Larger diameter fuselages (Stock) Ideas

[steffen_anywhere]

Hi,

I've always wanted to build a 1:1 replica (sort of) of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. Now that I actually want to build a space station, I need a heavy lifter, so this is the way I wanna go.

The Falcon Heavy has three first stage cores (1 main fuselage + 2 side mounted boosters, which are equivalent to the core's first stage), which have a diameter of 3.6 metres.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to create such a fuselage using stock parts only. I' ve seen people do this in amazing ways with stock parts (e.g. Mulbin's Jool V Launcher), but im quite out of ideas on how to do it myself

Any help is highly appreciated

Steffen

[steffen_anywhere]

Anyone???

I think we can assume that Mk1 has a diameter of 1 metre. What would the Rockomax size be then? 2.5 maybe???

Any suggestions would be great, I will have a go at this right now and post screenshots...

[comham]

There are plenty of mods that add larger fuselages, KW rocketry is particularly good. Unfortunately, the game is not well designed for large diameter parts at the moment, as you can see when you try to fly a simple mainsail and a rockomax 64 without struts.

I would be disappointed if this wasn't fixed by the time the game went gold.

[Francesco]

yes, mk1 = 1.25m, rockomax = 2.5m

[steffen_anywhere]

I'll definitely have a look at KW Rocketry, but SpacePort is down again...

Yes, the game does have problems with anything BIG, but some peoples' designs that are huge fly pretty well, so it is possible.

Generally, the trick to stable flight appears to be "the inability to control the craft so that it becomes unhandleable". This is apparently accomplished by giving ASAS no chance to create "wobble" by simply not having enough controls for it to do so...

Have any of you seen Mulbin's Jool V? Proof for stable HUGE launchers

I'll try to find a link to the thread...

[Uberick]

If you're trying to build a SpaceX rocket, there's actually a KerbX mod that allows you to do just that. . . it's not as refined as KW Rocketry(my favorite mod aside from MechJeb), but it works pretty well.

[capi3101]

What kind of payload mass are we talking about here?

From the design, I think you could start off with whatever kind of command module you want. Put a Rockomax Adapter and a Hitchhiker below that, then a Rockomax Adapter 02 and a stack decoupler. Put a small RCS tank and the core engine main stage fuel tanks below that and an LV-45 below that. Stick a couple of radial decouplers on, attach the same number of fuel tanks to those and put LV-30s on the bottom of that. Run fuel lines from the outer rockets to the core. You'll have a rocket that looks about the same as the Heavy (and produces roughly the same amount of thrust - 630 kN as opposed to the Heavy's 620 at launch). Only tricky bit is going to be figuring out the number of fuel tanks needed.

If you want to make the payload a space station core, use a set of BZ-52s along the sides of the Hitchhiker, and attach Clamp-o-Trons to them. Add solar panels and presto - instant space station.

Tricky bit is going to be making it a 1:1 replica; this will give you something that at least approximates the overall look.