Toy Box (DS-12) from Planetes with Fishbones included.

[PTNLemay]

To those who don't know, the Toy Box is the primary ship of Space Debris Recovery Section in the excellent sci-fi anime Planetes.  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes ) It's a clunky little space tug that travels Earth's orbit collecting space junk that could pose a threat to the multi-billion dollar space infrastructure that populates orbit (as well as the thousand of people who work there on a continuous basis) in the 2070s.  I created it mostly from memory, there's plenty of screengrabs and pictures of it online but a lot of it is in very low resolution, or it's inconsistent concept art/fan art with lots of variations.    These are mostly what it should look like.  

 

 

And here's my... vague attempt at recreating it in KSP.

 

One thing I am sort of proud of is that I managed to recreate a fish-bone.  These are super light maneuvering craft that the crew use to get to awkward spots that would be too far for their personal maneuvering packs, but not worth moving the whole ship for.  I couldn't find any specs on the one from the show, but the one I built is around 700 kg and manages 900 m/s total deltaV.

 

 

I do still need to work on the aesthetic a bit, and maybe rework the fuel distribution.  I seem to recall from the show that the cargo was kept along the belly, with the fuel tanks along the spine, but doing this in KSP means that any time the cargo bays are empty and the ship is fully fuelled means the center of mass is way too high.  I'd also like to find a way to use a robotics mod to give the ship proper robot arms like in the show.  The problem with the fish-bone is that it's arm is really tiny.  I would probably have to use tweak-scale or some such thing.  So yeah, let me know what you guys think, constructive criticism is always welcome.  And please, if you know of fans of the show who have already created their own Toy Boxes in KSP (as I'm sure people will have) point them out to me!  I want to see how others went about it.

Edited February 28, 2016 by PTNLemay

[Red Dwarf]

Love it, man! Planetes is one of my favorite shows, and I'm happy I'm not the only one that knows about it.

 

[FlipNascar]

Looks good! Are you using the No Offset Limits mod? Because you could probably completely recreate the shape of the fish-bone using struts and offsetting them with a 3x radial symmetry setting. Could give you a really clean looking replica.

[PTNLemay]

On 2/29/2016 at 10:26 AM, FlipNascar said:

Looks good! Are you using the No Offset Limits mod?

Hmmm, I hadn't heard of that before.  But I see what you mean, and how it could be useful.  Thanks!   Up till now I've been trying to focus more on simulating the performances of the show's vehicles, making them so they could do similar jobs, but the aesthetic isn't always there.   Hence the lack of the triangular shape on the fishbone.

But yeah, that mod looks like it would be useful even just in normal gameplay.

[Andiron]

Hey, that looks nice !

You may also try with B9 Aerospace, it has some nice cockpits and cargo bays.

Lack's Stock Extension has a really nice cockpit with two external seats which may perfectly suits the fish-bone.

RLA Stockalike 2.5m vacuum engine should looks nice at the back

Fuel Tank Plus have some nice tank caps for the top and back fuel tanks (and also color choice)

Edited March 3, 2016 by Andiron