NSI Space Station

[Szkeptik]

Hi all!

I present my first space station design.

At the launch pad:

Liftoff:

The Main lifter engines might look irregular, but I spent a lot of time stabilizing them and now the entire contraption is incredibly stable on liftoff. As you can see, no winglets are required at all and even without SAS the ship stays almost perfectly vertical by itself. Until it starts rotating around it's vertical axis by the time it leaves the densest part of the atmosphere. At that point you may want to engage the SAS.

Stage separation:

Out in space:

Some orbital EVA action:

CRAFT File:

[ATTACH]31442[/ATTACH]

Edited August 18, 2012 by Szkeptik

[Capt'n Skunky]

Nice station!

Until you reach 5 posts, your ability to post attachments is limited. I'll go ahead and lift that restriction for you.

Cheers!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[Szkeptik]

Thanks!

I uploaded the file.

I think I'll start working on a design that can go beyond close orbit and reach the Mun. It's going to need way more juice.

[ConstructorChris]

that thing looks amazing! how the eff did you manage to get the boosters to actually SIT like that without blowing up? XD

I look at this thing over and over again and still can't figure out how it gets to space. this made my day

Now add ladders and everything will be perfect...

[Szkeptik]

Thanks for the feedback.

It doesn't actually SIT on the pad, I'm holding it up with the red stabilizer thingies. I don't know their names.

It has some ladders as you can see on the last picture. I thought about adding more, but it didn't look good so I scrapped that idea.

The main idea on getting it into space is that the entire vehicle along with the boosters starts spinning around it's axis because of the not perfectly vertical position of the main booster engines. Most of the shearing drag gets nullified by the outward motion as a single force rather than yanking the craft every which way like you can see with most ships on liftoff. Because of this it can handle more acceleration as well and doesn't break apart below a 8-9 G acceleration (usually ).

Edited August 18, 2012 by Szkeptik

[Oddbin]

Very unique design. I could see that style being used for a large space station or even and interplanetary mothership.

[iZINC]

Very unique design. I could see that style being used for a large space station or even and interplanetary mothership.

Mothership!, Now thats an idea!

[Dynd]

Hehe, really like this, and all stock parts.

Edited December 20, 2014 by Dynd

[Sonicboom]

Everything looked so weird because the boosters are all crooked.. Why don't you put struts on the boosters to make them look pretty?

[Szkeptik]

Why don't you put struts on the boosters to make them look pretty?

I'm not sure how adding more struts would make it pretty. The boosters are like this for a reason. With horizontal boosters the station would fall apart at ~4 G acceleration. This way it can handle 8 G reliably.