The Icarus Project

[Sapphire]

And there's the impact. The probe core overheated and exploded about 1.5km up, and the rest fell into the sun. Final velocity was 93870.9m/s. It's also interesting how the sun doesn't actually produce heat. At a distance of 27.067Mm (fairly close), the thermometer on the shield was only reading 14.81 degrees.

Once you're closer to the sun the solar panels become incredibly powerful. Similarly, I imagine it shouldn't be difficult to extract power from the heat shield (though which method for doing so is a good question to ask).

I think the best way to do it would be to take a look at the .part files for that tiny non-rotating solar panel, and try and copy it somehow. I'm going to take a look myself right now, but I doubt it's as simple as copying code from it. The size parameters and whatnot would have to be set up first.

Then there is the problem of alignment. Indeed, I've already been working on such a project, but it has just become relevant: Here.

I was planning on doing something similar myself, but it was more "stick a rotatron behind all the docking ports because I can't mod."

Edit: So wait, that's a "probe" with a 16m shield? *cackle* Ah, just wait till I release the 100m and 200m shields. I've decided they're too big to be built anywhere except on the Mun, and launched from there. Besides, we can use the lunar soil for the main substance of the shield. Just have to send up water, or extract it from the Mun somehow.

Definitely looking forward to those largest shields. I mean, the actual Icarus II's shield was massive, really hoping you can capture that feel! Like, just look at the tiny crew modules at the bottom of the shield; you can see a few tiny lights that mark them.

And I don't think it's too far fetched to find water on the Mun. I mean, didn't that LCROSS probe from a few years ago find a little bit of water in the moon's surface?

Maybe i should learn how to mod and stuff... I'd really like to help out on this project.

But back to the Icarus III... The engineering/propulsion module is now docked to the command/payload control module. That leaves the intrepid crew of 8 who will fly this thing to the sun, and the habitation/science module. And luckily, the center of mass is right in front of the engines according to where the camera rotates around, so docking the final module should move that center directly under the engines. So, all is well.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Sapphire

[Tommygun]

I was thinking about a possible ship building layout method. If you build the command pod, fuel, mono propellent, engines and anything else that is consumed as the central part of the ship as the starting point.

You then add the shield to the side of the ship. Next on a long boom you add all the other items the ship needs at the opposite side relative to the shield.

Sense the shield weights a lot more than the other items you need the long boom to get the right leverage.

If you build it completely in the VAB you can get the balance right with the tools in there.

You can still design it in small modular components if you want to launch it in pieces into orbit.

It might be a good idea to use a lot of those quantum struts, because thrusting will stress the long boom.

Basically this layout allows you more room to maneuver without exposing the ship. The bigger the shield relative to the ship's width, the more of an angle you can turn to do engine burns.

Sapphire, I was disappointed about the lack of real heat readings too.

Have fun with Icarus III. I need to sit down soon and put a gold texture on the big shield.

Edit: It's done. I'm thinking of rescaling the middle shield by 10% to cover the gap in the middle area.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Tommygun

[Bluegobln]

Whats strange is according to my plans while making the 16m shield, I measured it to be 16m, but it is apparently 15m. How do I know this? Because the inside of the 45m shield is absolutely 15m... it simply HAS to be or the folding won't work.

So my 16m shield is actually 15m...

That's why there is a gap. I assumed the 1m would cover it just fine... incorrectly so.

Prototypes lol...

-----

Ok so "concrete" design plans for the 200m heat shield:

*ba dum tss*

- It's going to be 200m diameter, because I want it BIG, but I don't want it 2km big.

- It will INITIALLY require no resource to unfold, but in the future I would like to have it require mining material from the Mun or an asteroid.

- It will only be one way, once the animation plays you can't fold it back up. This is because it's made of an as yet unspecific "concrete" or heat brick made from Munar soil, water, etc.

- I will need it to act as a fuel tank, and fill with resource, so that it is low mass when launched and high mass after being built on the Mun or asteroid. That should make for some fun Mun launches! (Who goes to the Mun and then launches a triple digit ton payload!?! Has it been done?)

- You still have to ship up part of the mixture, just much less of it. Probably like 1/4 to 1/3 of the total volume, so a lot still. O.o

Concrete, as I've been reading, has actually been largely overlooked for use in space. It's uniquely suited for it though!

As far as it's strength under the heat of the sun, I'm going with it's just a structural material and the heat transfer systems and reflective material of the bags will take care of the majority of the heat itself.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Bluegobln

[OrbitusII]

It's also interesting how the sun doesn't actually produce heat. At a distance of 27.067Mm (fairly close), the thermometer on the shield was only reading 14.81 degrees.

No worries, once I get an adequate solar heating equation (I just need to test it! ) and finish up testing then my plugin should enable better solar heating. It will also come with all-vessel thermostabilizer systems (which I may limit to each stage eventually) so you can keep the temperature between -15C and 15, 20C, assuming you're not too close to Kerbol.

I really like how this project is turning out, it looks amazing! Keep up the good great AMAZINGLY INCREDIBLY MIND-BLOWINGLY AWESOME work!

Edit: ok, maybe not so Amazingly Incredibly Mind-blowingly Awesome, but it's still great.

Edited May 31, 2013 by OrbitusII

[Tommygun]

A rescale of 1.1 seems to have fixed the gap issue.

It looks like a good fit to me.

[Immashift]

Okay these are really, really cool.

The one model I wish there was, is one about the size as the shielded docking port when closed, that opens up much wider. Most of them are just rather large when not deployed, at least to me

Amazing work though. Was exactly what I was looking for, just for the visual effect alone.

[Bluegobln]

The one model I wish there was, is one about the size as the shielded docking port when closed

I'm working on a small parts pack that should be both 2.5m and 1.25m scaled that will have small shields like that for re-entry and solar shielding. However... there are other packs out there! Since that is part of the purpose of this thread, I'll show you one of the cooler ones I've run into for heat shields: Heatshield Collection

You can also use the heat shields (3 sizes) in the THSS pack linked in my signature.

I understand they're not precisely what you're looking for, but as I said, workin on it!

[steamypete]

Great work! I just discovered your mod and decided to equip my colonization vessel with a solarheat shield.

The result is simply awesome.

Now i gotto change its Jool mission, damned. To the sun!!!

Some pics below:

[Bluegobln]

So I spent a little over an hour just now modeling, animating, texturing, export, import, unity settings, cfg file, and straight into KSP for a single part. The whole process basically for a model with animation. I'm a bit slow as I am on occasion explaining things, and I goof a bit with how I am doing things (I didn't really plan the part out I just had an idea of it in my head). But hopefully this helps some people who'd like to make their own parts and are a bit lost. I apologize for the gap on the left and bottom of the screen, I forgot the desktop camera was set smaller than full size. If you get lost in a step because of that feel free to send me a PM.

I do not have experience with Blender for this process, sorry!

Also I got lucky and the part worked on the first try. Lol!

Here is the video: Quality is much lower than it was in the actual video file.... *grumble*

Here is the part:

GE-150 Heat Sink

You can see where if I wanted to spend a little more time on the part I could have done some more neato things, added more detail, but I was doing two things here of course: the guide, and the part. I may update the part in the future.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Bluegobln

[Sapphire]

Uh oh... do I have to roll the Icarus III back to the VAB to set these up? D:

Well... I guess it'll make pretty re-entry effects.

[Bluegobln]

You don't have to anything. They're non-functional until they're set up to use Puffin Tech's temperature plugin anyway. They do look kinda cool, I think, but eh.

I'm hoping the video will help some people a little. Obviously if you don't have access to 3ds or Photoshop it might be more of a problem, but a lot of what I do is comparable in Blender and Gimp. If I had any experience with those I'd probably just do the guide over again and fix the problems. Sorry!

[Sapphire]

Oh wow, those are cool looking! I guess it's fine, because there's no room on the modules I've already got up there, so I can just slap them on the unfinished habitation module instead, and a Moho probe.

[Mekan1k]

Oh- I was looking over you first post, BlueGoblin, and if You want an engine with some serious power and kick (I mean up-the wazoo levels of kick) Then I must recommend the Nuclear light-bulb engine design.

To see the principle, go Here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php

And using the ctrl-f search, search 'gas core'- the closed-system varient is the one. The estimated isp at sea level is 3000, while in vacuum it is 4000.

Go here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/surfaceorbit.php#libertyship

To see the preferred application of using this engine as a safe nuclear (yes, those two words are rarely together) ssto launch vehicle, capible of lifting the ISS into orbit in one go, and then executing a powered landing.

[Sapphire]

This was so nerve-wracking and laggy... But it's done.

Weighing in at roughly 150 tons and made of roughly 650 parts, the Icarus III can carry up to 20 Kerbals.

Its fuel levels include:

Electric charge - 46710

Monopropellant - 6976

Liquid fuel - 1350

Oxidizer - 1430

Xenon gas - 52000

Also carries 5 additional docking ports, a winch with full sets of dismountable connectors and various hooks, a vast complex of sensors including two MapSat dishes and a full Lazor system, and a full heatshield/heatsink array for the journey to the surface of Kerbol. No giant stellar bomb, though. oh well.

[Tommygun]

No giant stellar bomb, though. oh well.

You just need to grab a whole bunch of these fuel tanks:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom

[praskieva]

These shields are amazing. I have been wanting to build a solar observation station for a while now, and this pack is going to make me accelerate those plans. Especially I you come out with a nifty habitat/viewing module. Keep up the fantastic work!

[Tommygun]

On my way back from the sun I didn't have enough delta V to circularize around Kerbin, so I decided to aerobrake to slow down.

I did a quick save and tried several periapsis altitudes. I thought I would pass this information along.

Note: I lost all my engines and rear fuel tanks on every attempt.

I generally hit the atmosphere going about 7900 m/s.

Pe=10km Failed; lost too much speed and crashed into surface.

Pe=20km Failed; lost too much speed and crashed into surface.

Pe=25km Partial success; achieved a 19km x 916km orbit, but without any engines left.

Pe=30km Failed; left atmosphere still going over 4200 m/s and escaped the Kerbin system.

Pe=60km Failed; left atmosphere still going over 7600 m/s and escaped the Kerbin system.

With my partial success at achieving a 19km x 916km orbit, I was able to increase my periapsis to 77km by using my RCS thrusters and avoid reentering the atmosphere a second time.

I loss the central shield 4 out of 5 attempts do to debris hitting them, but the large shield survived all the aerobraking very well except the first two attempts.

I was surprised at how much damage was done to it, as I don't have deadly reentry installed.

Even the space station modules were ripped off most of the time and oddly the 30kn reentry did much more damage than the 25kn reentry.

Fuel tanks going.

How ship looked before reentry.

[Bluegobln]

Hehehe, that shield isn't meant for re-entry of course. But cool.

[Sapphire]

Misison complete! That was the laggiest, longest, most frustrating, and wobbliest thing I ever did (and I had to turn on infinite fuel to reduce the headache) and I never want to do it again. I'd love to do it with something that doesn't have a part count of 600 and has 3 nasty structural weaknesses though.

Preparations complete... tanker sent up and everything refueled, crew of 8 is onboard.

Doing the burn to leave Kerbin's orbit.

Through many a headache and multiple quicksaves and timewarps, a fancy slingshot around Moho like a boss...

And approaching the sun.

Final shot before I got fed up with the lag and just left it on timewarp to ram the sun by itself while I read a book.

[Tommygun]

Final shot before I got fed up with the lag and just left it on timewarp to ram the sun by itself while I read a book.

That made me laugh, I feel that way every time I use ion engines.

My game also crashed four or five times during aerobraking.

-Bluegobln, would it be possible to have attachment nodes on the top and bottom of all the shields?

It adds more flexibility when building. I wanted to add a second shield and device to the top of my ship, that I could detach and send into the sun while the ship stays up higher.

[Bluegobln]

You can add more stack nodes in the CFG easily, if desired.

I would not be surprised if there are major performance issues with that shield, as it happens to have quite a few individual parts and is likely stressing KSP pretty hard. I simply don't know a solution to that however, other than simplifying the model in ways that make it look kinda cheese. Only very little can actually be done about the folding panels though.

I think I will go through and update all of my parts to make tweaks, minor fixes, and add things like the attach nodes you just mentioned. No sense in leaving things broken.

Also, I am partway through modeling the 200m shield, but it's challenging.

[czokletmuss]

Will you add golden texture to the biggest shields and heat sink?

I love this mod and as soon as/if you finish the 200m shield I'm going to recreate Icarus

[Commander Zoom]

Grabbed the basic 16m shield (with white texture) for use on my interplanetary spacecraft that will be doing aerobraking at Jool, Duna, and possibly other places. No sundiving for me, though.

Got a balance question, though - one ton (the default mass?) seems a little light for a shield with bracing, actuators, etc. What do you think would be a more realistic weight?

[Mekan1k]

What happened to this mod? It was perfect for .20.2!

(Sorry if this is, but I hope it is not a necropost)

[Sapphire]

What happened to this mod? It was perfect for .20.2!

(Sorry if this is, but I hope it is not a necropost)

I still have all the pieces! I use them on all my Moho-bound craft. I'm still hoping that the one massive shield that was being planned comes out... it's a really cool idea. Until then, I'm satisfied with my small-ish sundivers.