totm june 2018 Work-in-Progress [WIP] Design Thread

[Torquimedes]

I started with Little One, then scaled it up to Big Six to get dockable wing-mounted engines. 

Then I wondered, can an X-wing replica be scaled down further?  How small can it be?  How silly will this get?

 

The farce is strong with this one.

[Triop]

2 hours ago, Torquimedes said:

I started with Little One, then scaled it up to Big Six to get dockable wing-mounted engines. 

Then I wondered, can an X-wing replica be scaled down further?  How small can it be?  How silly will this get?

 

The farce is strong with this one.

Edit: I hate how the seam of the small fuel tank does not line up...It's a KSP bug that bugs me...

Can be solved in the game, but it's a pain..

Edited March 31, 2017 by Triop

[RocketPilot573]

6 hours ago, fourfa said:

Amazed!

You seem pretty concerned with the fine details - the mechanical engineer in me winces a bit at the tower truss design though.  In this design, a counterclockwise torque at the top is constrained only by tensile forces, while clockwise torque is constrained by compression.  In the real world that kind of asymmetry can cause major fatigue failures.

If each layer had one diagonal pair (on opposing faces) sloping the other way, you'd have a wonderfully balanced structure.

This has been your structural mechanics minute, thanks for listening.

Thanks. I have to admit the orientation of the diagonal beams looked a bit odd to me when I was building it, but I was mostly going for look and low part count. That's how I ended up with the single diagonal beams in 4x radial symmetry.  I'll look into adjusting the design as long as it doesn't increase part count. The pad is already 200 parts and the rocket is maybe 500.

 

-Rocket

[fourfa]

No change in part count - just reverse the slope of two of the existing diagonals on each level.  It's actually very close to a classic time-honored truss, well done

If you have to save parts, you can go triangular.  On even levels, make all three diagonals slope left, odd levels slope right (or vice-versa). (You can do the same with the square truss too, to even out the forces)

Edited April 1, 2017 by fourfa

[Jefzor]

18 hours ago, Torquimedes said:

I started with Little One, then scaled it up to Big Six to get dockable wing-mounted engines. 

Then I wondered, can an X-wing replica be scaled down further?  How small can it be?  How silly will this get?

 

The farce is strong with this one.

Brilliant use of airbrakes. Does it fly well? 

[Torquimedes]

6 hours ago, Jefzor said:

Brilliant use of airbrakes. Does it fly well? 

Thanks!  It flies, but not well.  With no lifting surfaces it's a hovercraft with an aft engine for zipping around at surprising speed, but very poor maneuverability.  Between the turbine lag of the Junos and the brittle tiny legs I've not been able to land it.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Torquimedes

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I may finally have a somewhat reliable configuration for the E-50B

It seems that adding stub wings and thus reducing the disc loading in high speed flight allows it to fly at over 100m/s without fear of RUD.  It still blows up if you pitch down significantly though. Currently trying to figure out a way to make that harder to do. 

Anyways, testing of the Saturn S-IC stage is going along nicely. Not sure if I'm going to build new larger engine bells or not. What do you folks think? Do they need to be larger?

 

Edited April 1, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[Torquimedes]

Well it's much more flyable and even somewhat landable now.  The tiny legs always break but nothing else does.

 

The legs survive if you sacrifice your astromech as a parachute... it BOOPs its nose and then sits down.

[The Raging Sandwich]

19 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Anyways, testing of the Saturn S-IC stage is going along nicely. Not sure if I'm going to build new larger engine bells or not. What do you folks think? Do they need to be larger?

 

As I just was at the Space and Rocket Center in Alabama yesterday, I'd say they need to be way larger.

[SG Aero]

These ships make me feel bad about my own.

[Servo]

45 minutes ago, ShadowGoat said:

These ships make me feel bad about my own.

Don't let other's craft discourage you! Three months ago, when I saw torquimede's F-14, I never thought that I could make planes with moving parts. Instead of being intimidated, I was inspired to try it for myself. Now, I've built every swing-wing in the U.S. arsenal in stock KSP. 

Don't be afraid to try something new - you never know where it will lead. Look towards other's craft and videos as inspiration, and Don't be afraid to fail. 

Finally, don't be afraid to reach out and PM people - everyone here is very friendly, and will help point you in the right direction.

[DarkOwl57]

On 3/31/2017 at 3:25 PM, Torquimedes said:

I started with Little One, then scaled it up to Big Six to get dockable wing-mounted engines. 

Then I wondered, can an X-wing replica be scaled down further?  How small can it be?  How silly will this get?

 

The farce is strong with this one.

KerbalX link?

[Triop]

Guess what I am working on...

[DarkOwl57]

Oh my god

I just found an F1 mod with its own cars AND tracks!

Pics coming soon

[Triop]

1 minute ago, DarkOwl57 said:

Oh my god

I just found an F1 mod with its own cars AND tracks!

Pics coming soon

*Hyped.

[Columbia]

I haven't really done much in the past few days, mostly being focused on scale modeling.

I'm still overhauling my outdated airliners, most recently the A330. The engines it had before didn't look the part of the GE CF6-80E, and the Trent 700s are becoming more common and so I swapped them out for RR Trent-like replicas. 

 

Since they were rather simple-looking, I decided to try new techniques with the fairings and fan blades - I was quite happy with the result.

 

[He_162]

I present, the long overdue He1200 ton lifter!

Using just 1059 parts in the actual rocket, and 1510 parts in the launch structure combined, it takes up to 1250 tons to an 80km orbit. (1300 tons to a 70km orbit if you are lucky).

Stats:

Weight:
Height:
Width:
(Vectors) Engine count: 
------

https://kerbalx.com/He_162/He1200-ton-lifter

The largest lifter I have made to date, the launchpad part count is 1510, but the actual rocket has 1094 parts, making it smaller in part count than my previous 1000 ton lifter, whilst taking 250 more tons to orbit, as this thing can actually take 1250 or up to 1300 tons to orbit, albeit if you are lucky enough and efficient enough in your ascent.
+
This rocket has taken quite a long time to build, so please, bear with me. It is quite hard to build things at 3 - 4 FPS, and harder still to make it not explode on the launchpad, and even harder when it constantly crashes your game.

 

 

I will make a post with it, and my other huge lifters eventually when I have more than 1 - 2 of them.

Edited April 3, 2017 by He_162

[He_162]

I forgot to mention it's encroaching launchpad weights of 10,000 tons.

(9579.98 tons on the pad)

[SG Aero]

Well said servo.

[He_162]

Based on a similar architecturally speaking standpoint, I have developed a very inefficient 1500 ton lifter, but I guess efficiency isn't the point of these, these just take your huge random cargo to orbit in a single launch.

 

I present the He1500 ton lifter!

https://kerbalx.com/He_162/He1500-ton-lifter
These designs are work in progresses, I am essentially developing 2 stage to orbit lifters to take eventually, 2000 tons to orbit, and I am almost there, I simply have to take what I've learned from these, and put them towards developing a stronger more structurally stable rocket, which is what I have done.

(Part count is now a more respectable 857 parts, thanks to what I learned from that last 1200 ton lifter (1510 parts) That thing was a beast.)

 

Keep checking back for my next, hopefully a new architectural design than the cylindrical cone shaped one I have now, I want to make it more like a simple cylinder, whilst being aerodynamic at the top. (Possibly 1750 tons to orbit?)

All craft from now on will use at LEAST 4550 deltaV, the 1500 ton lifter has around 4660.

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by He_162

[Jefzor]

Working on an F-5 replica. What's your opinion on the nose? 

Edited April 4, 2017 by Jefzor

[PointySideUp]

Yo Dawg, I heard you like Ion craft, so I put an Ion craft in an Ion craft

 

[Thor Wotansen]

So I've been working on this baby for a few days now, it gets to orbit just fine with no payload, and once there has a good 5,250m/s delta V, however, when I put a 20t payload in the cargo bay, the wings fall off at around 500m/s, depending of altitude.  I've tried a bunch of things to mitigate this, but nothing I do seems to stop the RUD.

The nacelles are attached to the rear Big S wings and everything is autostrutted to the root part, which is the cargo bay.  The wings are attached to the Mk 3 liquid fuel tanks and autostrutted.  I'm not sure what else I could do short of using actual real struts and incurring the drag penalty.

[Torquimedes]

On 4/2/2017 at 5:43 PM, Triop said:

Guess what I am working on...

I'm curious to see the rest of this.  Stay on target...

Edited April 4, 2017 by Torquimedes

[PointySideUp]

4 hours ago, Thor Wotansen said:

So I've been working on this baby for a few days now, 

I'm not sure what else I could do short of using actual real struts and incurring the drag penalty.

Have you tried auto strut as grandparent part?