Spider-class Tug

[Elmetian]

Horizon Heavy Industries presents the Spider-class interplanetary tug. This compact ship is comprised of only 55 parts (85 parts on the pad). The booster provided with the tug can place it comfortably into a circular 80km orbit and then deorbit itself. The Spider's nuclear engines are carefully angled to avoid damage to its payload while maximising the available thrust. In order for it to move large masses between Kerbin and other planetary bodies, the Spider has two Clamp 'O' Tron Juniors acting as fuel expansion slots. Drop tanks docked to these ports will automatically drain into the main fuel tank. When equipped with these extra tanks the Spider can haul over a hundred tons between Kerbin and the Mun, or haul an E-class asteroid into LKO!

Action groups:

1 toggles the atomic engines

2 toggles the solar panels

3 toggles the nose docking port

Flight Notes:

Remember that it uses traditional staging to reach orbit rather than action groups, and make sure to 'control from here' using the nose docking port as the capsule is mounted upside down for enhanced visibility. Because the new S3 KS-25x4 Engine Cluster is less efficient than the Skippers, you need to take a steeper ascent than with previous versions.

• Launch at max throttle and with SAS engaged.

• Begin a gravity turn at 10km to approx 75° and throttle down two notches.

• Gradually reduce pitch so that you begin following the orbital velocity marker on the navball at 27km up. Aim to place your apoapsis above the atmosphere with the 1st stage by reducing the throttle accordingly.

• After staging, immediately throttle up to max and begin circularising your orbit. Ideally you should have at least 1 min to apoapsis when you stage.

If you're using the fuel expansion slots, please ensure that the fuel tanks are balanced. Also, if you don't want the tug to draw fuel from the payload, make sure to click on the aft docking port and 'disable crossfeed'.

Change Log:

Replaced Kumo booster with large parts from the ARM update
Reduced monopropellant from 175 units to 150
Reduced size of the fuel expansion slots to Clamp 'o' Tron Juniors to save mass
Replaced Inline Advanced Stabilizer with Inline Reaction Wheel to save mass
Part count on the pad reduced from 72 parts (85 on the pad)
Changed the colour balance on the lights to green and red
Updated the action groups
Edited May 1, 2014 by Narcosis
Updated craft

[spaceman1999]

Cool looking craft. I see that you like angled boosters.

[Technical Ben]

Nice. Reminds me of some of my smaller tugs. Currently working on larger ones, and low part count means they don't look as nice.

[Dimetime35c]

i like this craft. ive modified it a bit on my game to have mechjeb and more powerful lights.

[Elmetian]

Cool looking craft. I see that you like angled boosters.

Yep outriggers just don't look as cool imo, even if you lose some efficiency mounting them at an angle like I have.

Nice. Reminds me of some of my smaller tugs. Currently working on larger ones, and low part count means they don't look as nice.

True. I tried to balance aesthetics with increased part count. You could easily reduce it by a dozen or so by removing solar panels and shoving an RTG on this.

i like this craft. ive modified it a bit on my game to have mechjeb and more powerful lights.

It did originally have a lot more lights but I felt they weren't worth the extra mass, though I can understand wanting better illumination when docking.

[Dimetime35c]

i cant remember what mod the lights from but one has this really tiny but really bright led light. I put a bunch of those on it and it works great

[Oddbin]

That's a very cool wee tug. What size loads have you been hauling and to what destinations ? Are you looking into scaling up the design at all?

[Elmetian]

That's a very cool wee tug. What size loads have you been hauling and to what destinations ? Are you looking into scaling up the design at all?

It's actually a scaled down replica of this B9 tug I built in 0.19. Figured I'd make a small stock version so that more people could make use of it.

Regarding the payloads, I've tested it with a 36 ton orange fuel tank and it was able to take it into a 20km circular orbit around the Mun without using any of the cargo's fuel. I've also tested it with a cargo of around 120 tons, but it drew about half an orange tank's worth. If you used the two expandable slots, you'd probably need another 1440 units of fuel (2 x Rockomax X200-16 Fuel Tank) to drag 100 tons to Munar orbit from LKO.

Edited September 16, 2013 by Narcosis

[Rune]

Both booster and tug are real works of art. And the presentation rocks too. Astounding attention to detail! I am stealing a couple of ideas from this for sure.

Rune. Keep it up!

[Oddbin]

I'm really liking it. Had a wee play about tonight and it's really well made. Thinking of taking a couple on my first trip to Jool for shuffling payloads about and deorditing things.

If you tweak this or make more be sure to let us know please.

[The14th]

I really like this! ( And I'm extremely arachnophobic ;p )

I'm relatively new to KSP, but pretty soon I'm going to need to move things around in while orbit, and I'm definitely going to be using some of these!

Thanks!

[Elmetian]

I'm really liking it. Had a wee play about tonight and it's really well made. Thinking of taking a couple on my first trip to Jool for shuffling payloads about and deorditing things.

If you tweak this or make more be sure to let us know please.

Thanks Oddbin. I don't mind saying that I'm quite enjoying knowing that I've produced something useful. I'm going to release a reduced part count version soon that might be better suited to taking on interplanetary trips, or those who struggle to run part-heavy ships without laaagggg...g.

I really like this! ( And I'm extremely arachnophobic ;p )

I'm relatively new to KSP, but pretty soon I'm going to need to move things around in while orbit, and I'm definitely going to be using some of these!

Thanks!

No worries Glad my little tug has found some fans

[Elmetian]

I'm going to release a reduced part count version soon that might be better suited to taking on interplanetary trips, or those who struggle to run part-heavy ships without laaagggg...g

It's only taken me 6 months to update this craft file

I've recently been rebuilding some of my more popular craft, and I realised that the Spider was in desperate need of a part count reduction. I've swapped out the old Kumo booster for my new Tiào S, and removed a lot of unnecessary clutter from the actual tug. Hopefully you should find it more usable than the original.

[The14th]

It's only taken me 6 months to update this craft file

I've recently been rebuilding some of my more popular craft, and I realised that the Spider was in desperate need of a part count reduction. I've swapped out the old Kumo booster for my new Tiào S, and removed a lot of unnecessary clutter from the actual tug. Hopefully you should find it more usable than the original.

1 toggles the atomic engines

2 toggles the solar panels

3 toggles the nose docking port

Change Log:

Replaced Kumo booster with more efficient Tiào S
Reduced monopropellant from 175 units to 15
Reduced size of the fuel expansion slots to Clamp 'o' Tron Juniors to save mass
Replaced Inline Advanced Stabilizer with Inline Reaction Wheel to save mass
Part count on the pad reduced from 72 parts (159 on the pad)
Updated the action groups

As a loyal HHI customer, I hope you don't mind some feedback on your MarkIIs!

• As with the O.O.P.S Mk2, the booster is much improved!
  
• I think the Spider Mk2 also looks better without the side Clamp 'o' Trons and the reduced part count is very welcome indeed!
  
• While 175 monoprop may have been excessive, just 15 is a little low for my tastes - docking with payloads is one of the primary functions of the craft. I guess I can add some more on drop-tanks connected to the fuel expansion slots.
  

Onto one strange thing, and there seems to be a pattern emerging across ALL your releases.

For some reason I'm loosing your action-groups.

No.2 on the Spider is fine, but 1 and 3 are empty.

Likewise there are empty action-groups on the O.O.P.S Mk2 and the Canary Mk2. Then when I did a little checking I realised that I'm missing action groups from all your recent submissions - the Big O and Voltaire included.

At first I thought the problem might be my end, but I'm only missing action groups on your new ships not others downloaded from this forum... AND I'm not missing action groups from your old versions of these ships, only these new ones.

This is where it gets really strange... If I open the craft files in notepad and compare (for example) the O.O.P.S Mk1 and Mk2 engines, the both have identical actiongroup settings in apparently all the right places:

ACTIONS
{
OnAction
{
actionGroup = Custom01
}
ShutdownAction
{
actionGroup = None
}
ActivateAction
{
actionGroup = None
}
}

In which case, why does it work for the older ones and not the new ones? And why only yours?

It might be helpful if someone else could confirm whether the action groups are missing when they load your Mk2s into their games.

[Elmetian]

For some reason I'm loosing your action-groups. No.2 on the Spider is fine, but 1 and 3 are empty.

Likewise there are empty action-groups on the O.O.P.S Mk2 and the Canary Mk2. Then when I did a little checking I realised that I'm missing action groups from all your recent submissions - the Big O and Voltaire included...

This is odd. I think it's something to do with my install of KSP. Most of these craft were taken from my second sandbox save (the first one was getting really cluttered). When I created the new save I copied all my existing craft across from my first sandbox, and I noticed that action group 1 was missing for every single vehicle. I bet it's something to do with this.

I think I'll reinstall KSP this afternoon and hope that fixes the action groups. Got a bad cold at the moment so it might later in the evening (GMT) before I get round to re-uploading everything. Thanks again for taking the time to test these, I probably wouldn't have noticed this weird bug for a long time.

[The14th]

I think I'll reinstall KSP this afternoon and hope that fixes the action groups. Got a bad cold at the moment so it might later in the evening (GMT) before I get round to re-uploading everything. Thanks again for taking the time to test these, I probably wouldn't have noticed this weird bug for a long time.

No problem - I think they're great designs and I enjoy using them in my own game, so I'm very happy to help.

Since you're re-installing anyway, it sounds like the release of 0.23.5 may have come at a perfect time!

[Elmetian]

As a loyal HHI customer, I hope you don't mind some feedback on your MarkIIs!

• As with the O.O.P.S Mk2, the booster is much improved!
  
• I think the Spider Mk2 also looks better without the side Clamp 'o' Trons and the reduced part count is very welcome indeed!
  
• While 175 monoprop may have been excessive, just 15 is a little low for my tastes - docking with payloads is one of the primary functions of the craft. I guess I can add some more on drop-tanks connected to the fuel expansion slots.

I've updated the booster again to use ARM parts. Much as I liked my older boosters, these new 3.75m parts mean I can use far fewer. I've also added back a load more monopropellant as it does make turning large objects painful. For docking with asteroids I recommend taking monoprop drop tanks, or better yet, something like my upcoming LIMPET asteroid manoeuvring unit:

Edited April 20, 2014 by Narcosis