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Megastructure Alpha-II "We must now use all our available options to make a difference. The prodigy of interstellar travel in our near future demands us to put all effort into it. We have no choice but to leave the known paths we have been used to." - Bob Kerman (KSP2 early Access 0.1.4.1) My Scientist decided recently to go full ballistic with the Space Program, and a group of rather stealthy acting engineers are vigorously working on a new approach to space exploration. This is my personal blog on a long term early access gameplay, where nothing is unthinkable. My Kerbals don`t care about bugs, wobble, bananas and the such. My Kerbals are utterly determined to use all the means they have to go big- really big. The first and most important goal of this company is to establish a vast structure in low Kerbin orbit which serves as a fuel depot and a reliable assembly site for further near space exploration. It is crucial to have a variety of access points on a single location, and to ensure the survival of all our Kerbonauts who have encountered the kraken or other technical issues on their journeys. And we are also tired of all the unconcious staff due to head concussions because they refuse to fasten their belts during maneuvers, this must end, now. Okay, enough the introduction. I launched the biggest and heaviest object in all my KSP2 experience, it weighs close to 9`500 tons at launch and consists mostly of all the largest and heaviest parts available for now. The final payload, a orbital fuelstation weighs 1`500 tons and goes up fully fueled, yes. Unbreakable joints is off, there are lots of struts and a small wood made of launchclamps on the pad runway. TWR is around 1.3, some large reactionwheels keep it straight during launch, no RCS thrusters have been attached to this craft. The CoM is exactly along the core truss, a big cone on top is the only remedy against huge drag forces. I launched it from the first runway far away from the Space Center, for obvious reasons. Thirteen thirty Clydesdale solid boosters were necessary to provide the needed punch. Eight of the largest methalox rocketmotors make the first core stage, the acceleration is ridiculously slow. Short after launch the gravity turn is initiated, using fine controls to avoid sudden rapid unplanned disassembly... The craft has nearly 400 parts at launch and it still runs smooth on my system, no crashing anymore. The Clydesdales solved a major workload on this launch, the remaining center cores had very little performance further up in the atmosphere, but it will be enough by the end, alltough very tight on fuel while reaching orbit. The fuelstation "Alpha-1" is top/ bottom asymmetric, port/ starboard is the same construction, except the antenna which is slightly left to the truss. Ascend went quite calm, the SAS followed on her own the prograde path of a quite nice gravityturn all the way to circular orbit, still with fine controls activated. Very little "wobble" observed. This was the first and successfull test to launch a superheavy payload to low orbit. All my groundstaff went crazy as the PE marker surpassed 70`000 meters. By the way, the point of control on this craft is a very large drone core in the middle of the core truss, it is also the root part of this vessel... This structure will be the assembly location for my next explorations. I hope this will survive the coming updates and hotfixes... The docking ports in all sizes will be needed to attach new features like radiators and laboratories for science, and likely more habitat space for all the stranded Kerbonauts out there. Please don`t ask me about the sideways mounted methalox tanks... I hope you enjoy this blog about my mad Kerbals, i for one am having great fun to make this happen. I hope i can extend this structure until my PC melts away...

Cargo Accelerators Maxim 24: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun. This mod aims to provide mass driver parts (gigantic coil and maybe even rail guns) and control aids that can propel engine-less unmanned cargo vessels with high acceleration to effectively perform precise orbital maneuvers with enough dV to go from, say, LKO to the Mun. And with careful planning even beyond. With the help of mods like MechJeb and TCA it should be possible to organize a network of accelerators and decelerators (still not present) for moving cargo around the system cheaply and easily. So far it provides a single part - Orbital Accelerator It is a massive resizable coil accelerator with extendable barrel (up to ~1.5km) so heavy that I don't know any way of putting it to orbit aside from building it there or using the orbit editor (F12). It has its own powerful reaction wheels and RCS thrusters that are capable to reorient it in space; and enough tanks capacity to store fuel for recoil compensation. It also has dedicated UI that allows it to connect to the payload, read its maneuver node and either execute it by turning the right way and firing at precise moment with precise final delta-V; or tell you that it can't do it for various reasons. The model still lacks textures and most colliders, as it is used to develop and test functionality rather than play. But it's enough to get a hand on things and toy with the concept. Demonstrations https://gfycat.com/welcomecolossalfiddlercrab https://gfycat.com/infamousleadingjumpingbean Future plans In-orbit construction of barrel extension segments by kerbal engineers from EC and Material Kits + Specialized Parts Proper model for Orbital Accelerator Orbital Decelerator -- a counterpart that should, in theory, catch the payload on the other end of the trajectory and decelerate it. Needs further investigation. Ground-based Accelerator -- an accelerator that can be positioned on the ground and launch engine-less cargo straight to orbit. Needs further investigation. Download So far only from GitHub: https://github.com/allista/CargoAccelerators/releases/latest SpaceDock and CKAN will come when it's playable enough to be out from alpha

[First time I've made a thread so please let me know if I need to do anything differently or post somewhere else ] So here's a suggestion - functional simulated Space Elevators and Skyhooks not as vessels but as KSC pseudo-Structures that can be upgraded like any other. I don't know if I'll ever get around to making this myself so I want to put the concept out there for feedback and for anyone with more modding experience than me. I'll start with Space Elevators since they're simpler to use and implement. Using one would go something like clicking on the structure in the KSC, seeing the same menu you get when you click on the Launchpad and Runway, selecting a vessel to "launch", and then loading to a floating "structure" in geostationary orbit above the KSC. We basically render the station at the top of the space elevator, not the elevator itself, so it just floats there acting as a launchpad. There could be multiple such structures at different altitudes up the length of the elevator, from LKO up to GEO, although you'd only find yourself in a circular orbit if you set off from the GEO point since you wouldn't be starting with enough orbital velocity. From your chosen launch point you detach and off you go. You can use this method to put entire spaceships (subject to mass limits determined by structure upgrade level) into orbit, or put individual modules of a ship or station into orbit one at a time and then dock them. You could even bring canisters of material kits or rocket parts up if you're using Extraplanetary Launchpads, up to a waiting shipyard, enabling you to construct HUGE ships very easily for some seriously cool late-game stuff. This is my reason for wanting this mod, I'm tired of launching from the KSC or from EL bases on the moon and I want ways to streamline the process while remaining grounded in realistic futurism. For balance we can use the stock building upgrade system to incrementally increase how much mass the elevator can accommodate in one "launch" - you'd start with a few tons, and work your way up to tens or maybe hundreds. I don't think it should ever be unlimited as with the fully upgraded Launchpad and Runway. That would be too easy, you may as well just use Hyperedit at that point. For optimal functionality with EL, we'd need some way to have at least one vessel "docked" to the orbital launch point, otherwise we'd have to manually ferry cargo to a nearby station every time we brought it up, largely negating the whole point of the mod. I'm not sure how achievable this is in KSP. If it can be done, I'd like any vessel docked to the elevator to be able to receive unlimited resources from the surface, for a price of Resource Amount * Resource Cost * Operating Cost per Unit of Mass. If we can't dock with the structure in any traditional way, perhaps we can treat the shipyard as being in an unlaunched state on one of several staging points. Ideally that would mean there's a main "Launchpad" from which vessels brought up by the elevator are deployed, surrounded by one or more dummy launchpads where vessels can be placed, used and recovered but are unable to launch. This could get buggy though. Still trying to think of an ideal solution. Finally, if we wanted to make this REALLY awesome, it would be pretty great to place such pseudo-structures on any body in the Kerbin System and beyond. This could be used with out EL but it would be much more useful if you were using it as part of some serious extraplanetary shipbuilding or resource-moving infrastructure. This would entail a special part which, in the case of the Space Elevator, acts as a sort of "setup kit" which can be deployed on, say, the Mun to create a Space Elevator endpoint. It would need to be placed at the equator of a body to work and would take time and resources to complete setup. Upgrades to the new elevator would be managed through the right click part menu, but I think the best solution would be a dedicated menu at the KSC and Tracking Station where we can manage all our launch structures throughout the system in one list, without having to load in and visit them. We could also create skyhooks in the same way. The idea with skyhooks is they're cheaper to operate and in many ways simpler to build than space elevators. These would require you to fly a spaceplane to a specific speed and altitude eastwards over the equator. A toolbar menu would then enable you to "attach" to the skyhook, which would teleport the craft to a specific orbit depending on the skyhook.It would be fun to make even more narrow criteria and try and intercept the skyhook at exactly the right time and place, but it wouldn't be much use if you wanted to use the thing regularly. It would be nice to attach only the cargo somehow, but I don't know how realistic that is or how we'd achieve that in the mod since KSP only sees one craft irrespective of what's considered "cargo". Conceivably this would work offworld as well. Alright, that's it. I think what I've outlined here would be quite achievable, if I or anyone else gets around to making such a thing, and it would be tremendously useful and immersive for builds like mine where I'm spending most of my time in the late game playing with mods like Interstellar Extended and USI Colonization. I'd love to hear what the rest of you guys think

A Ringworld for Kerbal Space Program 200 light years from Earth, a huge ring revolves around its lonely star. The inner surface hosts a biosphere millions of times the area of Earth's, but otherwise similar in its distance to its sun, the magnitude of its spin gravity, and even its day-night cycle, thanks to enormous orbiting 'shadow squares' that periodically block the sun. Now you can observe this incredible artifact from your favorite Kerbal vessel! Dependencies This mod will not work without: Module Manager Kopernicus 1.3.0-8 or later These mods are not included in the download and must be installed separately. Try CKAN for easy handling of dependencies. Side effects The Ringworld's sun is normal-sized, and this mod enlarges Kerbin's sun to make exploring the system more accurate, which speeds up Kerbin's rotation to preserve its 6-hour solar day. Comment out the %Properties block of Ringworld.cfg to disable this. Limitations This mod is for visualization only. You cannot: Re-enter or fly in the Ringworld's atmosphere Land on the Ringworld Crash into the Ringworld Crash into the shadow squares Attack invaders with the solar flare cannon Indulge in rishathra I would love to support these things, but if they're possible for the interior of a non-spherical surface, I don't know how. Since the surface is just a tiled randomized texture, notable unique features are not represented: Fist of God Mountain Great Oceans and the Maps Spill Mountains Spaceport ledges Eye storms Attitude jets Shadow square wires Floating cities Links Download: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld/releases/latest Bug tracker: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld/issues Source: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld Localization: https://github.com/HebaruSan/Ringworld/tree/master/GameData/Ringworld/lang License: Public domain (Unlicense)