Jakalth

The Drescapades have begun! I have started my mission to Dres with the launch of the Trail Breaker extreme range survey probe, and the launch of the first of several tug launches to Dres. This first tug is the first of two of my lighter "Octopus" multi-role tugs, with some parts for the orbiting station in tow. The first Lamp Post will be following suit soon enough. Not a whole lot going on so far. Loading craft up for the mission is not the most exciting. The octopus 1 is loaded and flying while the lamp post 1 is only just getting into orbit now. Got several part destined for dres to load onto the Lamp post before launch but it's progressing. :update: Octopus 1 and Trail breaker are out of kerbin soi and on their way to their orbital plain adjustments while the lamp Post 1 is ready for it's escape from Kerbin burn. Stage 1 and 2 progressing well. Stage 3 can begine one they all arive at Dres. Building the space station and surveys of Dres from orbit. :update 2: Stage 3 is nearly complete with the assembly of the Drescapade Station and the orbital surveillance from the Trail Breaker probe. I'll be releasing the swarm of 8 satellites next and refueling the Octopus 1 by using the Lamp Post 1 as a refueler, a job it does quite well.

Stage 2: Octopus 1 cargo and launch. Our nest step on the journey to Dres is sending up these ugly pencil rockets containing cargo for the Octopus to haul to Dres. First of all is a pair of solar arrays for the Dres Orbital Space station. These two rockets ended up being a pig pain to launch to orbit. It was difficult to lock down the solar arrays inside their aero shells so that they did not wobble. So I had to fight this wobble all the way to orbit once again. I kept having the rockets trying to go sideways as they gained altitude. I ended up having to fly them on an inefficient, nearly vertical launch trajectory just to get them to space. Once in space, things get far easier. I only had to jettison their aero shells and use the remaining fuel to get them close enough to the Octopus that I could use their RCS to fly them the rest of the way. The first one was easy to line up and dock, thankfully. But with the second one I ended up coming in at an angle and had to play with RCS controls a bit to maneuver the array into place. Simple enough with how light these two arrays are. The next two cargo items were extra fuel tanks for the Octopus to use to extend it's range. With two of these on board, it brings the octopus to over 6,200 delta-v. This should be enough to reach Dres, if not, I can always try making a refueling run on my way there. The fuel tank launchers did not have the same issues as the solar arrays and only suffered from much simpler aerodynamic issues. Their flight was much simpler so there was nothing really to show for the now common launch of a long thing on top of a smaller rocket. So to save some boredom, I'll go strait to the separation of the fuel tank before I made an encounter with the wild Octopus in it's natural element. A bit of maneuvering with the RCS later and the fuel tank is lined up to dock with the rest of the Octopus. But this time with the added fun of being in total darkness... The second fuel tank was launched and docked without any issues leaving me with the completed Octopus 1 cargo train. Now that the craft is ready to fly, I decided to send it on its way. lets burn hard for Kerbin escape, shall we? And to make things even more interesting, I got myself a close Mun encounter on the way out of the system. This gave me two benefits, a nice fly by, and a gravity boost that saved my 400 delta-v in fuel. Nice! After the little encounter with the Mun, the Octopus was actually on it's way to leaving Kerbin's influence sooner the Trail Breaker. This would not due... Thankfully, the Trail breaker is loaded with a LOT of extra fuel. So after a 45 second full throttle burn from the Trail Breakers Ion engines, it was once again going to be the first craft leaving the influence of kerbin.

Stage 2: Octopus 1. Launch of the first "Octopus" starts out with a rather bulbous, ungainly rocket, with a large aero shell on top. The aero shell houses the Octopus inside to reduce its fairly considerable drag. The results are not the greatest... the Octopus is a bit wobbly inside it's aero shell and this throws off the flight of the rocket, making things more difficult then they should be. After several attempts, and a few adjustments, I was able to get the Octopus launcher on a decent orbit trajectory. At least the liquid booster separation went well... The flight continued, along with the wobble, until I got the craft into orbit of kerbin. Up here, it is time to reveal the Octopus in all it's glory. Ok, glory isn't really the right term to use here. It's a very utilitarian craft after all. Now it is time to set the craft free and let it spread it's many tentacles... And up here the craft will wait, in orbit of kerbin, for the arrival of it's cargo. The octopus is a cargo hauler on the lighter side of things, but it can still pull more then its own weight. Next step, bring up the cargo for the octopus to haul.

I finally decided to take on the Dres Awareness challenge. This is my mission to Dres. It is going to be a multiple part mission involving 2 lite "Octopus" multi-role tugs, 3 heavy "Lamp Post" multi-role tugs, and the "Trail Breaker" extreme range surveyor probe. The mission will be split into several stages, with a few of the stages being launched at almost the same time. I will be installing an orbiting space station to keep watch over the mission. A ground base will be built to perform science and explore the planet. Many satellites will be placed into orbit to keep the planet under full surveillance. And I will be making a few trips to the dresteroids to test their viability as low orbit refueling stations. As a bonus, I will try to capture and land a dresteroid on the planet's surface. Although it will more likely be a crash landing then a controlled landing. Stage 1: Trail Breaker. On the launch pad, the trail breaker looks fairly simple. A nice clean looking aero shell on top of a fairly simple 2-stage rocket. But looks can be deceiving. Inside the aero shell rests the Trail Breaker Probe. A quad ion propelled probe with a planetary scanner and a narrow band scanner. The Trail Breaker has over 13,900 delta-v of fuel on board for long duration missions The launch went smoothly and as the rocket climbed, the solid rocket boosters burned out. After jettisoning the boosters, the rocket now resembles a V2 rocket with it's short, strait profile. After guiding the rocket up into orbit, I jettisoned the aero shell revealing the Trail Breaker Probe housed inside. I am rather proud of it's custom twin i-beam attachment system. And of the ease at which the attachment system disengages from the probe. Just a little puff of thrust and the probe is free. And after a partial orbit of Kerbin, to get the orientation correct, it's full burn until an escape trajectory from kerbin is reached. Love the look of the blue Ion exhaust. Now it's a waiting game for the Trail breaker to escape kerbin before I setup a new burn to transfer the craft to Dres. This part might take a bit. Thank goodness for time warp.

I'm finally going to give some true love for Dres. The Lamp Post is going to fly again. And this time, only Dres will get the love. But not only that, this time the Lamp Post is going to be joined by friends. Several of them. here's hoping I actually commit to this fully...

When even Jebediah stops smiling when told he has to fly it...

Duna: I'll be doing that one in career mode soon enough. so I'll hold off until then. Eve: still not sure on my landing skill for large craft. especially with her sheer power. Visited her before but only with a single use lander/return vehicle. And barely made it at that. Moho: Might have to do a mission there soon. Haven't been there yet. Probably the only place I have not visited. Making the large solar power station sounds interesting enough. Dres: revisiting that planet might be the ticket I'm looking for. Not to close, not to far. Besides, I just made a refueling stop last time on my Jool mission. So the full mission would be useful. Large interplanetary shuttle with refueling stations: Well, I have the tug, which has modules for nearly any situation. And it can refuel its self by landing on most of the worlds in KSP. Has the range to do a Jool direct run without refueling. And if it needs more range, I can simply add more fuel modules. So that will, once again, be my main workhorse for this mission. The mission: Landing My main tug will be one of the landers and will act as the primary refueling station on Dres. I'll only have to modify it a little to add docking support while landed. I'll design and land several base modules that will be brought along with the main tug. Will most likely need at least a second tug to bring in enough modules. I'll also have a smaller lander/tug for doing the dresteroid prospecting. Need to find the right one, or more, if I'm going to try a capture. The mission: Satellites I've got a 6 pack module and a large scanner sat with 11,000 delta-v. The large satellite can make the flight on it's own actually. I'll throw the smaller sats into odd orbits to cover the majority of Dres with the scanner sat going into a polar orbit for max resource scanning. The mission: Orbit I'll bring a separate craft with enough parts to make an orbiting crew and communications station. This will be the fallback point should any of the surface bases fail for any reason. The mission: Roving What's a surface base without rovers? Several? Ones that can refuel and perform science? I'll bring those along. The mission: Dresteroids Hmmm... Landing on a few, should bring a grappling craft to do some tugging on them. Maybe bring one to low orbit. If I can design the craft right, might even try landing a dresteroid near my surface base. Something I've never done before... I think that should cover it then. Thanks for the replies everyone.

Looking for an interesting place to launch a large multi part mission using just stock KSP. This mission would involve landing multiple craft and/or setting up a fairly sizable surface base, on the surface of a planet, moon, or both. I have already done a Jool 5 mission, landing on and refueling from each moon in the Jool system. I'm looking for a more centralized mission where I focus on just 1 or 2 worlds. I already have at least 1 space-tug/low-g lander type craft I can use to get anywhere in the Kerbal system and plan on launching multiple different craft, each with their own multi part payloads. But to where??? Eve might still be outside my abilities to land anything sizable/functional on. And having already done the full Jool system, I don't plan on revisiting that system for a while yet. And the sun has nowhere to land on... Suggestions would be appreciated. Even suggestions for what type of infrastructure to try and set up would be good.

579Ton Vtol Aircraft with a pseudo landing strip on its back. Flies alright. It's quite stable. Needs around 80% thrust just to take off and can peak out at 3,600m @ 100% thrust. Enough fuel to fly for about 15 minutes. Has a top speed of around 50m/s... only... Uses 24 Goliath turbofan engines for lift. Has about 18 frames per second when flying. Carries 336 Kerbals as well. Not sure if it's a dead end craft or if it has potential for anything great. But it is BIG and can take off and fly with no wings. It flies stable and hold orientation well. other then that... meh... Just seeing if anyone here has ideas for this craft design.

@ Aetharan Amen to that. I agree with your whole list of comments. It IS what makes this community so awesome. The collection of "if this can't be done, then how did I pull it off?" stories found through out the forums. There are so many amazing ideas and people here, and more join every day. And about your naming choice... I thought I recognized the names. Anne McCaffrey is such a good author. Her son Todd is getting to be as good as her as well. Honors to the Harper Hall. Also, I'm not so much surprised as I am pleased to see how far this challenge can be pushed. It's good to see that the challenge is being enjoyed. @Gojira1000 That's the first successful Spaceplane submitted to this challenge. Definitely goes in the Spaceplane level. Being a pure flying rocket seems to be the initial option for size-0 spaceplanes at the moment. That is until someone cracks the Juno + rocket conundrum. Nicely done. @Caithloki Sorry if the wording was a bit off, but "Twitch" engines are ok to use. I consider them to be smaller then the Spark, or at least the same size. They are 0.625m scale. Look forward to seeing how you get along with this. Interesting first try.

Yeah, you two are pushing this so much further then I could of imagined. Hah! Love it!

Best thing I can say is this. get off the runway as soon as possible, go slowly as you leave the runway, and enter the water as slow as you can(10m/s for example). While traveling beside the runway, you can bring it's speed up to 40m/s or so, but it is safest to just take your time. If you try the Grouper, it should fit, just barely. But you'll need to remove the side ballast tanks to make it narrow enough. Second step would be to move the front dive planes onto the nose of the sub and move them in so they are about as narrow as the rest of the sub. Also, loose the top parascope wing. Thing is, half the fuel for the engines is part of the ballast tanks, so you'll want to add fuel tanks to the main hull. and the engine necells are needed to supply enough air for the wheesleys. Finally, you'll need to play around with removing small amounts of ore from the front and back ore tanks until the craft no longer sinks when it enters the water. probably between 1,200 and 1,500 combined ore removed from the two tanks.

There are other biomes then just shore and water? o_O Hmmm... Na, nothing else seems to be down in the depths but shore and water. At least not according to Kerbal Engineer. If anything has changed biome wise it hasn't been updated in KER yet. Anyways, I've just started dipping my toes in the water. I'll end up finding out if anything else is down there some time when I'm willing to spend more time to explore. At 14m/s, it takes quite a while to get anywhere. But if I load down the Grouper, I can just troll along the bottom on its landing gear, while I go afk. Then just check in every so after and see what it finds.

And by deep end, I mean ocean of course. 2 submarines to play around with. They may not be nice replicas like others have released, but they are simple and work well in the water. First we have the Flounder. This submarine is based on an ah... hmmm... I'm not really sure what it's based on, but it's my first successful submarine. It used 2.5m Ore tanks for ballast and 2 wheesleys to provide the thrust. The craft weighs in at over 150 tons and only has a top speed of just shy of 13m/s. This craft can carry two kerbals to the bottom depths of the ocean, and return to the surface in a hurry. It also has "quite a bit" of liquid fuel for longer under water runs. Like most other designs, this one becomes more buoyant as it burns off fuel and I'm sure it will eventually become too buoyant to stay under if enough fuel is burned off. Diving deep with the lights on can get you down to crush depth pretty quickly. Good thing the ocean don't seem to be quite that deep here. When pushed hard enough, this submarine can even porpoise out of the water. But beware, exerting too much forces on the craft can lead to spontaneous dis assembly. Like leaping out of the water, raising or lowering the landing gear too quickly, bumping into objects, or even looking at it wrong(switching to a different craft and switching back). The Ore tanks are quite volatile for some reason... The second submarine I have is the Grouper. This craft is a lot sleeker and more conventionally shaped. It's powered by twin, rear mounter, wheesleys with two rows of ballast tanks of either side of the craft to maintain ballance. Unlike the Flounder, the Grouper is nearly neutrally buoyant and has a higher top speed... of just over 14m/s. It's equipped with a hydrodynamic para scope boom that also has an antenna for transmitting back your findings without fully surfacing.(just a wing piece with some bits on it, but it works, or so Bill Kermen tells me.) (older picture) The Grouper is a bit more maneuverable then the Flounder and can reach the depths of the ocean a bit quicker. (older picture) And like the Flounder, the Grouper is equipped with its own landing gear, so it can crawl back into the surface for repair and refueling once it's mission is complete. (current design) The two craft are available for download, testing, and destruction at the following links: Flounder, deep sea submarine. Grouper, seeker submersible.

SuicidalInsanity Your rocket is beautifully elegant. It does have a close resemblance to an N-1 rocket. That's fine with me. You got to the moon, landed and returned to kerbin for a clean landing. Very well done. Nearly need another level just for Mun runs... Yours is only the second one to go that far. Dfthu A very Kerbal rocket you've got there. Big, slightly unstable, but still gets the job done. Very nice. I especially love the extra explosions during staging and the bent drinking straw look of the rocket. Bonus for still getting to orbit with your rocket bending and probably wobbling like a wet noodle. Nicely Done. moogoob If you could find a picture or make a recreation of the craft I'd be eligible for the ssto level. Only needing slight tweaks.

well, only progress I've been able to make so far is an inside out turboshaft. the engines are on the inside and the turbine blades are on the outside. Also, the center body of the bearing turns, not the axle. it's a strange thing indeed. But, it's very useful since the bearing can, in theory, be attached to the middle of a vehicle even easier then the cage mounted style turboshaft. Sadly, this design still majorly lacks in the power department since it currently only works with the Juno Engines. The bearing: The bearing only weighs in at 1.8 tons, less once the m-beams is ejected. The center structural fuselage is the rotational part with the landing gear and axel being stationary. This should allow the bearing to spin even faster, since the moving part is just the 0.1 ton fuselage. Should, is the key word here... It can be swapped around and run as a conventional bearing simply by attaching the center section to your structure instead of the lower liquid fuel tank. The Turbine: The turbine it's self has 18 Juno's acting as blowers and another 18 to counter the twist the others provide. It only runs on infinite fuel atm. In the picture, you can just make out the 12 radiator panels it uses to spin the propellers. They are actually attached to the propellers and rotated into position. The download: Center Body rotor 4 The 4th version of this design. still doesn't fly but does spin nicely.

@aser If the liquid fueled engine on it was only used after it reached orbit, then that more then counted. that beat my attempt. Nicely done.

last time I tried making a mk3 cargo bay based bearing, the main shaft kept linking with the cargo bay causing the whole thing to blow up, or do nothing at all... never could get it to actually spin. Would love a simple example of how to get one of those bearing types working, so I can see what I was doing wrong. Might be able to coerce the design into a syncro bearing set if both ends of the drive shaft can be free floating.

Yeah, Junos seem to have a speed problem. I've done a little testing of the Panther engine on my bearing set and it seems to be able to push the rotors a bit faster then the Junos. Although both the Juno(x3) and a single Panther still seem to turn the turbine with the same amount of force... Yes, the rotor bearing set is a bit heavy. Ok, it's VERY heavy... I've got a few ideas to try and make it lighter, but I don't know how I'd reduce the part count by more then a few parts, unless I switch to only 3 support rods instead of the current 4. Getting two bearing sets like that to line up with a gear at the bottom has been bugging me for a while. I can't seem to find a way to make a bearing cage that is open at both ends... I'm missing something in making one of those. Using a single turbine to turn both. Yeah, I've been thinking about that myself. If it worked, it would save both on weight and part count. I might have to give that a try.

Well, side project of mine. Been at work on another rotor craft drive system. This time it's the return of the Syncro-copter main rotors. Or at least a surprisingly stable prototype. No actual syncro-copter to fly around. Just a static test bearing set. Hope you guys find it interesting and educational. The turbine blades are the radiator panel(edge) and it's got 12 junos blowing on each turbine, with the two turbines synced using small hard point gears. It runs smoothly once it gets moving and doesn't overheat or get out of sync while running. I had an issue with the engines overheating the radiator panels, but I simply moved the engines out further and the over heat issue went away. They run hot, but remain around the same temp seemingly indefinitely. I left it running for 6 minutes, at full throttle, to make sure. NOTE: there are no fuel tanks or air intakes on this test rig so it needs to be run with infinite fuel turned on. Syncropter test rotors. Part count: 233 engines: 24 Junos Lift: minimal Functionality: 85%

I think your problem is heat... *dumb comment ended* Try moving the engines out further from the turbine blades. Try moving them by just 1 engine length at first and go from there. As I had said earlier distance reduces heat. Otherwise, try adding some form of charge generation to the rotors, that way the radiators are powered. They might be able to handle the heat better if they are powered.

Well, this time it's nothing fancy. Just two early game testing craft I've been using for campaign mode, to grind science on kerbin. The first is this second generation surface vehicle that only uses early unlocked parts. Tier 1 R&D building. This small craft is a Juno powered rover using stearable landing gear. It does a nice job at griding out those early measurement assignments near the KSC. In this configuration, it is capable of quite high speeds on land, and can turn safely at speeds of just over 35m/s on level ground. Much higher speed turns can be made and turning on rough ground can be made if your willing to take the risk. It has proven to be one of the best little land vehicles I've made and I still use it in my game. Science Putzer Mk.2 The current configuration I've been using has extended usability with better landing gear, power generation, and lots of science equipment installed. It's safe turning speed, with the small retractable landing gear, has been improved to just over 40m/s. It's top speed seems to be a bit higher as well. The second craft is an early game flier that I've found to be endlessly useful. It's a small Juno powered aircraft that I've been using to complete all the lower altitude "haul this to altitude" and "test this at x height and y speed". The little craft is quite fast, for being Juno powered, and also quite nimble, nearing super maneuverability. It's top speed, at 500 meters, is just over mach 1(~360m/s) and it's max operational altitude is around 10,000 meters. Although, it carries a limited fuel reserve, meaning it's not capable of extended flights. I've used it to carry some fairly heavy parts to altitude before, like the rocket engine I've got on it's back in this picture. And due to it's small size, it has a nice and low cost for each flight. So completing the mission and returning to the airstrip means the mission was highly profitable. srhstc (Short Range High Speed Test Craft) I hope you enjoy these simple craft and that they are able to inspire you onwards in your endeavors.

@scullyl Oh My... That thing is amazing! Love all the attention to details from the misaligned wheels and bent looking girders too the poorly fitting body parts. Really does look like something kerbaled together in a hurry to get too safety. Amazing!

Well, I've been playing with large vtols and found an odd occurance that I can't quite explain... It started off as a 6 engine lifter that I wanted to see how fast I could get it going horizontal and still be able to take off vertically without wings. It turned into one of the strangest things I've encountered that is neither a kraken event or a bug. Something I can't quite explain is going on with the physics here, it works, but I don't quite know how. I would like to figure it out, and I'm sure a few other people would find this oddity useful if it could be predicted. Self stabilizing airship/carriers for example? What I have here, is a stock auto pilot. One that is induced by a combination of aerodynamic strangeness and thrust. It starts with this craft on the runway: [URL="http://www./download/3939kj09c6rxs24/vertajet_broken_2.zip"]vertajet broken 2[/URL]. [IMG]http://i1346.photobucket.com/albums/p685/Jakalth/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/brokenvtol1_zpssgd8trba.jpg[/IMG] The name says it all. It's broken somehow. When the craft is set to take off from the runway, it starts building up speed and the tail takes off first. This puts the craft into a nose down orientation. As it builds more speed, the front also lifts off. With the nose lifted, it starts to level off again and continues to pick up speed. After it has accelerated a bit more, the nose continues to lift, putting it into a nose up orientation. With the nose up like this, it starts to slow down, but climb much quicker. It keeps climbing, slowly nosing down until at around 8,000m it's flying level, and accelerating again. From here on out it hold its self mostly level, with the nose going into a slightly nose down orientation, but pretty much holding direction. The odd part is, it does all this without me ever touching the controls. It does it all on it's own. The maneuvers are all slow and smooth as well, making it even more odd. What I would like to figure out, is what combination of aerodynamic forces and thrust positioning is allowing the craft to act like it has an auto pilot guiding it too altitude. I started the craft as a simple vtol, then added the extra tail surfaces and angled the engines to give it more forwards thrust. It took me several tries to stop it from simply flipping over on it's back and crashing. now I don't know what combination of things has given this craft the auto pilot like trait to fly to altitude and self level with no player input... To test this out on your own, follow these simple steps: 1: make sure the brakes are off 2: set the throttle too full 3: turn on SAS 4: stage the engines on 5: This is the most important step!!! [U]Do not touch the controls at all.[/U] Let the craft fly its self to altitude and just watch it do its thing. 6: think for a bit and see if you can decipher what is causing it to act like this. I'm drawing a blank and I've had all day to ponder over it. This craft has me all confused... But finding out what triggers this to happen would be useful for anyone planning on making a flying base/airship/carrier.

I'm glad the bearing got the mental juices flowing for people again. It's good to see the idea behind these isn't dead anymore, just changed a bit.