Project ICOVD Windmill Class Interplanetary Ramjet Development Thread

[Imagineer]

I am finally getting back to the autopilot system after dealing with a backed up sewer, a flood and the most seriously underbid development project I have ever been involved with.

The first cut of the control law seems to be working as well as the reference calculation. I need to connect it to the buttons on the helm panel. Then I need to add robustness for high time acceleration.

BTW, since this is a true space ship, does anybody care that it has no "up"? There is no "wings level" mode planned for the autopilot. The only thing that the autopilot does with the roll axis is drive the roll rate to zero.

So, there should be an autopilot available "real soon now".

 

[Ursus]

I've got no problem with no roll alignment. For the most part, it seems kind of silly to waste fuel trying to keep the X axis aligned with the orbital plane. Perhaps in the future, a separate roll mode could be implemented for the rare occasion when a helmsman does want to have the X and Y attitude thrusters aligned with the orbital plane and the plane normals.

 

[Ursus]

Ok... we've got an acceleration vector/heading readout... at least on the engineering panel.



In the above illustration, the vessel has reached the velocity of the solar wind, and has used the fuel in its tanks to blast through the "dead in the water..." umm... the "dead in the interplanetary medium" stage. Now it's collecting enough fuel to keep accelerating, but the drag caused by accelerating the solar medium to the vessel's speed isn't aligned with the Z axis, so the direction of acceleration is being thrown off a bit.

The pilot has compensated for the by steering into the headwind. Not only does this move the acceleration vector to the right direction (straight towards the target seems to work pretty well for a "direct flight" course), but it also increases the intake cross-section of the magnetic scoop, allowing the vessel to collect fuel faster.

Right now, I've got the acceleration along the Z-axis as the third readout in heading mode (as it is in vector mode). I'm thinking that maybe the total offset from the Z-axis would be a more useful bit of information to display.

I also added a couple configuration file options, so our mesh guy can change the mesh group index for the habitat animation if he needs to, or add a second mesh group to be animated along with the first one. If he inadvertently changes the group index of the hab ring, he can use MeshWizard to find the correct group index and add "HabRotMeshGroup1 = 5" (or whatever number) to the configuration file. If he adds a second mesh group that rotates along with the first one, he can use "HabRotMeshGroup2" (Group1 overrides the hard-coded group; Group2 adds a second group).

The addition was made with chewing gum and duct tape, for development purposes, but I'm thinking it might be a good feature to have, so I'll probably go ahead and do it up right one of these days.

Just to test the code out, I created a fuel centrifuge :



I haven't put a compiled package with the above changes up, but if Trokkes thinks he'll need it soon, or if someone really wants to ALPHA test the acceleration vector display, I can put one together.

Next: I think I'll add the acceleration display to the Helm, then... I'll work on that dang reactor.

 

[trokkes]

Hi there,

I also added a couple configuration file options, so our mesh guy can change the mesh group index for the habitat animation if he needs to, or add a second mesh group to be animated along with the first one. If he inadvertently changes the group index of the hab ring, he can use MeshWizard to find the correct group index and add "HabRotMeshGroup1 = 5" (or whatever number) to the configuration file. If he adds a second mesh group that rotates along with the first one, he can use "HabRotMeshGroup2" (Group1 overrides the hard-coded group; Group2 adds a second group).

I think this is a nice feature, it will be useful if not now in the future.

I'm redoing the docking ports, fixing the size of the dock and texturing them.
I would like to change many little details of the textures but, right now, I think they are almost ready to release in a first version.

I'll leave on vacations in hours :beach: and until September I won't come back (and no computer, no Internet, no nothing).
So the beta ... Any Tuesday on September? :rofl:

Well, see you soon

 

[HiPotOk1978]

just read your entire thread... Impressive work here Ursus... Just a few questions about the ship if u feel like answering

1) you mentioned something about the startup phase of the reactor, what type of 'therotical reactor style are you using... eg tokamak or something else??

2) are you going to be able to dock support ships like the Vespucci? I like the idea of carrying several ships with me, both because I sometimes loose a ship and well, always nice to have multiple support ships so u can rescue the people that I lost...

3) cargo bay?

4) cargo bay?

5) Ummu support? (I think you covered that, but just wanna make sure)

6) if your scoop is collecting X amount of extra fuel, but X is not enough to run those big ole engines at 100%, will the engines know that and give you the appropriate thrust???

7) Can you hurry??? I wanna fly this thing

Very good work from as far as I an see... I can barely wait !!!

 

[penlu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Looks really quite similar. Not for surface operations, I'm guessing?

 

[Ursus]

1) you mentioned something about the startup phase of the reactor, what type of 'therotical reactor style are you using... eg tokamak or something else??

I'm kind of working out right now more-or-less-exactly how the Mobius CNO Tandem Bicycle Fusion Reactor is supposed to work. Right now, I'm thinking along the lines of two torroidal (tokamak) chambers which will operate constantly, providing power for the scoop and other systems, and which will "jump start" a third chamber (some sort of glorified magnetic mirror?) when thrust is needed.

Hmm... "The Mobius Tri-Chamber CNO Tandem Bicycle Hybrid Fusion Reactor?"

(Does that sound plausible, folks?)

2) are you going to be able to dock support ships like the Vespucci? I like the idea of carrying several ships with me, both because I sometimes loose a ship and well, always nice to have multiple support ships so u can rescue the people that I lost...

3) cargo bay?

4) cargo bay?

The attachment truss will support cargo pallets and cradles for landers. (And an airlock attachment.)

5) Ummu support? (I think you covered that, but just wanna make sure)

Yup. Already implemented.

6) if your scoop is collecting X amount of extra fuel, but X is not enough to run those big ole engines at 100%, will the engines know that and give you the appropriate thrust???

Yup. Already implemented.


@penku: Yes, it's a Bussard Ramjet. No, it's definitely not designed to enter an atmosphere.

 

[trokkes]

Another brick ...

Hi there,
I have finished the textures:woohoo:
(actually, I've finished a group of templates that seems to work fine :dry.
So I'm uploading the last version of the textures. I have redone some parts of the mesh and now I think that size of docking ports is correct and there aren't missing normals

Finally, I've named the ship "WINDMILL"

I also added a couple configuration file options, so our mesh guy can change the mesh group index for the habitat animation ...

...

I haven't put a compiled package with the above changes up, but if Trokkes thinks he'll need it soon, or if someone really wants to ALPHA test the acceleration vector display, I can put one together.

Well, I think is a good time to do that, because when I 've tested the mesh it's all OK but the wheel doesn't spin but the truss does.
Now begin to upload some images ...

the ship

More windows

tank view

dock port

Comparison with ISS and DGIV

 

[Belisarius]

Are we going to see it soon?

 

[Mister Kite]

Very impressive!
Anxious to fire her up.

 

[Heywood]

Name and spacecraft look fine. Impatient for to have it.

Heywood

 

[Ursus]

Ok... I went ahead, zipped up a distribution tree and uploaded it to Sourceforge. Just don't hold down the reactor start button, or... the results will be so anticlimactic you might die of boredom.

I wound up taking a bit of a break from this project, but I should be getting back into some serious work on it within the next week or so.

 

[Belisarius]

Hi Ursus,
I went to Sourceforge and found your group but I couldn't find the package to download. Could you please link to it for me? Or is it not public yet?

 

[Ursus]

Hi Ursus,
I went to Sourceforge and found your group but I couldn't find the package to download. Could you please link to it for me? Or is it not public yet?

It's not officially public yet, but since it's hosted on Sourceforge, it's not totally private either. A person who really wants a sneak peek could find it by browsing the SVN repository, but we're not using the official SF distribution system or publicly posting any links until we've got something a bit more presentable.

The above-mentioned "distribution" was mainly so that Trokkes had a module with which to test the mesh.

 

[Belisarius]

OK, I'll be patient. BTW if you need any help testing or in preparing the manual, I'll be happy to pitch in. Just PM me.

 

[HiPotOk1978]

Hmm... "The Mobius Tri-Chamber CNO Tandem Bicycle Hybrid Fusion Reactor?"

Well it doesn't really roll off the tongue, or does it shoten

let's try it...
The Windmill's primary power source is the The Mobius Tri-Chamber CNO Tandem Bicycle Hybrid Fusion Reactor or MTCCTBHF for short...

Hmm..... works for me

 

[willy88]

Well it doesn't really roll off the tongue, or does it shoten

let's try it...
The Windmill's primary power source is the The Mobius Tri-Chamber CNO Tandem Bicycle Hybrid Fusion Reactor or MTCCTBHF for short...

Hmm..... works for me

How about the Mobius Tri-Chamber CNO Tandem Bicycle Hybrid Fusion Atom-Mashing Interplanetary Mega Reactor, MTCCTBFAMIMR for short?

 

[HiPotOk1978]

Haven't herd any infomation on this ship in awhile, so i thought I'd post to the thread to bump it and see if we can get any infomation from the dev team

 

[Imagineer]

Hang on...

This developer has been having difficulty finding time to focus on ICOVD due to working overtime on a real-world WAAS/LPV implementation.

Google "WAAS LPV site:rockwellcollins.com" for more information.

This is a feature that everybody wants. Management would have liked to start selling it "yesterday". Naturally we are getting a lot of visibility to those above. :heat:

 

[Ursus]

Looks like it's about time for me to put away my... er... code structure exercises...


(Eek... I should have resized that image.)

...for a while, and get back to work on this puppy.

Oh... I said that about a month -- er, two months-- ago (where does the time go?) and wrote about ten lines of code since then, but now that we're making progress on the attitude control system front...

As far as the reactor goes, I've pretty much just got to paint the panel behind the displays and tie it in to the engine and tank. A more realistic heating curve will likely wait until sometime after version 1.0, if it ever gets done. Who knows? Maybe someone with a taste for thermodynamics equations will be inspired to pitch in a bit of code.

After the main reactor is finished, it should be pretty simple to create the four smaller reactors using their common base class.

After the reactor headache gets done... I think the attachment management code was next. That should be a little less daunting.