The Diskovery Crew Vehicle and Rocket Family

[dlrk]

[Mods: 6.4:1 Kerbin, RealFuels, FAR, ProceduralParts, Procedural Fairings, Stockalike RF engine config, Deadly Reentry, KER, MechJeb, RPM, Station Science, Orbital Material Science, Near Future Technologies, KSP Interstellar, Kethane, Tarsier Space Tech, EVE, Texture Replacer, TACLS, RemoteTech2, Bahamoto engines, Connected Living Space, Kethane, KWRocketry, LTech, DMagic Orbital Science, Klockheed Martion, NovaPunch, RealChutes, selected parts of Realism Overhaul. Many mods were tweaked, for example the station science packs were made to take longer and more electricity, in order to make managing life support and station operations more challenging]

I recently started a new career mode run, and, after a couple probe landings, and manned fly-bys of the Mun and Minmus, as well as various orbital flights of those two and Kerbin(goo experiments, mapping, etc), I decided that rather than a traditional "mad dash to the Mun", I would set a goal of expanding Kerbal presence throughout the Kerbol System, and eventually colonizing the planets and moons that turned out to be the most useful or habitable. To that end, I decided to start by building a reusable crew vehicle, and an expendable, but simple, and (logically) cheap rocket family.

The crew vehicle is called the Diskovery Block IIC

The vehicle is entirely reusable, the only part jettisoned is the heatshield, just before parachute deployment. The two solid KW motors on the sides are the LAS, they are fired together with the main retractable engines, which can be seen around the bottom. The landing legs remain in the fairings until just before touchdown, which usually is in the flatlands by KSC. The service module contains ~3 days worth of life support for three Kerbals, and the total DV is about 3km/s. The RCS and main engines both are powered by MMH and N2O4(realfuels).

On Reentry:

It took a bit of work to get the shape right for it to survive reentry. It needed to be sufficiently draggy and light to lose significant speed in the upper atmosphere.

Chutes Out:

Docked to Station:

That was the Diskovery Crew Vehicle. It's lifted by the Diskovery II Lifter, of which there are two variants:

Crew only:

One large hydrolox powered Mainsail in the center, paired with two procedural SRBs that burn for two minutes.

Crew and Cargo

This cargo variant is powered by a larger center tank with four hydrolox mainsails, and larger SRBs. It was used to build the previously shown space station. The Diskovery would transpose and dock with a station module stored under it, in the fairing, then extract it, and tow it to the station, where it would be docked using the crew module's RCS.

And, a quick shot of the Diskovery docking with the station:

What do you guys think?

[Exothermos]

Cool! Looks like a plausible and well-sorted spacecraft for your 'more realistic' version of KSP. Holeymoley that's a ton of mod's you've got there. I really like the docking camera MFD.

[mecki]

Looks really nice!

would you Share which Parts / Mods were Used for this?

Especially the Tanks (with life support and fuels?) , the Engine and the landing legs!

thank you!

[GusTurbo]

I like it! Looks very cool and functional. If I had to make one suggestion, it would be moving the SRBs on the larger lifter down.

[MrMooner]

Hi dlrk

Those lander legs, any idea which mod ? (Deadly Reentry burns off one or more of my legs all the time)

Thanks

Mr Mooner

[dlrk]

Mecki: Tank is Procedural Parts/Real Fuels, engine is the Bahamoto Retractable Engine, the engine on the launch vehicle is the stock mainsail with Real Fuels and Stockalike config.

MrMooner: Landing Legs are NearFuture

[mecki]

Mecki: Tank is Procedural Parts/Real Fuels, engine is the Bahamoto Retractable Engine, the engine on the launch vehicle is the stock mainsail with Real Fuels and Stockalike config.

MrMooner: Landing Legs are NearFuture

Thank you! Where would I find the "Bahamoto Retractable Engine" though? Can't find it…

[mecki]

Found this, works for me on .24.2:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/82341-23-5-Bahamuto-Dynamics-CritterCrawler-AnimatedEngines-etc-v1-0-%28Jun7%29