How do you design your craft to look?

[Skyler4856]

I usually design my payloads after NASA and ESA mission's. I'm 15

[Demon_82]

I'm 31, and I try to build reallistic ships both in aesthetics and functionality. That means that my current RemoteTech 2 Lite network has a ton of single dish satellites, as they are fixed ones and two fixed dishes back to back can't point to two planets that aren't in opposite sides, and every launch was covred with procedural fairings. That said, I build some monstruosities from time to time when I try to send a surface base to any place, I've failed to do that modularly every single time but once xD

[sumghai]

Mid-twenties, and I design my rockets based on a very large and convoluted set of rules, some of which include:

- Crewed vessels must have abort / escape options throughout all phases of a flight; extensive unmanned testing is required before they are considered Kerbal-rated

- Use only lifters from a (very limited) selection of designs; no kludging extra boosters / fuel tanks

- No crazy min-maxing with whacko uber-asparagus rockets; if building a space station, send it up bit by bit; if building an interplanetary transfer vessel, use dockable transfer stages that can be assembled in orbit

- Payloads must fit underneath realistically-sized fairings; in other words, no tiny lifter with giant egg-shaped / superlong payload sections

[alacrity]

I posted earlier but realize pivs are worth a thousand words.

ROVERS

The beast refueler fully loaded over 100 tonnes

Science rover 1 from v .21

STAR BASES

Jovian base station "Overlord", Note minion probe in top right before it was sent off to Pol

Spindle Mk1 launched and asembled during the two days following docking port release

Spindle Mk 2 testing the limits of part counts

Spindle Mk 3 aka the Ode to gantries

Munar Orbital Habitat "Lupusville"

Kerbal Science platform "The Box"

COLONY BASES

Extraplanetary Launch Base with standard ALacrity landing package

Duna main habitat "Olympus"

Primary Duna Mobile Kethane Facility "Aero". Note the air bags and the propellers... Muahahah

LANDERS

"Johnny Appleseed" lander for duna mission with stops to drop off those little probes onthe way at ike, mun, and minmus.

"BubbleWrap" lander for a Mun mission

"Chariot" Duna Kerbal retrieval lander for a rescue mission

OTHER

EVE Online Rifter recreated for Kerbal (circa version 19 I think)

Ore storage tower "Hypheastus" for duna launch pad and refinery

"Herr Van Tuefel" Airship I made to fly to the pyramids of Kerbal

"Janus Rising" airship I planned to leave in high Jool orbit till I found out it couldn't be left there unattended

See.... No planes

Alacrity

[katateochi]

Some nice designs in here. Where is WackJob? I summon WackJob.

I build for form as much as function, both have to be right for me to be happy with a design. I used to build craft that where more improbable but lately I seem to be making sensible, more realistic craft. Its just a phase though.

One of the things I love about KSP is it doesn't really force you to do either, its up to you and either way has merit.

[ComradeGoat]

I'm 40. I'm a "form follows function" kinda girl. Here's my latest spaceplane, the Tristar Mk-1:

The design goal is simple: a singe seat shuttle with as little mass dedicated to atmospheric flight as possible, which can have a decent range in space and land vertically on airless bodies.

As a result, the wings are swept down and the tail is tall and rigid, so that each can take a landing leg at the tip. When landed it is angled slightly back so that the centre of mass sits inside the triangle of the legs.

There are no jet fuel tanks so that once in space, and refuelled, all fuel storage space can be used by the rockets, giving it a mass of around 10 tonnes and a range of over 2000 m/s delta-v; more than enough to land on bodies like the Mün.

It has a docking port at the front to which can be attached a drop tank for extended range (harder with an inline port, because that throws the centre of mass off when something is attached), and to dock with space stations.

It has 4 wing mounted ram intakes and a scoop intake under the main engine, allowing it to get up to 1700 m/s on jets at around 30,000 metres, leaving about 1000 m/s once LKO is established to rendezvous for refuelling.

However, I also like things to not look butt-ugly, and I do think this has a nice aesthetic to it.

[Danish_Savage]

Which spells FEMA, and so does not exactly instill confidence in efficiency!

You win this one. But I'll be back

Edit for the OP; I'm turning 17 and I build in following order(Function,Efficiency,Minimalism,Aesthetics.)

Edited November 14, 2013 by Danish_Savage

[ComradeGoat]

Spindle Mk 3 aka the Ode to gantries

OMG! Y U hate framerate?

[ComradeGoat]

In addition to minimalist little spaceplanes, I also build "flat pack" station/exploratory vessels in Kerbin orbit and then ship them off to distant locations, where they are reassembled into space station/orbital bases. This one is en-route to establishing a permanent orbital station at Duna:

[kiwi1960]

53, and I'd strap boosters to a rock if it would do the job!

[Traches]

I'm 40. I'm a "form follows function" kinda girl. Here's my latest spaceplane, the Tristar Mk-1:

*snip*

Lots of cleverness here. Good design!

[ComradeGoat]

Lots of cleverness here. Good design!

Hey, thanks! :-)

[Whirligig Girl]

13, form follows function, here's my Saturn V.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/stock-kerbal-v-stock-craft-style-mun-rocket/

and skylab, where function follows form.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/stock-kerbal-v-stock-craft-style-spacelab-and-kerbal-ib/

[Garek]

20, I like kind of a semi-realistic approach. Using FAR, DR and KJR, everything I launch either is aerodynamic, or gets packed inside a fairing. Also, Kerbals launch only on reentry-capable craft with LES. I haven't done much beyond LKO, so I can't say anything about space-only craft.

[Dante80]

33, I like a semi-realistic approach too.

Copernicus

RS-24

Silver Bullet (2 stage to LKO lifter)

Mu-4s

ST-01 (a space tug)

[alacrity]

OMG! Y U hate framerate?

Actually the station was down to 187 parts, before I added the two rescue and delivery vehikles. without them around I could still dock 70 part ships fairly easy. And capacity was in the neighborhood of 25k LoX.

Alacrity

[Catsceo]

22.

I build my lifters to look like real rockets, no matter how big they are. My stations and probes on the other hand, are a mess of spacetape and other parts.

[FlamedSteak]

I'm 37, I aim for function foremost, efficientcy second and hopefully if the first two are done correctly form will follow. That being said, I occasionally design a real turd that needs a lot of polishing to get into orbit.

I generally try to stay away from monstrosities due to the lag, but I make the odd exception. I'm currently sending a massive 6 wheeled dual command pod rover to Duna - it's basically a mobile base. The lag is acceptable when it's on the ground, but with the booster pack attached it's a nightmare.

[Catsceo]

*snip*

Silver Bullet (2 stage to LKO lifter)

*snip*

Where did you get those tanks? Stretchy Tanks?

[Dante80]

Yep, made a texture for them.

[Spatzimaus]

I'm 38, an astrophysicist, and my designs follow a pretty clear pattern. The first generation is pure functionality, with very little concern about aesthetics. This is especially obvious in the old-style stacks of rockets you'll use to first reach Mun and such. But then I start tweaking; in the course of making designs more efficient or robust, I'll clean them up a bit. It's not just about looking pretty; an efficient design is a good design, and efficiency usually involves doing things in ways that don't need tons of struts and such. I'll then go through a few generations of my designs where the capabilities change very little (if at all), but the design as a whole improves in quality with a noticeable improvement in appearance.

This is especially true of spaceplanes, where bigger isn't always better and being able to minimize your weight and part counts can have big payoffs in performance. For instance, here's the latest iteration of my personal SSTO spaceplane, the Sleazy Weasel 4b:

The "4b" means the third major iteration of the fourth generation of the design. Each distinct generation basically involves me tearing the design down and rebuilding it in better ways, while the iterations tend to involve minor tweaks that don't change the fundamental shape. The point is, the core capability of the design has barely changed at all since the first generation; it's still a ~27-ton design using two turbojets, 14 intakes (stacked), one LV-N, and a couple small boosters to help with achieving orbit. It's got a "thick wing" design to get plenty of lift without using a huge amount of space, which also lets me hide some of the necessary fuel lines and struts inside the body. It lands on its tail in a vacuum, and handles beautifully in an atmosphere. None of that has really changed since the beginning.

The only fundamental addition since the start are the ion pods at the ends of the wings, which make interplanetary transfers much more feasible (even if the burns do take a while), and better control surface placement to help with takeoffs (especially on Laythe). The rest of the changes are efficiency tweaks, often cosmetic, and the result is a plane that's just a lot prettier than its ancestors while also being a lot easier to fly.

This sort of process leads to a redesign of other types of designs as well; it's not just spaceplanes that benefit from this sort of iteration. My space station design is on the fourth generation, my basic rocket design is on the fifth, and my Kethane-using Grand Tour vessel (went everywhere back in 0.19) now has wings copied off the Weasel to help with atmospheric entries on Duna and Laythe. In most of those cases, the designs got a bit bigger in the process, but they still look a lot more refined than the originals.

[possum]

I am 28 and mine rockets tend to look realistic. I build under the principle that having a little too much is better than not enough, so thing tend to be a little on the big side.

[PDCWolf]

20yo. As realistic as stock-only can get. Unless I get some crazy idea and want to test it.

[TUFOM]

Age 22, I constantly try new things. Always on my mind what I have not tried yet.

Few pictures from "here & there"

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[milbournosphere]

I design my rockets with low part count in mind. Aesthetics come after performance for me. My stuff ain't pretty, but it gets the job done.