Realistic Solar System Crafts - MEGATHREAD

[Sparker]

Soyuz-like spacecraft. I'm planning to use it for crew/trsource transport to space stations.

Proton-like launcher. ~20t payload to LKO. This one launches a Lunokhod to the Moon.

[NathanKell]

This thread needs some love.

First, a Scout (more or less) with a 62kg mini satellite.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m8s8qv9977i5z7e/Microprobe%20Scout.craft

Second, a Mk1 Pod, service module, and launcher for it all. 1 toggles solar panels, 2 toggles antennae, abort triggers LES and decouples SM, 5 decouples everything and deploys chute (use after abort). Otherwise just stage your way to orbit. ~300m/s reserve for a 300x300km equatorial orbit.

Was originally going to have drop-engine Atlas-style staging, but I needed the thrust all the way.

RCS, two mini RCS tanks, parachute, and two antennae hidden inside the nose fairing below the docking port. SM contains more RCS, antennae, batteries, O2, and a hypergolic service engine. (ECLSS used).

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/p3cakf90d67f34e/Pod1%20Launcher%20III.craft

Both need all my mods, including Stretchy v7

Edited December 15, 2013 by NathanKell

[Captain_Party]

Lovely Nathan, unfortunately, I'm taking a break from RSS to wait until my new computer arrives...

[Razorcane]

I posted this over in my mission thread, but I guess I can share it here. I haven't gotten around to building other things yet and I've deleted screenshots of other ships, but I'll post more when I get to making them. This particular rocket can send 5t to GTO, although it's designed for .625 meter parts(the smallest), so you will probably have trouble making something that weighs that much.

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[ZaPPPa]

Mods used in the following examples:

Real Solar System

Ferram Aerospace Research

Modular Fuel System (Real Fuels)

Deadly Re-entry

ECLSS Life Support

Ackander Vertical Tree

Real Chutes

RemoteTech2

Craft 1:

Mass: 160t

Payload: 1t

deltaV: 16K

Mission: Science probe in Mun orbit

Craft2:

Mass: 170t

Payload: .5t

deltaV: 18K

Mission: Probe Mun landing

Note: All boosters outfitted with chutes for recovery

Craft3:

Mass: 140t

Payload: .5t

deltaV: 17K

Mission: Probe Mun landing

Note: All fuel LOX + LH2

Craft4:

Mass: 261t

Payload: 6t

deltaV: 12.4K

Mission: Heavy lifter to LKO

[Captain_Party]

Hey! Welcome! Just finished a 5000kg to LEO rocket, sorta ugly, but meh... I'll post it when I get home, I'm remaking my Atlas V series as well.

[ZaPPPa]

Craft5:

Parts: 167

Mass: 353t

Payload: 3.5t

deltaV: 14.5K

Mission: Manned (high) orbit of Mun

Relatively stable craft, but must disable SAS in stage 3 or it will wobble itself to death. Fortunately it does not require SAS to maintain course. It actually auto-turns to 45 degrees if nudged at around 5K altitude.

Stage 1:

12x RT-10 SRB

6x Aerospike

Stage 2:

6x Aerospike

Stage 3:

1x SLS-250 Bearcat

Stage 4:

4x KW Vesta VR-1

1x KW Maverick-1D

Stage 5:

1x RMA 3

Stage 6:

1x KW Vesta VR-1

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[Captain_Party]

Has anyone made a reliable Proton or Soyuz?

[ZaPPPa]

Manned lander on Mun

Mass: 1000t

Payload: 13t

Parts: 227

deltaV: 17K

Mission: Mun landing & return

1 Kiloton craft are mighty tough to launch with Ferram enabled!.. Take a lot of enabling/disabling SAS and thrust vectoring to make it go. Could not make a turn until I reached 45K or it would topple. Once stage 3 is reached, everything calms down.

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Unfortunately KSP decided to completely choke on the physics when I redocked with the return module. Something was wrong with the docking rings. I could have simply EVA'd from the Lander to the return module, but by then the craft was corrupted in the save and it became unusable.. A shame because I really wanted to complete this mission and I knew I had more than enough fuel and oxygen for the return trip.

Lemme say that putting a Kerbal on the Mun and returning him in RSS+RO+ferram career mode is not easy.. It took me hours to get the craft to the right deltaV and properly balanced.

[Sparker]

Has anyone made a reliable Proton or Soyuz?

I have, they're at the top of this page. The proton is quite close to real life, but the soyuz is a bit underpowered, so I'm not sure how much payload it can deliver into LKO as I mainly used it with the soyuz spacecraft copy. These launchers turned out quite reliable, I've performed a few successfull missions with each of them.

[Wallenberg]

Finally I'm about to post something to show my appreciation for RSS, ROv, StretchySRB, DREC, TAC LS, RftsEngines, RealChutes, RealFuels, FAR, PF (and possibly much more).

All of the following are in line with a single sandbox game so far - there might be some parts in the later rockets still left from the original tactical missile...

A tactical ballistic missile inspired by NK's "Reaching for the Stars" AAR series:

A medium-range ballistic missile:

An intercontinental ballistic missile:

A first satellite launcher:

The first man-rated rocket derived from the previous designs:

The next step, rated for two astronauts:

And this was built to rescue the astronauts who learned about the Engine Ignitor mod the hard way. After the first launch a second had to be scheduled quickly to rescue even more astronauts. One thing learned from this is that rotating the spacecraft around a lateral axis fast enough can be considered "ullage".

Thanks to all involved who are either developing these great mods as well as posting their awesome designs here!

.craft files will only be posted on request, none of these designs are in production stage.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Wallenberg
typos

[Captain_Party]

I am in love with the Mercury-pod one. Mini but mighty! Where are you getting the egg-shaped fuel stretchy tanks? I only have the conic one.

[maccollo]

I did it! I managed to construct a rocket using stock components that is capable of launching an Apollo type mission to the moon!

In all of my earlier attempts the rocket just wobbled itself to bits, or failed at random connection point, but then I came upon the structural pylon, which appears to be incredibly resilient to sheer stresses, and thanks to that I was able to construct this.

It's actually remarkably stable.

Edited January 18, 2014 by maccollo

[Wallenberg]

I am in love with the Mercury-pod one. Mini but mighty! Where are you getting the egg-shaped fuel stretchy tanks? I only have the conic one.

What you see in the picture of the Mercury capsule separation is only an egg-shaped procedural fairing. But you can also change the shape of how the conical tanks' sides slope down (use "b" to toggle through different curves).

Here is the .craft file of it

Mods used are (only those probably important for function listed):

Deadly Reentry

Kerbal Engineer Redux

Engine Ignitor

FASA (Gemini, Mercury et al)

Ferram Aerospace Research

Procedural Fairings

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement

Klockheed Martian (space shuttle engines - plugin only)

KW Rocketry

MechJeb (every FASA pod is per default a MJ module I think)

NovaPunch

Procedural Wings

RealChute

RealFuels

Realism Overhaul (Reaching for the Stars engines - Rftsengines.cfg - highly recommended for the experience!)

Real Solar System

Stretchy Tanks (StretchySRB that is)

TAC Life support (added Mercury, Gemini, BigG by hand)

@maccollo:

How did you even manage...? Stock parts only? Congratulations, this is an achievement indeed.

[Zyglrox]

Meet Angara A5P launcher.

Launch escape system is from Soviet pack, rescaled accordingly.

RD-191 engines are from Soviet Engines pack.

In flight, finishing gravity turn.

Losing first stage URM's and payload fairings.

Kerbal Piloted Transport System in 200km orbit.

I couldn't find any suitable engines for it, so I took a "LittleMother" from NP, resized to 3m and copy-pasted stats from SFJB's Apollo SM engine.

[Sparker]

Cool!

Could you show the abort system more detailed?

[Zyglrox]

Could you show the abort system more detailed?

Looks great on Soviet-style spacecraft.

[Elektrobus]

Proton K - 11t LEOable

http://imgur.com/a/feru5

[Captain_Party]

I love that Angara.

[Zyglrox]

Recently I decided to abandon RO for the reason of better parts compatibility in favor of 10x-rescaled Kerbol RSS. So it's a new game and clear skies, and the first thing I need is to design some launchers for my new space program. Normally I would just make the usual stuff (Soyuz-Atlas-Proton-SaturnV lookalikes) and call it a day, but since I already made an Angara-5P a few days ago and liked it, I decided to make the whole Angara family.

But:

1. I wanted to match stats of the rockets to those on wikipedia page, so in case of "which rocket for 20t payload" question I could look it up on wikipedia instead of some text file in my documents. Weird reasoning, yeah...

2. The design should be truly modular, i.e. the same URM for every rocket. All rockets should have close to 8000 delta-v with full tanks and listed payload.

It took me 3 days. The result:

A-1.1 = 2t to LKO (200 km)

A-1.2 = 4t

A-3 = 15t

A-5 = 25t

A-5P = 18t, manned

A-7V = 40t

A-7P = 36t, manned

A picture of the hydrogen fueled upper stage of A-7P with its payload almost in orbit:

The payload itself is worth a notice.

It is a PPTS-inspired spacecraft with hydrolox booster stage attached. I posted my first version of it several posts ago, this time I went for some kind of "realism" with numbers, too. Some parts are custom-sized.

According to proposed specifications, Lunar version of the PPTS should weigh 16.5 tons.

The booster stage should have enough delta-v for a 100 km lunar orbit, but here in KSP I couldn't find an engine/fuel/tank combination with such capabilities and under 20t wieght. The one in the picture is barely enough to reach Mun/Minmus, and orbit should be made with vehicle's propulsion system instead. Anyway, there is enough fuel left for some docking maneuvers and return, so let's just call it the "Kerbal way".

Mods: RSS (10x Kerbol config), FAR and DR - environment,

KW and real fuels with "realistic stockalike" config - engines,

stretchy tanks, procedural fairings, KJR, real chutes, FASA, Soviet pack - miscellaneous,

my own rescaled parts, replaced textures and probably some other stuff from here and there.

[Sparker]

The rockets are very cool!

[Wallenberg]

Well, since Ferram is working on a 1,000 mt launch vehicle, this might seem a bit outdated:

The Aggregat 10e 100t to LEO launcher and its 5,000 dV three-crew orbiter of the Financier IV type. While the Financier can carry more crew in its orbital module, it is not designed to safely reenter all but the three in the capsule.

Launch profile: start gravity turn slowly when over 100 m/s, gradually from 80° to 45° as soon as the apoapsis rises beyond 50,000 m.

Aim for a time to apoapsis of 1/2 to 2/3 of the burn time of the second stage to drop your nose for circularizing.

Once circular orbit (about 280 x 280 km) has been achieved and the payload is separated, the 2nd stage can be maneuvered and its small middle engine reignited to de-orbit.

Action groups of the launcher:

Backspace: ignites LES engines and decouples the capsule

0 : decouples LES and opens the parachutes

Action groups of the Financier IV orbiter:

1 : Toggle solar panels

2 : Toggle antennas

3 : Toggle lights

4 and 5: Toggle the four outer engines and the middle engine separately (all on by default when staging)

Download A 10e / Financier IV via Dropbox

Requires:

RSS/RO/RF/RftsEngines/StretchySRB/Engine Ignitor + Klockheed Martian Space Shuttle engines plugin,AIES, Deadly Reentry, Kerbal Engineer, FAR, KAS (supply of engine ignitors for stranded fellows), Procedural Fairings and Procedural Wings, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, KW, MechJeb, NP, RealChutes, TAC Life Support... that's it - some of those might not be needed.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Wallenberg
added launch and action group quickstarter / added required mod

[Motokid600]

Meet Angara A5P launcher.

Launch escape system is from Soviet pack, rescaled accordingly.

RD-191 engines are from Soviet Engines pack.

The black fairings.. I must know how.

[Zyglrox]

The black fairings.. I must know how.

It's "Kosmos.URM.Fairing.Conic.S.BLK", as far as I can tell.

Most likely, from the Kosmos pack, I deleted it long ago, but supposedly merged the fairings textures with my main Keramzit folder, don't remember exactly.

[Fenisse]

Here it's my first attempt at making a rocket completely designed by me, the Compass 1 (I know, strange name). It's payload is a 800 kg satellite, but it could carry more (didn't test).

EDIT: I made another version with the Sat and a MicroSat, ready for download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0lcwxmyr2so26yg/Compass%201%20v1.zip

Mods used (v 0.23)

AIES Aerospace

FAR

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement

Real Fuels

MechJeb

Procedural Fairings

StretchySRBs

KW Rocketry

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Edited February 5, 2014 by Fenisse