Discussion Orbiter Engine Design Database

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Hello Devs

While taking my first crack at addon vessel design, I noticed that it currently is somewhat hard to develop designs based off of real life technology & components & to know what design parameters ( propellant weight, Isp, underexpansion model, thrust range, thrust vectoring...) should apply to a given engine type. What I hope to accomplish with this thread is to create a repository of realistic rocket engines/boosters, their design parameters (even a link would be nice), and, if you feel comfortable with it, a copy of a reasonably accurate mesh file, donated for use by other addon devs. Although Im not so naive as to think that sticking any old liquid engine underneath any fuel tank (KSP engineering) will always work, having a realistic starting point to work with would be nice. Feel free to post any other components you think might be usefull as well.

 

[jedidia]

Someone already did all that work, minus the meshes

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Someone already did all that work, minus the meshes

Thanks for the link, but I was thinking of listing data on a specific real design, along with either a picture or a mesh file ie

Space Shuttle Main Engine
Isp-
Thrust range-
Mass-
Fuel types-

Then a snapshot of the component engine in use, a blueprint, mesh file, or whatever you can find

 

[Urwumpe]

I thought about having a class model for DLLs, that you could include in your add-on and which represents a more or less complex simulation model of the engine that you want to use, created from data of a shared database.

This combined with a mesh library for making add-on meshes would be pretty.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

I thought about having a class model for DLLs, that you could include in your add-on and which represents a more or less complex simulation model of the engine that you want to use, created from data of a shared database.

This combined with a mesh library for making add-on meshes would be pretty.

Ie digital rocket test stand for dummies?!? :lol:
I love that idea, the fundamental reason why this area is a problem is because I can easily make an engine bell in anim8or & make it look like a rocket engine, but I lack any real ability to describe how it behaves in reality (without building it for real that is)

Can you make it? I would love a design tool like that

 

[Urwumpe]

Can you make it? I would love a design tool like that

I could look at a design tool for that, but that isn't really an easy task. Depending on how many details you want, it can be pretty complicated.

 

[4throck]

Ie digital rocket test stand for dummies?!? :lol:
I love that idea, the fundamental reason why this area is a problem is because I can easily make an engine bell in anim8or & make it look like a rocket engine, but I lack any real ability to describe how it behaves in reality (without building it for real that is)

Well, multistage and spacecraft .dlls do this if you supply the meshes and provide the parameters.
I'm not sure if the simulated performance of those .dlls is 100% real, but from my (limited) experience, it looks consistent.

What can be done right now to get things going is to use the Orbiter wiki. We can create pages there with parameter lists, references and a link to meshes on OH.
One thing that must be addressed for a large scale effort is mesh reuse. I suggest simply indicating on the wiki page if the author allows reuse or redistribution.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Well, multistage and spacecraft .dlls do this if you supply the meshes and provide the parameters.
I'm not sure if the simulated performance of those .dlls is 100% real, but from my (limited) experience, it looks consistent.

What can be done right now to get things going is to use the Orbiter wiki. We can create pages there with parameter lists, references and a link to meshes on OH.
One thing that must be addressed for a large scale effort is mesh reuse. I suggest simply indicating on the wiki page if the author allows reuse or redistribution.

Ive tried to edit orbiterwiki before, and the registration always fails on me. I was planning on bringing the wiki issue up, as the information is so heavily outdated that it leads new orbinauts (namely me, but others Im sure have too) to download outdated addon packages, etc. I would like to have the older pages checked and updated so as to avoid confusion.

Could we start a list of engines for this?

I would start with

SSME
F-1 (of Saturn V fame)
-F-1 Derivatives
Space Shuttle SRM's
-Merlin family (SpaceX)
-Whatever info we might have on Aerospike engines
-RCS thrusters (Hydrazine or Hydrogen Peroxide based)
-Hall thrusters (very similar to RCS, weaker)

That list is still pretty American tech heavy, any russian designs?

Also, I was thinking we could expand this concept into a couple of other component types:

Docking ports (ROSCOSMOS/NASA use different designs do they not?)
Coms arrays

the point of all this data is so that an addon dev doesnt simply stare at the ceiling an make a guess when defining parameters for a spacecraft. The more spacecraft parameters that are inaccurate, the less accurate the whole sim becomes, so solve realism problems at the compiler!

 

[Hlynkacg]

I thought about having a class model for DLLs, that you could include in your add-on and which represents a more or less complex simulation model of the engine that you want to use, created from data of a shared database.

This combined with a mesh library for making add-on meshes would be pretty.

I'd be interested in this as well,

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to model things like chamber temprature and pressure using the often limited parameters made available to the public.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'd be interested in this as well,

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to model things like chamber temprature and pressure using the often limited parameters made available to the public.

I still work on my Rocket Calculator tool... shall I look at adding some functions to calculate rocket engine parameters and simulate them?