Jakalth goes off the DEEP end. Literally.

[Jakalth]

And by deep end, I mean ocean of course.  2 submarines to play around with.  They may not be nice replicas like others have released, but they are simple and work well in the water.

 

First we have the Flounder.  This submarine is based on an ah...  hmmm...  I'm not really sure what it's based on, but it's my first successful submarine.  It used 2.5m Ore tanks for ballast and 2 wheesleys to provide the thrust.  The craft weighs in at over 150 tons and only has a top speed of just shy of 13m/s.  This craft can carry two kerbals to the bottom depths of the ocean, and return to the surface in a hurry.  It also has "quite a bit" of liquid fuel for longer under water runs.  Like most other designs, this one becomes more buoyant as it burns off fuel and I'm sure it will eventually become too buoyant to stay under if enough fuel is burned off.

 

Diving deep with the lights on can get you down to crush depth pretty quickly.  Good thing the ocean don't seem to be quite that deep here.

 

When pushed hard enough, this submarine can even porpoise out of the water.

 

But beware, exerting too much forces on the craft can lead to spontaneous dis assembly.  Like leaping out of the water, raising or lowering the landing gear too quickly, bumping into objects, or even looking at it wrong(switching to a different craft and switching back).  The Ore tanks are quite volatile for some reason...

 

The second submarine I have is the Grouper.  This craft is a lot sleeker and more conventionally shaped.  It's powered by twin, rear mounter, wheesleys with two rows of ballast tanks of either side of the craft to maintain ballance.  Unlike the Flounder, the Grouper is nearly neutrally buoyant and has a higher top speed... of just over 14m/s. It's equipped with a hydrodynamic para scope boom that also has an antenna for transmitting back your findings without fully surfacing.(just a wing piece with some bits on it, but it works, or so Bill Kermen tells me.)

(older picture)

 

The Grouper is a bit more maneuverable then the Flounder and can reach the depths of the ocean a bit quicker.

(older picture)

 

And like the Flounder, the Grouper is equipped with its own landing gear, so it can crawl back into the surface for repair and refueling once it's mission is complete.

(current design)

 

The two craft are available for download, testing, and destruction at the following links:

Flounder, deep sea submarine.

Grouper, seeker submersible.

[He_162]

Nice job

[SpacedCowboy]

Something smells fishy!    Just kiddin'  Noticed you had a couple different biome going on there, "shores and water".  Have you discovered any others? Nice boats BTW

[Jakalth]

There are other biomes then just shore and water?  o_O  Hmmm...

 

Na, nothing else seems to be down in the depths but shore and water.  At least not according to Kerbal Engineer.  If anything has changed biome wise it hasn't been updated in KER yet.

 

Anyways, I've just started dipping my toes in the water.  I'll end up finding out if anything else is down there some time when I'm willing to spend more time to explore.  At 14m/s, it takes quite a while to get anywhere.  But if I load down the Grouper, I can just troll along the bottom on its landing gear, while I go afk.  Then just check in every so after and see what it finds.

[Mikki]

I am looking for a sub than can be stored in a 4x cargobay... downloading this for research!  Cool!

[Heckspress]

Having difficulties getting the Flounder into the water.

 

[Jakalth]

9 hours ago, Heckspress said:

Having difficulties getting the Flounder into the water.

 

Best thing I can say is this.  get off the runway as soon as possible, go slowly as you leave the runway, and enter the water as slow as you can(10m/s for example).  While traveling beside the runway, you can bring it's speed up to 40m/s or so, but it is safest to just take your time.

 

16 hours ago, Mikki said:

I am looking for a sub than can be stored in a 4x cargobay... downloading this for research!  Cool!

If you try the Grouper, it should fit, just barely.  But you'll need to remove the side ballast tanks to make it narrow enough.  Second step would be to move the front dive planes onto the nose of the sub and move them in so they are about as narrow as the rest of the sub.  Also, loose the top parascope wing.  Thing is, half the fuel for the engines is part of the ballast tanks, so you'll want to add fuel tanks to the main hull.  and the engine necells are needed to supply enough air for the wheesleys.  Finally, you'll need to play around with removing small amounts of ore from the front and back ore tanks until the craft no longer sinks when it enters the water.  probably between 1,200 and 1,500 combined ore removed from the two tanks.