Laniakea Class: Stock 250m Long Colony Ship

[Bubbadevlin]

Bubbadevlin Presents

The Laniakea Class Colony Ship

KerbalX Link

 

Development Process

Back when 1.8 was released I was playing around with the new SRBs and decided to try and make something which utilized them as structural pieces. This colony ship is what I came up with.
At 250 meters long and over 9000 tons it is the largest craft I have ever created in terms of size, and with a crew capacity of 2864 I think it it will fulfill its role.

The ship features a command section at the front, with a large multi-floor viewing window setup. Two habitation rings with 72 Mk3 habitation modules in each ring. (sadly I was unable to use BG to get them to spin, the rings were simply too large). In between the two rings sits the craft’s large multi-antenna communication array. The ship also includes 3 docking bays each featuring a fully functional cargo SSTO (albeit a pretty mediocre one that I quickly built). The 8 fairings are designed to mimic large fuel tanks, but this being KSP they are simply empty. At the very back of the ship is the two large propulsion units, each of which have 36 vector engines, though these are thrust limited to prevent spontaneous combustion.

This craft was created purely for aesthetics, and as such it is extremely impractical (who would have guessed). With a turn time of around 10 minutes and only about 1000 Delta V the real point of this thing is just to look cool.

 

Flight Guide

Dont try and make a launcher for this. Just dont. In my head canon this thing would be built in orbit from many parts. As such I simply always cheat it into orbit. If you are quick you can set its orbit before physics loads on the ground, but otherwise hack gravity to a minimum before launching. Other than that stage once for the main engines, and don’t stage again or the ship will fall apart.

Lights turns on the lights, and action group 0 will set the control point to be inline with the ship

 

[BowmanA081]

It's an impressive build, for sure. I'm sure you'll improve in the future.

[Bubbadevlin]

Thanks!

But I probably wont work on this thing much lol, it was built pretty much purely aesthetics. 

 When KSP 2 comes out and there is an actual use for colony ships? Definitely.