Lockweed Mardin - Orbital Defense Solutions

[HYuy]

UPDATE!: Lockweed Engineers have finally released the VLS variant of the Takemikazuchi, which does not rely on a warp drive to achieve orbit!

Lockweed Mardin is now officially going public, unveiling three of it's latest declassified projects! Originally founded in the last century, the company specialized in the development of bipedal and aerospace defense systems. Now, they have officially expanded to protecting their home planet, assisting the Kerbin government in providing solutions to the evil influences of the Space Kraken and it's allies.

Isometric Orbital View

Targetting View

The Takemikazuchi ("Honorable Sword of Thunder", very roughly translated) is the newest production class of magnetic catapult-based orbital defense systems. Sporting a 16 round capacity, it's clever design assists aiming and maneuvering. When it's reserves are depleted, it's descent engines may be activated to allow atmospheric re-entry - at which point the crew capsule may be jettisoned to allow a safe landing. Due to its significant size and mass, it requires a warp drive developed by Zorkinian to achieve orbit.

UPDATE!: Lockweed Engineers have developed a variant which does NOT require a warp drive to achieve orbit!

Download for the Takemikazuchi V.ertical L.aunch S.ystem variant (necessary parts minus mechjeb included):

http://www./?1na6elawvh3qb5s

(The warp drive version is still available for download in a link at the bottom of this post)

Takemikazuchi Warp Drive and Firing Demonstration Video:

On Launch Pad

In Orbit

The Revolver is a prototype system currently being developed by Lockweed Mardin to test the newly developed 0.4m Super MAC slug. Due to the extreme power and speed of the round, it is unable to be fired in a stacked configuration, and thus uses a revolving spindle to load successive rounds. It should be noted that this is still a prototype, and as such, requires skill to get into orbit, though it is quite possible. Excerpts taken from it's launch manual recommend using a straight vertical ascent until roughly 8km, whereby weight imbalance in the fuel tanks will require using a controlled spin to maintain ascent vector.

Cargo Shuttle with 4 Satellites

Closer view of a Satellite

Satellites working together to target debris

Artemis Necklace is the name for a planetary defense system formed from a collective of satellites armed with anti-ship laser cannons. A transport shuttle carries four satellites at a time into orbit, where they can be dispersed one at a time at calculated points for optimal cover. Each satellite can be controlled remotely, and provides a sphere of protection with a radius of 2.5km.

ALL Lockweed Mardin Orbital Defense Systems require MechJeb: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/12384-PLUGIN-PART-0-16-Anatid-Robotics-MuMech-MechJeb-Autopilot-v1-9

Takemikazuchi ODS DL link:

(Also requires Zorkinian's spacedock: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/9283-0-16-0-Plugin-Orbital-Planetary-Construction-V9-3?highlight=orbital+spacedock)

http://www./?nc5k81u576nm742

Takemikazuchi ODS V.ertical L.aunch S.ystem variant DL link (necessary parts minus mechjeb included):

http://www./?1na6elawvh3qb5s

Revolver ODS DL link:

(Also requires r4m0n's robotics pack: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/9675-v0-16-Damned-Robotics-Version-1-2-1?highlight=r4m0n+truss)

http://www./?c33bjf66rwf8szm

Artemis Necklace DL link:

(Also requires Tosh's Sunbeam laser: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/6014-PLUGIN-PART-0-14-SUNBEAM-Laser-2-1)

http://www./?g3m4c02c77qwxeh

Edited October 13, 2012 by sal_vager
Updating with new variant info

[mauermajn1]

Witness the power of this fully armed and operational Orbital defense system!

[kahlzun]

How do you designate targets for the Artemis Necklace? I'm terrible at interceptions, this might make things easier..

[KleptoKat]

Nice, I'll try it out later tonight. Sounds like fun. >

[HYuy]

How do you designate targets for the Artemis Necklace? I'm terrible at interceptions, this might make things easier..

Assuming another rocket, debris, or pretty much anything is within 2.5km of the satellite you are targeting with, press numpad 7. That'll activate the auto-target, and continually pressing it will cycle through things in range. Pressing numpad 9 activates the laser sights so you can make sure you're aiming at the right thing if you wish, and pressing numpad 0 fires. Basically, it works just like the regular Sunbeam laser. It even has a manual targeting mode, and you can see Tosh's thread for it linked in the main post to read more about it.

[Bigred2989]

I can't get the Artemis Necklace in orbit no matter what I do. No matter what at around T+1:30 a decoupler in the second stage breaks off and the assent stage smashes into the main stage. I thought it was something happening when the ship was turning but it happens even when the ship is flying straight up. Advice?

PS: Artemis Necklace? LOGH reference?

Edited September 15, 2012 by Bigred2989

[HYuy]

I can't get the Artemis Necklace in orbit no matter what I do. No matter what at around T+1:30 a decoupler in the second stage breaks off and the assent stage smashes into the main stage. I thought it was something happening when the ship was turning but it happens even when the ship is flying straight up. Advice?

PS: Artemis Necklace? LOGH reference?

Don't use full power for the main engines, at least not for very long. Whenever you make a ship with a certain mass above those engines, even stock, for some reason the creators made it so the engine overpowers the decoupler and pretty much smashes itself to pieces. Just so long as you keep it two notches down from max at least, it should be ok.

And yes, I'm a LoGH fan. Glad to see a fellow one (I tried making the Hyperion once, but stacking that many railguns and having them all fire at once ripped the entire ship apart)

Edited September 15, 2012 by HYuy

[Bigred2989]

Don't use full power for the main engines, at least not for very long. Whenever you make a ship with a certain mass above those engines, even stock, for some reason the creators made it so the engine overpowers the decoupler and pretty much smashes itself to pieces. Just so long as you keep it two notches down from max at least, it should be ok.

And yes, I'm a LoGH fan. Glad to see a fellow one (I tried making the Hyperion once, but stacking that many railguns and having them all fire at once ripped the entire ship apart)

I guess I can try to either turn off auto throttle on mechjeb or experiment with different decouplers/engines. Also you should make some huge ice missiles to tr to shoot the necklace down. Yang would be proud (or just adjust his beret, lol).

[Lazurkri]

Artemis Necklace reminds me of a old "Star Wars" ICBM defense system concept, Brilliant Pebbles, where instead of large orbital defense platforms, swarms of smaller, computationally linked together "Minisats" would work cooperatively to disable soviet ICBMs when they're still in space...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles#Brilliant_Pebbles

Is this where you got the idea or is it just coincidence?

Also, I've managed to,using Mechjeb, get the Takemikazuchi to and from Minimus about 6 times now, it truly has a massive amount of fuel in her...I'm going to test a semi-powered landing, see how far down into the atmosphere I can get before disintegrating.

***EDIT***

Managed to get her down to about 25 KM before the struts tore off, and the rest of it began to fall off starting at 10KM. Got clipped by one of the cannons on the way down, still survived. A really well built ship!

Edited September 17, 2012 by Lazurkri

[Cypherwraith]

The sheer scale of these is mind-blowing. I can't imagine getting the prototypes into orbit was easy

[HYuy]

Artemis Necklace reminds me of a old "Star Wars" ICBM defense system concept, Brilliant Pebbles, where instead of large orbital defense platforms, swarms of smaller, computationally linked together "Minisats" would work cooperatively to disable soviet ICBMs when they're still in space...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles#Brilliant_Pebbles

Is this where you got the idea or is it just coincidence?

Also, I've managed to,using Mechjeb, get the Takemikazuchi to and from Minimus about 6 times now, it truly has a massive amount of fuel in her...I'm going to test a semi-powered landing, see how far down into the atmosphere I can get before disintegrating.

***EDIT***

Managed to get her down to about 25 KM before the struts tore off, and the rest of it began to fall off starting at 10KM. Got clipped by one of the cannons on the way down, still survived. A really well built ship!

I got the original idea from a TV series called "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" (aka "LoGH", which was what Bigred2989 was referring to). The weapon system in that series was referred to by the same name: http://gineipaedia.com/wiki/Artemis_Necklace

There's an awful lot of fuel in the Takemikazuchi cause I was planning on eventually developing it to be able to get to other planets in the latter updates and be able to defend them. My latest version without a warp drive however, ends up using nearly half of that fuel just to get into a 100km orbit unfortunately, but that still gives it a considerable range. As far as atmospheric re-entry goes, I find if you decelerate and then fall capsule end first, you can pretty much maintain the entire ship in one piece all the way down, however with that approach you're obviously not going to be able to recover more than the capsule (assuming you jettison it in time).

The sheer scale of these is mind-blowing. I can't imagine getting the prototypes into orbit was easy

I like to build from a "build something cool and THEN worry about getting it into space" approach, and usually it ends with me going through about 5-10 tweaked iterations before I finally figure out a way to make it work. The Revolver surprisingly only took about 4-5 tries with re-balancing the center of gravity between the fuel tanks and the rates at which they burn, but the Takemikazuchi's taken CONSIDERABLY longer. It's paid off though, and now you can try the VLS variant for yourself. I recommend setting the throttle to 2/3 power till the SRBs are all used up and then hammering on the throttle. It's not so much to save fuel as it is a waste of power in the earlier launch phase, and you'll want to save that delta-v for circularizing your orbit.

Oh, and keep in mind, if you rely on mechjeb for steering the Takemikazuchi, remember that the capsule on it is actually upside down, so you'll want to invert your pitch and heading figures.

Edited September 18, 2012 by HYuy

[botse]

all you needed to do is make some mechjeb RCS pods with the round on them then stage them out in orbit and fire at will

all you need is

/\

| |

+| |+

MJ

+=RCS pod

MJ=mechjeb part

that is the firing bed so a smaller ship can get it to orbit and but this pod in to orbit so you get drone firing beds but that gets rid all of the fun of firing a 50 ton ships main gun so more fun so the RCS gun pod is for the ppl who wont to have a farst to build orbiter drone with a mac round on it to fire at there fros i well build a mechjeb ship to test the gun pod and well post if it goes well

[kahlzun]

that is the firing bed so a smaller ship can get it to orbit and but this pod in to orbit so you get drone firing beds but that gets rid all of the fun of firing a 50 ton ships main gun so more fun so the RCS gun pod is for the ppl who wont to have a farst to build orbiter drone with a mac round on it to fire at there fros i well build a mechjeb ship to test the gun pod and well post if it goes well

...what? Sorry, I didn't understand any of that :S

[botse]

all i said is that a mechjeb armed RCS tank and parts can do with the biger ship can do but it would not be as fun as firing the big ones like the revolver test bed or the biger one but would be just as good and can be made with the space dock with the lest parts used

[HYuy]

Yeah, I COULD do that, however there are a few issues.

1) Potential Energy Mass Ratio Recoil. What this means is that due to the ship carrying the round having very little mass in comparison to the round (at least in comparison to the full size cannon stations), the mini-firing platform would absorb a larger part of the energy of the round compared to normal, resulting in the round flying much slower than it could.

2) Capacity. The Takemikazuchi can carry 16 rounds in one go. Can you imagine trying to make a ship that carries 16 different small rcs units with rounds attached? They'd probably all have to be mounted radially, and you can't mount RCS pods radially by themselves without a liquid fuel tank or something attached. It's not quite as efficient as you might think.

3) Targetting. When you've got multiple rounds on a single station, you can miss the first one or two and then figure out how to adjust accordingly. With a single shot disposable pod though, if you miss once, you have to use a different pod which will likely be pointed at a completely different angle.

[botse]

Hmmm you've got a pont there but wene the money part of the game comes in you well have two big ships that you can't afford that is when the RCS pod can do it with a the lest money used but have not got the fire power of the bigger ones but can be but in to orbit with a home ship and 7 to 15 or even 23 more pods like it so you have a ship with a larg number of the pods can be more of a use then one ship that is a money hog and can't even land safely for reload and repair

I well get a working pod ship in orbit for you to see well update when dune

Edit: dune one ship that has the pods on it

Edit2: nope no more the ship came on a werd flight path with it going to the mun with I think well kill it and the pods don't load for meD:

Edited September 19, 2012 by botse

[FeedbackGuy]

WOAH THESE THINGS ROCK!!!!. I got 2 Atermis Necklaces in orbit, still planning to launch four(if the two crafts encounter each other they will fight to death! and see who will rule and stay at Kerbin orbit)

[tunderchark]

Two quick questions, perhaps, maybe, maybe, could you post a download for the Takemikazuchi without the railguns and such, it's a nice touch but it's a pretty cool space station (non weaponized) regardless. Reminds me of the Citadel from Mass Effect or even Installation 00 from Halo. I tried to modify the craft file but no dice, it just falls apart.

Perhaps a more important question, what's the method for distributing the Artemis Necklace you talked about?

[antieye555]

Why is the Takemikazuchi so long?