Nostalgia: Your Fondly Remembered Rocket Designs

[Overland]

Landliner 1000 Class - The original trains.. Ugly as all hell.. way before the days of dedicated hybrid transmissions.. they were jet propelled by sam hall's micro jet pod (oddly similar to the future 1.05's jet pod..)

Fast.. lethal.. ugly.. with a purpose they never quite achieved because no one survived to tell the tale.. before I knew it they were upto 1012+ in class numbers.. this was mid 2014 as I recall (LL1007 seen here with a twin jet failure limping back to the yard on 1 engine and traction motors)

it was a workable living ecosystem of early landliner trains... much older ansestors to the current day 40 class and 44 class..

my favorate engine from the time wasnt actually a mainline generation 3 tri-jet though..

actually a battery laden warts n all looking battery shunter for when I used to launch 1 wagon at a time and shunt the train into a full rake of wagons, locomotives, control trailers and tankers for the long trip ahead..

Her name was X2002 and her sistership upgraded X3001

She worked harder than any locomotive I built at the time.. id just found the rover wheel mod and added electric train sounds.. she had a soul of her own.. all wrapped up in a likewise little world never seeing outside the limits of KSC..

she would spend missions puttering around the runway, the main hanger.. the railyard (carpark)

for the limits of her batteries.. never taken back into the SPH.. this was a persistant locomotive that knew her role well as small as it was..

like any other locomotive running on batteries alone in such a role.. she had no generator of her own. nor engine.. she was pure electric traction from batteries

she needed a little help from her friends.. with primitive alternators from the jet engine pods and brakes applied.. any mainline locomotive nearby that had either came in from a run or just launched for one spent upto an hour running full throttle in a cloud of smoke to charge this poor thing..

mainline locos needed the shunter to assemble trains.. without it they'd be unable to function.. but just the same X2002 needed mainline locomotives to charge her batteries... it was.. I dunno some kind of symbiotic relationship..

quite fond of the old girl really.. she never took any kerbals life.. wasnt a killing machine in the form of a train like her mainline sisters..

she had a job to do.. she did it well... and went into retirement undamaged

makes me very nostalgic since it was abandoned once I took batteries out of the whole project and started experimenting with direct power to torque hybrid systems that didnt need batteries at all. and the jets became generators..

no one needed battery shunters anymore.. everything had its own and more compact

I miss it though greatly sadly that ugly intake isnt around anymore so it prevents me making any replicas

EDIT: um.. my bad.. you did say rockets.... havent got any of them

Edited November 9, 2015 by Overland

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

In the 0.18 demo, I remember my first orbital rocket.I don't have any screenshots because I didn't know how to take any, but it was a very ridiculous almost whackjovian rocket. It was a tall, thin stack surrounded with at least 3 layers of hammer boosters on 6x symmetry. It was also very overpowered, because I didn't actually do any gravity turns, because I didn't actually watch any tutorials and figured it out myself.

I called it the "Arthur Dent".

Still my best rocket name. I'm not very good at rocket names.

[AfailingHORSE]

Way back in the demo for .13 in the year of 2012 (I believe it was a Friday in August (I have a physics test that day irc)) I had made it to the mun, however, not images survive from that time, the laptop that was played on was wiped, the text to my friend with images of it were wipe when I switch from IOS to Android. But I managed to recreate the ship in 1.04 with the current parts and some use of tweakscale (the name of the ship was also lost to history).

The reason why it was so squat was mostly because I didn't know you could move the capsule at that time, also ALL the symmetry was done by hand because I didn't know about the symmetry tool. I could not recall if I put anything to generate power on the ship or not, so I decide to air on the side of not power generation other than the main engines.

But that is not where this story ends. I though, I'm ahead with my work and it's currently my lunch break, might as well see how well this very well.

And the answer to this question is that it holds up extremely well, thanks mostly to patched conics. However, the major draw back with this design which lead to it's eventual abandonment also persisted.

It only had enough fuel for a one way trip.

[Van Disaster]

Hmm.

First munar & return capable ( sans refuelling ) spaceplane I built, complete with hinged wingtips for supersonic trimming, was really nice to fly. 0.18? 0.20? don't remember which.

Probably the first rocket I built that looked like a rocket. Enough sats for the entire Jool system. 0.23 I think.

Still love how fast this looks even stationary. 0.25

This could lift it's own mass to orbit, given enough patience. 0.25 again

0.90 light launcher workhorse, another thing that came out looking sharp & flying beautifully.

0.90 Heavy. I built everything in orbit in 0.90 so the only rockets are really dull fuel tankers.

I haven't actually built a 1.0 rocket and probably won't.

[RoboRay]

I think this craft got more "I don't even..." replies than anything else I ever built:

Mission album: http://imgur.com/a/k9ng3#0

[Spacetraindriver]

ALL Saturn V's from older versions, even though they never accomplished their goal of sending kerbals to the Mun.

[Goddess Bhavani]

I have yet to remake this

[Temstar]

I still think Nova was the best all round booster I've ever designed. Looks really cool too - dat ass

My manned Eve landing and return stack is probably the one I'm most proud of.

Edited November 10, 2015 by Temstar

[Streetwind]

I think this craft got more "I don't even..." replies than anything else I ever built (*snip*)

That is adorable.

As for myself, I take only few screenshots, but one of my favorite rockets ever ought to be this one - the Munraker XI from my first serious long-term, modded career run. Was back in .23... good times.

The rocket carried three identical Mun landers at once, each of them able to deorbit itself, land on the Mun, take off again, return to Kerbin and land safely. Each contained a Kerbal, every single stock experiment, communications, TAC Life Support, power and even a landing floodlight, and weighed barely three tons all in all. Basically, where other people went biome hopping, my solution was MOAR LANDERS! Three launches took care of Minmus' 9 biomes, five launches took care of the Mun's 15. The booster wasn't all that large, only required to put ~10 tons into low munar orbit, but sadly I don't have pictures of it since it was pretty bog standard.

Unfortunately I will never be able to build it again because we have reentry heating nowadays, and the design called for lots of radially attached parts and a direct reentry. I also tend to play with DMagic Orbital Science, which ups the number of science instruments to way beyond what this little thing has room for

Edited November 10, 2015 by Streetwind

[Jett_Quasar]

I have a whole hangar full of designs that are now obsolete due to parts that are no longer in the game and changes to the aerodynamics since V1.0.

It looks like I'll be adding some new fleets to this list as well...

JR

[RAINCRAFTER]

The Schwartzenhegger series of rockets was my first legitimate series of rockets that didn't use cheats, with Schwartzenhegger 5 being the first with multiple stages and getting higher than 70k. Schwartzenhegger 15 was the first to escape Kerbin, and mind you; that was going straight up because I didn't know how to get into an orbit yet. The 20s were massive failures trying to land on the Mün and failing, but all of these rockets still live in glory. Then there was the Behemoth, which was basically a cargo bay with a cockpit and an engine slapped to it as well as two decoupled LF/O boosters for a launch stage. It landed on parachutes, and it delivered so many probes. Eventually, I had to make an SSTO, so I did one called the Ty Fighter, which didn't do a lot, but was still cool and awesome, and it also got me the 0.90 K-Prize. Finally, 1.0 came out, and I have tons of cool new crafts. Cheers, Raincrafter.

[Souper]

I made the Kerbol Express series back in my pioneering heydey's. They were [I]extremely[/I] nooby rockets, because back then i had no understanding that fuel had weight. I had a lot of heavy stages that i estimate had only around 200 m/s of DV, and i even didn't know what symmetry was (meaning i had to put it together part-by-part!). It was some jumbo-64's below an asparagus-staged cluster of FL-T800's and some Reliants, both below [B][I]another[/I][/B] cluster of FL-T800's and Reliants.

I think it was back in the [B]demo[/B], and up until the 0.19's or 0.20's. I'm making plans for the Kerbol Express to make a huge comeback, but i'm not supposed to blab that part just yet.

[Vermil]

Earlier in this thread, in the post that was supposed to be about my 'Angel', I boasted a lot about my 'Vulture' moon rocket. Well here it is, in a more proper presentation.

In my manned pre-v1.0 programs, the single-seat, low-tech CrazyRocket was eventually succeeded by rockets built with much more modern (and bigger) components. I think the 'Eagle' followed directly. It was a failure. It did do some moon missions, three I think, and successfully, but it was really scary to fly and land. It originated as a 3-Kerbal crew, scale-up of the successful CrazyRocket_E lander, but saw substantial changes with every launch. To no avail. It remained dangerous to fly. I went to a clean slate again and designed a spectacular success. I've never had a moon-rocket that was so nimble, stable yet agile, easy to fly, easy to land and impossible to crash, as the Vulture. As the Eagle was essentially 'dead' and the Vulture "ate" it, it got its name.




Here is the launch of one of the early Vulture rockets. This is a Vulture_A, identifiable by the smaller, shorter solid booster rockets.





And here is an image of the Vulture in its element, in a very low Mun orbit, looking for a landing site.




Looking at the Vulture (pre-v1.0 game) today, here landed on Mun, with a kerbal descending the ladder, seeing how elegant and functional it is, it's a mystery how I came up with its v1.x replacement, the Firebrand (which is rather crude). Did the heat shield really have that much impact?



One important feature that the Vulture introduced in my lines of rockets, is the quad landing struts instead of the previous triple. I've never looked back. Quad is much more stable and well worth the added weight.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Vermil

[NecroBones]

I'm only mildy nostalgic for my earlier rockets. These were fun, but man... the struts. I think about 50% of the launch vehicle was just struts (KSP 0.23).

Mun lander:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/LxeWFBX.png[/IMG]

Dres mission:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/QzLIayW.png[/IMG]

[Francois424]

My Solar Cruiser... back from 0.23 (or 0.22? can't remember exactly)
First 15k dV ship I ever made... But man those 45-80 minutes burns... Ouch.
( Price to pay for having 3 Ion engines )

Will redesign it soon with the new 5k xenon containers, but It wont be quite as beautiful I am sure.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Francois424

[Kobymaru]

Technically not a rocket design... But this Cargo SSTO could fly 16t to Orbit, back in the .23 days.

[imgur]gYmkR[/imgur]
I was very proud of myself, even if I had to resort to serious intake-hogging.

[Cupcake...]

I do miss .90 SSTOs. ;.;

[video=youtube;_zxmhRIcM14]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zxmhRIcM14[/video]

[video=youtube;DRGeSRaVz3I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRGeSRaVz3I[/video]

[video=youtube;QVj2fyJ4grc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVj2fyJ4grc[/video]

[video=youtube;lnL9YEuyE3A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnL9YEuyE3A[/video]

[video=youtube;2iNCQ-O7NOY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iNCQ-O7NOY[/video]

Good times. :)

Cupcake...

[justidutch]

I fondly recall the time (0.23) when the souposphere was such that your rockets didn't have to be all pointy and stuff. You could launch things like these…

[IMG]http://jscript.ca/ksp-images/23/Minmus%20Base/Apartments%20refueling.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://jscript.ca/ksp-images/23/Minmus%20Base/Apts%202.png[/IMG]

[Archgeek]

[quote name='Francois424']My Solar Cruiser... back from 0.23 (or 0.22? can't remember exactly)
First 15k dV ship I ever made... But man those 45-80 minutes burns... Ouch.
( Price to pay for having 3 Ion engines )
[/QUOTE]
Oh man, that thing just makes my day. It reminds me of the symmetry-glitch party that was my XenonStorm Mk3, just with over twice the delta-v (probably in part because I had 24 engines due to said symmetry glitch clipping insanity, and my very very dumb early attempt at high-density xenon storage). How the heck did you get that many gigantors in parallel at those angles? ...Are those tail connectors?

[Slam_Jones]

Ah, my first true "go-anywhere" ship. I think I named it the Hawkeye Cruiser... built about 5 of em (each with different colored lights) and sent them across the solar system. Good times.

I think this was in 0.90 or earlier.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ZHj7RaE.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/K7Dlpfz.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/6cbDDdy.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/0wFqo3i.jpg[/img]

[Francois424]

[quote name='Archgeek']Oh man, that thing just makes my day. It reminds me of the symmetry-glitch party that was my XenonStorm Mk3, just with over twice the delta-v (probably in part because I had 24 engines due to said symmetry glitch clipping insanity, and my very very dumb early attempt at high-density xenon storage). How the heck did you get that many gigantors in parallel at those angles? ...Are those tail connectors?[/QUOTE]

Sorry for the (very) late reply... I can see the forums from the job, but cannot post.
Yes, tail connectors with each 3 panels (one on the tip, on flipped 90 degrees front, the other backwards), the rest are attached to the fuselage and other parts.
The tail connectors themselves are attached to that part that gives a triangular 3-point attachment, and are reinforced with 3 struts each.
Extremely sturdy vessel, and on return the part containing the 12 science packages separates from the engine section via decoupler and the thing could land and remain steady-upwards even on the water (but land still preferred).
My original Jool-5 (no landings) with this craft netted me something like 2.5k science.

I've often tried improving the design but I always ran out of patience.
The new version will be manned by a scientist to reset experiments (and a remote control pod) allowing me cut down on quite a lot of weight, and parts too since we have 5k Xe containers.
I'll post it on the forums when I do :)

[Carraux]

[quote name='Vermil']Earlier in this thread, in the post that was supposed to be about my 'Angel', I boasted a lot about my 'Vulture' moon rocket. Well here it is, in a more proper presentation.

[COLOR=#333333]In my manned pre-v1.0 programs, the single-seat, low-tech CrazyRocket was eventually succeeded by rockets built with much more modern (and bigger) components. I think the 'Eagle' followed directly. It was a failure. It did do some moon missions, three I think, and successfully, but it was really scary to fly and land. It originated as a 3-Kerbal crew, scale-up of the successful CrazyRocket_E lander, but saw substantial changes with every launch. To no avail. It remained dangerous to fly. I went to a clean slate again and designed a spectacular success. I've never had a moon-rocket that was so nimble, stable yet agile, easy to fly, easy to land and impossible to crash, as the Vulture. As the Eagle was essentially 'dead' and the Vulture "ate" it, it got its name.

[/COLOR][url]http://i445.photobucket.com/albums/qq176/Vermil_01/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/Vulture%20B_js.jpg[/url]


Here is the launch of one of the early Vulture rockets. This is a Vulture_A, identifiable by the smaller, shorter solid booster rockets.

[url]http://i445.photobucket.com/albums/qq176/Vermil_01/screenshot191j.jpg[/url]



And here is an image of the Vulture in its element, in a very low Mun orbit, looking for a landing site.

[url]http://i445.photobucket.com/albums/qq176/Vermil_01/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/screenshot246j.jpg[/url]


Looking at the Vulture (pre-v1.0 game) today, here landed on Mun, with a kerbal descending the ladder, seeing how elegant and functional it is, it's a mystery how I came up with its v1.x replacement, the Firebrand (which is rather crude). Did the heat shield really have that much impact?

[url]http://i445.photobucket.com/albums/qq176/Vermil_01/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/screenshot253j.jpg[/url]

One important feature that the Vulture introduced in my lines of rockets, is the quad landing struts instead of the previous triple. I've never looked back. Quad is much more stable and well worth the added weight.[/QUOTE]

Nice lander design! I like it.

But is there a reason why it is so... huge? Do you know you can go to Mün with much less?

[ostrich]

Back in 0.23 I had a rocket capable of putting a probe anywhere in the kerbol system but I don't have pictures and my first working rocket (also no pictures) got halfway to duna on its first flight.

[Vermil]

[quote name='Carraux']Nice lander design! I like it.

But is there a reason why it is so... huge? Do you know you can go to Mün with much less?[/QUOTE]

Well, the main reason is in my signature. I'm playing science sandbox, so it's just taxpayers money...

I did go to Mun in much less, but this was intended as a next gen comfortable science harvester. And for the same role play reasons it's manned it's also carrying a crew of three.
Further, the lander is also entirely (except the four radial drop tanks) the return vehicle. It lands on the same struts on Kerbin again, as it lands on a moon. It uses the same rocket to brake and soften its landing again. It also carries all the science modules back, so there's no need for anyone to retrieve any science.
Further, I (still to this day) do all my missions 'Alpine Style'/aka TinTin style(the cartoon). What you go in is what you land in is what you return in.
Finally, I like safe margins on fuel. It also made the Vulture able to soar and pick its landing site at leisure. Edited November 25, 2015 by Vermil

[wired2thenet]

[quote name='Cupcake...']I do miss .90 SSTOs. ;.;

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zxmhRIcM14[/url]

Good times. :)

Cupcake...[/QUOTE]

I remember that Little Ship, Big Adventure! I tried to recreate it, but was never successful.

My fondest memory is accidentally creating an SSTO while talking about KSP with my 5/6-year old son. When I first flew her, I had her on a high angle, and suddenly found myself in space, so I decided to try again and capture the video:

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN7u1nkakxI[/url]