Rune's Slightly Used Vehicles

[ryan234abc]

Okay, so I used what was left of the lf+ox to get a 45km periapsis, then used all but 31 units of lf to land me on the runway. Overshot a tad thanks to my poorly planned steep re-entry, but it was otherwise perfect, no problems. Hit the atmosphere at 3500 m/s and two aero brakes brought me safely to land.

I honestly didn't expect the orca to do it, but I got no heat warnings at all! You sure build these things to last!

Cheers

Ryan

Edited June 29, 2016 by ryan234abc

[Rune]

23 hours ago, ryan234abc said:

Okay, so I used what was left of the lf+ox to get a 45km periapsis, then used all but 31 units of lf to land me on the runway. Overshot a tad thanks to my poorly planned steep re-entry, but it was otherwise perfect, no problems. Hit the atmosphere at 3500 m/s and two aero brakes brought me safely to land.

I honestly didn't expect the orca to do it, but I got no heat warnings at all! You sure build these things to last!

Cheers

Ryan

Thanks! Yup, I try to heat-shield my SSTOs as much as I can. And the shielded docking port on the nose is VERY resilient. Sounds like you had a very cool mission there! Rendezvousing on a hyperbolic/solar trajectory is no small feat! Me, I'm mostly fighting bugs. But my KSP is this close to running, like, perfect, so I can play a little in the limited free time that I have this days and fully get back into the swing of things.

BTW, there is actually a new Claymore in my KerbalX page, built in 1.1.2 with a few minor changes (improved thermal protection among them, actually), and a full rebuild due to bugs. Here, just in case.

 

Rune. I mean, it has to. I'm running out of things to go wrong.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Rune

[SingABrightSong]

Say, you mentioned earlier that you had a tug to go with your base pack. Apparently based off of one of Cupcake's designs. I saw that you've secured permission to publish it, but as far as I know you haven't actually uploaded it anywhere. Is there any chance you could post it?

Still wondering if you managed to get the "Colonize a Rock" pack working.

 

[Rune]

1 hour ago, SingABrightSong said:

Say, you mentioned earlier that you had a tug to go with your base pack. Apparently based off of one of Cupcake's designs. I saw that you've secured permission to publish it, but as far as I know you haven't actually uploaded it anywhere. Is there any chance you could post it?

Still wondering if you managed to get the "Colonize a Rock" pack working.

 

Oh, it works, it works. And it looks really good put together!

As to the DL, let me look into it, and I'll upload it to kerbalX momentarily... here you go. After all, the booster is already released with the Base-In-A-Box (same economical winged ~50mT chemical SSTO with a versatile fairing on top), and the ship itself is really simple. I just have been a real mess lately updating and such...  The colonize a rock pack, then, would be a Tug with a couple extra Drive Pods tugging a Base-In-A-Box pack and an Orca. For convenience, the Transport is already preloaded with a couple of Drive Pods to give it about 1m/s² of acceleration tugging the whole thing, with full ore tanks on all available bays and the Orca filled to the brim with liquid fuel (and thus enough dV to get pretty much anywhere including Moho). So in this pic, you can see I am suffering from a truly horrible TWR...

 

Rune. One of these days, I'll tackle the OP. One of these days...

Edited July 8, 2016 by Rune

[Raptor9]

That transport looks like it has some design influence from @Cupcake... 

[Rune]

5 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

That transport looks like it has some design influence from @Cupcake... 

You can see the tale of its genesis in one of his threads, actually, which I got pretty derailed for a page or two.

 

Rune. But I pay him in SSTO tips for the inspiration!

[septemberWaves]

@Rune When designing SSTOs and thinking about payload capacity, how limited do you feel by the size of the cargo bays? I ask because I have recently seen a couple of SSTOs that carry a small payload on top that's too large for a cargo bay, but so far I have yet to see anything truly massive launched in that manner. I am wondering if you have ever considered making a heavy lifting SSTO which carries a wide payload on the top of it. I don't know exactly what sort of payloads that you would use it for (perhaps a 3.75m fuel tank, for example), but it would certainly allow an extension of what is currently doable with stock spaceplanes. I would work on making one myself, but I'm not too great at sticking to stock spaceplanes when there is the Mk4 spaceplane mod that allows me to transport things on that scale (although perhaps I could use the top of a Mk4 spaceplane for transporting 5m tanks...?).

[SingABrightSong]

@eloquentJane I can't speak for Rune, but I'll mention that the monstrous RLV for the nuclear transport and Base-In-A-Box is a near-SSTO and has the payload bolted on rather than in a cargo bay. Bolted on the front in a massive fairing, and not on top, but bolted on nonetheless.

@Rune If you'd like(or if you'd not, I'm doing it anyway), I can provide a list of the non-outmoded craft files that have yet to be submitted to KerbalX. Mostly subassemblies, but your Apollo replica still works, and being a replica cannot be outmoded except by a better replication. To wit:

• Phoebus
• Asteroid Refinery
• SimpleSat
• Cupola Tug
• HL-20(Likely requires updating or retirement)
• Crys
• Ore Tank

The Mark ninety-three SSTO has a Mk2 payload bay suitable for the SimpleSat, of course, but the Crys seems to me to be a canditate for an update, with it's hidden NERV engine being something not present on the White Dart.

[Rune]

33 minutes ago, SingABrightSong said:

@eloquentJane I can't speak for Rune, but I'll mention that the monstrous RLV for the nuclear transport and Base-In-A-Box is a near-SSTO and has the payload bolted on rather than in a cargo bay. Bolted on the front in a massive fairing, and not on top, but bolted on nonetheless.

@Rune If you'd like(or if you'd not, I'm doing it anyway), I can provide a list of the non-outmoded craft files that have yet to be submitted to KerbalX. Mostly subassemblies, but your Apollo replica still works, and being a replica cannot be outmoded except by a better replication. To wit:

• Phoebus
• Asteroid Refinery
• SimpleSat
• Cupola Tug
• HL-20(Likely requires updating or retirement)
• Crys
• Ore Tank

The Mark ninety-three SSTO has a Mk2 payload bay suitable for the SimpleSat, of course, but the Crys seems to me to be a canditate for an update, with it's hidden NERV engine being something not present on the White Dart.

That post is extremely helpful to all parties involved. Thanks for that! And yeah, to expand on the answer to @eloquentJane, I generally welcome the challenge of having to fit stuff in a limited space. It's the reason the Base-In-A-Box pack is one fo the creations I'm most proud of! But, we always want a bit more room, don't we? So I came up with the almost-SSTO that @SingABrightSong mentions (it is in fact SSTO with ~40mT payloads, if you take out the SRBs), to take whole payload bays into space (it's also the launcher for my nuclear transport. Here, some pics are better than a thousand words to show the point that reusable launchers don't mean airbreathers, necessarily.

As to the housekeeping stuff you brings up, it's useful, mostly because I'm rather confident all of those subassemblies are just the same as they were, and I just have to re-upload them taking your post as a reference. The Crys... it's sad, but it'll probably go. I just don't see a point to it, frankly, beautiful as it is, the replacement to the Foil I'm working on will do the same thing, but for six kerbals instead of one. Without that gorgeous cockpit we should still have, I frankly don't want to look at it, there's also that. But on the bright side, the HL-20 has nothing to update/retire, since it's so simple!

 

Rune. Speaking of the "Nuclear Transport", I think I'm naming them the Magdalena class. If someone gets the pun, I'll give him a replike.

Edited July 10, 2016 by Rune

[HafCoJoe]

Just now, Rune said:

 

 

Dude... that design is breathtakingly gorgeous. Mind if I steal some concepts?

[Rune]

3 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

Dude... that design is breathtakingly gorgeous. Mind if I steal some concepts?

Go on right ahead of course! ...and if you need to take a look under the hood (I doubt it), it's both in the Base-In-A-Box DL and the Magdalena's class.

 

Rune. Let's start making it official... can you rename ships in KerbalX? Let's find out!

Edited July 10, 2016 by Rune

[SingABrightSong]

Some things I missed that weren't included in the subassemblies pack, but should probably be uploaded as well:

• CRADLE
• Base Rocketcrane
• USI-LS and KIS/KAS modules
• Low Part Station

When you're finished with the Foil replacement, may I suggest the name 'Epee'? It's a sword that you haven't used yet, and it's reportedly similar to a foil.

 

[PointySideUp]

2 hours ago, Rune said:

Magdalena class

Sunken Spanish treasure ship off the Cape Canaveral coast?  

I just sent 2 of these express sized Nuke Tugs with Base in a Box mining kits out to Jool.

[Raptor9]

2 hours ago, Rune said:

can you rename ships in KerbalX? Let's find out!

The easiest way is to rename the craft file in KSP and then reupload/update the craft file on the existing craft page.  You can of course rename the title of the vessel's download page in the Edit page, but that won't change the name of the craft in the craft file itself, just what shows up on the KerbalX craft page.

[Rune]

13 hours ago, SingABrightSong said:

When you're finished with the Foil replacement, may I suggest the name 'Epee'? It's a sword that you haven't used yet, and it's reportedly similar to a foil.

It's a good idea for a name, but I would change it to espada. One of the few things that sounds much cooler in my mother tongue.

12 hours ago, PointySideUp said:

Sunken Spanish treasure ship off the Cape Canaveral coast?  

I just sent 2 of these express sized Nuke Tugs with Base in a Box mining kits out to Jool.

Nope to the guess, it's way more obvious. yet at the same time google will greatly mislead you. Still, anybody that posts screenies of cool stuff I helped inspire gets cookies.

And speaking of the mining modules, I am this close to reporting the lack of surface of the big refinery as a bug. It makes them "uncool-able" by fixed radiators! The most frustrating thing is that it may well be an actual bug... the thing is, because it doesn't have a solid surface (unlike the 1.25m refinery), you can't mount the radiators directly on it. Fine, I installed them in the part next to it, like the drills... and here comes the issue: while the drills cool perfectly, remaining at 100% efficiency (no wonder, with 600kW potential to cool a mere 100kW), the refinery just overheats and reduces efficiency like the radiators weren't there. I'm going to have to bolt some deployable radiators until the issue is fixed, if it ever is.

12 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

The easiest way is to rename the craft file in KSP and then reupload/update the craft file on the existing craft page.  You can of course rename the title of the vessel's download page in the Edit page, but that won't change the name of the craft in the craft file itself, just what shows up on the KerbalX craft page.

Nice tip. I assumed, since the url includes the name, that it would be, in fact, impossible. Also, I found this cool pic showing how the thrust issue is meant to be addressed.

 

Rune. That would cross the ~1m/s² boundary that makes it playable in my book... with patience and multiple burns, of course.

Edited July 11, 2016 by Rune

[SingABrightSong]

So I decided to see if I could expand the Colony pack...

 

 

The Von Braun ring almost looks like an Alcubierre drive, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the beams of the ring managed to block the thrust from the main Magdalena engines, requiring that additional Drive Pods be added instead. Perhaps the VB could be placed somewhere else along the stack, but the Base-In-A-Box's other docking port is offset to accommodate the Orca, leaving limited options. There is additionally a Lackluster docked to the Orca, perhaps due to be switched with the updated Heinlein depending on mission profile. The lack of payload capacity on the Heinlein is troublesome, but the Lackluster doesn't exactly have all that much room either. Though I wonder...

[SingABrightSong]

Got it!

The addition of the long Mk3 tank is rather unsightly, and I think I only managed this due to GPOSpeedFuelPump, but I was able to lift a Base Refinery to LKO, extrapolating from which means that the Base Pack now has a candidate for a Tylo delivery mechanism.

[Rune]

1 hour ago, SingABrightSong said:

So I decided to see if I could expand the Colony pack...

The Von Braun ring almost looks like an Alcubierre drive, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the beams of the ring managed to block the thrust from the main Magdalena engines, requiring that additional Drive Pods be added instead. Perhaps the VB could be placed somewhere else along the stack, but the Base-In-A-Box's other docking port is offset to accommodate the Orca, leaving limited options. There is additionally a Lackluster docked to the Orca, perhaps due to be switched with the updated Heinlein depending on mission profile. The lack of payload capacity on the Heinlein is troublesome, but the Lackluster doesn't exactly have all that much room either. Though I wonder...

That stack is seriously impressive. I think you can turn the Magdalena 90º and then its nukes wouldn't impact the ring (or they might,on account of their angle), but of course you will still need some more muscle so you should still put four Drive Pods on the ring in order to have a halfway decent TWR. And or course you can just make the train longer with Ore Tanks...

1 hour ago, SingABrightSong said:

Got it!

The addition of the long Mk3 tank is rather unsightly, and I think I only managed this due to GPOSpeedFuelPump, but I was able to lift a Base Refinery to LKO, extrapolating from which means that the Base Pack now has a candidate for a Tylo delivery mechanism.

Cool mod! It surely has potential. But the pain of maintaining a full fuel depot on low Tylo orbit... surely a mission that I will leave to others to attempt.

 

Rune. Think every gram of fuel has to be brought there, and you need to refuel after each leg!

[SingABrightSong]

1 minute ago, Rune said:

That stack is seriously impressive. I think you can turn the Magdalena 90º and then its nukes wouldn't impact the ring (or they might,on account of their angle), but of course you will still need some more muscle so you should still put four Drive Pods on the ring in order to have a halfway decent TWR. And or course you can just make the train longer with Ore Tanks...

Cool mod! It surely has potential. But the pain of maintaining a full fuel depot on low Tylo orbit... surely a mission that I will leave to others to attempt.

 

Rune. Think every gram of fuel has to be brought there, and you need to refuel after each leg!

Funny you should mention that, as I just finished doing exactly that! The Magdalena's docking port has a probe core under it, leaving the extra space necessary to dock in such a manner. Ore tanks are a good idea, though; the VB will need them anyway, and putting them inline saves cargo space for less adaptable payloads.

 

[SingABrightSong]

So I saw that you mentioned you had an updated Lackluster in the works, and while I'm glad you like the prior modification, I have one I'm a little more proud of...

I added a docking port under the light! In addition to allowing greater stacking capability, it also serves as a helpful guide for getting the light pointing straight downwards: If the lens is clipping, it's not straight.

 

It's the little things, isn't it?

 

 

[Rune]

2 hours ago, SingABrightSong said:

It's the little things, isn't it?

That's one of my favorite expressions. And yes, just because I spent ages polishing my stuff, doesn't mean you guys can't improve on them... that docking port must be useful.

 

Rune. BTW, you might want to install ambient light adjustment. Can't see a thing in those screenies!

[Planetfall]

On July 9, 2016 at 5:16 AM, Rune said:

      ~snip~

Rune. But I pay him in SSTO tips for the inspiration!

One of the most valuable currencies on the forum! 

[Planetfall]

On July 10, 2016 at 3:45 PM, Rune said:

~snip~

 

Rune. Speaking of the "Nuclear Transport", I think I'm naming them the Magdalena class. If someone gets the pun, I'll give him a replike.

Well the HMS Magdalena sank on her maiden voyage.

But there are around six other ships of that name. (According to Wikipedia)

maybe the name its self means something... :/

[SingABrightSong]

33 minutes ago, Planetfall said:

Well the HMS Magdalena sank on her maiden voyage.

But there are around six other ships of that name. (According to Wikipedia)

maybe the name its self means something... :/

Well, there is Mary Magdalene, but I fail to see a pun in that case. I thought of the Pieta, but it was the Virgin Mary depicted there, not the Magdalene. .  

[Rune]

16 hours ago, Planetfall said:

Well the HMS Magdalena sank on her maiden voyage.

But there are around six other ships of that name. (According to Wikipedia)

maybe the name its self means something... :/

 

15 hours ago, SingABrightSong said:

Well, there is Mary Magdalene, but I fail to see a pun in that case. I thought of the Pieta, but it was the Virgin Mary depicted there, not the Magdalene. .  

Hehehe, it's funny to see you guys try. But the way you are going, you'll never guess it! See, it's my fault, it's a bit convoluted unless you are a spanish speaker like myself, preferably form Spain itself.

The thing is, in Spain we don't have @Cupcake...s, traditionally... the closest thing is more like a muffin, but you know, close enough. And of course, we call it "magdalena", or "madalena", depending on your region/level of poshiness. Now you get the homage to the guy that inspired the whole thing, right? I thought it was a nice touch myself.

Oh, and also...

On 11/7/2016 at 0:18 PM, Rune said:

And speaking of the mining modules, I am this close to reporting the lack of surface of the big refinery as a bug. It makes them "uncool-able" by fixed radiators! The most frustrating thing is that it may well be an actual bug... the thing is, because it doesn't have a solid surface (unlike the 1.25m refinery), you can't mount the radiators directly on it. Fine, I installed them in the part next to it, like the drills... and here comes the issue: while the drills cool perfectly, remaining at 100% efficiency (no wonder, with 600kW potential to cool a mere 100kW), the refinery just overheats and reduces efficiency like the radiators weren't there. I'm going to have to bolt some deployable radiators until the issue is fixed, if it ever is.

...that is plain wrong. There was a reaction wheel screwing up the heat transfer. It's confirmed, fixed radiators cool parts they are mounted on, and the parts mounted on that one. No more, no less. Yay I can keep the same shape and part count! (The file on KerbalX got updated yesterday when I found out).

 

Rune. Credit where credit is due, and all that.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Rune