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Colony in a Box / One Shot Colony / Colony Mothership


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I wanted to use Umbra Space Industries' Modular Kolonization System to complete the contract for putting a base on the Mun. I also wanted to put a fully functional colony on the Mun in one shot.

I devised a ship where each colony module has its own sky crane controlled by an unmanned (unkerballed?) module. It is still very much a work in progress...

First try was a bust (tried to land from too high of an orbit), but I got some good pics.

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^^^ This is my old design - it didn't have enough delta-v to land safely and detach the skycrane...

New version of the skycrane:

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To compensate for the added fuel and bigger engines, I also had to beef up my lifter and transfer stages (there are five of these skycrane / Kolony modules strung together - all that adds up quick!)

Finally got the whole colony landed safely, although two module fell over but did no damage.

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I sent up a crane to transport the modules from where I was able to land them (they were all within 8km of eachother)

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I just used the same lifter over again, sure I wasted some fuel and mass, but I didn't have to spend time redesigning something from scratch every time I wanted to send something heavy.

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I had a bit of a rollover and tore off a solar panel, but I discovered that this panel recharges 4 cylindrical batteries wicked fast! So I suppose the remaining one was a spare. :)

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I missed the colony landing site by about 25km or so when I landed the crane, but that was okay - that meant that I didn't have to worry about crashing in to my precious colony modules that I spent most of the week getting to the Mun in one piece. It was a long drive and some nasty surprise craters sent me rolling on occasion, but this crane miraculously landed back on its tracks and was still able to recharge, so I was good to go.

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So now my colony is all in one place, now I need someone to put it all together...

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Some of my favorite screenshots:

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Edited by neamerjell
Updated design
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You have a craft file for this?

http://www.neamerjell.com/projects/ksp/Kolony%20Mothership%202.craft

BTW: it takes a few tries to land these modules correctly. I have to send a crane to put two of the modules upright again and move them close together. However I was impressed with myself that I got all the modules within about 8km of each other... now THAT took a lot of tries to get right! I did a little victory dance when I finally got all the modules to the surface without wrecking them.

I have about 80 mods installed, but the ones I'm sure I used in this are:

Tweakscale

Tweakable Everything

MKS / OKS

B9 Aerospace

MechJeb

the solar panels are from the Near Future contstruction or something - I know it is part of the Near Future series

KAS

KW Rocketry

Edited by neamerjell
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  • 9 months later...
Looking back on some older posts of mine, and I think this is my greatest achievement in KSP so far. I worked for the better part of a month planning, building and testing this. Then I spent at least a week of spare time actually doing (and redoing) it.

I so want to revisit this idea in 1.0.5 and in the much fabled 64 bit 1.1 (cue the spot light and choir "ahhs").
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