This is an extremely common mistake among artists or developers attempting to portray Apollo style RCS blocks, but the nozzles are not oriented at right angles. Instead, the nozzles in real spacecraft tend to be angled slightly away from the skin of the craft, as can be seen in photos of the Apollo command module. Beyond merely looking more authentic, if I'm not mistaken the logic is that this angling balances their performance when pitching/rolling/yawing to their translation performance. It also doesn't hurt that it keeps as much of the expelled RCS propellant cone from hitting the skin of the craft. If you look at official space agency craft concepts as well as historical photos, I think you'll find angled nozzles like I'm describing are more common than not. This is one thing that KSP got right in its bog standard vanilla 4-way RCS block, for example.
Please consider improving this small detail for greater authenticity and verisimilitude.
Please consider improving this small detail for greater authenticity and verisimilitude.
Attachments
Upvote
1