Whats your revolutionary design hacks?

[The CanineCraver]

I know that I personally am not the brightest bulb in the box,but I have had a couple "good" ideas,so I'll start with my first one,

  

As you can see jeb doesn't approve...

but he does now!

Sorry for all of the GUI getting in the way but I did this awhile ago.The idea was to create a single ship powerful enough to land on the moon,and come home without any docking(at the time docking was the hardest thing ever,still sorta is ).So I attached a couple terriers on the sides and my ablator on the top,so that I can bring it all back,reducing the cost of the ship.

 

[jros83]

Cool

[Hodo]

For me, without posting a dozen pictures that I have already posted elsewhere here.   It was the discovery of the "Cranked Arrow" delta wing design.  

 

I found that is by far the most useful wing design for SSTO planes and just high performance aircraft in general when dealing with FAR.   

[regex]

I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but something I've done for a very long time (prompted by building my first few space stations and the crushing part counts) is putting booms on my tugs for RCS. It usually means designing the payload to conform but that's never been a big deal. Although it's rarely balanced I never have to worry about the extra superfluous RCS pods everywhere.

And unbalanced RCS just makes you better at docking...

Spoiler

[The CanineCraver]

If it's something That you use regularly and if you take credit for making it(or even if you didn't), than it belongs here, and BTW it's a good idea.

Edited March 28, 2017 by The CanineCraver
odd wording

[Frozen_Heart]

Does Clipping landing gear through a metal plate and somehow achieving thrust count?

[The CanineCraver]

sure does,if it works.

Edited March 28, 2017 by The CanineCraver

[n.b.z.]

Mounting an additional probe core, or two, deliberately tilted off the vehicle's axis of travel, in order to...

1. implement an AOA HOLD mode for planes (nice feature for cruise flight and/or reentry from orbit)
2. tame wobbly rockets on ascent
3. build an asymmetric shuttle stack, and use SAS PROGRADE on ascent like on any other rocket, going as far as rotating the whole thing 180° into a heads-up, tank-down position (like the real shuttle did) while the main engines are still burning, mainly just because I can

I don't know about "revolutionary", but my little write-up about the TiltProbeCore™ seems to be my most-liked post ever.
 

 

 

[The CanineCraver]

Well it is the first of its kind,so yeah,REVOLUTIONARY!

Edited March 28, 2017 by The CanineCraver

[bigcalm]

Ok, so this thing is a bit big and entering the atmosphere at speed means a lot of flipping (and then exploding) with just a heatshield at the bottom.  I can't really move the centre of mass down towards the heatshield easily.

I kind of need fins to keep it on a stable trajectory.  I need them to be highly heat tolerant and really draggy.

Ooh hang on, what about this?

Works like a dream.  Solid and steady as a rock through the atmosphere.  Pulled and survived 20g's on entering Eve.

Your vessel still needs to be able to fit on top of a 10m heatshield but that shouldn't be too difficult except for the most massive of craft.

 

 

[The CanineCraver]

You know I never really thought about that @bigcalm,not only does it work well,but it looks quite graceful aswell,good idea!

I do have a question though,do you keep those heatshields,or ditch them after re-entry? 

Edited March 29, 2017 by The CanineCraver

[Jarin]

1 hour ago, The CanineCraver said:

I do have a question though,do you keep those heatshields,or ditch them after re-entry? 

It looks like it decouples just above the parachutes, with separatrons to carry the whole assembly away.

[bigcalm]

2 hours ago, Jarin said:

It looks like it decouples just above the parachutes, with separatrons to carry the whole assembly away.

Yes that's correct - the upper heatshields are ejected when the ship gets close to terminal velocity and before any parachutes are deployed.  Note that the bottom heatshield is only ejected after the parachutes are fully deployed (or it tends to crash into itself.  Sigh).  It also works for craft that don't have precise centre of mass. 

 

 

[ouion]

Using the Decoupler's open areas to fit sas and monpropellant to make a service module 

[Superfluous J]

I liked my design for the Mun-and-back-cheapskate challenge. It was aerodynamic enough to get off of Kerbin without wasting a bunch of fuel, but... interestingly designed enough that I didn't need to worry too much about it falling over on landing. The video title screen below shows you everything you should need to know, but if you want to see it in action it's just a click away.

Spoiler

 

 

[Numerlor]

Quote

Add more boosters 

-Jeb

Jeb wanted to share his revolutionary idea

Spoiler

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

 

[drhay53]

pressurized Fuel Tanks Plus tanks. I think I've put them on in like 18-count symmetry mode before. Is this a hacks or cheats thread? Those things feel like cheating.

[Sputnik 1]

Clipping 5 SRBs into a single, powerful engine. Five times the power, 1x the size.

[Gargamel]

8 hours ago, ouion said:

Using the Decoupler's open areas to fit sas and monpropellant to make a service module 

Do you attach to the main body, just to use up the dead space, or do you attach to the decoupler itself?  I see both having advantages.  Thanks for the idea!

@regex, I've done something similar before, but I had an occasion while backing away from the docked part, the booms bumped into the piece and cashed an explosion. 

I've also found do the same thing with the girders at 90' to the vessel, usually a space tug designed to stay on the station and go pick up delivered parts.  The wider stance of the RCS seems to allow for finer control, and adds torque to help control long parts. 

[regex]

16 minutes ago, gargamel said:

@regex, I've done something similar before, but I had an occasion while backing away from the docked part, the booms bumped into the piece and cashed an explosion.

vOv I've dealt with tons of physics bugs in the game, it's why I quick save obsessively while doing orbital construction. I saved a station from autostruts doing that. I also sometimes hit the timewarp while the tug is backing away to put everything on rails, keeps things from phantom colliding and doing stupid things (aggravating because I'm quite proud of being able to do some delicate docking maneuvers bringing craft inside others without bumping).

[The CanineCraver]

On ‎3‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 4:29 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I liked my design for the Mun-and-back-cheapskate challenge. It was aerodynamic enough to get off of Kerbin without wasting a bunch of fuel, but... interestingly designed enough that I didn't need to worry too much about it falling over on landing. The video title screen below shows you everything you should need to know, but if you want to see it in action it's just a click away.

  Hide contents

 

 

I really think this is an amazing design,I whatched the video and you nailed the challenge,much better than I ever could.