Redshift OTF

I've seen a few Dropship designs on the forum lately and I thought I would have a go at my own version. 213 Parts. 115 tons. I made a couple of tweaks to the version shown in the video so it now carries 2 pilots and 4 passengers. You can't see the cockpit door but you can still EVA a Kerbal from it. The Mk1 passenger modules can be EVA'd from the cargo bay. Hotkeys: 1) Toggle Rear Engines 2) Toggle thrust reversal on Rear Engines 3) Toggle VTOL Engines 4) Toggle Afterburners on VTOL Engines 9) Toggle Roof Doors 0) Toggle Ramp Door Make sure SAS is on before flight, (unless you like a challenge :)). The ship can hover at 5/6ths throttle. Try not to land vertically harder than 8m/s. The Dropship handles pretty well and has a lot of fuel, (37 mins hover time and 1 hour horizontal flight time). I'm not sure how much she can lift but you can always use the afterburners if you need some extra power. Yaw is pretty good in this plane in either mode. Download here > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9mK0rPybNaxU0REX1dkX1hSaDQ Enjoy and share your own Dropships if you like!

Wow, these are really nice. You should make more of them! Do they fit in a Mk3 cargo bay?

I've only just tried this but I am amazed! I've built a Chinook before but it never had the lift yours does plus it is smooth and stable to fly. I also didn't realise you could turn 1 object, (large fairing disk), with 2 engines. I'm guessing the SAS on the rotors keeps them stable? I don't like the way the game caps RPM so I think I will try a different approach and go back to building better turbines. I'll stick to the stock aero-dynamics to start with. The turbines are pretty compact for the amount of lift you get. They also lift almost 34 tons. 8 Juno's should only be able to lift 14 tons in a vtol configuration so I am creating more than twice the thrust with this setup. Something must be funny with the stock aero. I'll try and do a video tomorrow with a craft if anyone wants it. I should add that Mechjeb states that this setup has a flight time of 2 hours and 3 minutes. The downsides are that it's only good for up and down for now as roll and pitch create strange aerodynamic drag that causes the thing to oscillate wildly until its destruction. The thermohinges can't take side strain to well. I might have to look at some of Azimechs bearings since they seem to go so fast!

Oooh, interesting. I would love to try a piston engine mod.

Thanks Bubba! Your walker inspired me to make this one so thank you. Unfortunately offsetting the leg bearings so they make a larger circle and therefore bigger strides causes to much stress on the bearings and they pop out. Something I will try and work on.

OMG, thanks for featuring my Mech Walker! And thanks for doing Spacecraft Fridays as I had missed some of these ingenious creations that deserve more credit! That C-5 is nuts.

Thanks for the comment. And thanks for the likes all! I've got another bearing in the works so I will swap them out and see if I can get this Mech to go faster.

Haha, yeah I know the feeling. Great ships!

Some day Jeb will take a car to work. Until that day comes, he'll ride things like this... 168 parts. 31.6 tons. 100% bad ass! Instructions: EVA the Kerbal and board the seat. Engage brakes and SAS, press space and you're good to go. Best keep it at half throttle otherwise the bearings might pop. There's enough power in the reaction wheels to turn the Mech if needed. OK, it walks like it has arthritis but its not bad for a stock walker! I like the way it lumbers along. I think I can get better performance out of it if I can improve the bearings so maybe there will be an update on this in the future. I'll keep you posted. Until then, enjoy this behemoth. Download here > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9mK0rPybNaxR0hHWmJhV2ZIamM

Yeah, definitely give that heli its own thread! I will DL it and give it a spin.

Are you using the inflatable heat-shield? It's good but creates a lot of drag which can flip your craft over. As 5th Horseman said, put some air brakes on a part that you can detach so you can get rid of them before take off. I've had to use up to 20 for some landers. If you want to just test the landers ascent performance without having to de-orbit the thing and land it every time try the following. Make a basic probe ship, surround it in 2 inflatable heat-shields and Hyper Edit it to Eve. De-orbit and land it. Then, use the Vessel Mover mod to pick it up and place it wherever you want it on Eve. Save the game and then you can use the Vessel Movers spawn craft function to spawn your pre-saved lander directly on the surface.

Woah, nice entry astrobond! I didn't bother with nosecones on mine as I didn't see any difference in performance but it looks like it is working for you. How did you manage to de-orbit that without it burning up? It's not needed for the challenge, I'm just curious. I'm also surprised you got enough TWR out of the last Aerospike with the weight it is carrying.

Anyone want to take on the tough challenge of making an Eve lander for 1.1.x? We had a thread around 2 years ago that came up with some excellent designs for Eve landers and I thought it was time to revive this for the current version of the game. Challenge description - Build the lightest Eve Lander possible! Category 1) Take off from anywhere on Eve and reach a stable orbit. Category 2) Take off from an altitude of under 100 meters and reach a stable orbit. Challenge rules: You need Kerbal on board who can exit and enter the vehicle prior to take off. What would be the point of landing on Eve if you couldn't have a walk around on the surface. No external command seats! That rules out using a seat in a service bay. You'll need to use a lander can or command pod or something similar. I may add an extra category if there is a demand for the use of a chair in a service bay method later. Stock parts and physics only. Exceptions are Autopilot and navigation aids like Mechjeb, Kerbal Engineer etc and any building mods like Editor Extension, Hanger Extension, Infinite offset limits etc. These are allowed. You do not have to transport your lander to Eve. you may use Hyperedit to reach an Eve orbit and the Vessel Mover mod to move your vessel once it has landed, (useful if you want to take off from a specific altitude!) Post screenshots of proof as well as the lander prior to take off. Craft files would be most welcome and videos are optional. Why this challenge? Well, in some ways an Eve Lander is easier to build in this version since v0.9 as you probably only need around 9000 DeltaV to reach orbit from sea level compared to the 12000 DeltaV. However, the journey to Eve is harder compared to earlier versions. Aerobraking is difficult due to the heating effects of the atmosphere and Eve is inclined so it take more DeltaV to get there. This makes building the lightest craft possible an important factor in enabling inter-planetary transfer stages to be of reasonable sizes, especially if you plan on using engine thrust to achieve orbit. Obviously you do not need to build one of these for this challenge but a light lander will help anyone who wants to use a submitted lander to build a craft that is fully capable of a mission to Eve and back from Kerbin. Here is what I have come up with myself: With de-orbiting, re-entry and landing parts attached. With above parts removed, (that are jettisoned at lift off). This weighs 74.220 tons, 86 parts and completes Category 2. It can reach a 100 km orbit from under 100m with 444 DeltaV left over so I think there is a lot of margin left over for better designs! It's a simple asparagus design however the first 2 stages are just fuel tanks with the 3 Aerospikes and 2 vectors all firing from launch. Mixing the engines like this gave me the best balance between TWR and DeltaV. The biggest challenge was ensuring the craft could survive entry into Eve's atmosphere without flipping out as the inflatable heatshield has so much drag it tends to flip the craft out. I realise now that I could have just used the Vessel Mover mod to spawn a saved vessel directly on the surface and not worried about re-entry but this makes this design one step closer to a fully functional Eve capable craft anyway. Download > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9mK0rPybNaxSHNVZ2JPZm5UdWc Good luck!

Well this is impressive then! How much does the plane weigh? My only other thought is that wouldn't you end up using more fuel trying to get the plane in orbit compared to if you used 2 Whiplashes?

Oh I can see by your second video you also have Rapiers. I thought you only had one Whiplash! Lol. That would be a challenge. I guess it is more user friendly than I first thought. Good job.

Wow, great job there. It looks difficult to get into orbit but then to have a good amount of DeltaV to use in space you have to be on the edge of getting enough height and speed for the Whiplashes to work. @Rune is good at ultra-efficient SSTO's so he might be able to give you some optimisation tips.

I'm having a similar problem on a different craft. Go into the map screen and hover over the I icon. Does it show the craft has landed when it has not? That seems to be my problem when the orbit line disappears.

Heh, interesting idea but my plane could barely get off the ground, let alone dogfight. Plus I don't think enough people have the patience to build these sort of craft to have a competition.

So I made the engines a little stronger but I am at the limit of what can be made with thermo hinges alone. They don't seem to be strong enough for helicopters and with props they tend to pull the axle forward which makes things likely to fail. Possibly they could be combined with wheels to make them stronger? That is something I could try. On the plus side you can make great small cogs out of them!

I'm not playing your games!

More like the Sinky McSplinky.

Wow, thanks for featuring my Aircraft carrier! Even if it is a bit explodey.

Have a look at the thread Major Jim quoted as he invented it. Here's my explanation though: The left cubic strut is attached to the control ring in this picture. The right cubic strut is connected to the left strut but I used the infinite offset mod to move the strut away from the first and create a gap. The thermometers are attached radially to the left and right struts and moved together to form a tube that looks like an 8 sided star from the end. The middle cubic strut is connected to the blue decoupler and then offset in the gap between the left and right cubic strut. Finally an antenna is placed on both ends of the middle cubic strut. When you load the craft and press space to release the decoupler the centre strut is detached from the craft but doesn't fall off as the antennas are held between the thermometers. Now it is a free rotating bearing! Hope that makes sense. I've had a bit of luck making the engines stronger by clipping 2 antenna on each end of the axle and moving them about a bit. It seems the bearing is completely friction free which is useful.

What do you think of my new micro prop engines? They use MajorJims thermometer hinge as bearings. They lack a bit of power, (mainly because the props I have fitted are more for looks than optimal performance), and the engines tend to fail as soon as you bank the craft due to uneven stress on the axle but they are the smallest engines I've made yet plus they only weigh 2.8 tons each. 70 parts.

Lol, yeah this one is crazy big but a bit too big for the game to handle. I learned a lot from building it though.