Zac's Space Junk Selects

[Zacspace]

 

This is the page where I used to put all of my best space-things. Still do too, apparently.

My favourite things to build are spaceplanes and rovers, so you'll be seeing more than a few of those.

 

 

Selected Selects:

My top 3 favourites of the things I've built. It's all down hill from here unfortunately

SP-9 Poleaxe A chibi space shuttle SSTO with ludicrous performance. Comes with a free rover and lander inside for doing a Jool 5* with. *Extensive use of part clipping makes this craft technically ineligible for Jool 5	Exoloper Mobile Colony The biggest thing I've ever built. Carries a rover and a lander on board alongside loads of ISRU equipment. It uses a glitch with the big wheels to drive pretty fast and handle rough terrain. <300 parts!	L-49 Laboriosa My only dropship. Designed to do big refueling jobs on little bodies like Minmus or Gilly. Named for the Himalayan honey bee.

 

Spaceplanes

Spoiler

 

SP-8x Naginata A craft with quite a bit of history. It began it's life shortly after the 1.0 atmosphere re-write as an abomination with engines mounted to mk-2 bicouplers. This A variant barely made orbit and had disappointing range once it got there. Later on I'd find Rune's Spatha, another chibi-shuttle SSTO that managed to space its engines around on a mk3 back plate evenly in a way I couldn't replicate, so I stole the backplate. Since the SP-8 and the Spatha had similar profiles to begin with, once I stole the rear end they became nearly identical. The c variant gained the name Spatha in recognition of that. The modern SP-8x uses a new rear end with a self-occluding fairing that reduces the fuselage's drag to zero, dramatically improving range.

SP-9 Poleaxe A cargo plane based off of SP-8x. The construction is surprisingly different due to the cargo bay preventing me from just extending a fairing all the way through. It's designed intentionally so that you can easily rotate the cargo bay between opening upward or downward. It can carry anything that can reasonably fit into it's cargo hold to orbit, with a normal payload it can fly direct to Duna or Laythe surface from the KSC runway. A lot of how I build spaceplanes today is based on what I learned building this one.

 

SP-27 Razorback Another old craft that survived. This one came up just slightly short in every way when I first built it, so it stuck around. Occasionally I'd update it and get a little better performance out, but never quite enough to make it into regular rotation. The current isn't much different. Having less range than Naginata and being a little pickier about where it lands due to it's long tail, it distinguishes itself by having much better atmospheric flight performance. Career players may appreciate that it's easier on fuel, too. I've managed to land this on the Mun direct from the runway, just barely though. Working on getting it to the surface of Duna where I suspect its low wing loading will really separate it from its peers.

SP-38 Starwhale This is the current largest of my Spaceplane Fleet. It uses the same tech as the Naginata and Poleaxe, but a little less extensively since it's a little more focused on delta-v on-orbit than it's smaller siblings. I intended to run a grand tour mission with this plane, but could never get the Eve lander working correctly. I might come back to that someday. It performance is predictably ridiculous. It's able to send itself to Minmus for refueling with it's cargo absolutely crammed wth densely clipped grand tour hardware. Starwhale can easily land a more reasonable payload on the surface of Duna or Laythe. ive used it as a support vehicle on a variety of other missions just because of the flexibility it's range and cargo bay give

 

Rovers

Spoiler

 

Exoloper Mobile Colony A colossal rover that drives around on 16 of the rovemax XL wheels because it legitimately needs them. It carries a smaller rover with it in an onboard garage and a lander on top. It's got 24 drills and 4 converter modules alsongside the power delivery and cooling to keep it all running indefinitely. Besides that it has all the science parts and sensors with space for several full sets of surface experiments. It uses the steering glitch to hit nearly 200km/h on flat ground and handle steep terrain with no problem. For such a large, heavy, and complex vehicle, this rover is surprisingly robust and light on parts. It's been extensively tested and improved on a few different long-distance missions. Safe to say it's not just "woah, big thing!" craft, you're supposed to actually use it. there's even a version with a launch rocket here.

 

Deployable Support Vehicle Designed to compliment my SP-38 Starwhale, this rover unfolds into a sort of elevated drilling platform. It carries most of the science parts and sensors, and 4 drills which efficiently saturate its single small converter module. compared to its smaller cousin, Compact Support Vehicle, this one is faster and better suited for long-distance driving as well as having a couple sensors that had to be left out of the smaller rover

 

Compact Support Vehicle Designed to compliment my SP-9 Poleaxe. This rover has 4 drills and one small converter like its larger cousin above. It also carries an impressive suite of science parts and sensors. It's main drawback is the Making History wheels it uses, which just aren't suited to a rover this size. I've included 10 of them to try and make up for their low climbing power.

 

Rover Mini The smallest car-type rover I've managed to build. Originally just for messing around on Kerbin, it's become actually useful over time. This is the rover included in Exoloper's rear bay. it fits into a mk2 cargo bay as well. I've circumnavigated the Mun in this rover

 

Honeybadger A craft designed for the Elcano Challenge. Drives like the product of an unholy union between a quadbike and freight train. It uses the tank steering glitch like Exoloper does to go incredibly, irresponsibly fast under its own power. It also makes use of the obnoxiously large superstructure the Rovemax wheels have to form a very strong crash cage, alongside a lot of other more subtle tricks to improve crash tolerance. the result is probably the most indestructible vehicle possible in KSP's physics.

 

Heavy Refueler The precursor to Exoloper, this truck's purpose was to greatly hasten the process of refueling landed vessels by having just a lot of ISRU equipment all running at the same time. It's the basis for my whole ISRU strategy in this game now, even if I don't normally use this craft specifically anymore. I've toyed with the idea of using the chassis for a heavy lift crane.

 

Rig Pig + The oldest Craft on this page. This rover is descended form the very first thing I built with the ISRU parts when they first came out. Over time it gained more features, became more compact, faster, better. Today it has all the science parts, space for surface experiments, all the sensors, vtol thrusters, a crash bar and a simple arm to aid in refueling. It doesn't really align with my design sensibilities anymore, but it continues to be one of my most popular craft on kerbalx.

 

Rover 6 A surprisingly popular rover that looks pretty cool and doesn't have as many parts as those fancy replica cars I guess. It doesn't do much that another rover on here couldn't do better, frankly, but I'm for the people, and the people want Rover 6!

"Other"

Spoiler

 

L-49 Laboriosa A dropship style lander that began life as just the front segment of Heavy Refueller. I designed this because using even small refueling rovers on low gravity worlds like Minmus is kind of a pain. The result is unintentionally more robust than it needs to be as it works pretty well on even Duna

 

P-19s Strike Sparrow & Four Planes P-19s is a tiny plane that I designed after a fighter jet I was flying exploded and I noticed the disembodied cockpit did a pretty good job on its own. I gave it huge, oversized control surfaces and 2 engines where one would suffice giving it way better speed and handling than any plane belonging to a space program needs. Four planes is a rocket that sends 4 P-19s planes one-way to Laythe where they can establish air superiority perform super sonic science the way they were always meant to.

 

Cargo Vessel II A cargo ship with two very large spaces for oversized cargo and a senior port at rear for towing even larger cargo. Unladen boasts about 7000m/s delta-v. Designed to easily get itself into position to grab cargo which may not have its own reaction system.

 

H-2 Block Hawk For a brief period of time after Breaking Ground released, there were no helicopter blades. As a result, if you wanted to build a helicopter in KSP with the shiny new rotors you'd have to steer it with SAS torque. Or would you? we had all kinds of joints suddenly, after all, couldn't you build a working helicopter swashplate with them and solve the problem that way? No, but actually yes. It doesn't work quite like it did anymore because the robotics in that first release were a lot more rigid, but it does still work a little!

 

Crew Transfer Vehicle Originally designed simply to move crew from one space station to another in the same planetary system (think Duna to Ike, or Laythe to Vall), I decided to build something that would favour ease of use over efficiency. CTV has enough thrust that you don't have to wory about multiple or very long burns, vernor thrusters, strong torque, and axially aligned docking ports to make docking quick and hasssle free. These attributes have made it very generally useful to have around a space station for wrangling modules and general tugboattery. On the occasion that I send a whole space station kit to a planet like you see to the left, CTV will form the drive section

 

SLIII Like my Crew Transfer Vehicle, This is a convenience-first craft. It has enough thrust and delta-v to handle bodies as small as or smaller than Duna. It's intended to be quick and painless to dock to a station. it also fits quite nicely inside a Mk3 cargo bay.

 

Compact Station A 'lil space station I built for the purpose of establishing a minimal presence around a planet without the hassle of building a whole space station. It fits into a mk3 cargo bay and includes most relevant scanners and science parts, as well as the ability to process ore into fuel.

 

 

Not all craft as pictured. Provided with no warranty or implied suitability for purpose. By flying these spaceships you consent to Take-Two coming into your house and using your toothbrush while you're out.

Edited Monday at 08:12 AM by Zacspace
Updated due to the passage of time

[klond]

 Nice photos.  I like the Cargo Vessel II, the way the front end is put together.  And the Landship is a futuristic bus in the best way.

[Zacspace]

1 hour ago, klond said:

 Nice photos.  I like the Cargo Vessel II, the way the front end is put together.  And the Landship is a futuristic bus in the best way.

Thanks. Those two craft have pretty similar front ends, I feel like the cupola's one of the more industrial-spaceship-looking cockpits we have.

[Rune]

Pretty nice stuff! I'm glad to have served as the inspiration to get another builder to show us his particular style. I might 'inspire' that wheel arrangement on the landship myself, actually...

 

Rune. Sincerest form of flattery and all that.

[Zacspace]

On 6/28/2018 at 10:52 AM, Rune said:

Pretty nice stuff! I'm glad to have served as the inspiration to get another builder to show us his particular style. I might 'inspire' that wheel arrangement on the landship myself, actually...

 

Rune. Sincerest form of flattery and all that.

I think the sincerest form of flattery might be having one of the oldest and most accomplished builders on the forums have something nice to say about my craft. I built my very first SSTO way back in .20 after dissecting one of your designs, too. I'll be interested to see what you do with landship's wheel arrangement since your surface equipment is usually smaller modules.

[TanoPrime]

Been on a journey to try and find who made these designs, as a lot of them are not available online anymore for some reason. Someone on the main KSP subreddit pointed me to this thread.

I'm very impressed with your designs, they are very elegant - I worked to reproduce your Razorback and my reproduction was less efficient than your craft. I'm now in the process of sending a SP-36 Ranger to test it on Laythe where I've never been before.

How come these designs are missing from KerbalX now?

[Zacspace]

On 11/14/2023 at 3:43 AM, TanoPrime said:

Been on a journey to try and find who made these designs, as a lot of them are not available online anymore for some reason. Someone on the main KSP subreddit pointed me to this thread.

I'm very impressed with your designs, they are very elegant - I worked to reproduce your Razorback and my reproduction was less efficient than your craft. I'm now in the process of sending a SP-36 Ranger to test it on Laythe where I've never been before.

How come these designs are missing from KerbalX now?

Woah. I haven't been around here much lately so I missed this. Thanks for going out of your way to find my stuff! I'm surprised anyone on the subreddit knows about me, I've never interacted with that community and barely do this one.

I tend to remove craft from my Kerbalx page when they break, become obsolete or just aren't up to my standards anymore. My Ranger in particular I never quite got working as well as I'd have liked. You've probably found out by now, but it's a little unstable on re-entry and it's thrust was annoyingly off-axis.

I've decided to update the thread since it's somewhat visible now (and apparently has been for some time).