The Hanging Gardens of Mun - a super-crater colony COMPLETE (+bonus) [IMAGE HEAVY]

[M4ck]

The Hanging Gardens of Mun

Harmful Environments Research Program, project 1.

Finally, taking two weeks of my time and definitely a lot more launches than it should've taken, the colony has been completed!

After reading a thread about some new, super-deep Mun crater, and, precisely, THIS post:

Have a base on the side of that crater! That would be awesome!

I've imagined a single, fully autonomous platform hanging there and decided to give it a try. And right after placing one module, some new ideas came to my mind. Long story short, a wall-hanging colony was born.

Parts (with links to their posts):

1. The central module

2. The landing pad

3. Fuel storage and lines

4. The crane

5. The habitat

6. The walkway and the ladder (with an EVA tour through the base)

7. Another, final habitat + something else

And an album link if you only want pictures(no descriptions yet)

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Yeah, I know i have also posted this in another discussion, but I am so proud of myself I want to share it with all of you, guys )

After seeing someone speaking of a new, probably bug-made very deep and steep crater on Mun, as well as seeing some photos of it, I've came to a conclusion that this will be a great spot to try hanging bases. So far there is only one module, something like a self-sustaining outpost. It consists of an observation terrace, small solar panels array(despite being located quite deep into the crater, they get quite a lot of light), a crane for lifting/lowering my brave, lonely kerbal hermits(kermits?), a battery bank, fuel mining/processing equipment with a fuel hose included, and a lander can for the little guys to rest in.

As you can see there is a lander can, some structural elements, a large battery bank, two small kethane tanks, two drills and a converter, as it will be probably used to provide fuel for vessels launched from a launch pad on the bottom of the crater(still to-be-landed there ), or to some little ships visiting a landing pad anchored to the wall nearby, via the bottom connector cable. The other not yet used connector will probably be used to lower/lift kerbals between the base and the bottom by means of plugging an unfortunate kerbal instead of a claw/connector, bungee jumping and lowering them slowly when they reach current rope length. I have edited the KAS files to make the cables about 1,5km long, which is about enough to reach the bottom.

The battery bank is used mostly when kethane is processed and mined simultaneously, especially if the solar panels are in shadow(since they are at about 80* angle they provide great amount of electricity for their size, usually between 0,8 and 0,95 efficiency when in sunlight).

I am currently planning to create a whole colony down(up?) there. It will take some time, as first getting it into the crater, and then anchoring it to the walls is... well, pretty difficult and/or long Any progress will be reported here Finished base will probably include:

• 
  
• the current outpost
  
• 8x8 or 16x16 landing pad just next to the first module
  
• several short 2,5m fuel/RCS tanks mounted perpendicularly to the wall, located a bit below the landing pad
  
• larger crane anchored to the wall to the other side of the first module: a large girder arm anchored directly to the wall and also hanging on one support rope(like the two in main module), winch at the end, and a 2x2 or 4x4 platform on which kerbals will stand/seat on the way up/down, it will be located so that they will be able to directly jump from the platform to main module
  
• launch pad either on the bottom of the crater, or atop one side of it. I doubt it can be attached to the walls firmly enough that it will not fall apart when I launch something from it.
  

Everything other that the launch pad will be connected via KAS, fuel will probably be transfered between bottom and top by lowering/rising a tank hanging on one KAS, detaching it there and connecting to the launch pad vessel(If it was all supposed to be connected at once, I would get a vessel about 1,5km long, so the camera would probably go crazy.

any suggestions for modules are welcome

Edited September 17, 2013 by M4ck

[M4ck]

Just in case any of you would like to replicate something like that, here's how I have actually put it there

First of all, it was launched oriented in a way that the side of the cylindrical winch on the end of "crane" structure was on the top, and the side touching the wall was the bottom. Lifters were connected via 2,5m separator connected in the middle of the edge touching the wall, then there were ASAS, RCS tanks + 4x4 thrusters(16 total, 4 in each direction), a rather short fuel tank with an engine weak enough that the TWR on Mun was about 1,3, maybe 1,5. THAT was later connected to a flat platform with some engines and landing legs, below that was the main lifter structure.

1. Get it to orbit, detach lifters

2. Fly to moon using engines on flat platform, enter an almost-polar high orbit and refuel a bit if needed

3. Land on the bottom of the crater(just to save in case something goes wrong... Maybe that's cheating a bit, but I really hate redoing all the launch-orbit-getto-land stages...)

4. Detach from lander platform and slowly rise. ASAS enabled to keep it straight(one large stock ASAS, or whatever it is now called, was enough for me), use RCS to get slowly moving towards the wall while hovering on the main engine. (I had a docking port placed on the side opposite from the engine in order to "control from there" and make sure the ship was oriented exactly vertically

5. When near the wall, thrust RCS the opposite direction to make yourself almost stationary

6. At a distance of about the lenght of deployed 1x6 solar panel from wall, I fired the claws(set "eject" on all 4 winches to an action group) and slowly throttled down to zero, sometimes using RCS to slow the swing towards the wall. When the base is just about to touch the wall, decouple that tank+RCS+engine part (ASAS was ON the whole time, so the base was kept straight)

7. Now you just need to pull the cables to level the base I first pulled the "near" cables(using that KAS windowed controls, much faster than right-clicking) till they had about 1m of cable left, then extended the "far" cables till everything was horizontal. That 1m left was so that the base would touch the wall with the bottom 8x8 panel(the upper layer was 4 4x4 panels, from KW rocketry or B9, I don't remember exactly), not the winches + I-beams + 8x8 panel(then it was slightly sloped towards the wall)

Edited August 9, 2013 by M4ck

[neronix17]

Looks great, would be awesome to have an entire base of half a dozen structures along the wall. Would be cool if it was possible to have a platform suspended in a similar fashion using two opposing walls (like North and South wall supporting their side of the platform). I gather that there aren't any craters which would be capable of this purely because of the distance limits. Very cleverly done though, always surprised by the creativity of people on KSP.

[M4ck]

Well, to be honest I have already tried that. It IS possible to suspend a tiny ship in the middle using cables going in all 4 directions, but the claws detached under really low stress meaning it hanged there for a while, but started to fall after "stretching"the cables by throttling up a bit.

[RocketPilot573]

Wow, that's awesome! Now, were on the Mun is this giant hole? (My Space Program's scientists seem to be interested)

[M4ck]

Location: 57*39'34" N /9*05'00" E, according to MJ. If you are going to land there using MechJeb for any reason, try to land from a very stretched orbit, going almost straight down through the surface, otherwise MJ will go crazy and probably just smack your ship into one of the crater walls.

[Tw1]

It will be awesome to see this develop.

My name suggestion: The Hanging Gardens of Mun! (Adding plants optional.)

[M4ck]

I had that name in mind, the first module was is called the Hanging Garden I am now in the process of designing a portable launch pad to place nearby, in order to save me all that trip from Kerbin for future modules. The bottom of this crater is rather uneven, so the bottom part of launch pad has to be quite wide. I'll have it placed there today, maybe tomorrow morning.

Edited August 9, 2013 by M4ck

[M4ck]

Another module installed

This time it was a medium-sized landing pad oriented in a different way than the first module - I know KAS cables have no collision on them, but it would still look silly if visiting ships were to maneuver between all types of cables on the way down. Just after installing it in place I've realized it will be a bit wobbly(but not too much) and impossible to angle it away from the wall without some claws along the lower edge, but I didn't have enough patience to redo this whole flight... Maybe some other time.

Also, for some reason, the present colony seemed to be located almost 1km higher than in reality(which was ABOVE the crater edge), after closing in to less than 250m it moved to the correct position(I assume the physics kicked in at that time, but why was it this high to begin with?).

Final stage lifter structure: 4x(2,5m separator, probe core, RCS tank, short LFO tank, 2x ASAS, battery bank(turned out to be not needed for any reason other than making lifters long enough for the last stage to stand on lifters, not platform edge), 4x RTG(for reaction wheels, overkill), 4x3 RCS blocks and a regular nuke engine. Only LFO tanks were not stock, so engines were stock nuke ones - I really had no idea they were THAT efficient(see end of next paragraph) in space. (one of the probe cores was the core part)

Again, after going into high Mun polar orbit, this stage was landed on the bottom of the crater and slowly lifted with ASAS on, then moved towards the wall with RCS. This time my technique was a bit better than on the first module, as I have found some useful things to help this whole process. Kerbin TWR of 0,33 was a bit too much to precisely control hovering. TWR of about 0,2 would probably be better. The best acceleration(showed by MechJeb vessel info window) at which I hovered after reaching desired altitude for a long while was something between 1,55 and 1,6m/s², which changed a bit due to fuel consumption. RCS translation up/down was strong enough to control altitude without the need to touch throttle. Top down view helps a lot in the last few moments before firing claws, you know exactly where you are positioned and where you are going in relation to other modules. The fuel and RCS depleted really slowly, the ascent from the bottom of the crater to the moment of cutting the throttle off completely took me about 5 to 10 minutes, and the fuel reserves were barely touched(compared to what I expected), so there was a huge safety margin

Now here are the final moments of installing it on the wall:

Approaching the colony(after its relocation)

Firing cables and lowering thrust to 1,4m/s² to slowly swing towards the wall

Close-up of the underside

Detached parts falling to (as it soon turned out, not only)theirs doom

On their way down they accelerated to about 40m/s, crashed into previous lifters and obliterated each other(a bit). One engine bumped into the launch pad, but luckily didn't rip anything off. (the launch pad turned out to be defective somehow anyways - while on Kerbin it worked fine, on Mun anything launched from it gets teleported inside the launch pad vessel(not the plate) once physics for the new vessel kicks in, ripping it to shreds; back to regular Kerbin>orbit>transfer>orbit>landing, everyone! The launch pad now simply sits down there looking pretty)

Underside after detachment of lifters

Colony overview

It looks rather dark, but the plate is highly resistant against exhaust damage, and those yellow strips are still bright enough when illuminated by landing vehicles that it is rather easy to land precisely in the middle

Next modules to add: fuel tanks, crane, KAS hub and kerbal safety net below the core/landing pad.

Edited August 10, 2013 by M4ck

[Wice]

This is awesome and it inspired me to startworking on a prototype for a wall climber. Here are some picture of the first prototype test

[M4ck]

Another little addition: fuel tanks.

Although I've written earlier something about 2,5m tanks, after thinking for a while I choose not to mount huge tanks here mostly because larger tanks >> more claws, cables etc >> more parts >> more lag in the future. So now the tanks will be more like buffers between kethane processing module and refueled craft. New module is 12 "regular" parts + 13 KAS parts, two bottom ports will probably get removed(somehow).

Before detachment

Bobman Kerman at work connecting it all together

Everything nicely balanced and working properly, refining kethane into monopropellant

By the way, Wice - glad to have somehow inspired such an interesting creation

Edited August 10, 2013 by M4ck

[M4ck]

Another module now sits on the wall next to everything else.

It is rather light for what it looks like, the main "arm" is 6,5t, and the platform much lighter than that. It was sent in two separate pieces - the arm first, then the platform was added.

This is what two last stages of transport vehicle looked like. That mainsail was a bit too long for landing legs - a stupid mistake, but was not that difficult to correct; there simply was no landing phase, the mainsail and its tank were dropped off when I got into the crater.

Now it's time for the platform

Lander stage

Anchoring it to the wall... not exactly as planned, some parts fell off after hitting the wall - luckily not from the platform itself, but from the transport - so it hanged at a weird angle

"Can we fix it?" - asked Bobman the builder

Yes we can. And we have over 35% fuel left

It works well, going straight down for about 150m and then nicely sliding down the wall all the length of the cables. After some wild swings during construction, it turned out to be very stable. The platform also has a fifth KAS port, in case it has to be pulled under some other module(winch from the landing pad can be hooked up to it).

But wait, what happened to that stupid, plus-shaped support? Well...

Edited August 10, 2013 by M4ck

[OUScooby]

Holy crap, that impressive!

[19spacepug]

Wow cool project I might just have to try making something like this some time. still good job

[tntristan12]

How do you get kerbals onto the winch, and between platforms? Jetpack? It'd be cool if you had some type of suspended walkway to connect them!

[Captain Sierra]

Fascinating, and awesome.

[M4ck]

Well, yes, now they jump around looking silly. Right now I am installing a habitation module, the next thing to do after that will be the walkways unfortunately it's a bit hard to place something very precisely, I'll try something with movable ports instead of the claws/hooks.

[Tw1]

Ooo! Modules. This is going well.

Edit:

This is awesome and it inspired me to startworking on a prototype for a wall climber.

Head over to the climb the VAB challenge! How fast can you go?

Edited August 11, 2013 by Tw1

[M4ck]

After countless retries due to, for example:

• placing winches without anything separating them from the panels - the claws got immediately stuck to panels/bounced off them when fired >> back from the crater wall to VAB
  
• forgetting to add struts between panels, resulting in the whole contraption falling apart upon hitting the wall >> back from the crater wall to VAB
  
• not adding enough struts... >> back to VAB, again
  
• 1x bug/crash/whatever, 1x lightning struck nearby and PC restarted >> back from last phase of landing on the bottom of the crater to Mun orbit twice
  
• and finally KSP crashed again >> back from docking-like maneuvers by the wall to crater bottom,
  

I've finally managed to install the habitat module. At first I wanted to have it hanging above the first platform, but then the detached tanks would either crush the solar panels or tear away some of the floor panels/railings. Now it fell clear between the main platform and the crane(camera focus switched to the falling tank, so just for the lulz I throttled up, turned SAS on and let it fly as long as the fuel lasted; it got far beyond Kerbin's SoI and orbit, even without power after getting to about 10km altitude). Again, no landing there, just a quicksave midair right after detaching lower tank.

In fact these are just empty fuel tanks and solar panels, nothing more elaborate, but I think they look good enough.

Close-up of the module in orbit(lights on, to better show what it looks like)

First, unexpected anchoring in the dark, as I couldn't land it properly and time warp to daytime(turned out the addition of direction lights was a really useful thing this time), not much more difficult than I expected - there was much more light than there would be in a similar situation in orbit, for some reason...

Two shots at the "sunset" in the crater, and one in the night

And the last one, in daylight

Now, I've figured out an easy way to precisely attach the walkways to the wall, using movable radial KAS ports with allowStatic = True added in KASModuleAttach module of part.cfg and later connecting winches to them while in EVA - a bit similar to how I've connected the platform to the crane. The walkways probably won't be ready for a few days - I'll be away from home, and I'm not sure if my laptop can handle KSP without problems.

By the way, the longer I look at the whole base, the more I begin to hate that black launch pad plate... Should I try to retexture it, remove it via save editing, or just delete the whole module, change the plate to something else(if yes, then what do you suggest? I don't want it to get burned by other crafts, you know), and place it on the wall again?

Anyways, what should I do with it now, after adding the walkways(pad-central and central-crane, maybe) and a ladder(central-habitat)? Do you have any interesting ideas? I was thinking about a cableway(is that the correct word?) to the opposite crater wall, but it bets buggy at these distances.

Edit: after looking at all the screenshots at once, I am now thinking the domes are too small... Will it be better to make it one larger, instead of these three? What do you think? It will require rescaling the domes and the "windows", but that shouldn't be very problematic(of course this will also have to be another launch...).

Edited August 11, 2013 by M4ck

[19spacepug]

Good update I bet the walkways will be hard can,t wait for the next update and on the landing pad I would just delete it and make a new one it may take longer but it will be better.

[Spartwo]

I've got to do this where is the hole located?

Sorry

Edited August 14, 2013 by Spartwo

[M4ck]

As I've written somewhere on the first page, the location of the crater center is about 57*40'00" N / 9*05'00" E , it really has to be an almost vertical drop from about 4km altitude down, as the whole area gets rendered in a strange way and you might easily smack into the ground around the crater(it appears rather flat when you are a few km above the surface).

By the way, my laptop somehow manages to run KSP. Slowly, but still. So there probably will be a new post in a day or two about connecting it all together

[BostLabs]

Wow! This is pretty interesting.

[M4ck]

Another step towards the completion of Hanging Gardens of Mun has been taken. This time Bobman spent a lot of time connecting the walkway to the wall, watching it swing like a wrecking ball, pushing it where it was supposed to be, and sitting comfortably in his landing can house while ladders slammed into the wall right outside. Afterwards, he took a walk outside to show us what the base looks like from his view.

Sorry for the delay, but maneuvering crafts was so slow on my laptop I had to wait till I got home to complete this and to be able to post here.

First, the walkway lander was sent to the colony landing pad, along with about six mobile KAS ports. The big ball was there to balance the craft(I-beams and KAS tipped it to the side), it was an empty fuel tank with a power bank. It later crashed into the fuel tanks below the base after detaching, but didn't destroy anything.

After placing the ports on the wall and connecting the first cable(and quicksaving), Bobman faced what he later called "a crash". KSP simply died, so I had to restart it, only to discover the three placed but not yet connected ports missing. I have no idea why, as the max debris count was set rather high, and all the other debris, like on the crater bottom, was present. Anyways, a little port-carrying probe was sent to the main module(it was quite tricky to land there, but RCS made it a lot easier during the last several meters).

All four cables connected(only the two closer to the wall in the finished walkway were actually needed, another note for Hanging Gardens 2). By pure luck, 8m long walkway fit perfectly between the landing pad and the central module.

"And here... we... go!" - not as planned, but the whole thing survived

The ladder was, as written previously, simply slammed into the wall. It's a really simple build, 1,25m probe core with 2x 8m ladder, 2x RTG for power(and as anchoring points for the "wiggling" stage: RCS tanks and nozzles), and 2x 2xlarge I-beams each with a single claw/hook facing the wall on the far end(hidden behind the ladders, which had no collisions on their own for placing hooks, unfortunately). After placing it somewhere near the desired point, it was "wiggled" into its current position by detaching one claw, stretching everything to the side with RCS and slamming it into the wall again.

Now, Bobman goes outside to take a look at his pretty base he himself assembled

Outside the hut

Standing next to the carrier probe

Going up, climbing towards the stars

Atop the habitat(the jump had to be jetpack assisted, the future Hanging garden will have a tree-like structure of ladders connecting various modules, so each branch will end right on a platform)

On the walkway(this time a regular jump was enough, the central module railing makes it impossible to simply walk onto it)

The pad(high-res texture on it looks a LOT better than the ones in previous posts, IMO )

And finally, a colony overview at night

As for the last module, to be placed at the top of the ladder, I know HOW it will be attached so everything will work nicely with walking up/down the ladder and getting off, but I don't know WHAT exactly to put there... I was thinking about a vertical tower-like habitat made of a kethane tank with a half-sphere on top of it, with some fake "windows" like in the current habitat - it should look nice together, as it will be white tank with green stripes, white sphere tank with orange stripes, and the same, blue windows on both parts. I will post some of my ideas for you to choose the one you like best in several hours. If you would like to see something else up there, feel free to post

[M4ck]

Here are my ideas for the last module parts, I don't know which to choose. I am thinking of either 2 or 3 horizontal ones stacked above each other, one horizontal and one/two vertical(the "legs" are just to make taking shots easier), or 2 or 3 verticals side by side (like one smaller in the middle and two taller on its sides). Here's a link to the album with all of them.

http://imgur.com/a/unB7w#0

List of all variants:

• horizontal with green/orange caps
  
• horizontal with horizontal/vertical windows
  
• vertical small with one/two segments
  
• vertical small with green/orange caps
  
• vertical tall with green/orange caps