Hep Hep, I need this drone plane in to space.

[Azuratte]

Alrighty, so I made up a 6.8 ton drone plane to hit up atmosphere planets and fly around for however long and then chute down and release a drone rover to find a suitable landing spot for the "mothership"

The overall rocket was originally 2500 ton at launch pad and was roughly 200 ton at kerbal orbit. It was a massive drone carrier, 3 drone planes, 10 stationary landers and 1 kerbal pod full of sandwiches. It was capable of getting in to orbit with plenty of fuel to get anywhere in the system and back again and back out to Mun for lunch. But after a couple bad clicks I lost a bunch of connecting rods randomly and then engines started to vanish, then clicking the menu system was so laggy that I'd click a part and mouse over to the ship only to find the mouse click was lagged and it had selected the ship but no menu item, ARGH.

Needless to say she was chunky and in a fit of rage and .2 FPS I deleted the mother ship. But I do have the drone plane but no idea how to launch 7ish tons with this particular shape and the fact it's pointing backwards. It's Alpha, I can't complain, I still giggle and laugh and have way to much fun with this game and I've only gotten to Mun... Well I've gotten to it 7 times now and after 5 attempts at rescue I managed to send a 150 ton lander to go pick up the crash landed souls on Mun. It was 150 ton mostly because the landing struts were roughly 90 meter wide steel I-beams. ( I have trouble landing) I run that mecjeb thing now, much nicer while I work on design.

A poke in the right direction is all I'm looking for.

Thanks a bunch.

[yutixfiddle]

Send me the .craft file, and I'll return with the magic.

I'll try to decrease lag as much as possible.

[SDIR]

You could always just mount a large rocket under that plane and boost it up like any other payload, or you could attach them radially to a large orbiter capable of carrying tow or three. And looking at your design, if you excluded the orange tank, you could get two planes into orbit with a 500-750 ton launcher.

[Azuratte]

You could always just mount a large rocket under that plane and boost it up like any other payload, or you could attach them radially to a large orbiter capable of carrying tow or three. And looking at your design, if you excluded the orange tank, you could get two planes into orbit with a 500-750 ton launcher.

Oh yes, my bad the large orange tank is not part of the plane, nor is the giant cpu or the truss just behind it. The large cpu is there so I could attach a central rocket and have the plane as a child, as for some reason the cpu is pointing backwards if the plane is attached to further parts. If I use the one on the plane or the rover unit they are both backwards until they are undocked for their parent parts. It was all very annoying but I managed to get through it and the SAS now works with all 3 stages as they are.

Hmm

As for uploading the craft file I'd be happy to, is there a way to upload to this site or is a separate file server required?

I do have this launch platform for my sketchy tall overpowered Mun lander, I can't land this thing with its return stage below it on my own. Something like this but just strap two to the central tower if it were just a bunch of structure?

http://i1288.photobucket.com/albums/b489/Azuratte/ScreenShot2013-06-27at80211PM_zps8a2a575b.png

[Rune]

Actually, that's not a bad place to put a tank. When you are launching stuff with wings, you have to keep the lift center behind the center of mass if you want it to stay stable on atmosphere, so generally tractor systems (the rocket and fuel tanks are on top of the payload) end up being the only thing that will fly straight. Put the engines on side pods around the tank (or use the radial engines, though they have crappy isp), and add crossfeeding boosters radially to get the delta-v (about 4.5-5km/s to have some margin). Add space tape liberally.

Rune. Engine gimbals might do weird stuff if you put them above the center of mass, though.

[Azuratte]

Good news! You guys jogged my brain, meet Drone Frigate Lite. With Kerbals on board so they can pop down immediately once the drones find something interesting, like, a shinny rock.

Due to problems in the VAB I was unable to do stages in pairs and had to do them in sets of four, it's really lame but the game just bugged out when I did things in pairs as far as the boosters were concerned. Oh well, other parts could be paired without issue so it's not the end of the world. The ship was sliiiiightly over powered and I now have 3 orange cans full of fuel to take me to the outter reaches. After leaving Kerbin orbit I had around 2 3/4 full of fuel. The original plan was to have one orange and see where it got me but, the lack of maths in the VAB and the fact Bob got a sweet deal on orange pain meant I have lots of extra fuel now. I'll still probably run out and get no where near my target but oh well.

As far as the ship goes, there is a probe on top so I can have a marker for the first plane and know what the atmosphere is like before I drop a plane. The two planes are the same as above and have worked well on Kerbin so they should maybe not smack the ground on Duna, which is the first stop. Then once the probe rovers find the shinny rock or better yet, a large shinny rock; the crew pod will follow and land nearby where they crew will have to walk since I forgot to attach the manned rovers to this launch. The manned pod might be capable of taking off from Duna, it's powered by a Poodle and 4 orange things, if it manages to orbit then it will dock with a return ship in orbit of Duna. The return ship will head out once Bob cleans up the spill of orange paint he left in the VAB.

Yes I realize I"m still dragging a Mainsail but like I mentioned I wasn't expecting to be hauling 2 full cans of fuel either. MechJeb says I was hauling 14,000 m/s of Delta-V or something like an hour burn time before leaving Kerbin, I hope its enough with my driving skills.

On a side note, Bobwise forgot to pack the Mayo for the sandwiches, the rest of the crew is not impressed and Bobwise will likely be taking the rest of the trip on the ladder outside. Also someone forgot to install the long range antenna making ordering take-out no longer an option.

As far as engine gimbals above center mass, yea, they're nearly non responsive and wander around a bit but since the nukes have no balls it's a manageable crazy.

The lack of cones on top the cans is simply because the game started tweaking out when I tried anything but the design you see. She's a stable build but I cant' get any cleaner than this without risk of loss of file like the other builds I've tried, this is build 9 of the same basic design but the files just corrupt. When I'm less frustrated I'll probably try putting the cones in again and see if I get more fuel efficiency.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Azuratte

[SDIR]

My god, 14000 m/s dv? That's probably enough to do several high energy transfers (non-hohman) to Jool and back! And I must say, this ship is quite impressive. And as of now, cones don't actually make your rocket more aerodynamic. In fact, they make your rocket heavier and produce MORE drag than without them, so if this works for you, just leave it as is.