Ace in Space
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Posts posted by Ace in Space
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No real news today; just added a few more crafts to my Wagon Train To DunaTM ... and a straggler craft that had some difficulty getting out of the atmosphere, which is currently en route to Jade Station to refuel before joining the rest of the herd.
In the mean time, have a picture I forgot to post yesterday. This is a long-distance communication satellite. Its official name is currently the creative "Comm Sat," with the intent that once in orbit around its destination, it is to be renamed "AppropriateGemstone Comm Sat AppropriateNumber."
But honestly I've just been calling it "Ugly Space Flower."
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I may or may not be sending a
wagon trainlarge number of crafts to Duna orbit (and then to Ike one by one for assembly). This may or may not be only half of them.
Mimon Kerman has died of dysentery.
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18 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:
Interesting... what’s the mechanics (electronics?) behind this?
18 hours ago, Brikoleur said:There isn't. It's a myth which will either do nothing or make things worse.
Hm. That's interesting. I picked the technique up from my dad, who's been in the computer industry for a long time, in my childhood. I did already know that it makes things worse for the drive in question - the idea is not to "fix" the hard drive but get the data off before it dies for good. I did a little more searching and asked my dad where the idea came from, and apparently it's less "myth" and more "outdated" since it actually does have some validity... it's just that it's a solution for a specific type of problem that doesn't really occur anymore. Which makes sense given that I picked it up so long ago from someone who comes from the "old school."
So I stand corrected (and have informed my dad that hard drive design has marched on since ye olden tymes).
5 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:Nyan Cat!!!!! Everywhere!!!!
I'm not seeing Nyan Cat in my game.
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1 hour ago, Jeb, The Lonely Kerbonaut said:
Today, i recived bad news. The HD of my computer stopped working definitely. He was replaced by an cheaper HD, with an lower storage capacity, but the data of the old HD was not recovered. So, i lost everything, incluiding KSP.
So i decided stay away from KSP for a time. But i will still participate of the forum.
This is going to sound completely nuts to someone not familiar with the technique, but have you tried putting the HD in the freezer for a few hours? If you lower its temperature, you can often bring a hard drive back to life just long enough to pull data off it before it warms up and dies again.
1 hour ago, RizzoTheRat said:I want to keep a docking port on the top for refueling
Radial docking port on the side maybe?
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Well, today was interesting. After considerable fiddling and tweaking I came to a design I liked for the Duna landing mission. Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot of the exact build I used before launch.
Anyway, I had found in earlier test runs that the craft was having some difficulty getting from the Launchpad to orbit around the sun without using up most of its fuel. So this model was equipped with a docking port, and what would you know, Ruby had just enough fuel after achieving Kerbin orbit to intercept Minmus and dock at Jade Station for refueling (as you might have noticed, I use gemstones for my naming scheme). I know I have too many landers docked to the station; the one with the poodle on the left is Ruby (the others are maintenance craft for the station and associated surface base).
After filling up the tank, the transport stage was able to get Ruby into orbit around Duna, but ran out of fuel just before being able to lower the craft into a landing trajectory. The three terriers are the final engine stage and were initially intended for taking off and flying back to Kerbin, but I had to use a little bit of fuel to drop my periapsis into the atmosphere (which was as much as I was willing to use, because that final stage's fuel budget is tight). Duna's thin atmosphere means that aerobraking takes forever, so I ended up making several passes through the atmosphere, collecting lots of science as I went. But before the aerobraking was actually complete, I had second thoughts - first, I had a lot of science and I am not one to keep gambling when I'm in a good position. Second, with the poodle already spent and ejected, if the parachutes turned out not to be enough (which in the thin atmosphere they might not have been) I would have to use precious, precious return trip fuel to slow the landing. And third, even though it seemed like enough at the time I launched, when I was sitting in orbit with only those three little tanks of fuel, suddenly it didn't look like enough to take off from Duna's surface and fly all the way back to Kerbin.
So I quit while I was ahead. Ruby made a flyby of Ike on the way out for the dual purpose of gathering yet more science and eking out just a bit more fuel efficiency by slingshotting off its gravity, then stored the data and ditched the heavy science module.
Once again, the amount of fuel turned out to be just right and allowed me to intercept Kerbin at a low enough periapsis, turn the flyby trajectory into an orbit, and then have a small amount left over to help slow the craft down as it entered the atmosphere. Inability to actually land aside, I really should have named it Goldilocks.
I didn't get to test the parachute system on Duna but I can confirm it works just fine on Kerbin!
Ruby landed in a rather scenic area, so the crew piled out for a picture before heading back to the space center.
Despite not achieving the actual goal of the mission (landing on Duna), I'd call the flight of Ruby 3.23 a success overall. The craft needs a couple small tweaks but the mission proved that it's a pretty good design overall. Completed a couple contracts, got a boatload of science out of it, everybody hit level four, and a good time was had by all.
The plan going forward, as of right now, is probably to set up another refueling base, Onyx Station, on/in orbit around Ike. It would basically be a copy of Jade Station with a couple minor modifications, since the existing station seems to be working out so well. This way I wouldn't have to worry about trying to land and take off again while saving enough fuel to go back to Kerbin - I could just go back to the nearby base, refuel, and go on my merry way. It might also be a useful stop when trying to venture further out into the Kerbol system.
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I'd really like the ability to rearrange the order crafts appear in on the tracking station menu.
The ability to save crafts in subfolders (e.g. I could make a folder to hold, say, craft intended for Duna, or a folder for purely experimental crafts, or one for rovers, etc) would also be nice.
If I'm being an idiot and we already have these capabilities, please let me know.
Edit:
18 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:VAB/SPH lv3: a simple dV calculator
Yes, this too.
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I fiddled around some more with the trebuchets and got the double-arm to work, as well as finding a sturdier way to construct the "hinges" - it would be a lot easier if there was a real hinge part in the game (I know, there's probably a mod for that, but I don't really care). Even with the double arm, there's just no real substitute for a rope, so the projectile still doesn't go much farther than before.
Anyway, after playing with that for a while, I remembered what this game is actually about and went back to my career save, where I performed my first flyby of Duna (and, by chance, flew by Ike on the way in, too)! I've finally graduated from rocket science kindergarten!
I've since been working on building a lander to take the orange suits to the surface and back. Technically I only need to bring three kerbals (one for each job), but I figure, heck, why not bring the fourth one too? It's not like the lander design can't accommodate a fourth seat.
Right now Duna's in an even worse place to launch to than before (due to the time taken for Jeb's solo flyby), so I decided to get some other stuff done before continuing. Had to re-sync my communications satellites around Minmus (as close as they were to having identical orbits, they were a touch off and drifted out of sync over the course of Jeb's flight), launched an improved version of an IR-camera satellite I had floating around, briefly toyed with the idea of catching an asteroid and dragging it back to orbit around Kerbin... I found an asteroid that did actually enter Kerbin's SOI, but it went directly below the planet instead of to the side, and I was having a few issues with the design of the tug craft, so I decided not to bother for now. Also, I added a completely superfluous and currently (and probably always) empty extra habitation wing to Jade Station, because some daft kerbal paid me to.
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Recently, I had something of an epiphany: I kinda suck at this game. I suck at rockets. I suck at planes. I am just not very good at aerospace in general. And admittedly, some of the weird, amazing stuff you guys build like flying cars or massive thousand-kerbal space stations or what-have-you makes me feel rather inadequate by comparison.
So to make myself feel better I decided to build something I am good at.
Medieval siege weapons!
This is a fully functional stock trebuchet that launches fuel tanks. Because why not?
The screenshots don't really do it justice. There's something magnificent - and incredibly amusing - about watching this thing in action. The explosion when the tank hits the ground doesn't hurt, either.
It doesn't throw it very far, mind you. Lacking ropes in stock I couldn't give it a proper trebuchet sling, and had to make do with a catapult-style arm - there's a little shock absorber doodad mounted between the legs of the trebuchet to abruptly stop the counterweight arm and send the payload flying (instead of just slamming it into the ground immediately in front of the trebuchet as this design would if it didn't have a sudden stop).
I also had an improved design that makes up for the lack of ropes by using a sort of double-pendulum arm, but "hinges" in stock are... not sturdy - as one would expect, considering that they're structural fuselages strung onto girders (or whatever else I happened to put them on) like a roll of toilet paper on a holder. I could probably make them sturdier if I attached the girder to the structure at both ends rather than just strutting the loose end to the stand, but I didn't want to bother with turning on part clipping so I could anchor the girder on both sides - maybe some other time. Anyway, I was having some issues getting the secondary launching arm to stay attached to the assembly, and lost interest before nailing down the design - but it did look promising, and I think it could toss a fuel barrel quite a ways if I can get it functional. I should probably also add another "hinge" to the counterweight arm so it can drop more naturally, as it currently has a tendency to occasionally snap and/or explode from the strain when the counterweight arm hits the stopper.
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I'll just leave this here.
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2 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:
Eyeballing interplanetary transfer windows is... not easy. If on top of that you're adding roleplaying (i.e., no fast-forwarding another few years), that makes it even more difficult.
I'm not hardcore roleplaying this, so I'm a bit reluctant, but in the end, I'll probably end up begrudgingly using time warp. I'll just be a little bit grouchy about it.
But thanks for the link.
Truth be told it's just that I'm still new and clueless. Also in a bit of shock because I thought I'd gotten over the steep part of the KSP learning curve - turns out it's multi-tiered.
1 minute ago, Kronus_Aerospace said:One is that the balance between liquid fuel and rocket fuel tanks needs to be precise
I actually got them pretty well balanced - I just ended up running out of both when I hit 70km. The rest of your information was helpful, though. I think the main problem is just that, as stated above, I have no idea what I'm doing. I probably just need to do some research. That's typically how my KSP experience has gone so far: try to learn by trial and error experimentation, fail, give up and go on a youtube binge until I have some fraction of an idea what I'm doing.
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My space program is not in a good position right now and I'm salty about it.
I decided to double check something and I'm pretty sure now that being slightly in front of Duna means waiting a year before it's in good position to launch toward. So that's obnoxious. My only options at this point are to either fast forward (basically putting the entire space program on hold for a year, which the roleplayer in me loathes to do), try to do the mission now anyway and put Jeb in space for Kraken knows how many years (roleplayer in me hates this too), try to go to Eve instead, or attempt to keep myself busy for an in-game year (which is really not an option at this point). So I'm not happy about that.
In other news, I obtained the RAPIER engines and have concluded that they are the engine equivalent of a spork - it tries to be two things and is terrible at both. I made several attempts at building an SSTO with what I consider to be bare minimum parts for a worthwhile craft: cockpit, cargo bay full of science equipment (because what's the point if you can't do science?), a couple batteries and extendable solar panels I jammed into the remaining available cargo bay space (because I've learned my lesson about electricity from the last incident), small wings, tail and ailerons for atmospheric control, lightweight landing wheels, docking port (because I knew I'd need to be able to refuel in orbit), and some RCS valves so I could use said docking port. The only superfluous parts were the AIRBRAKES, which I was reluctant to lose because of the speed of this thing and I didn't fancy trying to land it without being able to slow down. Everything else was the RAPIER engines and fuel for them.
This plane was able to make it to 70km, and then promptly ran out of fuel before being able to circularize. Every time. I went through at least six iterations of the thing, and no matter what I did, I always ran out of fuel at 70km. Attempts to add more fuel defeated themselves by consuming more fuel due to the extra weight of the fuel.
Frustrated, I gave up on SSTO and tried launched the plane upright like a rocket using solid boosters in hopes of not having to waste precious fuel fighting the atmosphere.
It still ran out of fuel before being able to circularize, because the RAPIERs are the most inefficient things imaginable. They're inefficient and heavy as jets, and they're inefficient and heavy as rockets, and I hate them with a blazing passion that is starting to leak over into my opinion of spaceplanes in general.
Me, bitter? Naw. Yes.
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Well, Duna will apparently have to wait. I'd rather not have Jeb orbiting the sun for years waiting to intercept it, so I'm going to wait until the planets align better before sending anybody over there. Turns out interplanetary missions are harder than Mun missions. Who knew?
In the meantime I decided to do some other stuff, like gathering science to get RAPIER engines so I can make a spaceplane, earning money, and rescuing kerbals because we're too cheap to hire them. I've built a combination rescue/tourism vehicle that hauls tourists up into orbit for sweet, sweet funding, and at the same time can be used to retrieve kerbals who are stuck up there. Tonight I launched one of these with a special attachment - a data canister to bring science back from Jade Station, since transmitting it directly didn't seem promising.
So ultimately this craft is returning to kerbin with two tourists, its pilot, and a newly-rescued kerbal who'd gotten himself stuck in orbit around minmus (going the opposite way of Jade Station, naturally). And as it's entering the atmosphere, I lose power. I couldn't keep the heat shields pointing prograde.
Astoundingly, the craft's lack of anything even resembling aerodynamic stability when not in SAS mode was what saved it. It tumbled wildly in the most chaotic spin imaginable, which managed to keep any one part of the craft from taking the brunt of the reentry heat. On either occasion - the first pass through the atmosphere captured the craft but did not slow it enough for de-orbiting, so it went around and entered again, this time being dragged down to the surface. Both times, spinning wildly. Amazingly, nothing exploded and I was able to deploy the parachutes successfully; all four kerbals walked away alive and even the science canister survived.
Meanwhile, at mission control:
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I agree 100%. Just the other day I was thinking about this as I manually deleted debris.
Oh, or better yet - the ability to select multiple craft (by holding ctrl probably) and then a "delete all selected" button. This would bypass the issue Geonovast pointed out where the game treats things that are potentially not really debris as debris. Just click down the list and hit the delete button once.
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Jade Station and all its infrastructure are finally, officially done. There was cake at mission control.
The station itself is complete, the mining base works like a charm, the science lander has proven capable, and now the final piece, the fuel lifter, has proven itself as well. It got to Minmus, landed, picked up a full load of fuel, took off, and docked with the station. Most critically, it did this and still transferred a good amount of fuel into the station's orange tank. I now have my first working, replenishable, orbital fuel station. There's an extra kerbal on board now (piloted the lifter over) who needs a ride back home, but after that...
Duna, here we come!
Oh, also I launched a sentinel satellite into orbit around the sun just slightly farther out than Kerbin itself. But nobody cares about that.
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I was about 90% done writing this post when my computer bluescreened.
Thankfully KSP Forums apparently autosaves posts in progress!
Today I bolstered the ranks of the space program by taking a few rescue contracts. Funny how a task (rendezvous and retrieve stranded kerbal from orbit) that took a couple weeks when I first started playing is now so routine I do it casually. Anyway, I mention this because one of the kerbals I rescued had a very... interesting... name. He was called "Doing." I'm not sure whether to pronounce that "doo-ing" or "doyng," but either way it's hilarious.
I also made a couple more attempts at shuttles/spaceplanes because I can't leave well enough alone. These, too, failed, and I gave up and went back to working on Jade Base. Speaking of which, I finally completed it, save for the lifter craft meant to carry fuel produced at the base up to Jade Station (which has been sorely in need of fuel for a while now). I intend to send the lifter tomorrow, but due to its nature it was the one component I couldn't test on Kerbin, so it may take longer than expected if it needs a redesign.
Here's the haulerbot I've mentioned and praised so highly, carrying one of the modules during construction.
I actually managed to tip the haulerbot over for the first time today; necessarily narrow wheel base + low minmus gravity + impatient Ace trying to turn too tightly = flipped haulerbot. Thankfully, gravity on minmus is so low that nothing broke from the impact and I was able to flip it back right side up using the power of the module's reaction wheel alone. Really glad I put that on there. Construction proceeded as normal after this, although I was a bit more careful turning after that.
Here's the finished Jade Mining Base, with the haulerbot parked out front, and Elbree, the resident engineer, standing by.
Elbree, incidentally, was already aboard Jade Station waiting for the completion of the base. When it was ready, he simply jumped off the station as it passed over the base and RCS'd down. Minmus's low gravity is a wonderful, wonderful thing, and I love it.
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4 hours ago, Cupcake... said:
Some more hair brained stunts with a trip to the Mun thrown in for good measure.
@Cupcake... What.
In other news, I attempted to build my own first space plane today. Can't really call it a SSTO, since it has some additional engines stuck on the tail that get dropped, because I don't have the RAPIER engine yet. It ultimately made it to about 60km and then ran out of fuel. I spent my KSP time today working entirely on this stupid plane, instead of the Minmus base.
And then, after several hours and many redesigns, I had an epiphany that I was wasting my time designing a craft for a mission that I not only didn't particularly care about (mostly it was out of curiosity, which quickly ran out as I realized it was harder than I'd estimated) but had not, in fact, even accepted yet (precisely because I knew it would be harder than I estimated), and even if I could get the craft into orbit, I wasn't sure it would even work for the desired purpose, and even then, I would likely never have a chance to use it again because of its ridiculously specific design.
"Why," I asked, "am I doing this?" and realizing I had no compelling answer, I promptly scrapped the project.
I'll do a space plane later. Maybe when I'm ready to go to a planet with an atmosphere. And when I have the RAPIER engine.
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Today, I put the last of my communication satellite constellation into place around Minmus - I got each satellite within (if I recall correctly) about 10m of the same periapsis and apoapsis, so they shouldn't drift out of formation any time soon.
This was put into place to ensure constant connectivity for the remote-operated portions of Jade Base on the surface (and Jade Station in orbit, but that's mostly bonus because the station is entirely kerbal-operated). Speaking of, the second module of the base made its way to Minmus after much struggling. It was a particularly heavy module with all the aerodynamics of a brick. It took a lot of work to build something that could lift it; I eventually settled on a stable and reliable but very strange looking design, landed it a couple km away from the base, and used the local haulerbot rover to carry it over where it belongs.
Speaking of that, I have finally discovered haulerbot's weakness. I knew it had to have one. It's stupidly fast, has great battery efficiency, can easily carry just about anything I drop on top of it, and is surprisingly durable. It also looks pretty neat (but I don't feel like uploading pictures tonight. Maybe this weekend). And it never, ever flips over - on Kerbin, or on its own on Minmus. But haulerbot is really lightweight despite its power, so when it's carrying a module in Minmus's low gravity environment, you have to be very, very careful when turning. I had more than a few heart-stopping moments when it went up precariously on two wheels while bringing the module back to Jade Base despite turning carefully at a speed of about 4m/s. Despite that, though, it never actually flipped, so it's still pretty stable. If it had a slightly wider wheel base it might actually be truly unflippable, but it had to be narrow to slide underneath the modules it's designed to carry, so there's nothing that can be done about that.
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Ah, thank you! That makes sense.
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Alright, so this isn't exactly an intro, as I've made a handful of posts elsewhere, but this is still a "I'm new to the forums and can't figure out how to work this website" question, so I figured it belonged here. When inserting pictures in a forum post you have the option to "Insert existing attachment" or use an image from a URL.
Of course, I have no existing attachments. But the fact that such an option exists implies there's a way to upload attachments. But I can't for the life of me figure out how to do that. Which is rather sad, considering that it's hardly rocket science.
Can somebody tell me how it's done?
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Well, I made some progress on the base building front. I launched a test module to the Mun and landed it, proving that the design can in fact survive landing on a heavier moon than Minmus. I also launched another module to start building the base on Minmus, and plonked it down on a nice, ore-rich flat. I also fiddled with the design of the fuel truck meant to move the fuel from the base to the lifter shuttle that takes it to the orbital station, and managed to finagle the docking port into a position that neither caused the base to flail wildly nor popped a tire or four (a problem I saw in some of the earlier designs - I guess docking pushed the wheels into the ground because the port was a bit too high).
That's about as far as I got, because while I was waiting for... something (I don't remember; I just needed some time to pass to test something)... I decided to do a few contracts. One of these was to rescue a kerbal stranded on the surface of the Mun. I sent Jeb in a tried-and-true two-seat rover to collect some science and pick up this other kerbal. Unfortunately, the kerbal was up near the north pole (and I didn't even get any polar biome data because he was just too far south for the drive to the pole biome to be worth it) and that meant burning extra fuel to get to him. Jeb managed to get just barely into stable polar orbit (which I figured was better than some weird 60 degree angle orbit) and then promptly ran out of fuel.
To top it all off, this is the second time he's gotten stranded in orbit and needed Val to go and save him. Although I think it's a testimony to how much I've improved at this game how differently these events played out. The first time he got stuck was when I was just starting and had no idea what I was doing, on my first attempt at orbiting Kerbin - being new I overestimated how big my orbit needed to be and also learned the hard way that you burn retrograde rather than toward Kerbin to go home. It took me two real life weeks (not playing every day, granted, but most days) and a couple dozen ship designs to successfully bring him back to Kerbin. This time it took me a couple hours at most, with two or three minor modifications to a single ship, to bring him back from a much more difficult position. The cherry on top was that Val's rescue craft landed about 50km from the space center.
So Jeb managed to get stranded and needed to be rescued for a second time... while on a rescue mission himself. I don't think Val is ever going to let him live it down.
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My battle against the Base Kraken continues, although as of today I think I have finally won. The twitchiness of my previous base design seems to have stemmed from docking ports being ever-so-very-slightly misaligned, despite all modules being made from the same base template (only the stuff sitting on top the template varied). Near as I can tell, this was due to the fact that each module had a different weight and therefore pressed down on its landing legs a different amount, resulting in each one sitting at a different height.
Today I redesigned the base from the ground up and constructed my new test base on the field outside KSC. This one has landing legs only for use during construction and the actual process of landing. Once the module has been carried to the appropriate location by the hauler-bot rover, landing legs extend so the rover can drop out from under it and reverse away, then the landing legs go back up and the module ends up actually sitting on the four small rockets used for landing. Since these don't compress, every module sits at the same height.
Bonuses of the redesign include the fact that I no longer need dedicated connector segments (they're built into the modules) and because the modules are so low to the ground, if the docking port is slightly misaligned, I can use the hauler-bot to gently nudge the module in the right direction. So construction is that much easier now!
I'd put a picture in here but I don't feel like uploading a screenshot to a hosting site and haven't yet figured out how to upload images directly onto the forums yet (though the existence of the "insert existing attachment" button tells me that it's possible to do so).
I guess tomorrow I'll have to design the rockets to actually deliver these modules to their location - intended destination right now is Minmus, but I've designed them to hopefully be a versatile design to be reused without modification, so I'll see about landing them and constructing a base on the Mun too - if I can make it work there, I should theoretically be able to make it work in various key locations across the solar system.
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10 hours ago, Geonovast said:
This is one of the greatest things I've ever seen.
Agree 100%. Thank you for sharing this.
Further testing of the properties of intakes is now required. For Science. Of course.
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On 1/21/2018 at 9:31 AM, A FAT KERBAL said:
... I am planning to recreate an entire episode of star trek in ksp ...
... Go on.
I'm afraid I don't have much advice to offer beyond what has already been said, although I'd add that if you only see a room from one angle, don't bother building the other half at all. But I am interested in what you're doing and would like to see how it progresses.
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Well, what I've got to share isn't nearly as impressive as all these other people, since I'm still relatively new, but today I took my first foray into mining and modular ground bases.
Haven't launched anything, mind you, just designing modules and, in moment of wisdom and foresight, decided to thoroughly test everything in the field outside KSC before trying to build anything on Minmus or the Mun. Good thing, too, because I ended up having to redesign everything about four times before I found a workable design. One of the designs was about halfway built when my construction rover accidentally rammed into something while trying to finagle a particularly uncooperative docking port into aligning correctly, and ultimately a few explosions later I had to scrap that model entirely and start from scratch. That wasn't fun.
Eventually everything was in place and working just fine... with the odd exception of the habitation module. That was the last thing I added to the field test, and for some inexplicable reason, having its landing gear deployed caused the kraken to attack the whole base.
I bailed Bill out in case everything exploded, but that turned out to be unnecessary; I undocked the offending module and recovered it without so much as a broken solar panel. The kraken promptly left and everything else appears to be working smoothly. Tomorrow I'm going to investigate just what it is about this otherwise perfectly innocuous module that causes the entire base to have a full-blown seizure.
But thanks for the link.
Thankfully KSP Forums apparently autosaves posts in progress!
What did you do in KSP1 today?
in KSP1 Discussion
Posted
I have finally completed the wagon train. All parts for the orbital station and surface base are on their way. I have no idea if all or even most of them will reach their target, and I'm a little bit worried about the ones that are carrying kerbals. But I made sure all of them had a minimum amount of fuel left after the Kerbin escape maneuver that I think should be enough to at least reach orbit, so if something goes wrong, I can send a rescue mission for my brave settlers during the next launch window.
The map's kind of a mess right now with all these spacecraft on their way out of Kerbin's SOI.
Also, one of these is a fuel truck, which carries fuel from the mining base to a lander that lifts it to the station, because trying to land anything actually on the base instead of just near it is ridiculous. I bring this up for two reasons. One being that it's a particularly awkward thing to transport and gave me a bit of trouble. There's no space on the back to attach it to anything, and the docking port on the front is not centered, so using that as the payload attachment point is asking for something to tip over. It's too wide to fit in a cargo bay, so no luck there either. And for the reasons I've already mentioned you basically have to attach to it on the top or bottom, and it's too long when oriented that way to put a reasonable fairing around it. So I just built an awkward lifter above/around it, which flies surprisingly well.
The second reason I bring this up is that, appropriately enough, I noticed it vaguely resembles a conestoga.