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Open Source Construction Techniques for Craft Aesthetics


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clips directly to the bottom of the BZ-52 once its in place and the intake goes onto the top, assuming you have part clipping turned on, if you don't then its the old small strut flipped inside trick to fix the intake ontop.

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I found a way to make the avionics package look nice with the Mk3 cockpit with part clipping! Stack 2 octagonal struts onto the nose and put the avionics on that. Then take an FL-A10 adapter and put that on the nose node as well. Bam, avionics package looks nice!

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A really nice way to create a Saturn V first stage. Take a quad coupler and put it on the bottom of a 2 meter fuel tank. Then, with part clipping enabled, put the new 1 meter fuel tank (Smallest we had, but now chopped in half. Black and white stripes down the side) in the middle at the attach point of the 2 meter tank. Then, with a new engine (LV-T35)(?) attach that to the fuel tank. Then you have a nice cluster of engines!

If any pics are needed, please contact me as I am not the best at painting pictures with my words.

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Some design ideas that I am kicking around:

mnwQvW2.jpg

ahAprDS.jpg

zXczkCD.jpg

5-man pod (3-man capsule + 2-man lander can) with retrorockets to slow it on descent, because it's very heavy. I needed some way to hide the bottom of the crew pod, so I used the BZ-52 radial attachment point turned upside down so the shrouds (which have no collision detection) act as a sort of fairing. I also used them to break up the lines on the side of the craft, for a little visual interest.

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interesting design :) mmh - would it be possible to align the 3-man capsule door with the lander can's one by starting to build it from the lander can, then rotating the 3-man capsule (assuming starting from the lander can will actually make the 'control from here' on the lander can itself, and not on the capsule :P) ?

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You all have come up with some really cool ideas. Too bad that what I've put up so far at KSP Spaceport is not only all stock, but function dependent rather than aesthetic oriented. (Self flying planes are a challenge for me to make: take off, gain altitude, fly until out of fuel, glide, safely land or ditch: no autopilot and no piloting).

But I'll be sure to try out some of your ideas and hopefully contribute something which you can use in the future. Keep up the good work!

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interesting design :) mmh - would it be possible to align the 3-man capsule door with the lander can's one by starting to build it from the lander can, then rotating the 3-man capsule (assuming starting from the lander can will actually make the 'control from here' on the lander can itself, and not on the capsule :P) ?

Yeah, I tried a few different configurations, but the alignment of the windows really threw me off when I aligned the hatches.

In any case, I think the most interesting part of this design exercise was the new uses for the radial attachment point.

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  • 1 month later...

This thread has lain fallow for a while. How about a new design idea?

Rover Wheels as Landing Gear

This idea came to me when looking at different landers, like the Apollo LEM, which feature saucer-shaped feet on their landing legs. Right now, the only gear with that feature is the micro landing legs, which are a bit small and flimsy. The small FL-A5 adapter has the right shape, but it doesn't have the kind of impact tolerance as the real landing legs, and it wouldn't be stowable for neat packaging like the stock landing legs. So, what to do?

Wheels:

0MbkEl3.png

They have the right shape, and an added benefit. Careful placement of parts will cause the suspension to compress. See this decouplers here.

shdkr8z.png

UHiTDoa.png

Now obviously it's a bit silly to have the decouplers become high speed debris just to deploy your landing legs. Two thoughts on this. 1. You can build your payload fairings off the decouplers, that way the legs will deploy when your fairing ejects -- not too ridiculous. And/or 2. there may be a more elegant solution here.

One general principle that may have more uses here is that the wheels in this game have places to attach things radially -- this may be exploitable in numerous useful/fun ways. Anyway, that's all for now!

Edited by GusTurbo
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that's an interesting way to do it :)

just tested it out, the wheels are pretty sturdy for cushioning an impact - tested it with a 11.5 tons weight above the wheels (1 2 place lander can and a rockomax x16) - the wheels stay attached to the dead weight until around a 15 m/s impact - pretty impressive :)

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qkhYPYT.png

One of the many methods I use to make the mk1 cockpit to be attached like it looks like a mk2 cockpit(Provides a cool IVA too!), is basically attaching the mk1 to a cubic strut at the end of an I-beam(On a fuel tank/fuselage), and turning it forward, then the I-beam can be covered with nosecone/whatever connected to the cubic strut.

Another is to attach an I-beam to the button of the fueltank/fuselage, point it forward and attach a fueltank/fuselage, which is what I did on this, look at the exposed parts behind the FL-T100 Fuel Tank.

2Ncvmlt.jpg

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They are sturdy -- I dropped the lander shown in those pictures from the max VAB height and it survived. Unfortunately it took a bit of a bounce and fell over, but the whole thing stayed together. Also, the suspension on the wheels will compress as long as some object is obstructing it -- it's not just decouplers.

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Hi all,

I thought I would share this little aesthetic tip with you guys, if you dont already know it. :wink:

When you attach say, the MK1 command pod to a small fuel tank you get this:

DCAAD289EC577626A1216DE7C6FE45BD7B8664DD

Not very pretty..

By adding a round 8 toroidal fuel tank to the underside of the command pod, thusly:

94ECB0997F47CAA97766DB9D3FF0A59B17911DE8

Making sure its sitting in the higher position on the Command pod.

Now add the fuel tank and presto! it fits nice and flush with the pod.

F76642B968D7A57A6C57D2FDE2D76B6BB870620C

MJ

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Hi all,

I thought I would share this little aesthetic tip with you guys, if you dont already know it. :wink:

[...]

And that is why reading this forum rocks. Ingeniously simple! I always get a bit annoyed by that, this trick goes to my bag.

Rune. Is the fuel accessible afterwards? Does it flow by itself? Don't worry, I will try myself and dissipate my own doubts :)

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Hi all,

I thought I would share this little aesthetic tip with you guys, if you dont already know it. :wink:

When you attach say, the MK1 command pod to a small fuel tank you get this:

Not very pretty..

By adding a round 8 toroidal fuel tank to the underside of the command pod, thusly:

Making sure its sitting in the higher position on the Command pod.

Now add the fuel tank and presto! it fits nice and flush with the pod.

MJ

This sort of thing is exactly why I created this thread. Great trick!

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have you guys noticed, that the trust of engines can be "blocked" by overlaping parts? when a part is overlaping the zone of trustcreation (inside a specific point of the nozzle) of a rocketengine, a fuel tank or reversed nosecone, the engine will still consume fuel, but won't generate trust. this was my problem during the first iterrations of my Proton M rocket

so remember guys: you can hide the enginebody, you can clipp several engines together, but the nozzle(s) must be "free"

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hello :)

here's one stock simple engine assembly i use more and more these days, both for it's usefulness and it's good looks, which i nicknamed the LVT-939 :P

i've noted in the album's descriptions how i build this assembly.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

basically, the assembly use only 5 parts to work correctly (the FLT-T100 you see on the picture is only there to further improve the look, by providing a 'support' for the LVT-30's top end)

2 cubic struts, placed radially, a LV-909 at one end, and a LVT-30 at the other end, with a strut between the topmost cubic strut and whatever is above it to solidify the assembly.

both engines works correctly without blocking the other's thrust. (and you can see the LV-909 exhaust flame inside the LVT-30 nozzle for additional eyecandy ! :P)

the assembly gives us a radially placable engine with 265 kN of thrust, a weight of 1.75 and a TWR of 15.4 (lower than a LVT-30, but higher than a LVT-45), with an ISP of 374, with a small amount of gimbal given by the LV-909.

plus, if you want, you can 'throttle down' the assembly by shutting down the LVT-30, in order to get your ISP up to 390 with only the LV-909 working.

Edited by sgt_flyer
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