[Showcase] Post Your Near Future Technologies Craft!

[Immashift]

Alright folks, I used to love perusing the old B9 creations showcase and as far as I know one for NFT doesn't exist yet. 

In the NFT thread it was suggested to me that I start one myself. With the release of 1.3 NFT I think it's the perfect time.

There are no requirements other than that your craft use an NFT part or mechanic. Can be current or old, I don't care. 

I'll update with a few more when I get home today, but I'll start this off now - 

This craft was designed in pieces and assembled in orbit for one of my many grand tour ideas. Back in .25 I was using Krag's planet pack before Kopernicus and I needed something with more delta-v than I'd ever managed before. 

This thing had 27km/s with the lander docked fully loaded, and about 45km/s without the lander. It was designed to be able to get to things like the old Ablate, which orbit really, really close to the sun. 

It was a really utilitarian craft, as in the second image, all but one fuel tank were designed to come off and go down with the lander to be refuelled with Xenon and brought back up. 

The lander itself was inspired by Cupcake's dropships, and had enough for a Tylo landing without any extra baggage, and could also do a Dyna landing plus ascent without refuelling via Kethane. 

I had a lot of capacitors there so it could handle ~3 minute burns without reactor startup, then get that power back via solar panels. 

There were two main problems with it - the lander had no RCS to save fuel and relied on two tugs to dock every time I had to move it, which got annoying fast. Secondly, out past Jool it had power problems because no RTGs and low solar output so I had to keep the reactor online very low. 

I can't wait to redesign for 1.3, TAC LS and the new changes to NFT, and I'd love to see all your designs. Mine tend to be very functional and not so pretty, though I was somewhat proud of the way this one looked. 

Anyways, let's see all your crafts folks!

Also any tags or formatting I've missed please feel free to pm or post or whathaveyou. 

Edited June 16, 2017 by Immashift
Corrections

[lovec1990]

Ok,

Here i have ship meant for long range space travel build mostly with NFT parts currently its just a prototype and its missing a lander.

Spoiler

Any sugestions or ideas where too improve her?

[JadeOfMaar]

Here's a single launch station made very largely with NF Construction and Station Parts Expansion in mid KSP 1.2.2. Particularly, it's an overblown station core. All it had was seats and those Kerbodyne tanks. It cleanly captured into its orbit by using vernier engines, allowing its transfer stage to plummet into the moon behind it. It had no purpose and was merely an exercise in design after a prior long period (right before the release of KSP 1.2.0) of not designing anything in NFT. Its codename was Linda meaning beautiful. Sending something pretty to the outer moon's orbit was the whole idea.

 

My best ever ship design with NFT at its core, the Lithia L, deep space science ship in KSP 1.1.3. Ignore the fact that it lacks actual experiments and was launched in sandbox. It had 6km/s on Lithium and about 1km/s on LFO for VTOL, with which it could land on Vall. 6x 1.25m MPDTs, 3x 2.5m reactors cleverly hidden in the hull and just enough stock radiators, placed elegantly rather than just any-old-where like on most other craft that carry more than one nuclear reactor. Besides that it had ISRU so that it could return to Kerbin on its own.

it launched from Minmus to Jool and had no business in LKO. Kerbin just happened to look really nice during the glamor shot phase of development.

There was a closely related ship called Lithia S, a Mk2 lander which was a Duna SSTO. It could not fit in the Lithia L but surely it would fit a mothership with MkIV-class body.

Edited June 16, 2017 by JadeOfMaar

[Maelstrom Vortex]

It is the plane that never lands.. or least doesn't have to for several hundred years.Primary NFT usage on this is in the electrical system, several capacitors for when it has to send boatloads of processed data home from the on board lab. Hybridized with stock and other mods, download here if you think you'd enjoy: https://kerbalx.com/Maelstrom_Vortex/Project-Phoenix-2-Final

Recommended tweaks: Use non-tweakscaled large landing gear in replacement of its current gear, working on an upgrade to the design. Can visit literally every biome on kerbin in a single flight except the tiny ones at the space center.

Edited June 16, 2017 by Maelstrom Vortex

[Nergal8617]

2 hours ago, lovec1990 said:

Any sugestions or ideas where too improve her?

That is a lot of radiators, have you considered grabbing Nertea's Heat Control?  There are some awesome radiators and such in there and it was just updated for 1.3.

[Immashift]

2 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

 

There was a closely related ship called Lithia S, a Mk2 lander which was a Duna SSTO. It could not fit in the Lithia L but surely it would fit a mothership with MkIV-class body.

What I really love here is your engine placement. I'm a huge fan of what I call "puller" designs rather than "pushers". My ships tend to be either but recently in lander designs I've started putting the engines on outriggers and making them wide so that A) It's easier to reach surface with stuff like drills or put docking ports on the bottom (especially on my interplanetary tugs designed to pull 3-4x their mass to other planets), and B) If I space the engines far from the main body of the lander i can widen the landing footprint and make it quite simple for it to land on very uneven terrain. 

The only downside I find is with thrust possibly damaging your ship components, but with good design I don't think it's an issue. Maybe this round with NFP I'll make a ship that has engines firing through the center column or something fancy that looks good in videos

[DeltaDizzy]

This thread is my new favorite. In fact, I'm making something similar to the OP craft for the weekly challenge. I actually decided to do a Jool 5 if I can.

Here's the lander

A modified Viewmatic sits atop a JSELL 1

 

[HoveringKiller]

 

I'm not sure how to post pictures directly into the forums, but I have a few designs that I've put into imgur albums that I'll link.

The whole of the Kerbin logistics network planned out, this is supposed to work in conjunction with the next album to allow seamless interplanetary missions.

This is my old interplanetary ship, designed to work with the previous logistics network for refuel and refit, as well as crew rotations.

This is an album showcasing the refueling station I had built to refuel my interplanetary ships around minmus between missions. I was in the process of redesigning a new interplanetary ship for longer duration missions, when the 1.3 update happened, still waiting on a few mods to update before I try it again. (Mk IV mainly, but I'm still getting load errors when trying to load on of the NFT mods can't remember the one off the top of my head)

Finally, the massive ore lifting craft that I devised to get ore from Minmus surface, to the previous refueling station. 

Sorry for all the album postings, but I am in industrial engineer and one of my dream jobs would be to set up/work on a system similar to this irl, so I'm rather excited that I can set it up in KSP, albeit a much more simple version.

[Nergal8617]

My robotic orbital construction tug.

 

Edited July 13, 2017 by Nergal8617

[Immashift]

On 6/16/2017 at 11:02 PM, HoveringKiller said:

 and one of my dream jobs would be to set up/work on a system similar to this irl, so I'm rather excited that I can set it up in KSP, albeit a much more simple version.

To be honest, I've got the exact same niche going. I'm currently working to send an unmanned expedition out to Eeloo in orbit of Sarvin in search of Karborundum. Supplies and Logistics are one of my favorite things to micromanage and that's why I love USI Kolonization and TAC LS among other things. 

I always thought it was cheaper in terms of resources and time intensity to convert ore with your lander and then haul a giant fuel tank of whatever you need up from the surface. I suppose minmus is ideal for just an ore ferry and on a station you can have a massive refinery setup, not to mention the capability to capture and convert asteroids... I'm gonna have to look into that. 

My current expedition to Sarvin was done before NFT 1.3 and before I had unlocked the NFT tech nodes. After it's complete and orbiting Eeloo I'll start converting all my current tugs and other craft to NFT systems because they're just more efficient.

[Raptor9]

On 6/16/2017 at 0:32 PM, Immashift said:

In the NFT thread it was suggested to me that I start one myself. With the release of 1.3 NFT I think it's the perfect time.

Nice idea.  If there is one thing NFT and @Nertea's other related mods needs, it's more publicity.

[Immashift]

Nothing worth really showing off, but I finally got to the NFT nodes in my career and this early probe's cruising around the inner system on argon and this super low flyby of Gilly was actually a lot more fun than I thought it'd be. Now to continue on to Faz...

[JadeOfMaar]

A bootstrap rover and bootstrap power core for a Mun outpost before KSP 1.2.0. Each of these was buildable from a strict and workable serving of 5 tons of MaterialKits and were vital to base expansion out of the Gourd-like lander appropriately named "The Missionary."

 

Eventually, (and along with a few shipments of MaterialKits,) this sprawling base was completed. NFC doesn't look quite fit for building surface bases with... But I was inclined to challenge that reasoning.

The flying saucer (containing NF Spacecraft command pod and NFP's low profile LFO cluster engines) was not constructed here but was delegated here. It had 3500km/s dV thanks to procedural tanks and those engines' modestly higher Isp (350s? ...355s?). This base received a shipment of XenonGas, and a shipment of EnrichedUranium. Then it launched a Duna probe and a station core. The xenon carrier and station core were heavy on NFC as well.

 

There's the station core with just one NF Solar panel to keep its probe core alive. It would serve as an orbital refinery and shipyard, and so contained truss Ore tanks. The foreground object is a recoverable launcher which could have been recycled for MaterialKits but I was lazy and let it crash far out of physics range. The station core is kindred to my newer "Linda" station posted earlier, and an interplanetary station concept that I lost the screenshots for.

 

And here's the Xenon delivery craft. The truss stack contained two probe cores. The severed head would refuel the Duna probe already in orbit. The body would top up the base. I tried, and failed, to use Mono for landing engines. There weren't enough SpaceY engines on it for good TWR so I had to keep the Rhino boosters.

This is my last post of old stuff, I promise.  

Edited June 20, 2017 by JadeOfMaar