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Request for vessels for a KSP demonstration

stibbons

By stibbons
in KSP1 The Spacecraft Exchange

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stibbons

stibbons

Posted
Posted

Hello ship builders.

So here's the thing. I've been building a control panel for KSP. It's almost complete, certainly flight ready, and this weekend I'll be demoing it at the Sydney Mini Maker Faire. Basically that means I'll be spending two days playing Kerbal Space Program with a great big control desk with people who may or may not have seen the game before. Pretty cool right? :)

Now, to speed things up and avoid spending long periods during the event on ship-building, I would like to have a bunch of ready-to-go vessels to fly for different objectives. I'm really not that great at designing ships, so I was hoping the fine folk here could help out with vessel suggestions.

Here's the rules:

  • Stock parts only. I'm installing all of the visual and sound enhancements I think I can get away with, but don't want to add any part packs. Mostly because I've never really used any of them and don't want to have to explain them, sorry.
  • Easy to fly vessels. I don't think it's reasonable to try to explain to a newbie how to use custom action groups to switch between three different types of engines to get an SSTO to orbit. Especially when there's a big red stage button longing to be whacked. :) I'm looking for well-balanced, stable ascent vehicles. Landers that are easily managed and can cope with mild abuse. That sort of thing.
  • Stuff that looks good. This is where all of my designs fail miserably. :)

Here are the kinds of missions I was thinking could be easily run, and what I've dug up so far to do them with, looking on this forum and KerbalX:

  • A Kerbin orbit space station. Something that vessels launching from Kerbin can dock with. I've pretty much settled on using this ISS replica. But open to other suggestions!
  • An LKO vehicle. Something that can launch from KSC and dock with the orbital station at around 500km orbit. I was thinking about just using the Kerbal X modified with a docking port on the nose, but am a little bit nervous about the asparagus staging it uses. Alternatives welcome!
  • A Mun lander and return mission. I was thinking about using the Apollo 12 vessel for a realistic Kerbin moon landing. I'd be very interested to see any other vessels for a simple moon landing and return.
  • A moon base, probably Minmus. I'd like to assemble a base on Minmus using Rune's base-in-a-box. Just a small base that we can aim landings at.
  • A dedicated lander. I'd be keen to get links to descent and lander subassemblies. Stuff that I can hyperedit to a moon or any of the other bodies and have folk try to land. Even upper stages that can manage a landing, then lift off and return to Kerbin would be fun. I haven't yet found any good vessels for this that are guaranteed 1.0.4 compatible.

That's all I can think of. I'd love to hear about any other ideas people might have for this sort of demo, as well as links to ready to fly craft for it.

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Jabbernewt

Jabbernewt

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I've got two crafts, one for Mun landing, another for LKO crew transfer. Let's start with the Muke (mun nuke).

The Muke, as the name suggests, is a nuclear craft. In standard configuration it has 410 liquid fuel units, 240 monoprop. units, and an RTG in the back.

I've also created a set of external fuel tanks, one for either side of the vehicle. This adds 320 extra fuel units, 160 monoprop. units, and solar panels. The pods would have ion engines as well, but the Kracken eats the battery pack that the engines and fuel are connected to when I dock the pods onto the Muke.

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The Muke by itself will get you into Munar orbit, and that's about it. With the fuel pods, you can land on the Mun, and prolly make it back into orbit. I would've myself, but a bug messed up my orbit (straight into the surface of the Mun). That said, I was able to change my trajectory to enable orbit, and then landing. With the fuel used in the corrections I could've gotten back into orbit, but not much further than that.

Second craft is just a plain LKO crew transfer. Flying is fun- the main booster stage has fuel tanks that fall away soyuz style, and there is a full abort system. Notes for flying are in the craft description.

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If these sound good, let me know, and I'll rustle up a download for you (and anyone else, for that matter).

Edited by Jabbernewt
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stibbons

stibbons

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Woo, lots of awesome responses.

Any chance you want a few atmospheric planes?

Cause that's where I specialize. :D

I don't fly planes at all, so not sure how much of a run they'd get. But who am I to say no? :)

You can build a nice small station out of them.

Can and will. Thanks very much.

Slapped a lander together based off you requirements.

Over 2k DV, high TWR, full RCS system.

Perfect! Looking forward to seeing a download.

I've got two crafts, one for Mun landing, another for LKO crew transfer.

These are both fantastic. Would love the craft files. And you pretty much nailed it with the "first vessels" approach.

Thanks very much for the input so far. I really appreciate the help here. :)

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Mad Rocket Scientist

Mad Rocket Scientist

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Here's some stuff that's up to heavy abuse.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/113015-Space-Bus Looks good, docks, flies easily, but landing is a bit tricky.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125885-Bush-plane Flies great, lands easily, and looks, I think, very good.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/121678-F-117-By-AMRSD Harder to fly, but shows what can be built in KSP.

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Jabbernewt

Jabbernewt

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Alright, here you go!

First Flights

https://www.dropbox.com/s/39hfk00ys275sta/Dinky.craft?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0tabip584g6ogwy/Twinky.craft?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k3v4d2upajoj3b5/Orbiter.craft?dl=0

LKO crew vessel:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6dlwqhg1m32ac6t/LKO%20Crew%20Resupply.craft?dl=0

Muke:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxa3ec6z0y6jzkg/Mun%20Nuke.craft?dl=0

(Fuel pod module) https://www.dropbox.com/s/bow95xdhps26bvz/Mun%20Nuke%20Fuel%20Pod.craft?dl=0

I should mention that the Muke needs a bit of fuel line work. I'll have the link updated sometime tomorrow.

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stibbons

stibbons

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This is great. Thanks all for your responses. I've tried out most of what has been posted here, will give the rest a quick bash tomorrow. Lots of fun stuff. :D

I've put stations in orbit around Kerbin and the Mun. Will add StormKat's tomorrow, probably at Minmus although a Duna orbit station sounds like it could be fun too. After that I want to make sure each has a couple of landers docked, and will leave some vessels in orbit for transfers back and forth around the Kerbin system. It's great to have a much wider variety than I would have been able to knock together in a couple of days.

Here's some stuff that's up to heavy abuse.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/113015-Space-Bus Looks good, docks, flies easily, but landing is a bit tricky.

The KerbalX link in your Space Bus thread seems to be incorrect. I did find it eventually though, and it looks like fun. Also managed to park a Bush Plane on the island runway - if I can fly it straight anybody can. ;)

I should mention that the Muke needs a bit of fuel line work. I'll have the link updated sometime tomorrow.

I ran out of time tonight so haven't tried it yet. Looking forward to an update.

I also have this more Apolloesque lander that I can provide if you want it.

That looks great too. :)

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Mad Rocket Scientist

Mad Rocket Scientist

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Posted
[...]

The KerbalX link in your Space Bus thread seems to be incorrect. I did find it eventually though, and it looks like fun. Also managed to park a Bush Plane on the island runway - if I can fly it straight anybody can. ;)

[...]

Thanks! I changed my username a while back, and most have missed changing that link.

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stibbons

stibbons

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I'd been planning to, but it was a very very hectic weekend. It's Monday evening in Australia and I'm only just catching my breath. :)

The weekend went really well, but nothing like what I was expecting. I prepped a save file with an ISS replica in Kerbin orbit, a small station built from Azimech's components in a low Mun orbit, with a couple of landers docked. And then added StormKat's all-in-one station in Duna orbit, and parked MajorJim's stock Curiosity replica on the surface of Duna near the face anomaly.

I hear there were nearly 8000 people through the doors over the weekend, and there were only a few times I had less than about four kids eager to try the game out. Because of the sheer number of folk wanting a turn, I ended up sticking to KSC launches, some of them achieving a stable orbit, some suborbital, and quite a few going straight up until they escaped Kerbin. That let me give everybody five minutes or so with my controller, playing with the throttle slider and thumping the big red stage button. :D

With that in mind, I mostly only used the smaller LKO orbiters people submitted here. Sorry about that. :( All of them performed really really well, and there was enough variety to let me guide many people in to space without dying of boredom. So thanks again!

I did manage to find time for a couple other missions during quiet moments. Yukon0009's lander was great. A friend who'd never played KSP before undocked it from a 200km Mun orbit and sat it down on the surface with more than enough fuel to get back up and dock again. Quite a few people drove a rover around a big red planet and walked away grinning. Whenever somebody tried to tell me this was their favourite game and they play it all the time, I made them try to launch one of the bigger ships to a circular orbit without looking at the map screen. They mostly crashed, sorry. :D

Thanks again for everybody's help. There was a lot of photos and videos taken, but I'm still trying to track them down. Anybody still interested in seeing those, as well as the footage from the two interviews I gave about KSP and my build, I'll be posting more updates in my controller forum thread.

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Yukon0009

Yukon0009

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I did manage to find time for a couple other missions during quiet moments. Yukon0009's lander was great. A friend who'd never played KSP before undocked it from a 200km Mun orbit and sat it down on the surface with more than enough fuel to get back up and dock again. Quite a few people drove a rover around a big red planet and walked away grinning.

.

:)

Makes me feel warm on the inside.

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stibbons

stibbons

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Yep! The Demonstrator got a lot of use, especially on Saturday afternoon. Very nice little ship, and a fun ride to LKO. Haven't yet seen any public pics of it on ascent though sorry. :(

I had a few folk introduce themselves because we work for the same company and saw me write about this project on the internal wiki. And I had a few who saw some of the pictures I tweeted. I'm not sure if anybody explicitly mentioned stopping by because you recommended it. But in my defence I talked to a lot of curious people.

EDIT: I'm also stibbons on twitter. My timeline and mentions include a lot of pics from the weekend. The @maasmuseum and @makerfaireSYD accounts have some pics too.

Edited by stibbons
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selfish_meme

selfish_meme

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Yep! The Demonstrator got a lot of use, especially on Saturday afternoon. Very nice little ship, and a fun ride to LKO. Haven't yet seen any public pics of it on ascent though sorry. :(

I had a few folk introduce themselves because we work for the same company and saw me write about this project on the internal wiki. And I had a few who saw some of the pictures I tweeted. I'm not sure if anybody explicitly mentioned stopping by because you recommended it. But in my defence I talked to a lot of curious people.

EDIT: I'm also stibbons on twitter. My timeline and mentions include a lot of pics from the weekend. The @maasmuseum and @makerfaireSYD accounts have some pics too.

Ah thanks I can wear my stubbies in peace now. They would not know my tag so I wouldn't expect them to say anything.

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