Open Source Construction Techniques for Craft Aesthetics

[Captain Sierra]

Same thing with the escape tower. Arrow down or else things look weird.

[Urban_K]

Do you have the arrow on the decoupler pointing down?

Nope. My apologies: I missed that detail. Works fine now.

[karolus10]

Another "clipping" design, now escape tower .

It uses 10 sepatrons, enough to escape from top of most rockets with engines firing, ~ 2g ship acceleration (or bit more) in low altitude.

Only last 2 are used for tower jettison, so it had slim chances to reach orbit if jettisoned late in the flight.

Tower base is attached to small stack decoupler and it share the same node with docking port on top of the pod.

Example of tower performance (older version, with more SRB's for 7G seperation):

Skip to +0:35s

Edited October 10, 2013 by karolus10

[GusTurbo]

I like the look of the adapter there. Does the docking port come off with it?

[Francesco]

A small trick to make radial boosters more stylish: parachutes clipped inside 1.25m nosecone adapters

[karolus10]

I like the look of the adapter there. Does the docking port come off with it?

Docking port will stay, and look like it never had tower on it.

After opening docking port, small ring (tiny decoupler) is barely visible on hatch inside docking collar .

Craft file > HERE <

[GusTurbo]

I was trying to find a way to mount LV909s to a 2.5m tank symmetrically, while having a decoupler still attached, without using fuel lines. This is because any fuel lines that one would attach to the engines become fuel lines from the tank into the decoupler, rather than from the tank to parts 'inside' the decoupler. While this doesn't always happen, it was a repeating occurrence in my testing, so I had to find a way around it.

Remember, the engines can't be mounted directly at node-height, because the end of the thrust bells of an engine must protrude farther than the bounding box of a decoupler in order to function.

So, the solution was to use docking ports.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

They change the height of the engine satisfactorily, can be mounted symmetrically anywhere, and do automatic fuel crossfeeding, meaning there's no need for fuel lines. It weighs more than using struts, but I think it's a great trade.

I like this technique. I just mounted a tank directly to the decoupler and even though the nozzles were protruding out the bottom, it still came off cleanly.

[Blue]

Right now I'm modifying my Orange-Tank-to-LKO Fuel tanker for more "recoverable" stages. Right now they use parachutes but I wish there was a way to land a Rockomax Mainsail+x32+x64 SpaceX style.

I've also managed to reconfigure it to have a nice little jettison-able nose cone that protects an also-jettison-able very small orbit-transfer engine. The new design for the fuel payload has no engine of its own, saving the weight of a Poodle.

[Captain Sierra]

Inspiration?

[Blue]

Okay, here it is.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

The 50t Fuel Tanker Mk IV. At the bottom you can see how it's asparagus staged, and all through the launcher you can see I've made an effort to clean up the struts like a little OCD kid.

This post has been edited from its original version by Blue for further clarity.

Download here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2VEZa9UYxIbTmFyNW9MVVlZNnc/edit?usp=sharing .

The second image shows the inter-stage from the Core booster to the bottom of the payload. That is, the top of the launcher and below the uppermost fuel tank.) The decoupler conceals four large parachutes for recovery, and the bottom of the ASAS module has four RCS tanks partially inside. This saves weight and size. The protrusion of the tanks could've been avoided but I still wanted click-access for transferring RCS fuel out of the tanker. (This all requires Part-Clipping.)

The rest of the images concern the nose-cone orbital manoeuvring stage mounted on top of a Karolus Patented© Universal Docking Port"). It would've been simpler in terms of serial staging to make the orbital manoeuvring system mounted at the bottom of the payload and on top of the launcher, but this would mean adding parts inside of a critical structural point, which is unwise. Anyone who's done large rocket testing knows how temperamental it can be to have the dead-weight of a large orange tank sitting on another part.

What follows after that is a series of instructions on how to build it the nose cone assembly as I made it.

First, a strut is put on the topmost node of the standard decoupler [!! pointed downwards!!], and then standard size decoupler is put on top of that. All of the nose cone is rooted from this decoupler, since when we're done with the orbital manoeuvring system we want it to jettison clean and without lingering on the docking port. From that decoupler, the fuel tanks and engines are mounted, and then a small Octo-controller mounted upside down, so that I don't have to control thrust-firing from a backwards direction. Then a large decoupler [! pointed upwards !] is attached to the upper node of the smaller decoupler. If the large decoupler is attached to the lower node of the smaller decoupler, the whole assembly will shred itself when you try to jettison, so don't do that.

On top of all that was a simple assembled nose-cone with two seperatrons to get it clear after launch. Remember to put the staging in the right order, once it's all assembled.

From underneath you can sort of see a tiny tiny gap between the large docking port and the bottom edge of the Rockomax decoupler; for me it's not a problem, and it also helped me figure out which decoupler was which when doing the staging order and ensuring that during launch the speratrons spring the nose cone free and not the whole orbital motor.

Every time I start KSP I will be launching one and rendezvousing it with a space station I made, also equipped with Universal Docking Ports. The plan is to permanently lock 20 of these tanks up there and have a nominally sized refuelling station that only needs to be topped off after use: once all 20 are up there I'll be revising the design again to come back and be reusable, for the job of whatever goes up there to deliver the go-juice and come home.

Edited October 17, 2013 by Blue

[GusTurbo]

It's awesome to see the innovations posted in this thread coming together in a useful (and great looking!) way.

Could we get a .craft file?

[Blue]

Must the craft file be hosted on a 3rd Party site?

_____

Dangit.

Only after making my first rendezvous with my newly launched Refueling Depot that I learn there's a trick in building universal docking ports.

Tip no.3 : Universal docking port (part clipping required)

You can stack 2 docking ports to same attachment node to get docking port being able to dock with both types... If you dock 2 universal ports together they stay connected permanently.

If the ports are not properly connected, then the default port will dock itself to the large port as if they were of the same size and being built pre-docked. This will require some fiddling to get right, since my fuel tanker has a functional universal docking port, but my space station now has 20 lemons that cannot dock, and cause [harmless, but useless] debris when undocked from themselves.

How much testing did you do with your universal docking port technique?

Because now I have to troubleshoot my space station, and re-launch a fixed one.

Edited October 10, 2013 by Blue

[Halsfury]

A small trick to make radial boosters more stylish: parachutes clipped inside 1.25m nosecone adapters

That's interesting, Also to add to that you can make a booster look like a space shuttle booster with the same nosecone adapter and a Mk 16 0.5 m parachute on top, also to lengthen the burn time you can add the small SRB to the bottom of your rocket and then stage it so that you have a solid booster for a total of 75 seconds burn time

[karolus10]

Must the craft file be hosted on a 3rd Party site?

Files shouldn't be hosted/attached on forum, so Yes... You can share craft file on spaceport too, but using 3rd Party site to share your files/images are preferable .

How much testing did you do with your universal docking port technique?

For me it worked just fine, every time I used it, but I don't recommend using universal ports everywhere.

Use it only in places you would like to dock with both types equally, like space stations docking port for incoming spacecrafts or interplanetary transfer stages (like nuclear shuttle) where You could dock both with smaller spacecrafts using medium port, as well like larger payloads or additional fuel tanks by using larger one.

Spacecraft on picture has only medium port on it, but I hope You get the idea.

In general is better to use regular port in most cases + universal in place where is needed

Edited October 11, 2013 by karolus10

[Blue]

Well anywho, here's the link for the craft of my fuel tanker.

"Blue Reactions & Energy Ltd." Fuel Tanker Mark IV.

GoogleDrive [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2VEZa9UYxIbTmFyNW9MVVlZNnc/edit?usp=sharing]

[Captain Sierra]

Says access denied.

[Blue]

Forgot to edit the permissions. Sorry about that, chaps.

___________________________________

On another note, I've managed to figure it out:

It seems that the naughty part can be chancy when building Universal Docking Ports- or at least, as far as I can tell, when repeatedly switching between vessels.

And that part, is the Rockomax Large Adapter plate.

Regardless, I've managed to launch a new version of my Universal Docking Port equipped space station.

1 Permanent tank locked in, 15 more to go.

Edited October 12, 2013 by Blue

[inigma]

Can someone make a video of the tips in this thread?

[Captain Sierra]

I might go over some of it some on my stream tomorrow (doing some MP stuff). THere is just too much here. Though I could probably compile it into a good written guide.

[Giggleplex777]

Which version looks more like a Proton?

[The Fleet Master]

Second one, Giggle your craft are always amazing.

[Captain Sierra]

I think the first one looks better, even if it's slightly more off.

Also, you could try RLA Stockalike. It has 0.625m fuel tanks in many lengths with correct fuel to weight ratios.

[Specialist290]

I just discovered this thread, and I want everyone to know that you are all awesome and that this thread is going on the Drawing Board I'm going to have to try many of these tricks out myself.

[Daishi]

Fellow part clipper here - it makes things so much more interesting to design and build To be as conservative as possible with my ship sizes, i try modelling them based on the dimensions of my fairings.

(L07 Firemoth, single person two stage lander; L15 Uller, three kerbal two stage lander; L02 Epona, duel atmos\vacuum rover with skycrane, heat shield and parachutes; and a service module from a Phelan-class launch vehicle)

Going by the amounts of awesomeness in this thread, i doubt my creations can shed any more light on new techniques ><

Edited October 15, 2013 by Daishi

[Blue]

Well it does inspire me to try and make my payloads more shapely if I can, but I don't plan on getting any faring mods...

Righteous beauty of a service module though.