Project BABYLON

[Temstar]

Gentlemen I just thought of something for those of you designing weapons: for non-homing projectiles like your decoupler cannon, instead of having the separation fire straight along the axis of travel it may be better to tilt them by say 5 degrees so that when fired they impart a spinning motion to the projectile. Just as with a rifle bullet the spin will stabilise the projectile while it accelerates.

[Tada]

I use septratron torpedoes with spin stabilisaton both on Wasp and Hornet class fighters. I will post pic of them in action. But reloadable version is very part heavy - like 11 parts or so. Main advantage is that you can fire them on quick flyby atracs without need to switch control.

Well known pics of my excersise in precision:

Edited May 8, 2013 by Tada

[Tada]

LawsOfFire: I like "Viking" good name

ROFLCopter64bit: Well, Alpha and Beta will come with introduction of resources

[Windchild]

I'll suggest some Names:

Capital Ships:

Aquila

Midway

Enterprise

Light Ships:

Yorktown

Warship:

Spear of Kerbin

[Tada]

I´ll use Aquila for one of the cruisers

So the names for time being are:

Damkina class motherships:

DCMS "Ark Royal"

DCMS "Viking"

DCMS "Marco Polo"

DCMS "Vasco Da Gama"

Marduk class light escort cruisers (X-305 series):

MCLEC "Essex"

MCLEC "Anicetus"

MCLEC "Aquila"

MCLEC "Erebus"

Edited May 9, 2013 by Tada

[MRab2]

Have been watching this thread with considerable interest, but have a request; more pics please

Looking forward to the video.

[Tada]

Light interceptor on its way to orbit

DCMS "Ark Roayl" in orbit of Kerbin waiting to be refueled and equiped for Journey to Laythe, notice 2 probes on sides and radial mounted defensive missiles

[MRab2]

Nice. Keep em coming

[Tada]

Testing new supply delivery system... Guess whats in the box?

I´ve been also thinking - manned mission to Tylo is not a priority, but it would be nice to land some rovers there, mind the hight survace gravity and and lack of atmosphere to aerobrake in - small rover + small but powerful skycrane is way to succes. Alsou would be nice, if it would be kept in box for delivery

Edited May 8, 2013 by Tada

[ROFLCopter64bit]

For the motherships, maybe Zeus? Apollo? Icarus?

[Temstar]

I have some good news on the basic design of DCMS. It was based on an interplanetary ship I designed for my manned Eve landing project, Tada got an exclusive early release of it for BABYLON.

The long awaited Eve transfer window has finally arrived on my save and here are some screenshots of the successful Eve transfer burn:

Tanker undocking from the Eve stack

Throttling up to max with phase angle and ejection angle aligned.

Full thrust half way through the burn. Now obviously as you can see from just the shape of the payload docked to the interplanetary mothership the CoM is not centred. The arm with the long nuclear tug is heavier and further away than the arm with the rover and the ship has a tendency to drift right under thrust. Yet there's enough control authority to easily manually correct that drift during the burn. The DCMS has even more torque than my mothership as it uses a three man pod rather than a lander can so there should be no problem bringing asymmetrical load to Jool.

Transfer burn complete, total fuel usage is about 1841L of liquid fuel and 2251L of Oxidiser.

So I think we can say the general design of the mothership is validated.

[Brotoro]

The long awaited Eve transfer window has finally arrived on my save and here are some screenshots of the successful Eve transfer burn...

Nice looking Eve expedition ship. I look forward to hearing about your results there.

[Tada]

Glad to see you leaving to Eve. I ´ve never really tried asymetric payloads but I maybe will.

I ´m also glad that my math is not totaly wrong - you've burned 1800 to get 1000 dV and my fully loaded DCMS Proto B burned 3600 to get 2000...

Well, now I ´m having hard time picking the equipment carried by DCMS "Ark Royal"... It will either be 2 low gravity landers I just developed or 2 SSTO shuttles for Laythe surface operations. Or maybe the Stargazer array. Second ship using this launch window will propablu be MCLEC "Essex" providing security.

In case of carrying low gravity landers I would propably leave the mothership in Joolian system to go exploring. In case of SSTOs I will leave the payload on "Saphire", refuel and bring the mothership home...Since all DCMS are capaple to of defense there won ´t be usualy need to escort them when they carry no valuable cargo...

[ROFLCopter64bit]

I ´m also glad that my math is not totaly wrong - you've burned 1800 to get 1000 dV and my fully loaded DCMS Proto B burned 3600 to get 2000...

You can calculate that using one of my Math Thingosâ„¢!

Delta-V / Fuel burned

should give you a rough estimation of efficiency.

[ssTALONps]

Here's an album of ASX-II Single Launch Surface Refuel System testing for ARX-3.

http://imgur.com/a/l7JVX#0

This new refuel truck has more capacity, RCS fuel, and most importantly, single launch to Laythe capability.

It now has detachable fairing and integrated interplanetary stage/heat-shield for injection burn and reentry.

It will reach LKO with 2.8km/s of dV, which is sufficient for Laythe transfer burn.

Be aware, if you try to land with mass over 15t, most rover wheels will burst.

I'll release it after more testing

[Tada]

Oh man, thats the right stuff! I really like it, now even more when I decided to use those "boxes" myself for some crafts

Well, 2800 dV, well it would be hard to land spot on - at least on same land mass - u can alwas fly jet there,repair wheels and drive this on the desired airstrip. So I would maybe dock this to mothership and drag into Lathe orbit - in that case just small engine to deorbit the thing would be needed. But we can discuss that in the future since surface operations are way ahead of us.

But I definetly wanna use it, I ´m sure we can overcome possible difficulties, to male it work!

Great job! Really...

Edit: Now giving it a closer look using computer instead of phone I can see it has rockets for deorbiting and RCS for dockin, awesome! It is gonna work!

Edited May 9, 2013 by Tada

[Tada]

So all capital ships are named:

Damkina class motherships:

DCMS "Ark Royal"

DCMS "Viking"

DCMS "Marco Polo"

DCMS "Vasco Da Gama"

Marduk class light escort cruisers (X-305 series):

MCLEC "Essex"

MCLEC "Anicetus"

MCLEC "Aquila"

MCLEC "Erebus"

[LawsOfFire]

im finally done with the deep space tanker "Dairy Cow"

i had trouble with the launcher. so i made a less efficient one (you can upgrade to a better one. but there is too much d/v to care about that) it have 3 orange tanks. 2 for getting there. and 1 to unload. with the 2 tanks alone. it have about 5000 d/v when in orbit. with the last tank. about 9000 it also has the double amount of RCS required.

[download link https://www.dropbox.com/s/lki5l9vih30yhcy/Dairy%20Cow%20-Space%20tanker-.craft

BTW. Congrats to me for getting to Jool for the first time

Edited May 9, 2013 by LawsOfFire

[brobel]

Hey guys here is my progress on frigate

launcher is soming along but if you want to take a shot at it im not goin to stop you

craft file:http://www./?qi15d2fyn02152x

the making the fuel easier to get to was easy just had to move armor

here is the best launch stage i have made (wish i was realy good at making launch stages only got it up to 75,000 going about half way around the world)

Tell me what you think and please help with launch stage you guys are better at it then me

[Tada]

LawsOfFire: Nice, will include in next save - one can never have enought fuel above Laythe - mothership can take more than 2 big orange tanks to refuel, Marduk class cruiser is little bit less fuel hungry, but still...

brobel: you will crack it soon enoug I hope - what about adding some more liquid boosters on that first stage? I´have some sweet names for those ships as they get operational.

For me today was in name of testing various SSTOs:

From left to right: Sparrow from Zombihphylax single and double seater and ARX-3 from ssTALONps.

Sparrow is generaly much easier to fly both in space and atmo due to its very low weight and poweful turbojet. It can deorbit from 75km Laythe orbit, land on desired spot and take of again to 75km Laythe orbit and rendezvous with station - I´ve tested that a lot. It is stable, easy to flight, it can fly without kerbals onboard - then you must watch for level of electricity and after landing and or in orbit deploy solar panels. Flight characteristics of single and double seater are very similar - double seate has more wing surface to compensate for added weight - but it takes just a bit more fuel to get into orbit. As a main advantage I see low weight which allows this craft to be delivered to Laythe with no problem and great flight characteristics pleasant to most of the pilots. Disadvantage I see in limited fuel capacity and very small room for error during surface operations.

ARX-3 is also quite pleasant to fly, but it is completely different experience. If you compare the size to Sparrow you can see where I´m going. It is heavy. I mean it has more than 3 times amount of fuel than Sparrow, but due to use of normal jets it is not as efficient as Sparrow and arives into orbit with very similar amount of fuel (about 75-100 units of liquid fuel). But when fully fueled in orbit it has very good dV. Double seater flyes just a bit heavier than single seater. Main difference between Sparrow and ARX-3 is in autopilot. ARX-3 uses ASAS which for me personaly is not very convenient. It means that on landing you have to get really long and flat aproach and there is less room for error. Main advantage I see in current and soon new system of ground refueling, meaning than risk of getting stranded on surface is minimal.

Conclusion:

Having many hours in cockpit of Sparrow, it is being my SSTO of choice, but I think PROJECT Babylon will definetly benefit from using both desgin for extensive testing and maybe some other pilots will prefer ARX-3 for their orbit-surface-orbit runs. It would be very good if we manage to alter the sparrow for ability to use the same up-coming ground refueling system as ARX-3. So both types will be delivered to Laythe for extensive field trials, 2 pieces of each craft.

DCMS Ark Royal was spotted in orbit of Eeloo demonstrating its capability to full extent:

I hope I´ll deliver updated save file late friday night or early on saturday.

[Octobomb]

Nice work! Sorry bout the lack of stuff from me, been kinda busy trying to cut down on parts for this baby:

[Tada]

I like the concept and I have idea for you on this craft - what about making it a probe carrier?

Unmanned ship roaming the system dropping probes into orbits and on planets? For future exploration? Lets say 4 orbiters and 4 landers with parachutes?

[Octobomb]

Upgraded the design. If I send you the .craft can you launch it to orbit for me?

[Tada]

Yeah propably I ´m decent in launching stuff :-)

[Tada]

Ok, more prototype testing today, official save file relase coming tommorow I hope...

Still haven´t solved atmo-fighter, so I´ve decided to arm one of the SSTOs I currently test for project. I´ve also changed standart jets to turbojets to give it more power to compensate for added weight of armament