Space Station & Nuclear Tug set (WIP)

[Aegeas]

Still a work in progress but thought I'd post as I wont be working on it for a while and the concept might help someone.

I wanted to make a bunch of generic space stations to shunt to each planet for career mode contracts.

Because I have an old laptop I wanted them as low part count as possible so I didn't want to have them include engines or extra fuel tanks for the trip out to each planet.

I wanted to make a reusable tug to push them around seeing as career mode kind of infers making things that are reusable so as to save money.

Problem I ran into is that docking ports are really spongy connections and as soon as you put any amount of thrust through that connection well good luck staying on your maneuver node.

So I wanted to have a way to dock to a large tank and have the same sort of connection strength that big tanks and big engines usually enjoy.

I developed a way to brace the docking connection and with my testing on the launch pad it will take the full thrust of a mammoth and not flex any more than a size 3 tank/engine connection would.

This is what I came up with:

[TABLE=width: 1100]

[TR]

[TD][/TD]

[TD]The Problem I had was using landing gear alone the higher you make the tension the more chance you have of breaking legs. Grabbing units work very well but are extremely hard to get to align well and if you have them radially arranged it's hard to get them to all engage. So combining the two and relying on the physics warping of x4 accelerate I can get a perfectly aligned connection with all the grabbing units engaged.

There needs to be sufficient reaction wheel torque or RCS thrust in the craft you are pushing so that it is not completely being steered from the tug but apart from that it can run on 100% thrust and stay perfectly on what ever node is assigned.

[TUG - Action Groups]

4 middle radiators (6 total)

5 angled radiators (12 total)

6 tensioning gear (18 total)

7 docking lights (2 total)

8 arm grabbing units (6 total)

9 release/decouple grabbing units (6 total)

[space Station - Action Groups]

1 start fuel cells (4 total)

2 stop fuel cells (4 total)

3 toggle gigantors (4 total)

0 toggle antenna (4 total)

7 docking lights (2 total)[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Craft files:

I've included some basic launch vehicles that will get the Tug and the Station to a 125k circular orbit with about 3/4 fuel remaining so will need a top up from space planes etc.

These are still beta so if anyone wants to test them out please let me know any bugs and I'll look into them.

Also I've taken some liberty with assigning resources to adapter pieces on the space station so that the part count is lower and so that there are less things to click during refueling procedures.

All the tanks on the tug have been converted to Liquid Oxygen keeping the amount standard as per mk2 tank sizes.

The station will hold 14 Kerbals.

beta_SS.craft

beta_TUG.craft

Edited September 26, 2015 by Aegeas

[DMSP]

Nice!

[selfish_meme]

This will solve a lot of issues people have with large ships.

[manek22]

Looks awesome. Can't wait to try it out after work tonight.

[Araym]

Not to spoil you down, but Grab Units tend to show weird bugs if multiple of them from a single vessel are forced to be attached to the same part (any part and even a single asteroid)...

... I'd use probably more a multi-docking ports ring, rather than risk a interplanetary ship for an already known bug U_U

But aside that, very clever use of them and nice looking tug

[Stone Blue]

Thanx!...I usually end up having to make my tugs with modded parts, which makes it difficult to carry them over to future releases of KSP...

Cant wait to try these...

But, ummm... The links for the downloads merged together, so you can only get the Tug...

[Aegeas]

Thanx!...I usually end up having to make my tugs with modded parts, which makes it difficult to carry them over to future releases of KSP...

Cant wait to try these...

But, ummm... The links for the downloads merged together, so you can only get the Tug...

Ah wow, thanks for letting me know... I've fixed it now

- - - Updated - - -

Not to spoil you down, but Grab Units tend to show weird bugs if multiple of them from a single vessel are forced to be attached to the same part (any part and even a single asteroid)...

... I'd use probably more a multi-docking ports ring, rather than risk a interplanetary ship for an already known bug U_U

But aside that, very clever use of them and nice looking tug

I'll have to keep this in mind and as I've said its beta - I've done limited testing so far but it did manage to burn long enough for a duna intercept with out any 'bugs' causing it to fail.

The multi dock is something that I've played around with in the past but it has no where near the strength of this type of setup - so I'll have to hope it doesn't develop these issues you speak of, and I guess there is always the save/reload thing... and if there is a spectacular failure well that could just make for a cool rescue mission.

Thanks for the feed back!