Project AIA Toehold Lunar Base

[PhantomCruiser]

I'm not too hip on runways either, but rather a large pad, with a UMMU capable blockhouse nearby. with a train (or monorail) leading off to the main portion of the base. Textured 'roads' for rovers is a neat idea.
As much as I think it'd be cool to taxi over to some hanger space, I think support equipment would be available to tow the craft into a hanger or rework facility. As good as some of our pilots were in the NAVY, I'd really rather park the birds with a couple of wing-walkers and a tow tractor.

 

[Nemoricus]

I'd also like to see a large area with spacious landing pads as opposed to runways. It dings my sense of realism to have runways on an airless body.

 

[tgep]

How about this.
1 crater houses the launch \ landing facilities with an animated structure near a crater wall closest to the living area. That way you can put the unloading hangers beside it with a nice tunnel hewn thru the barrier wall to drive your moon buggy OR cargo-train thru to the living quarters airlocks in the second crater.

 

[HiPotOk1978]

I like the idea of runways, if you know how to use them...

I think a more proper name would be Landingways. Instead of using your engines (and precious fuel) to null out your horizontal speed, you can use those wheels and the brakes attached to them. Would be very useful for a cargo laden XR5. 400t in the cargobay is a lot of mass to slow down

 

[Face]

So, Here's an idea. What if I used 2 adjacent craters that share a wall. I could put all the launch/land stuff in one and have a base built through the crater wall into the other. That way I can include all the essential stuff, but people have an entire crater to expand into...?

This is a nice idea. I can imagine that a kind of "tower" is placed inside the craters' shared rim. The regolith walls provide enough stability against accidents and you could place windows facing both craters for overview.

Regarding runways/landingways/pads: I don't really care what it is named, but landingway sounds cool. I'd say it doesn't matter if rectangular, circular or eliptic, just make it big (>50m) and add some directional markers, so approaching vessels can follow a pattern of least collision probability. A cool feature would be lighting the directional markers according to the direction that the tower approved for a approaching vessel. I can assist you in coding such features, if you want.

BTW: For SC3-induced features, I can offer you to convert them to "real" vessels once design/proof-of-concept by means of utilizing SC3 is finished.

regards,
Face

 

[the.punk]

Yes. Big landing pads would be cool. And maybe an other texture for those pads, because the standard orbiter ones are a little bit boring.
One area for living and one area for landing and launching. Maybe in different Craters; this sounds good.

 

[T.Neo]

I don't see how runways would be practical on the Moon, although larger landing pads would be nice.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Thanks again all, for further thoughts.

Ok, so runways are a hot topic lol, with mixed feelings. Therefore, I shall come up with asomething that hits some common ground on people's opinions. Basically I shall play around with large scale landing pads or landing ways, or whathaveyou. I intend to have about half a dozen on this base I think, 4 smaller and 2 larger, to reflect the likely flow of traffic. Plus I want to cover all the 4 main cardinal approach and departure directions (N,S,E & W). I will try to think of a generic name for them that is not specific to either launch or landing, but pertains to both.

I'm liking the idea of both some sort of monorail/train and roadway connecting the main areas of the base together. In fact a UMMU compatible monorail would be a useful addition to a lot of bases. In it's easiest form I guess it could be a simple animated vessel with docking ports at each station, so the animation is just cosmetic. A more advanced version would have UMMU boarding/alighting only possible when the train is actually at a station, but that version I could not code.

with coding in mind:

BTW: For SC3-induced features, I can offer you to convert them to "real" vessels once design/proof-of-concept by means of utilizing SC3 is finished.

I will very likely take you up on this offer, Face, thanks.


keep it coming chaps.

---------- Post added at 12:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:03 PM ----------

As good as some of our pilots were in the NAVY, I'd really rather park the birds with a couple of wing-walkers and a tow tractor.

'scuse my ignorance, but what are 'wing-walkers'? I agree that most taxiing should be done by tug rather than engine power, that applies to WIN too. But I'm not sure there is actually a universal tractor that can attach itself to ANY vessels, but I'd be happy to be wrong. I will try to do what I did at WIN, which is make it spacious enough to taxi under engine power, but leaves the option open to use a tractor.

 

[the.punk]

Thanks again all, for further thoughts.

Ok, so runways are a hot topic lol, with mixed feelings. Therefore, I shall come up with asomething that hits some common ground on people's opinions. Basically I shall play around with large scale landing pads or landing ways, or whathaveyou. I intend to have about half a dozen on this base I think, 4 smaller and 2 larger, to reflect the likely flow of traffic. Plus I want to cover all the 4 main cardinal approach and departure directions (N,S,E & W). I will try to think of a generic name for them that is not specific to either launch or landing, but pertains to both.

Have you an custom texture for the pads?

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Have you an custom texture for the pads?

Not yet, since dev hasn't begun. But, like WIN, most of the textures will be custom, the pads definitely included.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

...what are 'wing-walkers'?...

Anytime we moved aircraft around we had a plane captain, who was the overall man-in-charge (average age of 19), a driver for the tow tractor, a break rider (in the aircraft), one person walking under each wing (wing walkers) and one person walking under the tail section. It was the job of the wing walkers to watch for things that could damage the aircraft as we moved them around.
No doubt you've seen how tight we can pack aircraft onto a flight deck. I had an Air Force guy comment on how the only thing separating our birds from each other was a few layers of paint and a couple of air molecules.

For a moonbase, the wing walker job isn't practical (unless someone is already suited up and just happens to be around. The job would probably be done with remote cameras. I'd like to think that there'd be plenty of room for the different craft also (like you mentioned about the large hanger space).

Something else that came to mind also, but probably not easy to code... When I moved over to the ASW world, on board the ships we used somethign called RAST (Recovery Assist Secure and Traverse), http://indaltech.cwfc.com/products/spokes/01a_RAST.htm
to move our helo in and out of the hanger. We only used the Recovery Assist portion for initial qualification (for the pilots) and in bad weather. But the Secure and Traverse sled might be of some use, perhaps?

 

[tgep]

How about instead of " runways " , you use taxiways to to mark out reinforced surface areas to tractor landed craft from touchdown points to hangars ?

Only large vessels ( 100m + ) would use the runways as temporary landing pads.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Phantom, interesting link! I've not seen one of those before, seems like a lazy way to land . It would be beyond my coding to do something like this, even if it could be done. I'd be interested to see the clever bods here analise this for space use though. I have a feeling it would only be of real use in the specific instance that it is currently being used. Since there are not the same forces to contend with on the moon.

As for tight parking, yes, hats off to you boys, you really can wedge a ship full! I suppose the one luxury I do have on the moon is that there is no shortage of real estate!


tgep, nice thought. I shall throw it into my boiling pot of planning atm and see what it cooks up.


Is there a current tractor addon that can be used with all vessels?

 

[pattersoncr]

One thing that I think a permanent lunar base would have is a means of getting from a landed craft into the base without suiting up for an EVA.
If there are a small number of types of craft that the base is expected to service, they might have a standardized entry hatch location. There could be a "docking" structure on the ground that snakes out a tube to the hatch that is pressurized after it connects. This setup tends to favor small landing pads (rather than the large ones everyone seems to favor). Supporting a wide variety of landing craft (as I assume WHAP wants to) makes this approach significantly more problematic.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Cheers for those thoughts, patterson.

I've been thinking a lot on the transition from ship to base. The easiest way is to have pressurised hangars, although this requires some serious resources and structures. so maybe a transfer vehicle as has been suggested.

I have a horrible feeling that there is a bug in orbiter which means 2 vessels cannot dock with each other when landed on a planet, without some hickups... am I imagining that?

Chances are I will have a combination of pressurised hangars and UMMU transfer stations.

 

[pattersoncr]

WHAP,
You're correct. Attempting to dock two landed vessels induces all sorts of "bad craziness"
Any such transfer system would either need to use attachment points or simply move up close to the hatch and we'll all pretend that it's really attached.
Perhaps something like a "jet bridge" at modern airports would work well?

To save frame rates, you could have static ones at some pads as well as animated (SC3 or .dll based) ones at one or two pads.

 

[the.punk]

I have a horrible feeling that there is a bug in orbiter which means 2 vessels cannot dock with each other when landed on a planet, without some hickups... am I imagining that?

I think it must be possible. But I never tried that. Good queston though.

EDIT: already answered by pattersoncr

 

[tgep]

As far as a good location for the base, I may have found one at a crater complex named Playfair.

Playfair is located at 6.7 Deg East Lattitude and 24.2 Deg South Longitude.
Playfair is 94 Km ( 55 miles ) in Diameter and has steep walls with a flat bottom and a few nice deeper craters inside to place structures in or on. Playfair-G is an adjacent area with a higher smooth floor that would be well suited for a landing area.

 

[pattersoncr]

I've been thinking that something coded very much like the URMS would work well for this sort of "jet bridge"
URMS creates attachment points on whatever it's trying to "grab" and has multiple usefull camera angles for lining things up.

 

[the.punk]

I've been thinking that something coded very much like the URMS would work well for this sort of "jet bridge"
URMS creates attachment points on whatever it's trying to "grab" and has multiple usefull camera angles for lining things up.

This would be an good idea.

---------- Post added at 05:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:37 PM ----------

But is the source code inclueded?