JadeOfMaar

Managed to make a vanilla plane that gets to Mun. I call it the NOX Bluestreak Z. No Rapiers or Oxidizer here. Its fuel margin is a little tight and may be beyond my piloting skill considering the limited range (of runtime and strength) on the Whips. Added RCS tanks but not nozzles, and replaced the heatshield with a shielded docking port. It's technically still WIP but it's up for download by any ace pilot. Derived from my mod SSTO that can reach Minmus, land and return.

I hadn't thought of that as I'm staying in KSP 1.1.3 for a while. It'd be pretty sad to think that certain ships I design and share will no longer work.

I think it's a little inappropriate to post an incomplete station... But here's my next one. The Cubis, launched from Munbase Muna Industria. All of this is just the core. It's waiting on MKS-Lite to (and if it will) catch up to KSP 1.2. If it doesn't I may have to say goodbye to those beautiful inflatables and flex-o-tubes and change how I design the modules for crew and orbital construction...and blow off the EL pad off of the top there with Whack A Kerbal Object Thrower. I'm staying in KSP 1.1.3 for a while.

Some of these requests are really nice yet can really only happen with mods... Like binary moons and clouds. It would be within Squad's scope to insert an array of co-orbital lesser bodies (like trojan moons?) around a greater body. That sounds like Haumea with ⅓ Pluto's mass and 4-hour days. Very good call.

Till Underverse come?

Lol. Every planet pack alive is waiting for Kopernicus to catch up to KSP first. They can't operate without Kopernicus.

The folks at Fort NOX have been quite satisfied with their developments and Jebediah's participation. They have proudly (mostly) completed their vanilla gladiator and named it the BlueStreak Z. Oxidizer, Rapiers, Mods? No. Mun orbit? Download? Yes!

No mission updates or new manned launches of any sort today. Only tweaks and test launches to a mothership in anticipation of one single large mod update and the beginning of the assembly of a flagship from another universe...maybe another game even. Sadly the ships are both Klassified ...for now.

IIRC Nova wanted to put, basically a Mustafar, where we have Laythe. Anyway, yes please.

The first round of potato tagging is concluded with senior crew Valentina and Sigmund having each named a Dresteroid after themselves. They descend from high orbit and plan their rendzvous with the main ship. The plans change slightly as things get hairy with the junior crew of Nancy and Munney Kerman whom, after launching from near Dres' canyon, must summon the ship into low orbit to retrieve themselves and the lander which has nearly exhausted all its LF and most Monopropellant just to return to orbit. Everyone unites finally to share logs, snacks, phone home, and snooze in the comfort of a large vehicle after a few hundred days sitting in landers/koasters. Back at home, Fort NOX fastens Jebediah's hands and buttocks to experimental spaceplanes that make Mach 5, have enough TWR with nukes alone to climb into space and require no aftermarket parts. Since no one can hold a pen and a steering wheel at the same time, however, Bob tags along and does the logging. Their lives hang on the line as they have to save fuel in the back of the craft after reentry to keep impact force away from the cockpit. Splashing down at ~60m/s Bob's logs affectionately end with "This one has a fat SAS."

You're far from the only one building generations of and splitting sub-families from the same ship. This sounds like a very nice idea, and something a lot of the community will want, including myself, once they know it's out there. You may find this mod interesting in the interim and even a source of inspiration. It doesn't do versioning but the tags and archive abilities should be quite helpful while you (wait to) get started.

If you have KerbalX then upload onto the site just so it can detect the mods in it, and delete once you're done. If you don't have KerbalX then upload it somewhere, PM me a link and I'll do it for you.

Nah. Nobody's gonna ask that. The T1 aerospike is supposed to have a node behind it so you can mount a fairing base easy. So you're experimenting with having the SSTO not carry mining gear?

Oooh well this is a nice thread. As for me I am, and have been, sorting out parts mods in some troublesome ships (The trouble being having to read "Locked or invalid parts" because of this one part from this one mod that I love but actually has no place in this craft or the mod's folder needs to be renamed).

OPT spaceplane seaboat. This is the "Giantess" hinted at in opening post. A J cargo bay at the very front opens downward for a tiny submarine, there's another phoenix cockpit under the water, and the craft has parts from the Karbonite mod to refuel while in ocean, but Karbonite is nearly non-existent on Kerbin so those parts turned out to be a waste of time. It may turn out just right on Eve, however, as the purple world is full of it. It also cruises at 28m/s and travels up to 60km. In addition to its limitations it's... not giant enough. But it's a good start.

That Kerbin sure looks like Rald to me.

This one has been brewing in my mind for a while but the catalyst for its arrival was a PM expressing appreciation for my alien ship designs. I inserted a unique challenge into this one: Build with only one parts mod. So Mk2 Expansion and IntestellarFuelSwitch. The Kraden Purple @kraden is a deep space science vessel with up to 10,000 dV, 14 xenon engines, plenty room for 1.25m vessels and almost enough [fixed that] nuclear reactor power to steadily feed them. It had blue lights first "The Kraden Blue" to match the xenon emissives but then it started really looking like Eddie's Odyssey and we can't be having that. Though if you can ask his KRnD for a measly 1.3 Mil , the builders will get cracking on this for you right away. On KerbalX; More pics. The hull part with circular cabin lights is the science lab.

Sounds legit, then. Alright, design something that uses the J Linear Aerospike or ARI-7x engines. And I see what you did there with that Iridium reference. *makes Vulcan hand gesture*

The overuse of Tweakscale does come across as a tool of a lazy engineer. However, for my two non-stock hovercraft so far I've had to scale down nearly everything except the core section because those ships are meant to be very small. I've seen mention that @Andrew2070 is highly concerned about part count and game performance, especially in KSP 1.0.x, which is completely understandable. Scaling something to be immense can save on performance but will degrade any texture, of course......But none of that justifies his use of (if he actually has use of) over 20 thousand monopropellant. @Mycroft opened a serious can of worms. Lol. I'm on the fence about mods making it harder to produce a good-looking and well-functioning craft. I've seen countless wonderful and functional vanilla ships. But then there's my USS Enterprise. Not just another trophy ship it does nearly everything expected of a working ship. Sadly it contains 5~7 mods but I know my mods. If anything makes it hard to build good-looking and capable crafts with mods it's that mods that make certain features easier to build in may not exist or are obscure and unknown to the designer...or how they operate may scare the designer, or the anticipation of technical issues with the mod which will hurt the design more than help it--and vanilla players never want/do to have to deal with that. Speaking of technical issues, I happen to have this: I'm helping to develop a planet pack and OPT seems to not agree with it. Everything's there but I can't use fuel switch on hull sections and would have to compensate with procedural tanks. But as KSP 1.1.3 (which I'm still in) is phasing out, I'm not complaining. Upgrade your game then marvel at the truckloads of new shiny OPT parts and then decide what to build. Make a castle ship or station and send it to Moho, Pol or Gilly... Something static and important for your SSTO to serve with.

Some more testing and developing occurred: Attempts were made to enable a lander to function effectively as a rover (stick some girders under it, some wheels on those and mash the pedal). Also an SSTO design was more thoroughly tested. It started ballooning out in a bad way just to be able to take 15 tons to the Mun. But here's something momentous. While the NANC Brown crew get things done at Dres (Valentina and Sigmund have taken it upon themselves to take turns playing Tag with asteroids...to make up for forgetting to pack any Claws) and the Lithia's crew still wait to enter Jool's SOI, KSC finally finds something to do. The finally settle on a station design to launch from Muna Industria. With some help from pilot Eiyuu Kerman, the lady of the day, Eligy Kerman, arranges the KAS connection between the slugging miner vessel Graveheart and the OS Cubis Mun Station. For some reason/with what part I don't remember in there, the station is not DOA. No kerbal had to be sent to deploy the station's one solar panel to allow it to charge its batteries. Basic microwave power ability via MKS Lite brings it to life on its own. After Graveheart does its work and Eligy removes the pipes, she stands right there like a mad woman as the station launches off, threatening to blow her away. Since Muna Industria is not on the equator the station is obliged to do a plane change and resolve that little nag. Habitation and other necessary modules will go up in due time, all launched from Mun, except supplies of things like Enriched Uranium, Argon and Xenon. 50km altitude might be a bit low for the station but there's enough RCS tankage and thrust aboard to adjust if needed. Finally, the pancake launch vehicle deorbits itself and Bill, lead engineer among the Industria staff, gets cracking on the list and designs for things to send up.

But.... but.... why 12? D: People's eyes will bleed at the amount of Monopropellant that giant Mk2 tank is holding.

Since I started paying attention to aero overlays it disturbed me to no end that the old wings were seen as giant ailerons, but seeing that guide now it makes complete sense. @jrodriguez I was introduced to this and B9 Aerospace at the same time but B9 was horribly broken then. OPT therefore grew on me like plants grow for Poison Ivy. @K.Yeon Many thanks, but that design is going to get worlds better as you're on the ball again. Parts I needed,you're reviving them. And new ones that automatically have a place in the upgrade. @Raideur Ng Your cautionary words spur an interesting chain of thoughts for me. I don't intend to bash but I'm particularly zealous for this mod, so I'd like to say sorry in advance if comes across that way. I rather like that OPT parts are relatively OP (without being gigantic like in B9 HX) and that the overall theme, even the name, has a way-advanced, clearly sci-fi not-quite-for-everyone feel to it. Several other mods like Mk2 and Mk3 Stockalike Expansion fit the bill of being very stockalike and having a few "obvious advantages" super-powered parts but not being famous just for them. OPT's problem, if any, is that anyone who merely knows the name of this mod probably knows about the Dark Drive and the J-61 Mk2 turboramjet and will get lazy with those or have the mod banned from a challenge submission. On the other hand, Mk2 and Mk3 Stockalike Expansion also have engines with comparable might to OPT's own. No one seems to know about Mk2 Expansion's equivalents of the stock Vector or Rapier engines, Mk3 Expansion's equivalent of the Rapier, either mod's atomic engines, or the scramjet that only just gets started where most other air engines would start to die, and can raise a craft's apoapsis by leaps and bounds while still in atmosphere. As for my argument: not everyone wants to jam-pack sets of several merely-fancier-looking stock-level engines into a craft and deal with part count/haul hundreds of tons of fuel to get a mission done. But even an SSTO built with only OPT engines, and hopes to go past Mun (or in some cases, even hopes to get out of Kerbin's atmosphere) already still needs to have a lot of engines. Even a fully loaded Mk IV spaceplane would need to have a good few OPT engines bolted onto it. @Denko666 I have this, with two J-92 and the J Aerospike. It should be able to make Mun orbit and back but it hasn't gone that far yet and hasn't carried any sample cargo yet.

Ahhh. Now I see the yellow stripe of the Mk2 monoprop tanks. You use it as ballast then? If you're willing to make the Longsword just a little longer you can insert the OPT Inline Docking Port part which fits Clamp-O-Tron Senior (and Junior too in the old version you're using) makes docking easier. It even contains an amazing 750 monoprop by itself, allowing you to replace the 2x 400 in the Mk2 tanks with more Mk2 LiquidFuel fuselage and solve your Oxidizer problem, and all without breaking your style.

@Mycroft you Ninja'd me D:

Oooooh. Now noticing the Jump Ring. I actually tried to design something with a similar purpose some time ago but it tried to be too flashy and ended up too heavy. It excluded Dark Drives, which is part of why it failed. I assume the Ore you carry to space is to refuel the Jump Ring ship but if I may ask, why does your spaceplance carry so much Monopropellant? That's 8~13 tons (2000u ~ completely full in your screenshots). You could save quite a lot on weight and dV by developing your docking skills.