A Reasonable Way to Deliver Trusses to KSS?

[Kulebron]

Hi,

I managed to send KSS core to a circular orbit, and now how can I send a truss and solar panels there, without ridiculously huge rockets?

I can't find a reasonable way to do this: either everything sticks out of the rocket (which is unreal from aerodynamics POV), or it's a space shuttle mode. I see decouplers hide engines inside, but don't hide anything else.

Will appreciate any help.

Also, when I open a rocket in the construction site, how can I see what part is under the cursor?

Edited August 26, 2013 by Kulebron

[Bacterius]

What about a vertical truss attached to a docking node with docking ports on them? It would be small enough to fit in a fairing (at the top of the rocket) so no aerodynamism problems there, and lets you connect more trusses later on.

The only problem is you might have to make it shorter than you wanted, as rockets tend to get very unstable as they get higher. But for a truss or two it's definitely doable.

Edited August 25, 2013 by Bacterius

[Kulebron]

What's a fairing? Can you give a link to a wiki page?

[Spyritdragon]

Might you be looking for the Procedural Fairings mod?

Else, whatever you're trying to fly up, you're going to need a decent amount of rocket fuel to get the weight up. The heavier your payload, the more boosters you'll need of course :-).

I've found that if you're flying really light, something like an FL-T200 with a docking port and two solar panels, launch stages can go very light. Among the order of 4 or 5 FL-T800's

[Apollo13]

My truss delivery system. The trusses are the larger, heavier trusses from the NFJ mod. The main fuel tank, engine, and boosters are NovaPunch 2. Standard docking ports are on each end of the truss.

This system creates a very tall rocket which must be carefully coaxed into orbit. Otherwise, at about 30km, it will fall over.

Delivered to the orbiting station. HOWEVER, thanks to the undock bug that plagues this game, I cannot leave the truss at the station. I cannot undock the command module from the truss to return to Kerbal. Some day, I hope, Squad will take 30 minutes to fix this.

[Spyritdragon]

My aplogies, Apollo13, im stealing your signature. Tell me if you have any objections :-).

Also, its totally not what the mod is meant for, but theres this big huge station truss in the RemoteTech mod.

Edited August 25, 2013 by Spyritdragon

[Kulebron]

Ok, that explains everything, thanks a lot guys!

[Kulebron]

By the way, how do I make a ship with both docking ring and a parachute?

[Specialist290]

There's radial parachutes which you can stick to the side of the capsule. I usually use two or more, for the sake of preserving symmetry.

[Kulebron]

Ok, so finally I could try this out somewhere, I mean an orbiting simulator with easy UI. Downloaded it yesterday and bought in a few hours.

Managed to send KSS core, then make a dockable module, approach, dock it, then dock a truss with an engine (still 2nd stage). Docking the first one was just the approach and hard to learn to control translation.

(actually this 1st pic is seconds before bumping with parachute into the docking ring. Had to repeat the approach, align both ships and dock well at 0,2m/s)

The second one was easier, since I got used to it (and got used to control looking at the craft, quickly steering then countesteering, then moving the way I needed.) Almost collided, because it started magnetizing a bit off the axis, SAS started blowing everywhere, I turned it off, pulled away a meter, then corrected, and it attracted correctly (5 degrees off-axis though ).

[Kulebron]

There's radial parachutes which you can stick to the side of the capsule. I usually use two or more, for the sake of preserving symmetry.

Thanks, will try!