Rendezvous with Rama!!!

[th3ranger]

I tried to suggest this idea to Squad and never heard anything back. However it is a simple idea, and easy to explain.

Mission Idea: Large cylindrical object enters the Kerbal system, you are told about it in a prompt, its size (20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter and 54 kilometres (34 mi) long). Your  mission is to rendezvous with this object and collect science with the stock science instruments in various places, including inside it (once you figure out how to get inside). That's it, that's the mission. Science text would be from the book more or less so that the data will slowly allow you to figure out Rama and its purpose/workings. Views from inside Rama could potentially be stunning. Craft could either be given to the player or alternatively they can construct it themselves given a few (just enough) constraints.

  

 

Potential issues:

In the book Rama has a very high velocity, might be reasonable to reduce it for easier orbit matching.

How do you make a 30 mile long cylinder in KSP with water, or at least blue deck plating or perhaps a large ditch?

Clouds in a player made vehicle???

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, th3ranger said:

However it is a simple idea, and easy to explain.

However, it's not something you can do ingame...  and thus is not a valid challenge.

 

[Ernos]

This all is impossible in KSP, with the limits of KSP's framework and Unity. I can be sure about the Unity side, I am a Unity developer, as in I make games with Unity.

[vyznev]

9 hours ago, Munar pilot said:

This all is impossible in KSP, with the limits of KSP's framework and Unity. I can be sure about the Unity side, I am a Unity developer, as in I make games with Unity.

Just out of curiosity, what's the Unity limitation that prevents this?

Thinking of this as a modding challenge, I suppose the obvious thing to try would be to mod in a tiny planet (using Kopernicus) with no gravity and place a giant cylinder-shaped "anomaly" on one of its poles. I see no obvious reason why this couldn't be used to make a "tubeworld" of some kind (with a small "hub" in the middle), although I'm willing to believe that some limitation of the physics framework could kick in if you try to scale it up to Rama's size.

[Piatzin]

Tweakscale + MK3 Cargo bays

+ HyperEdit

Fixed.

[DerekL1963]

19 hours ago, Munar pilot said:

This all is impossible in KSP, with the limits of KSP's framework and Unity. I can be sure about the Unity side, I am a Unity developer, as in I make games with Unity.

There are mods with airlocks, not mention stock hatches used for EVA...  so I'm not sure I buy this.  The key limits in KSP/Unity would appear to be size and whether you could specify the interior to be 'EVA space' (with dynamic kerbals) rather than 'IVA space' (with static kerbals).  @Earthlinger appears to be on the right track.  So I may have been wrong in my first assessment.

[th3ranger]

21 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

However, it's not something you can do ingame...  and thus is not a valid challenge.

 

It's a mission idea not a challenge, although it might be challenging

[Ernos]

2 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

There are mods with airlocks, not mention stock hatches used for EVA...  so I'm not sure I buy this.  The key limits in KSP/Unity would appear to be size and whether you could specify the interior to be 'EVA space' (with dynamic kerbals) rather than 'IVA space' (with static kerbals).  @Earthlinger appears to be on the right track.  So I may have been wrong in my first assessment.

I mean as far as the pure size of it and how KSP handles physics.

[DAL59]

19 hours ago, Munar pilot said:

I mean as far as the pure size of it and how KSP handles physics.

Tweakscale.  The 30 km version would crash it, but a 1/10th scale craft is definitely possible.  With mods, you could do it with maybe 200 parts.

 

Proof that large craft work in ksp.