Nicole's Career Creations

[Nicole]

Hello! I decided I'd like to start documenting the craft I make in the SPH and the VAB, for posterity. I might as well put it on the forums, maybe other people will be interested too. 

I play the game in Hard mode on Career, which means that not only am I crawling for new technology and parts to use, each thing I build has to function well and have a positive prototype stage, because in Hard mode you simply can't loose many Kerbals or throw Funds into the wind and still keep a space program going. I use some mods which you can notice, but am pretty conservative and only use those that I feel mesh well with the stock game visually and functionally. Lastly, I always want to be creative and neat with the things I build. I feel there is a lot of easy or obvious ways to build craft in the game that nearly everyone does, due to convenience and the parts available, and I try to avoid those for interest's sake.

 

KJ-20 Vulture Jet

Atmospheric survey plane.

This is the best flying plane I've ever seen or had in KSP, it is above all simply fun to fly. Not only does it have a high speed just under supersonic, making it bearable for flying out for survey contracts, it can turn on a dime with huge amounts of lift and is remarkably stable. It is suitably flyable that a non-pilot Kerbal is fine to use with it. I wanted to try making a plane that did not have a rear horizontal stabilizer, like a tiny space shuttle, and largely fluked amazing performance out of it. One interesting design note is that I have StockPlus installed, allowing me to tweak the authority of control surfaces, which I have used to align the vertical stabilizers on the wing tips to be straight into the airflow even though they are attached on an angle. This is done by having them be "deployed" with very low authority, and testing reveals that this does increase speed. I can toggle those surfaces to be "undeployed", which angles them in and increases drag for a useful landing configuration.

 

WH-6 Helicopter

Space Center operations, science and recovery.

 

Many respect to Kerbal Aircraft Expansion for enabling me to build a helicopter! Unfortunately, this helicopter had a bit of a rough prototype phase which resulted in the death of two Kerbals, including renowned engineer Bill Kerman. That was due to it's desire to flip over into a non-recoverable state while yawing at speed. The problem may have been the angle of the aerodynamic surfaces attaching the landing skids to the craft, however it was since stabilized by incorporating new reaction wheel systems, which allow any degree of induced roll to be recoverable. Still, the craft now features an eject-able main rotor and parachutes. This helicopter also has pontoon landing skids, as I had planned for it to be water land-able, but my estimate for the buoyancy was not correct and it does not float at a reasonable level. 

 

ZUREK V Orbiter

Low Kerbin orbit tourism.

Originally designed as that next step up from a simple MK1 pod for putting Kerbals into low orbit around Kerbin, it excelled in every way, and it's reliability, cost effectiveness, and ease of use led to it's usage for tourism. In fact it has launched many more tourists around the planet than it has official mission astronauts, due to lack of science equipment aboard. The prerequisites for design were to have something more comfortable and roomy than the MK1 pod (Very little options available at the time of design), to have the final stage engine also be part of the return vehicle for efficient vessel recovery, and to have a more interesting return system than a nose-cone parachute. As a plus it also turned out pretty cute. The craft features remote probe core control, despite being crewed, which not only made the dangerous prototype stage much more Kerbal-friendly (Oh yes, the utility tower came off once or twice during the first re-entries!), but it also allows all Kerbals aboard to be tourists which is a great advantage. Due to not going into high orbits, the ship does not need a heat shield and instead uses the engine to protect itself on re-entry along with radiators to manage heat. I had just watched a video of the Orion craft landing from space before designing this, and was partly inspired by it's jettisoning cover over the main chutes to do something similar. As you can see the main chutes are tucked away behind radiator panels, which are ejected just before they deploy.

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I'm sure I'll make more things in the future, hopefully bigger and better than ever, and I hope to update this post. For now that is it, thanks for reading. 

[Castille7]

Love the Helicopter video, I've had my share of experiences with that VAB landing Dropships on it! Also the Heli itself is a nice unique design

Edited March 11, 2016 by castille7

[FleshJeb]

I love the aesthetics and the engineering on your chopper and the orbiter.