Interplanetary transport of unwieldy items

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

16 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

On 12/31/2015 at 11:27 PM, Francois424 said:

In stock KSP large motherships aren't very useful except for looks and kicks (Better send 10x small crafts rather than a 700+ parts big one).

I disagree with this statement ... Why? ... well because of this: Dres Love Missions

 

My 2¢: Sending a large fleet may be easier on the game engine, but it’s not as much fun.

KSP is fun with a relatively short cycle of design, test, launch, fly in space, attempt the mission (fail, send a recovery ship) accomplish the mission, repeat.  Too much of any one thing becomes boring.

I tried to send 12 ships to Jool, and it just became too much.  Too much design, too much orbital construction, 12 long-burn departure maneuvers (which took two consecutive weekends of gametime), 12 midcourse correction maneuvers, more than 12 orbital insertion maneuvers attempts to get into orbit of the right moon.  It became no fun.

Along the way, I missed three upgrades to KSP.  I finally abandoned the whole thing well after 1.0 came out.

This time, I’m going to build one Enterprise-style interplanetary exploration ship, and send it on grand tour mission rendezvousing with several resupply and colonial ships along the way.

 

[Francois424]

4 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

My 2¢: Sending a large fleet may be easier on the game engine, but it’s not as much fun.

KSP is fun with a relatively short cycle of design, test, launch, fly in space, attempt the mission (fail, send a recovery ship) accomplish the mission, repeat.  Too much of any one thing becomes boring.

I tried to send 12 ships to Jool, and it just became too much.  Too much design, too much orbital construction, 12 long-burn departure maneuvers (which took two consecutive weekends of gametime), 12 midcourse correction maneuvers, more than 12 orbital insertion maneuvers attempts to get into orbit of the right moon.  It became no fun.

Along the way, I missed three upgrades to KSP.  I finally abandoned the whole thing well after 1.0 came out.

This time, I’m going to build one Enterprise-style interplanetary exploration ship, and send it on grand tour mission rendezvousing with several resupply and colonial ships along the way.

 

I guess it depends how much you hate lag.  I once needed to send 6 probes to Jool...  Both for mapping the moons, and a huge Relay satellite in high orbit of Jool.

I could send a 1000 parts launcher (Down to 750 after the launcher is gone), which takes about 7 sec of RL time for 1sec in-game.  Do one planning, and one burn. 
Or I could send each of the probes with a 20 parts Ion drive for 9k delta-V (so who cares about transfer windows),
I went with the mothership, and I'm telling you, it was very painful and killed-off most of the fun for a while.
Releasing each probe from the Main ship once at Jool was fun tho.  But I'd be weary of making another craft like it before 1.1 and maybe after.

I still like making Big ships, but I try to seriously cut down on the parts count by any means necessary.  I don't have a bad system, but sinc eI like playing KSP with a green clock that means no more than ~200 parts unfortunately.
I hope 1.1 gives us a 100-200% increase in the green (Unrealistic hopes, but hoping nonetheless).

[Der Anfang]

On 1/9/2016 at 6:25 PM, Captain Sierra said:

I ignore the restriction on end-placement, because using modded docking ports that are made out of unobtanium (ridiculously heavy but very stable) and KJR means that part wobble is nonexistent at docking connections when using 2.5m. It results in things like this (massive image warning):

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For heavier payloads (20+ tons i.e. Eve ascent vehicle), I tack those onto the front of the propulsion stage, opting to push rather than pull (pendulum fallacy becomes slightly less of a fallacy when the no. 7 tensile truss is in use).

What mod are those tanks from? I want those balls.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Der Anfang

[Captain Sierra]

5 hours ago, Der Anfang said:

What mod are those tanks from? I want those balls.

Ignoring the poor phrasing there at the end ...... the tanks are part of the trusses. Same part actually. The entire thing is constructed with the Near Future suite of mods. This particular craft uses NF Construction for its main structure, Electrical for the reactors, Propulsion for the engines, and Spacecraft for some RCS blocks.

[RizzoTheRat]

I'm also another fan of the Tug approach, I tend to build stations that can be moved by a tug or have a transfer stage to get them to their required location and then stay put.  I then use smaller tugs or resupply ships to haul crews and fuel rather than a huge mother ship.  I fancy having a go with a life support mod at some point though, in which case I guess motherships will be become a lot more important.

However I'm trying a slightly different approach In my latest game. I built a lander capable of pushing it's own fuel tanker to the Mun and Minimus, so I'm thinking of expanding on that idea for longer range missions.  Obviously this will mean low TWR craft and long burn times but on this kind of design I could relatively easily add a couple of engines to the side of the tanker stage, and still use the lander engine.  Plus as I'm using RemoteTech I can automate the burns to a degree rather flying manually which makes long burns more acceptable.

This pic is after launch when it had reinforcing struts, but after redocking I had no stability problems (flew it to the Mun after landing in all biomes on Minimus), with a larger docking port on a bigger ship I should still be able to keep the length down to help stability, but KAS is always an option to fit some removable/replaceable struts to be fitted before taking longer trips.  KJR just feels a bit cheaty to me.

I've also used wing components like this to space out the engines/tanks on previous tug designs, leaving space for docking ports in the centre, allowing for a much shorter overall ship than if the docking ports were on either end of a body that contained all the fuel.

[glen.mack]

I made this thread as a discussion on the design aspects of hauling cargo as an in-line middle of the ship option for interplanetary transport. I made the parameters of what I wanted to discuss fairly clear.

Your advice on the subject:

1. Don't.

2. Use more mods. (I have on average 3-4 crashes every day I play KSP.)

3. Here's something I built that deals with things in an unrelated way.

4. I ignored one or more of your design parameters to make this suggestion.

As good as this community is, most people don't actually put any thought into most OP's actual questions. Thank You to Bewing who came closest to some actual advice.

Carrying cargo as a center line mass is probably the most sensible way of doing thing in reality, and from a physics point of view in KSP too. The reason it ISN'T done in KSP is because designing an apparatus to do this is difficult, and putting two of things on the side or one of something on the bow or stern is easy. The fact that radial designs can't be brought back to a single part, makes it a chore. Does it make it a bad design choice? No. Just a difficult one.

So I turned to the community for help. I think the thread can be closed though.

[Vanamonde]

Thread closed by OP's request.