sgt_flyer

Well, i'd say 6 or 7 on ten it does not use a lot of parts, but you need to carefully adjust the parts which make the door system - i used the hacked gravity mode in alt +f12 to quickly tweak the positions, notably of the docking ports. Once everything was correctly set, i launched the cargo normally into orbit without cheats

Be sure to take gravity into account when making ground or air based doors (gravity alone can make a structural pylon to slightly bend if there's enough weight attached on it)

@giggleplex yes they were yours @Zekes - the legs will clip through the panels at a moment or another - once they stop moving, they lose all physical effect they have on it's own ship parts. (which is why i used docking ports, to provide stopping and locking points - but you need to not forget to undock it from it's closed position prior to making it move) basically, if a part is not undergoing an animation, it can't affect the rest of the ship - the parts will harmlessly clip through each other - until something breaks and they become two separate entities (that's usually when the fun begins ) although the structural pylons are unbreakable and elastic enough for this kind of work. Also, try to limit the max angle you have between your starting and ending point - else, when you free the door so it can close back, the speed would be too important and the doors 'closed' docking ports won't detect the doors on their first passage during the slam back.

after my drill, i'm develloping a new small dumb rocket for ultra light fighters - typically for mosquito class fighter lets say that... it seems pretty effective against shades (even at ranges < 100m, as they still don't have a good accuracy - still working on that ) they only have 5 parts. and no, i didn't put a structural pylon in it as a warhead - and it's not a nosecone either

that's the payload - all awkward payloads needs strutting for more conventional payloads, you need much less struts of course and keep in mind that the rocket is really heavy i have the equivalent of two orange tanks per engine here for the center of the first stage. (the engine being made, like my Saturn V, of a mainsail + a LVT 30 inside it, for the core stage and the boosters)

one of my best launch vehicles : it was derived from the work i made on my saturn V - here it's a 2.5 stage to LKO (under the space station core at the top ) it can lift a little more than 85 tons to a 80x80 LKO (12% of the total mass at liftoff is the payload) the first stage is basically my saturn V 1st stage, but with only 4 engines, helped by 4 non crossfeeding jetisonnable boosters. the second stage is a modified version of the SIVB - here it as more efficient engines. and that damn thing is rock solid never had something breaking on the production model i also have my angaras which are not asparagus - and i keep reusing them in various configurations for all payloads up to 50 / 55 tons (thanks the modular system ). (note : for simplicity, i don't use the fairings / and the third stages are more destined for GTO launches - but they are there if i need it )

i made a new stock cargo spaceship, with animated bay doors here are some images of it in orbit: of course, the bay doors use the system i presented in this post some stats about the cargo ship : number of parts : 237 (492 parts with the launch vehicle) propellants : 4320 units of liquid fuel, 5280 units of oxydizer, 750 units of monopropellant Weight (with tanks full, no payload) : 102 tons Dry weight : 50.99t (with all rocket fuel and monopropellant drained) Delta-V (empty) : around 5000 m/s - with a TWR of 0.36 Delta-V (50t cargo) : around 3000 m/s - with a TWR of 0.24 so it is able to ferry your precious payloads quite far away docking ports : the cargo ship has 2 exterior docking ports, 1 shielded docking port at the front, and a SR docking port at the rear (if you need to pull extra wide payloads which would not fit inside the cargo bay). inside the bay, there is 1 standard docking port on each end of the bay, and 4 Jr docking ports at the bottom, so you can dock a wide variety of payloads inside it. the whole cargo bay is slightly longer than a jumbo tank. (although a jumbo wouldn't fit inside, due to the inside docking ports which reduce a bit the avaible length) Operation of the bay door system : note of warning : always close the bay door before attempting to time warp (else, hilarity will ensue during timewarp, as the doors will put themselves in an awkward angle, and the doors will rip off their 'open' docking ports when you exit timewarp) step 1 : undock the two bay doors (the docking ports are accessible just above the cockpit section) step 2 : hit G to deploy the landing legs : they will push the bay doors until they connect with their open position docking ports. step 3 : retract the landing legs with G. step 4 : undock the bay doors from their open position docking ports, they will slam back in their original position, thanks to the structural pylon elasticity. after step 4, you can restart from step 1 to open the doors. launch vehicle : i used temstar's supernova SHLLV to bring it to orbit (the nova can bring it to orbit too, but lack a bit of control authority for such an assymetrical payload, and you end up with several degrees off from your planned orbit) don't forget to disable gimballing on the boosters of the supernova, (key '0') and set your throttle 2 small notches down from the maximum (to prevent the winglets from making you veer off course). make your G-turn as usual, and set your throttle to max after 20000m. here's the file with the cargo atop Supernova SHLLV : http://www./download/5ltng4h7lzxn4qo/Heavy_Cargo.craft some fun facts about the cargo : while i was testing different launch vehicles, i had several launcher failures - although the external engines could be damaged by the debris, the central bay door whistanded the damage - and the whole cargo bay structure can serve for lithobraking to protect the command pod ! (i've seen the command pod survive a crash at 112m/s on the ground) just try to land cargo bay first, and the structure collapse will protect the command pod. as always in KSP, have fun

well, the aircraft carriers in real life are supposed to have a full escort - in KSP, it will be hard to keep a full escort near the carrier all the time (you would need to correct all the time your relative speed) - so armor can be useful when the carrier is targeted by enemy ships (and atleast, the armor will protect it's contents from small fighter ordinance - else, a small mosquito class fighter could get lucky and break your carrier in half with a single small missile

note on energia / buran the Zenit boosters are decoupled by pairs from vulkan / energia (basically, the russian coupled two zenits side by side, and used that as a booster for Energia / vulkan : 2 pairs for Energia, and 4 pairs planned for vulkan. the russians did that to prevent damage to the payloads for Energia (the zenits pairs were supposed to decouple from each other after having clearing the rocket - and later deploy their winglets for making a glide assisted descent and then a parachute landing when the boosters glided back where the russian wanted it. (although for sure, we won't able to 'control' those boosters in KSP - we would be too busy to finalize Energia's orbit for looking after 4 Zenits ^^).

Don't forget one thing concerning naming Spiritwolf and hanland are corporations, not military groups , so here we are speaking of various other corporations assisting one side or another. I would be ok with having common class designation based on wet weight and purpose (freighter, cruiser, frigate, etc) but other than that, standardized naming convention would not fit the corporate environment. (on earth, the various countries does not have the same designation for their warships)

i have made some progress - here's a cargo bay which works with my leg system (although it needs to be operated manually, action groups don't work...) you need to undock 1 door at a time - i'll try with the other docking ports too - but i can't make the JR's to work with action groups I also tested the thing with hacked gravity and decoupled from those launch clamps - it does not damage the box structure (although as i decouple the doors one by one, it induce a little torque on the object during the operation of the doors - although it will be reduced as your ship's mass goes up) i used docking ports on each end, as they are the only thing which is able to stop the door's rotation (else, it will be considered as having no physical effect on the rest of your ship, the parts clipping through the rest while the door stabilize it's position) here are the screenshots Step 1 (initial state, cargo bay closed): Step 2 (undocking the JR ports inside the box, one by one, but it would be feasible to create a structure to have the ports outside the box): Step 3 (toggling the landing legs, which force the bay doors open): Step 4 (bay doors docked in open position, with the landing legs which clips through the door because they lose their physical abilities once they stop moving): Step 5 (landing legs toggled back, so they are in their initial position, ready to undock the bay doors, to return in the same state as step 1,as the structural pylons elasticity will force the doors back in their original position): note : even if you activate the landing legs without decoupling the JR docks, the structure will shake a bit until the landing legs manage to clip through the doors - but the cargo bay did not sustain any damage during the test. I'll try to integrate the cargo bay inside a space capable cargo vessel

hum neph, if you start this way, i can show you the second revision of my saturn 1-b here ... - which have what looks like 8 engines on the bottom, early engine cutoff for the center engines, and advanced interstage and payload fairings don't forget Mulbin made his Jool rocket series fairly consistent early on, and he only aimed for a more closer saturn look recently with the Munbug VIII (here, we have the Munbug VI S-IVB directly ported from his first jool V with it's full fairing) - plus, judging from the first post date, it was made before the Skippers were avaible

Swiss cheese anyone ?

well, orbital minefields would be something hard to make and maintain - the mines will not keep their relative position to what they are supposed to protect. orbital defenses on the other end, with a supply of guided heavy missiles, may be easier to use

brrr someone's trying to engineer a Kraken !

The true interest about pull designs is in space in real life, is that it enable to reduce considerably the ship's structure - most materials are much better withstanding traction effort than compression efforts - thus, much less weight is needed for the ship's structure, so if you use the same tanks and engines, you will have more delta-V in a puller design than in a pusher design. (i'm speaking about absurdly big space only ships here, not reentry capable crafts )

the legs are enough to overcome the structural pylon's elasticity in fact here, once docked, the weight is put onto the structural pylon and the JR docking port - put an asymmetric load on a structural pylon and it will bend on it's own - i think it can be more suited to orbital systems (aka cargo doors, etc ) - but for the moment, it's only the basic proof of concept here experiments will have to be made on how much we can get from this

hello fellow KSPers edit : here's the link directly to the cargo post : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/39481-new-motorized-hinge-system?p=510565&viewfull=1#post510565 MK3 cargo bay : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/39481-new-motorized-hinge-system-now-with-a-cargo-spaceship?p=515498&viewfull=1#post515498 i make this thread to share a proof of concept i made, for animating parts - (i started working on this after seeing the new structural pylon based helicopters) here's, it's not intended to simply make something spin - here i have only partial rotation with a lock into place at each end first, some pictures of the system: Step 1 - just after loading the craft : Step 2 - extending the legs (which start to bend the structural pylon): Step 3 - legs extended (you can see here that once the legs have stopped moving, they no longer affect the rest of the structure of their own craft, and clip through the base plate): Step 4 - legs starting to retract, bending the structural pylon the other way : Step 5 - legs retracted, but the docking ports have managed to dock between themselves, preventing the pylons to straighten up. once you went to make the hinge to straighten, you simply need to undock the docking port to go back to step 1 (for the moment, nothing broke during my testings - i repeated the process several times without a hitch ). as you can see, there's no separation of the parts into several entities - so if you add in engines on the system, you will still be able to control it now here is the .craft file with the proof of concept system: http://www./download/szrylyiacedyorp/Stock_Hinge.craft have a go with it, feel free to try to improve it, and don't hesitate to post your own testings of this system a warning though: Jeb found the system, and turned it into a kerbal catapult ! anyway, as always in KSP, Have fun

well, -94°K is simply not possible (except maybe for kerbals ) - as you can't go under 0°K in real life (0°K is the 'Absolute zero' ) - in reverse, we cannot determine the absolute hot with certitude there are only theories -anyway, the highest temperature should have been during the big bang (no jeb, your rockets experiments does not yet reach this kind of big bang )

a craft or a persistence file, with the ship in position. - problem is, the ships will have to be remade once 0.21 goes live to integrate the torque wheels - and the persistence file can't be ported. here my ships are not yet where i want them to be i'm building all the ships i will need and send them into parking orbit, awaiting the transfer window to send in a whole fleet

@Sanity - they tell it in the calculator you need to aim a little higher than the calculation anyway, i have a new support vessel for my persistence file, a heavier cargo (think refueller ) version of my valkyrie. the civilian valkyrie refueller weight 161 tons, has 3000 d/v with a 0.21 TWR, and is around 160 parts - and it won't need to tap into the refuel tanks for that it can bring two orange tanks and 2 of the big RCS fuel tanks to destination (although it will use a bit of the RCS tanks for docking manoeuvers) - it was made to be able to refuel in one go the shipyard i presented sooner, if it was completely empty (the other ships has less fuel onboard than the shipyard anyway ) it's propelled by 6 nuclear engines, placed around the middle orange tank, and there's a Jr docking port at the rear. and yup, it made it to orbit ontop of my new non asparagus super heavy launcher (although barely - the upper stage of the super heavy launcher almost had no fuel left for deorbit after that - the whole rocket had a little less than 4600 d/v to orbit with the 161t payload ) - although this kind of rocket can be a little unstable, even if not wobbly, some times something break at random

multiple possibilities : do you use an Asparagus design ? when you drop your first stack, asparagus has a tendency to start a slow spin. (one way to limit this spin is to disable and reenable ASAS just after dropping tanks) second possilibity : something broke inside your rocket (check with F3 during ascent ) if something broke, it might be when your dropped stage unloaded from the game at 2.3km distance from your rocket. (that can cause a slight lag when the thing is unloaded) in the end, where are your canard laced on your rockets ? (i usually prefer the small winglets for controlling rockets at the base than canards )

Here's a tool that i often use for my aerobraking manoeuvers that tool is really useful http://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/ Also, even if you don't want to aerobrake, you will need to minimize your laythe encounter difference of speed to save delta-v, by positionning your laythe encounter orbital path is tangent to laythe orbit - going in the same direction of course Hope that can help you achieve orbit around layhte

no, the engines are disposed at an open angle at the front, in tractor configuration - besides, the ISV structure itself would be totally crushed in a pusher configuration - no material on earth would be able to sustain a compression made by engines capable of reaching such speeds - puller design, it's another thing. here's an article about it on pandorapedia http://www.pandorapedia.com/human_operations/vehicles/isv_venture_star

I made something like that too - and printed it on papers that i cut after that (1 paper per planetary angle) - so i just have to place them on my screen to check if the planets are aligned