flyin_ruski

A real life Kracken Drive!

There are many technical jobs you could choose that would transfer over to NASA. I'm in the Marine Corps and I work on ejection seat parachutes (rigging and packing), aircraft O2 systems, and emergny rafts and such. Last year I helped some NASA guys work on oxygen converters for one of their birds. I know that SpaceX and Virgin Galactic were hiring people with my MOS not too long ago.

welp i bought it. Seems pretty on point to what you all had said. I look forward to seeing what it is like a few updates down the road. Thanks for the info!

Is it any good from those who have played it? It seems a little like Minecraft. How many people play online? I hope its not WW2 dog fighting in space like other games. KSP has pretty much ruined the fun in those for me.

The next update may hinder the operation of the K-drive. Or make it better. I have to wait and see. I would be slightly disappointed if the K-drive was fixed after the countless hours I spent making mine functional.

It's an exploit of phantom forces caused by part clipping. Mostly landing legs that while in the deployed position push on another object like a structural panel that in turn pushes the ship to high G's. For best results do it in orbit going at least 800 or so m/s.

The K-Drive's G output varies greatly based on design. Mainly position of legs and the pusher plate. I have completed to missions using my variant of the K-drive for transfer, injection, and suicide burns. One to Gilly and one to Moho. Once in orbit around the target world I undock my lander from the Kraken Drive proceed to land then orbit and dock. A pretty big issue I have with the K-drive is that if I activate it going less than 800 m/s or so my ship will dissasmble violently. On a side note I hit the mun going 30000 m/s using the k-drive by aiming directly at it.

I hit the Mun with a probe.....going 30,000 m/s......

my most recent test was to create a craft that uses the K-drive as its primary means of propulsion The Eve Insertion was done entirely with the k-drive. Ive found that activating the k-drive at low orbital speeds, generally in the triple digits, causes the craft to become incredibly unstable.

EDIT: disregard

My KrakenDrive's first orbital test look promising. I put it into LKO then turned it on, in about 30 seconds it's orbit went slightly past the mun's. At its AP however it kinda fell apart. I need to place the reaction wheels better.

Gentlemen, what the average speed of your krakendrives off the launch pad? Mine is about 2m\s to 6m\s on launch. I've yet to do a successful orbital test an am wondering if initial launch tests are any reflection of orbital speed.

I have yet to put mine into orbit. Having issues with the pusher plate and landing legs freezing. Probably gonna test it on the mun once I increase its reliability.

Nutt007, that reminds me of the chaos scenes in the film 'Event Horizon'

welp Ive spent the better part of this evening toying around with a design heavily influenced bu Aramchek's model. Mine has 8 legs and four pusher plates plus a shroud to give it a neat and tidy look. After being satisfied with the design and function from the launch pad I put it on a flat bed and tried to launch it with a Kerbal (only one is crazy enough for such black magic, Jeb!) on top. Here we have Jeb and the Aramchek KrakDrive on top of a flatbed (I named it Aramchek because as I said, his design heavily influenced mine) Jeb climbing up to the command seat (which has egress capabilities) Ready for Kerbed test One I bet you thought it was gonna take off from the flatbed didnt you :-p TOO FAST! BAIL OUT!!! Overall a somewhat successful test other than forgetting to decouple the Krakdrive from the Mobile Launch System. Word of caution gents, it seems that once the Kraken has been poked it is reluctant to go back into slumber. Shortly after Jeb punched out and touched down he was flung from where the test occurred, past the launch pad, and into the KSC runway. Gotta say gents this is an awesome find. Im having a blast toying around with this tech!

Moar struts was the problem.

I seem to having an issue with the legs after they make contact with the 'pusher plate.' They start pushing then stop completely and i lose the ability to retract and redeploy them. Im using a modified version of Aramchek's model.

My lifters are very reliable. It's the payload that's attached that gets sketchy. By sketchy I mean explodes, falls off violently, turns into epic fireworks.

236 parts but I can easily build a super sized version (which I will when the asteroid comes about).

Had a space plane docked to a interplanetary pusher ship and was maybe 200 meters out with a fuel ship to fuel the plane an pusher. At around 100 meters I could see parts just fall apart. I quick saved/loaded several times at different distances and my final one was 75 meters and both the spaceplane and pusher vanished. Tracking station showed the craft but it said "landed at KSC." I switched to it and it was 72000ish meters above KSC frozen. Couldn't IVA,EVA, stage, or activate engines. I tired editing the persistence file but nothing. All I could do was hit recover vessel.

Gotta check the part count, the launcher itself is around 450 parts. It can re orbit itself and has a docking port inside the 'cup' for re- fueling. I still have to test it on clusters and chains of debris That's an awesome idea musketeer. I'm going to try it.

Hmmm almost challenge accepted...I need to conduct further tests!

Hmmm almost challenge accepted...I need to conduct further tests!

I catch the desired piece of debris in the 'cup', put it on a sub-orbital trajectory, and the release it! This was the first test and it passed with flying colors. Later versions I think I will make the 'cup' bigger. I may use a version of this for the upcoming asteroid...

I thought about doing that but decided it would add an extra challenge to building in LKO. So now I have a pretty huge shield on what will soon my fuel depot I never really payed attention to debris in the past few updates because it doesn't show up in map view anymore unless you select it.