Thrusters) for extra-heavy takeoff :hmm: )


carrying extra tanks in the bay should boost your operational limits enough for reaching higher orbits or awkward inclinations - and those tanks could carry fuel for either the main engines or for the OMS/RCS, depending on your mission needs

external propellant-tanks, in the other hand, are more suitable for off-plane launches, where you'd fly in atmosphere until reaching the target inclination, then jettison the external tanks (above a mission-control-cleared patch of ocean, for safety's sake) and blast off the ramcasters for orbital velocity...


i think i'll have to write a detailed operations handbook for this thing... covering many possible launch settings and other G42 specific operations

man, i think way faster than i code ....

 

[T.Neo]

external propellant-tanks, in the other hand, are more suitable for off-plane launches, where you'd fly in atmosphere until reaching the target inclination, then jettison the external tanks (above a mission-control-cleared patch of ocean, for safety's sake) and blast off the ramcasters for orbital velocity...

Wouldn't it be easier to launch launch into the correct heading for that inclination from the start?

I know the reason it doesn't happen with multistage vehicles like the shuttle, is because flightplans have to be over open ocean, so the stages (hopefully) don't kill anyone and in the case of the shuttle so that the boosters don't turn to scrap metal on impact. That's why polar launches with STS were either going to be from Vandenburg, or via a dog-leg over the Atlantic from KSC (which would have required 5-segment boosters).

The G42 is an SSTO (unless you're carrying external tanks), so I don't see why it would be necessary to avoid flying over land... other than the possibility of debris falling onto populated areas during a crash, but in that case you have other problems... :uhh:

Then again, launching to a polar orbit will reduce your payload capacity, and external tanks could improve that. But then you'd need to launch over water again...

 

[Zachstar]

Creating your own "Launch Point" enables a FAR faster access system to targets already in orbit. If you can cruise at a good mach number you can catch almost anything in its orbit as it passes over the Atlantic.

T-Space had this plan. Tho it would be subsonic

 

[DaveS]

via a dog-leg over the Atlantic from KSC (which would have required 5-segment boosters).

Nope. STS-36 did a dog-leg after SRB sep to reach the targeted 62° inclined orbit with just the standard RSRBs.

 

[T.Neo]

Interesting bit of information there DaveS... I didn't know a dog-leg was ever done with the shuttle, and I didn't know a shuttle ever reached a 62° orbit. :thumbup:

I was talking more in terms of polar orbits from KSC though, that would require 5-seg SRBs, unless I'm mistaken.