Craft that survived across KSP versions to present day - your own favorite craft?

[Rune]

Well, I have a few things that I just can't improve. The last one is my Orca: Try as I might, it just does everything I ask of it, better than stuff designed specifically for it.

Built to ferry up and down base modules to Duna, it turns out that it is also an amazing SSTO in Kerbin, and a very heavy-duty lander for airless moons. Basically, it can handle everything except Tylo and Eve. It is a tough, big, VTOL and sea-capable, extremely maneuverable with RCS on, and although it eats fuel like a hog, it has the endurance to return to a base to refuel from the land (that it probably set it up itself). My best jack of all trades, by far, and it was built in 1.1.

But really, in SSTOs, the king of endurance is my Claymore:

With small variations, I still use it, and it is basically a post-porkjet conversion (and considerable enlargement) of my Broadsword. And that one is really old.

It may not look like it, but the weight distribution and design principles are the same. Maybe you can see the lines if you squint? And although the porkjet pass and, especially, the end of the souposphere brought many changes and a serious increase in payload, my big workhorse SSTO still traces its lineage to this beautiful bird that I used for the first reusability challenge, in those days before recovery was a thing that you could choose. I don't even remember the version, and I must have flown both like a gazillion times. I run a mostly reusable space program since I built them, basically.

But really, if I really really go for the spirit of this thread, I have to go with two little gems, which I think have always been rather underappreciated: subassemblies. Note these two pictures:

The second one was uploaded to imgur three months ago. The first one, two years ago. And the only thing that has changed there is that the Drive Pods now have a radiator shroud (because heat became a thing in the meantime), and I took out the RCS... because the other subassembly, the Klaw pod, was just so good (it is the thing that is holding the asteroid in the last pic, incidentally, and it is exactly the same design nowadays). I haven't changed them, I don't expect to, and frankly, I don't want to. They are just that awesome, and have seen me through a lot.

Edit: now that I see the pics full size, look at the kerbal moving around the orange tank with a EMU-type thing in the background of the Broadsword pic: I still have that same 10-part subassembly in some of my stations!! I think that must take the crown for longest-living thing in my space program. Here's another shot of it:

 

Rune. So yeah, I guess you could say I'm "a bit" conservative.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Rune

[HafCoJoe]

4 hours ago, Rune said:

Well, I have a few things that I just can't improve. The last one is my Orca: Try as I might, it just does everything I ask of it, better than stuff designed specifically for it.

Built to ferry up and down base modules to Duna, it turns out that it is also an amazing SSTO in Kerbin, and a very heavy-duty lander for airless moons. Basically, it can handle everything except Tylo and Eve. It is a tough, big, VTOL and sea-capable, extremely maneuverable with RCS on, and although it eats fuel like a hog, it has the endurance to return to a base to refuel from the land (that it probably set it up itself). My best jack of all trades, by far, and it was built in 1.1.

But really, in SSTOs, the king of endurance is my Claymore:

With small variations, I still use it, and it is basically a post-porkjet conversion (and considerable enlargement) of my Broadsword. And that one is really old.

It may not look like it, but the weight distribution and design principles are the same. Maybe you can see the lines if you squint? And although the porkjet pass and, especially, the end of the souposphere brought many changes and a serious increase in payload, my big workhorse SSTO still traces its lineage to this beautiful bird that I used for the first reusability challenge, in those days before recovery was a thing that you could choose. I don't even remember the version, and I must have flown both like a gazillion times. I run a mostly reusable space program since I built them, basically.

But really, if I really really go for the spirit of this thread, I have to go with two little gems, which I think have always been rather underappreciated: subassemblies. Note these two pictures:

The second one was uploaded to imgur three months ago. The first one, two years ago. And the only thing that has changed there is that the Drive Pods now have a radiator shroud (because heat became a thing in the meantime), and I took out the RCS... because the other subassembly, the Klaw pod, was just so good (it is the thing that is holding the asteroid in the last pic, incidentally, and it is exactly the same design nowadays). I haven't changed them, I don't expect to, and frankly, I don't want to. They are just that awesome, and have seen me through a lot.

Edit: now that I see the pics full size, look at the kerbal moving around the orange tank with a EMU-type thing in the background of the Broadsword pic: I still have that same 10-part subassembly in some of my stations!! I think that must take the crown for longest-living thing in my space program. Here's another shot of it:

 

Rune. So yeah, I guess you could say I'm "a bit" conservative.

Thank you for this post, It's always fun to read of your progress

[XB-70A]

Such an interesting topic. I tried to find a craft from my beginning in January 2015 but all of them were deleted... except one! The XC-70A Comet :

This is the really first one from 2015. Made this time with the help of Tweaksale for the vertical surfaces, a small tail gear for the safety of the same surfaces and some ridiculously placed solar panels.

 

Then after an umpteenth update I got enough of the parts mods and had to rebuilt it a bit (not counting the medium gears were replaced by the heavy ones after one of these official update) :

I replaced the Swivel by the Aerospike which were way better for its transferring flight to 200-300 km it was built for. Stock vertical surfaces replacing the original ones.

To be honest it was my really first SSTO and that is why I kept it as all the others pre-1.0.5 vehicle were lost or threw to the trash... 

Edited July 14, 2017 by XB-70A

[ARS]

I have one. IIRC, this craft design is the one that I made way back in the late 2015 and it still survives to this day

It's an LKO SSTO, Starlight Dream. I love the design and aesthetic since it looks sleek and cool. The mod used for it's black color is HRP, and it's already discontinued (If I remember) since 1.05, but I still love this because it's simply flies and get it's job done for delivering kerbals in LKO (and looks cool)

[Kerbinchaser]

On 6/3/2017 at 11:17 PM, Jett_Quasar said:

 

My Millennium Falcon was originally designed in V0.23.5 (the ARM expansion), and I was able to turn it into an SSTO in V0.90.  It's still going today (although no longer an SSTO) - here are two videos, one done in V0.90 (posted in July 2015), one done in V1.2.2 (posted in January 2017)

Visit My STAR WARS Hanger to find my entire collection of stock Star Wars replicas

 - Jett

Very nice, but have you thought about using a coupula instead of a Mk1-2? 

[HafCoJoe]

I finally got around to releasing the updated versions of the Volta

'XV' stands for fifteen as these are the fifteenth interactions of the Volta, the fighter plane that I use in my Avatar picture, and has been in progress since around KSP version 1.0 (it's been around for a while!).

The one on the left in the thumbnail is called the "Switch", and has four engines, two of which rotate 90 degrees using RCS/thermometer hinges in flight to make it VTOL.

The one on the right in the thumbnail is the "Spear". Like previous versions of the Volta, the CoM is actually about 3 meters behind the CoL... While this usually makes planes unstable it makes the Spear the most maneuverable plane I've ever made.

of all the craft I've made these two hold the record for the most iterations after all, they are my profile picture

[Spartwo]

http://i.imgur.com/kJK7laj.gif

Lineage from before rover wheels. MK20 at this point.

[Jett_Quasar]

On 7/16/2017 at 0:57 PM, Lo Var Lachland said:

Very nice, but have you thought about using a coupula instead of a Mk1-2? 

Someone downloaded the craft and switched out the capsule with a cupola - I personally prefer the way it looks with the capsule.  It's been that way for a long, long time and I'm not about to change it now.

 - Jett

[Khorso]

On 7/16/2017 at 2:53 PM, Avera9eJoe said:

I finally got around to releasing the updated versions of the Volta

Like previous versions of the Volta, the CoM is actually about 3 meters behind the CoL... While this usually makes planes unstable it makes the Spear the most maneuverable plane I've ever made.

 

WHAT ON EARTH.

That was absolutely incredible, @Avera9eJoe - especially the Spear's landing. When I unlock more aero parts in my current save, I will have to studiously learn from your designs. I wish I could hand over +5 for your post.

- Khorso

[HafCoJoe]

30 minutes ago, Khorso said:

WHAT ON EARTH.

That was absolutely incredible, @Avera9eJoe - especially the Spear's landing. When I unlock more aero parts in my current save, I will have to studiously learn from your designs. I wish I could hand over +5 for your post.

- Khorso

xD Thanks!  I put them on KerbalX for just that purpose

[Araym]

My 0.25-0.90 based F-14. Born as stock excluded wing hinges (Infernal Robotics).

These picture were just taken as soon I placed in my new pc, bought at january, KSP 1.2.2.
Still working flawlessly.
It's the first ever things that fly out from an hangar, on a new KSP major upgrade.

...

As extra, my new pc started to like a lot more mods than back in those days...
... so I exploited the very same F-14 hull to add more features.

This is the last one (new cockpit, BDA added weapons+radome, new flaps... bla bla shiny things), but it is basically the same thing.




... very different from the "boxellated" graphic I had when the design was conceived, but the plane itself is true 90-95% to the original design.

[Van Disaster]

I think this is the only thing I have from ... probably 0.22? - when did those wheels appear? - which still works. Things from older versions definitely don't. There's an all-stock one in the rover thread somewhere.

 

I've been building B9 S2 forward-swept spaceplanes for years, but not reusing the same design - I guess that is sort-of a signature.

 

Spoiler

2013 

2014

2016

 

also variants of this thing
 

Spoiler

 

Original

2016

 

although I've never got it to look as good as the first one which I don't think I have anymore.

Edited September 18, 2017 by Van Disaster