Sorry for posting in such an old thread. But I had a few questions.
First, I know that the package comes with a few payloads for the cargo bay. But I'm working on constructing my own space station and I noticed that most of the ISS modules are just too big to fit into the cargo bay. At least I think. Most of the time I can see them sticking out through the cargo doors. It could just be bad placement on my part.
Do we know the dimensions of the bay? Also, are there any FOI cargo modules that were released post-Eridanus that I can use that will fit? I found a few references here and there, but it appears that they were never finished/released.
If not, that's okay. I can find other ways to get modules to orbit using the Quasar. But I like the RMS and the ability to dock and then position new modules to my station during construction.
Thanks for any pointers.
You're probably not using the offsets enough. To reacquaint myself with how Eridanus does payloads, I ran a few test scenarios with the Habitat Core from [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2857"]Space Station Modules addon[/ame] loaded aboard Eridanus via the config file. For the first test, I deliberately left the offsets at zero for all axes and left the rotation and direction values at the defaults. After eight to ten minutes of browsing the web in another window, I saw something similar to what you described.
It's a bit too high, and after opening the bay doors(didn't grab a screenshot for that, sorry) it also was too close to Eridanus's external airlock as well. But, it's just a matter of getting the offsets right, and lucky for me, my first guess was close to what was needed, so I only had to sit through two more launches.
Leaving the X offset alone, putting the Y to -2, and the z to -1.5, shifted the Habitat Core down 2 meters and aftwards 1 and half meters and it fits, mostly.
There looks to be enough space fore and aft between the rear bulkhead and external airlock for the Core to fit comfortably. Based on the values for the fore and aft docking ports in the Core's config file, plus a little addition, I think the Core spans about 9 and half meters, or around 30 feet. Width-wise though..
..it's actually fine, excluding the protruding docking ports, which extend into the bay at the bottom and protrude through the boom/arm, depending on what side of Eridanus you're looking at. From one port to the other is 4.38 meters, or a few inches over 14 feet. Anyway, making it so the port don't protrude into anything would need some attention to the rot and dir values(rotating the side docking ports to face up and down instead of port and starboard), and probably moving the Y offset up a few tenths of a meter, but that's just a bit of guess work and patience, since I'm reasonably sure that there's enough room.
Also, now that I think of it, I could've saved a scenario after the first launch got into orbit, altered the values in that scenario file, then loaded it up in Orbiter to check the new values, and then after however many changes and loadings, put the fixed values into the Eridanus payload config file, and by doing that, only have to sit through a launch twice.
Well, hope this helps you get a grip on putting payloads into Eridanus.