Maybe stupid question, but when building a ship, do you 'ignore' that your crew can pass through a heatshield to get into other compartments?

[TEMPEST_114]

I'm building my first Interplanetary ship - going to Eve and back and I'm trying to build is somewhat 'properly' i.e. with habitation, hydroponics etc and a gravity wheel for the long trip, but as the crew will eventually need to separate from the 'mothership' to return to Kerbal, that will require the command module, small fuel tank, engine, RCS and of course a heatshield. But with all that attached to the back of the command module, how 'realistically' are my little Kerbals supposed to move from the command module to the other compartments without being able to pull a Wanda and handwave the whole thing away?

Just wondering. 

[Mr. Kerbin]

Hmmm.

Maybe imagine it somehow has a hatch, like this mod

 

[TEMPEST_114]

23 minutes ago, Mr. Kerbin said:

Hmmm.

Maybe imagine it somehow has a hatch, like this mod

 

Thanks. I guess I'm 'worrying over nothing' right? 

I guess the 'correct' answer is to have it built and stay in LKO and have a shuttle move the crew in/out...

[arbsoup]

I think Connected Living Spaces is the mod that tries to handle all this? But I never sweat it — I've got way too much else to worry about, I just roleplay the bits I enjoy and slip past all the other stuff.

I'd have thought the normal "legitimate" approach would be to dock the return vehicle to the mothership by the top, so you have a docking-port connection from the capsule directly to the mothership's habitat module or something; i.e. if what you have now is command pod / return fuel+engines / mothership, you could spin the whole return vehicle around to get return fuel+engines / command pod / mothership.

[TEMPEST_114]

Just now, arbsoup said:

I think Connected Living Spaces is the mod that tries to handle all this? But I never sweat it — I've got way too much else to worry about, I just roleplay the bits I enjoy and slip past all the other stuff.

I'd have thought the normal "legitimate" approach would be to dock the return vehicle to the mothership by the top, so you have a docking-port connection from the capsule directly to the mothership's habitat module or something; i.e. if what you have now is command pod / return fuel+engines / mothership, you could spin the whole return vehicle around to get return fuel+engines / command pod / mothership.

LOL, yeah, I'm getting bogged down for sure; I've been designing this ship for the best part of a week, and I'm still at the drawing board.

Oh, like the Apollo CM and Lunar Lander? Have it attached at the front, backwards, and detach when the job is done? Yeah, that could work... spoils the aesthetics a bit and will spoilt my Kerbals view out the front! lol  

[arbsoup]

3 minutes ago, TEMPEST_114 said:

LOL, yeah, I'm getting bogged down for sure; I've been designing this ship for the best part of a week, and I'm still at the drawing board.

Oh, like the Apollo CM and Lunar Lander? Have it attached at the front, backwards, and detach when the job is done? Yeah, that could work... spoils the aesthetics a bit and will spoilt my Kerbals view out the front! lol  

Yeah, exactly, or like this Constellation/Orion thing. Or to be really sleek about it, you can have a return spaceplane docked to the side, all aerodynamic-like.

Edited April 6 by arbsoup

[TEMPEST_114]

@arbsoup

That's cool! Thanks for that  -  I wasn't aware of that design at all.

But...

YOU HAD ME AT 'SPACEPLANE'... LOL

Edited April 6 by TEMPEST_114

[TheKspEngineer]

A very cool soviet spacecraft called TKS also had a heat shield which could be passed through.

[averageksp]

I think it goes through the heatshield if you are using FreeIVA

[TheKspEngineer]

4 hours ago, averageksp said:

I think it goes through the heatshield if you are using FreeIVA

sorry for off topic, but how do you embed ilnks to be pictures?

 

[averageksp]

1 hour ago, TheKspEngineer said:

sorry for off topic, but how do you embed ilnks to be pictures?

 

[Vanamonde]

6 hours ago, TheKspEngineer said:

sorry for off topic, but how do you embed ilnks to be pictures?

 

If you use Imgur.com you can simply copy their BBCode link directly into your post with no additional formatting. 

[TheKspEngineer]

No I mean the ones in his signature where you can click on it and it goes to github

[TEMPEST_114]

5 hours ago, TheKspEngineer said:

No I mean the ones in his signature where you can click on it and it goes to github

Time for your own thread I believe. Hijacking threads isn't good form. 

[theJesuit]

On 4/6/2025 at 1:20 PM, TEMPEST_114 said:

I'm building my first Interplanetary ship - going to Eve and back and I'm trying to build is somewhat 'properly' i.e. with habitation, hydroponics etc and a gravity wheel for the long trip, but as the crew will eventually need to separate from the 'mothership' to return to Kerbal, that will require the command module, small fuel tank, engine, RCS and of course a heatshield. But with all that attached to the back of the command module, how 'realistically' are my little Kerbals supposed to move from the command module to the other compartments without being able to pull a Wanda and handwave the whole thing away?

Just wondering. 

I don't allow for the handwaving myself, and mo to travel through heat shields.  I also don't let my kerbals travel through the smallest of docking ports, only the 1.25m one and bigger.  The smallest is only for resource transfer.  I also play with Kerbalism which has a stress modifier which takes into account the amount of living space (volume) of the inhabitated parts.  without Kerbalism I add a hitchhiker for every two kerbals.

Note that with Apollo the LEM sat behind the command module which flipped in orbit and docked to the LEM the then the crew were able to transfer.

Edited Friday at 08:23 PM by theJesuit

[swjr-swis]

On 4/6/2025 at 3:20 AM, TEMPEST_114 said:

how 'realistically' are my little Kerbals supposed to move from the command module to the other compartments without being able to pull a Wanda and handwave the whole thing away?

Really doesn't require much of any handwaving or suspension of reality. An actual hatch will do the trick:

That's the back of the Gemini B (SC-2) capsule, as displayed in the USAF Museum, showing the hatch (smaller circle at the top) meant to be used to pass through the heatshield of the reentry capsule in and out of the MOL (Manned Orbital Laboratory).

It was only ever tested in suborbital trajectory, and without coupling to the MOL, so we'll never know how it may have performed from actual polar orbit reentry, but there you go: an actually flown reentry capsule with a hatch through the heatshield.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gemini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory

[Shameless plug: my KSP replica of the above, for the USAF Museum thread ]