Round-trip ships.

[combat squirrel]

These are ace, what does everyone think to posting their craft files also ?

[comiquaze]

comiquaze, the launch vehicle needs Mainsails to get the mass off of the ground, but they aren't very fuel efficient. So after they've lofted the ship to orbital altitude, I use the right-click menu to pump the fuel remaining in the boosters into the ship itself, eject the boosters, then complete orbital insertion on the fuel-efficient LV-Ns of the ship. It does reach orbit with almost no fuel remaining and needing refueling, but I think that's a better choice than trying to make the launch vehicle even larger.

I launched with all motors firing, barely made it to orbit and refuelled about 11 times until I had enough juice to get to Moho, where I arrived with 22200 d/v remaining. Looks like this is a winner!

I have a few things I want to modify on this one.

Many thanks again.

[Vanamonde]

The small one made it to Moho? I haven't tried that myself. How much cargo was it carrying?

[Procyon]

and this is my second try, the rhea. bigger, more engines, more probes and a lander with a rover. i am planning on sending it to the jool system.

[comiquaze]

Well the second one that launched in one go, it wasn't carrying anything, it was just a test and I'm using it now as the future space station for Moho exploration. I still have much to learn.

[comiquaze]

I'll show you guys some pictures tomorrow.

[comiquaze]

Ok, as promised, here are a few pictures.

First I tried to build an Astro-Train:

Astro-Train I en orbite by comiquaze, on Flickr

The concept worked, but it had no where enough d/v to go to Moho.

So I went back to the drawing board and modified it so it could really work like a train. For that, I need to be able to ditch the main engine.

Mise en orbite d'Astro-Train Ia by comiquaze, on Flickr

So I stacked two more tanks behind the main engine and it took about 5-6 refuelling trips to top off the tanks.

Ravitaillement de l'Astro-Train Ia by comiquaze, on Flickr

No need to tell you that it was a failure. I loved the idea, but I missed the execution.

Astro-Train Ia prêt au départ by comiquaze, on Flickr

So I then blatantly copied Vanamonde's design and sent it on its way to Moho.

Moho Station by comiquaze, on Flickr

Moho Station by comiquaze, on Flickr

Moho Station by comiquaze, on Flickr

This time it worked.

Now, I tweaked the design a little bit and I added a few Sr. docking ports and moved the standard ports around, to be able to carry a lot of stuff around.

Constellation I by comiquaze, on Flickr

Constellation I by comiquaze, on Flickr

I'm currently adding modules to it, so far I have a CSM from my Agena family, I have a Space Station Core that's about to be docked and my Artemis lander will join them. All that will then voyage all the way to Minmus.

I still need to add my Skycrane to it and to figure out a way to attach a few probes...

Oh, and I still haven't figured out how to do a nice simple rover for the kerbalonauts to drive around in.

[Immashift]

That's... a lot of orange tanks. TWR for that must be tremendous...ly horrible on NERVAs.

Rovers aren't that bad. Just make a simple probe based one and stick some seats on it. Make it low enough for right click menus and you're golden.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Immashift

[rodion]

I just finished assembling my second design for one of these kinds of ships, this time with quite large (23 ton wet, I think) lander instead of a mere observation module (cupola) like the first one had. Lessons were also learned about where to place solar arrays so that they don't get in the way of docked payloads, how much of X resource was enough/not enough, and so on. Most importantly the new ship has another docking port on the tank/engine end, so it can theoretically be extended with as many extra snap-on fuel tanks/NERVA engines as I feel like, hence unlimited range in the Kerbol system. Theoretically. The old one could be refueled but no more large parts like extra tanks could be placed on it.

Here's the whole thing as of last night, the docked ship jutting out was refilling the small amount (300 units) of fuel I used in the assembly process, not too bad for a ship with a 6,000 unit capacity. On the docked end of that is a tiny Kerbin return ship - the conception for the mission was a "sample return" type where I could land a crew on the Mun, mess around, then re-dock with the ship in Munar orbit, then send a crew member back with precious cargo without having to take the whole 90 ton ship back to Kerbin orbit at the same time. So, a Mun crew Kerbal was bundled into the tiny ship and shot back to land on Kerbin, carrying a cargo of imaginary Mun rocks:

Mun was just a proof of concept test, now I'm quite confident that the ship will stand up to a round-trip to any body, in the right configuration. The lander could be altered on the ground, launched and switched out in orbit with an atmospheric parachute-bearing one for Duna. Probes could be attached with abandon.

[Captain Sierra]

SSI Proudly presents the Lazarus!

This behemoth has yet to be tested under any cargo at all. As we speak, I am sending up parts for a Munar base that will use Kethane and Extaplanetary Launchpads. This is a test for a future mission to the Jool system (some stuff will be redesigned). The fuel module and megatug parts HAVE TO be sent up eempty and fueled in orbit. Otherwise, they will be too unwieldy to dock. This ship is not entirely stock and after a failed attempt to make my own empty fuel tanks mod, I just hyperedited it into orbit (a friend of mine did succeed at a launch and dock when they were empty so it can be done).

I went sparingly on parts and opted for a pull not push drive system to minimize the need for struts so it isn't too bad. I get 15-20 FPS on it as it is now. It will no doubt be worse when a munbase is in tow.

[Immashift]

SSI Proudly presents the Lazarus!

What I love about that thing is that it's a puller design. Always more stable than rockets in the back. Trickier to launch though.

[Captain Sierra]

Yes, but it can be done. The fuel and tug MUST go up empty to be dockable but once you do that, you can build this thing. I will be adding two new modules to it before I depart. A power module and a kethane refinery. Everything else that goes on will be mission specific. Here are some stats I posted in another thread:

In it's current state, it has ~8577 dV. It currently weighs ~600 tons, has a part count of 257, and a surface TWR of 0.05 (XD).With full kethane tanks and topped off fuel, it weighs ~850 tons and has a dV of ~5000.

This is all of course without payload in tow. Normally, it would have payload, such as the munbase it will be carrying for me, in tow to it's destination. This does mean I have to be careful loading it down as I do need enough power to get to my destination (it can carry an orbital kethane refinery so it could refine on the return trip if it needs more than 5000 dV XP)

EDIT: Max acceleration: ~ 1/2 m/s XD Thats not much better than a heavy ion probe (one with 4 big engines that I often send out interplanetary).

I purposely set it up as a tow style vehicle to minmize stress on the craft so I could go sparingly with struts (just enough for payload to survive launch). This gives me about 20 FPS so I barely notice any lag with it .

[allmhuran]

Both of these can go everywhere in one trip:

[Exothermos]

Wow, some of these ships are insane!

This is my first manned Duna mission ship. It's a Tug & pusher hybrid. Everything to the left of the Docking Sr. ports is the lander / heat shield assembly. It will also return to Kerbin. Everything to the right will stay in orbit as a space station. So I suppose it doesnt fit the billing of this thread exactly, But it is the closest I've gotten.

I'll try to post with a trip report this weekend.

/crosses fingers.

[switchON]

Here my ship : Marylin

It is able to go on Duna and come back. Pay attention to the lander docked at the end of the convoy.

I'm working on a new one that is going to have a Greenhouse/ and I wish able to get kethane to fill the tanks.

[replica17]

Wow what mods are you using there? Awesome!

[switchON]

Wow what mods are you using there? Awesome!

For the engine : Nucleonics but it seems they are not available anymore :-(

Solars Panels : Kosmos

Lights and stuffs from B9

and finaly Rocketry

[BigDog]

I am not a fan of assembling stuff in orbit so I build insane rigs like this. In the middle are two of the stock games 2 stages landers with a 3rd stage added, which is good enough for orbit from Kerbal and makes them reusable for most worlds. It also has 4 rovers docked to the sides and a mapping/Kethane detection satellite docked to the nose. There is also crew return module that can separate at the front of the ship with a hitchhiker can just in-case there is not enough Delta V for a return trip.

This next one is a bit more sane and is mostly for placing mapping satellites in place ahead of full on missions. one is docked on the nose also in this pic. It does have 3 mod parts on it, a 2.5 meter to twin 1.25 meter adapter the Nukes are on, the white 2 x 2 panels hiding that, and aviation lights. So while it i not stock it could be built stock. It has the capability of landing on lower grav worlds. DV is 4500 or so with the spikes or 6700 or so with the Nukes.

[iDan122]

After the KSA(Kerbal Space Agency) decided not to waste money on designing Duna and other planet capable ships,

it decided to build Eeloo-1, a ship that could go farther than even Jeb has gone before, this simple, easy to use ship, with a gravity deck, comm arrays, 3 docking ports for regular craft and 6 ports for space probes, 2 solar panels and a lander.

I present you, Eeloo-1:

The ship has lighting systems everywhere.

View from ShipCam-5

View from behind.

As you can see the ship is powered by 4 nuclear fusion engines, the next step in space travel.

An optimal escape burn requires more than 5 orbits of burn-and-wait-for-periapsis burns.

The ship, after wasting a ton of fuel due to an inexperienced Jeb(me) has around 1500 units of fuel left. Probably enough

for achieving orbit around Eeloo(MET: 1056 days so far, currently en-route for Eeloo encounter.

I am not greedy so here ae the parts with my lander included:

Propulsion with fuel tanks

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1viv458siumtdgb/Eeloo-1%20Prop.craft

Core

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uwlktjzr3yflioo/Eeloo-1%20core.craft

Lander

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o8httchudqk766y/Eeloo-1%20Lander.craft

The ship is assembled through 3 launches. The lander acts as a cockpit too(it docks in front) but the ship in case of loosing the lander has all the equipment for control by itself, even unmanned.

The lander hauls 5 crew member. Maximum capacity of ship in pics is 18 kerbals.

More pics might be available later.

Note that not all the parts include a working lifter(was too lazy).

If you dont want to go through the hassle, here is my save folder:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9z5v53ddegjdm7m/JLWCUGn4t_

The ship is on an Eeloo encounter in about 10 minutes of 10000x time wrp.

Good luck and enjoy!

-Dan

Note: i was inspired by Europa-1 from Europa Report

[Sunfang]

Very inspiring ships guys! Mine is merely an engine component ATM...

She is called "Beam" and is designed as a modular interplanetary tug. The launch vehicle sucked all the fuel out of the orange tank and I didn't notice that until she was in orbit. I can't be bothered to re-fuel her just yet, so she is sitting in LKO as a glorified orbital station for my space planes. She has 12 NERVA's, 6 normal docking ports and two large docking ports. I originally designed her to tug stuff out to Jool in multiple missions, but I'm sure that if I tack a few more fuel tanks on her she'll go anywhere

[Wayfare]

Here my ship : Marylin

I play EVE on and off and I have a Cynabal called "Marilyn"... Love that ship! I loaned it to a buddy when I went into wormholes for a few months. He loved it so much he bought his own when I got back, and called it "Manson". My original reference had been to Marilyn Monroe but you can see where this is going. We got a dual kill a little while later, so the poor sod in question was blown up by Marilyn & Manson.

Er... Yeah. This may not make much sense if you don't play EVE. Bottom line: love the name of this ship

[Dispatcher]

I understand about being sure before releasing a product. While my "self flying planes" (at the Spaceport) are good planes and fun to fly, I added ladders (and for those space capable models, solar cells and thruster nozzles) AFTER testing them. I've seen that such seemingly minor additions do influence flight behavior. After all your hard work, you'll want to release the best, funnest product you can.

I'm really impressed by your round trip designs. I've been concentrating on things planet side and in Kerbin orbit, simply because I'm learning so much about rockets, planes, rovers, boats and other craft. After seeing some of the creations here, there are even more things to make that I hadn't thought of. But seeing your ships has motivated me to leave orbit and head for the other planets and moons. Keep up the good work.

[Dispatcher]

So really? Only a couple of us are doing this? I thought there would be more.

By the way, as much as I dislike cheats and try to avoid mods, flying 4 to 7 fuel tankers to refuel my ship between every flight is getting really tiresome. How could I just wave a magic wand and make its tanks full?

Scott Manley recently did a You Tube video (of course) about editing the quicksave.sfs file. In it he started with a craft at launch altitude. He edited the file and changed the launch altitude to, well, you'd be in orbit to start with. That's probably taking it a bit further than you are wanting, but I found it to be interesting. Of course now I don't know which video it is, but if you progress back through his KSP videos, you should encounter it.

[TheAndrewTaco]

My newest interplanetary craft, designation IEV "Nebuchadnezzar". Right now she's about 90% complete and waiting for an upcoming Eve launch window.

Edited August 14, 2013 by TheAndrewTaco
Forgot the image.

[Commander Zoom]

Nice design. What's the 10%, and any chance of some closeups (say, on those carried craft to the sides)?