[0.23.5] Spherical and Toroidal Tank Pack (Updated 05/02/14) (New download link)

[RoboRay]

...the Hab module that I'm working on...

Sir, you now have my undivided attention!

[Talisar]

Sir, you now have my undivided attention!

It's still a WIP, but that's it in the center of my station, using LLC airlock and windows

[Markarian421]

I love these tanks. A feature request: a 45 degree radial connector would be handy for adding the extra mainsails needed to get one of these off the pad!

[foxgguy2001]

It's still a WIP, but that's it in the center of my station, using LLC airlock and windows

I think you need more fuel and monoprop up there! Looking good!

How'd ya get em into space, mind posting your rig?

[taniwha]

Two mainsails are sufficient, so a resized stock bi-coupler, or for extra oomph, tri-coupler, will do the job nicely.

[Relic13]

Here's my station featuring spherical tanks

Currently in LKO awaiting (many) refueling trips before depaturture

But wait, those don't look like spherical fuel or mono tanks, they have blue trim. Any space exploration vessel with this crew capacity sure needs a lot of oxygen.

So I made new parts from the mono tanks by edited the textures and cfg's to work and (aesthetically fit in) with IonCross Crew Support. (Also updated the description for them indicating the # of day supply per tank)

LMK if you want them.

[Talisar]

Wow, how many launches did that take to put together?

[Greys]

Hey, I just completed a set of precise measurements and calculations using Jeb's Big Stick to determine tank sizes down to the centimeter, put it all into excel, and got a bunch of numbers out and...

Stock parts are faffed.

(when I set up a stack of all the tanks to measure their diameters I positioned the scale on the 64 in such a way that it conflicted with those little surface accent tubes, and wasn't able to measure it, so I skipped it)

These are just LF+O tanks, and assuming LF and O to be equal (because all of the numbers we have are equal)

Once I started filling in their resource Contents I realized that each tank just has an arbitrary amount of fuel, there is absolutely no consistency between them. Even if you ignore the Oscar B as an outlier, they still vary by 33~ units per cubic meter, which is 16~% to 19~%

The value being used thus far was 173.9 I believe, though I haven't followed all of the math going on; if so that is certainly inline with the stock range.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Greys

[Mihara]

Once I started filling in their resource Contents I realized that each tank just has an arbitrary amount of fuel, there is absolutely no consistency between them. Even if you ignore the Oscar B as an outlier, they still vary by 33~ units per cubic meter, which is 16~% to 19~%

Hee. Are they at least consistent in terms of dry mass per unit of fuel, though?

[Greys]

Haven't gotten that far yet, and I have to go pay rent then sleep; all the numbers except dry mass are there though, so have fun without me.

[Talisar]

The value being used thus far was 173.9 I believe, though I haven't followed all of the math going on; if so that is certainly inline with the stock range.

Yeah, that is the number we've been using, so the current fuel values should be good. The dry weights were balanced using the small tank as the basis (I believe, taniwha would be able to say for sure), so they should accurate and consistent across the set of spherical tanks

[Markarian421]

Two mainsails are sufficient, so a resized stock bi-coupler, or for extra oomph, tri-coupler, will do the job nicely.

If the large tank is your main stage, yes. If your goal is to lift something else large with the tank, for instance, another large tank, you need more. (And many many SRBs.)

[Relic13]

Wow, how many launches did that take to put together?

I ended up launching the station in 1 part. Initially I was going to assemble it in orbit, but I couldn't get the ring right if I were to dock them all together. Also the big tanks don't play well with engines that are docked (so heavy). So in an effort to (ultimately) reduce the stations part count I decided that if I launched it in one mammoth vehicle I'd save on parts for non needed docking ports. I guesstimate saving something like 35 parts.

My launch vehicle though was nearly 1700 tons. It took many, many failed attempts at 3fps to finally get it dialed in to reliably place the station in LKO as a whole.

Edit... Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'll send up another and dock them together

Edited June 5, 2013 by Relic13

[Scottiths]

I like the size of the large tanks. This station has over 100,000 fuel! I made it over 10 launches.

The green lights are where ships can dock. The red lights are so I avoid hitting the station.

[Talisar]

Added the set of tanks that Relic13 converted to hold oxygen for Ioncross Crew Support to both Spaceport and the main post. Thanks, Relic13!

That is a cool looking station, Scottiths. Must have been a pain to get docked

[Gryphorim]

I know I'm splitting hairs here, but can we get some different colours for different contents? As in could we get a texture release for the original, white tanks with different banding, like the kethane tanks pack has green, but for fuel on it's own, oxidiser on its own, monoprop, and xenon?

[Garm]

Hello. Can I recommend cylindrical inserts for half-tanks so one can put them between two halves with halves acting as caps on both ends. Thanks.

[Greys]

Finished all of the measurements for everything, here's my less than useful results but if you're going to maybe include more resources, don't hurt

[Catullus]

Hello. Can I recommend cylindrical inserts for half-tanks so one can put them between two halves with halves acting as caps on both ends. Thanks.

You can use KW Rocketry tanks for that, they look really good with half-spherical caps.

[taniwha]

(for reference, my post detailing my dry mass calculations.)

Yes, I used the small tank as a basis as 0.5t seemed to be a good mass for that size (however, I do not remember how I determined that[/]).

As for how I've been using the tanks:

Shortly before noticing I had the wrong docking ports on the kethane tank's equator. However, the EVA kerbal saved the day and swapped in the correct ones (yay vim).

Kethane tank safely docked to the station. Total kethane capacity 160ku (4x large cylindrical tanks amongst the solar panels)

Transferring from the upper stage of my heavy lift to my kethane miner. It has a serious design flaw (I forgot fuel lines from the peripheral tanks to the core for the converter). Discovered on-site on Minmus but fortunately it has enough delta-v to get back to Kerbin.

[Blaylock1988]

Given that we can see into the end of the center tank and see that it's a cylindrical shell containing spherical tanks, I assume the two outriggers are also spheres of roughly the same size as the normal sphere tank. By the looks of it there would be 3 tanks in the center section and 4 in each outrigger, plus the end caps that's 13. Given that doubling the dimensions of any closed 3D shape gives you eight times the volume, you would have on that tanker roughly 1.625 large tanks worth of fuel; Assuming that KW balanced their sections with the sphere tanks in mind, and by the same numbers as have been used here. It's a safer bet to assume they picked a number that sounded good and went with it.

This assumption is actually incorrect. Large tanks like these are long cylinders with rounded ends. Example, the two segments you see in Delta IV rockets, the orange is actual tank shell (and I have also looked inside the Delta IV tank in person).

Falcon 9 LH2 Tank:

Another example is the Shuttle external tank:

For cryogenic rocket fuel (LOX and LH2, which is also what we see in KSP) the Hydrogen is in the larger tank.

[Greys]

Ah yes, I failed to consider that common structure; I was overcome by the spherality of this thread.

Do you have any numbers on how long that is? it's 2.5m wide right?

[Talisar]

Going by the node placement in the cfg file, the longest 2.5m KW tank is 10m long. The longest 3.75m diameter tank is 15m long.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Talisar

[leopardenthusiast]

Any chance of tanks that have the ends fitted for 3.75m parts (and, of course, the sphere being larger to match the others), and/or larger monoprop tanks? I'm considering a rather large fuel depot, and ridiculously huge tanks of EVERYTHING would make the job much easier.

But, if you don't feel like it, that's fine too.

[LaVex]

Really loving all the maths you guys are doing to get the sizes right. It would be really cool if we could at least get a community standard for resources in tanks, even if the stock parts follow no standard laws of reality in reference to how much of a resource you can hold per tonne. Who knows, maybe even though their rocket program is from the 60's maybe they have some dimension folding tech in all their fuel tanks, but Jeb thinks its funny to set the values to random numbers.

Also, the new Kethane is out and they changed the density of Kethane. You might want to rebalance the Kethane tanks.