totm june 2018 Work-in-Progress [WIP] Design Thread

[selfish_meme]

Resolved second stage seperation issues, now I am trying to balance the fuel load, it's within a couple of meters of the real thing and makes orbit easily, improved many other features and am working on reuseability

Not sure how but I have reduced load times and seperation times by about 30s

It reminds me of the MC Hammer song I like big ... and I can not lie

Edited February 25, 2018 by selfish_meme

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

On 2/21/2018 at 8:30 PM, PaperAviator said:

 

FYI I would avoid having the blower going through the center, blowing on the meshing teeth of the gears. I remember from the experiments I did with synchrocopters/ intermeshing blades that having that configuration resulted in the power rapidly pulsing between the rotors as the exhaust hit a tooth from each gear in turn. This caused a jiggle that put much more strain on the gears, causing to break more often.

I'd recommend giving each shaft it's own separate turbine and blower, such that the gears must only provide minimal forces to keep the rotors synced.

@selfish_meme

I like big rockets and I cannot lie.

You otha brothas can't deny.

When a rocket rolls out 

with engine bells in your face

You get sprung Wanna see it launch...

Edited February 25, 2018 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[atassiedevil]

So i built this, which is stock apart from tweakscale and potentially the OBIOZur  welding mod, so the part count isn't too horrendous. It's a full scale Battlestar Valkyrie, which is the pocket battlestar from the Galactica series.  650m long.

I've put it up on kerbalX here, https://kerbalx.com/atassiedevil/Valkyrie but  commented that it is work in progress so people don't get all upset n stuff as it currently doesn't work.

 

It has launch tubes, full working airlocks (courtesy of scaled inflatable heatshields), and enough storage in the flight pods for 24 Vipers, a bay in the center body for plenty of raptors and steathstars, as well as the blackbirds from my hangar which are all to scale and all on kerbalx here. Both the Mk2 and Mk7 Vipers will fit in the tubes as will the Blackbird, the Steathstar will have to be bay launched as you'd expect.

https://kerbalx.com/atassiedevil/craft

Been trying to use the OBIOZur  Welding mod, so i can reduce part count. (basically so it wont lag to death and tear itself apart when you try and do any manouvering)

I'd like to weld the body in one big part, minus the engines and airlocks, so part count is minimal and it functions. I can then add the engine pods and airlock bits. This isn't working too well as you can imagine. It crashes on launch and i don't know what "symmetry mode" in the OBIOZur  Welding mod i should be using, so it could be as simple as that.

It'll also need more reaction wheels or RCS to do actual manouvering.

Can anyone see what i am missing here? If i can get this to work it'll be epic. I'll then try and build a galactica and pegasus.

C.

 

Edited February 25, 2018 by atassiedevil
Additions and changes to help required.

[Majorjim!]

13 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

It reminds me of the MC Hammer song I like big ... and I can not lie

Its coming along nicely! Looks like a tricky project too.

 That song is by Sir Mix-a-lot not Mc Hammer.

[selfish_meme]

9 hours ago, Majorjim! said:

Its coming along nicely! Looks like a tricky project too.

 That song is by Sir Mix-a-lot not Mc Hammer.

I am on a new version, but the load times are horrendous on all of them, big fairings overlapping, means big delays

[klond]

NASA type rover update - Mun tests

 So I hit version 5.8ish and felt pretty good.  'Drove vehicle to the local pool for suspension testing.  Great!  Time to make a rocket for Mun test next.

Spoiler

 Ok, now I gotta make a rocket that won't wobble to death or spiral out of control.

Spoiler

 There we go.  Don't laugh too hard.  20 reverts and many mistakes later we get orbit (feelsgoodman).  Over the course of a couple hours and a bunch of quicksaves/quickloads ended up getting 2 full rover copies and 1 wrecked one to the Mun, all in darkness, which is good for testing I guess.  Couldn't see jack squat tho, lol.  Oh, and my first trip I forgot to put lights facing down so um I'm guessing the height above ground and it didn't go so well.  After I crashed hard, well then I knew the elevation of the surface..  That part felt a little cheaty.  Shouldn't there be a sensor for this other than visual, like 'depth under keel' for a boat?

K, got one of the rovers undocked and out of the cradle.

Spoiler

 Note here: the version of the craft I took to the Mun had the power of each wheel as low as I dared set it.  Low enough it won't drive on Kerbin.  Didn't matter - sold my soul for leg power and you-know-who came calling.

Spoiler

 So of the 2 good rovers, none lasted more than 1 minute and were just terrible under low gravity.  I'm going to fork that version and keep a copy because it drives so nice on Kerbin.  I'll make a video sometime.

 In the meantime the other version fork continues, and looks more like Curiosity's suspension every day.  Maybe Duna's slighty higher gravity (says the wiki) vs the Mun will help the suspension work more correctly.

 Designing stuff to work on other planets is hard.

Edited February 26, 2018 by klond

[qzgy]

2 hours ago, klond said:

mistakes later we get orbit (feelsgoodman)

Why not just you know... hack it into orbit? It is just for testing anyways and could have saved you what seems to be a considerable amount of time...

[Majorjim!]

11 hours ago, klond said:

 Designing stuff to work on other planets is hard.

Tis! Keep at it though mate.

 You should create a kerbin test arena to show off the suspension.

[VR_Dev]

 

 

Edited February 26, 2018 by VR_Dev

[klond]

20 hours ago, qzgy said:

Why not just you know... hack it into orbit? It is just for testing anyways and could have saved you what seems to be a considerable amount of time...

 I still get that awesome feeling of achievement when there's success from effort.  Getting to orbit hasn't gotten old yet since I do it so infrequently.

 I have tried Vessel Mover to get ships from the runway into the water , but couldn't get it to work.

 Thanks for following along.  Stay tuned to see if I can get 4 tons of rover to Duna right-side-up.  Only been there twice and it was glorious.

 

[qzgy]

28 minutes ago, klond said:

 I still get that awesome feeling of achievement when there's success from effort.  Getting to orbit hasn't gotten old yet since I do it so infrequently.

 I have tried Vessel Mover to get ships from the runway into the water , but couldn't get it to work.

 Thanks for following along.  Stay tuned to see if I can get 4 tons of rover to Duna right-side-up.  Only been there twice and it was glorious.

 

Ahh ok, makes sense. Go right ahead then.

For vessel mover, which part of it isn't working for you?

Also, good luck with the Duna Landing.

[selfish_meme]

1 hour ago, klond said:

 I still get that awesome feeling of achievement when there's success from effort.  Getting to orbit hasn't gotten old yet since I do it so infrequently.

 I have tried Vessel Mover to get ships from the runway into the water , but couldn't get it to work.

 Thanks for following along.  Stay tuned to see if I can get 4 tons of rover to Duna right-side-up.  Only been there twice and it was glorious.

 

You can hack gravity without any mods to be what you want, so you could test on the runway with Duna gravity before taking the long trip there, just use the Debug menu

[klond]

24 minutes ago, selfish_meme said:

You can hack gravity without any mods to be what you want, so you could test on the runway with Duna gravity before taking the long trip there, just use the Debug menu

 Now that I'd be willing to try!  I can picture the Duna trip's success rate increasing already.

[Servo]

Had a little bit of time this evening, knocked out a new hinge design, This one is much flatter than any one I've made before. A ring of 8 RCS balls surrounds another RCS ball hinge. This supports the lateral forces, with the up-down forces being taken by the wing glove. No docking mechanism yet, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

[MaianTrey]

I think I have a working MBS for my stock ISS recreation. It moves along the rails, and docks in place to do whatever installation is needed, and then locks back up to be moved wherever. Also have a few screenshots showing the umbilical and strut connection from the Destiny lab to the S0 truss. Album here: https://imgur.com/a/C4f2W

 

Edited March 4, 2018 by MaianTrey

[Azimech]

Building a city is a lot of work.

[Castille7]

2 hours ago, Azimech said:

Building a city is a lot of work.

Can you elaborate on this a little, is it a mod you are working on or with?

[He_162]

2 hours ago, Castille7 said:

Can you elaborate on this a little, is it a mod you are working on or with?

Perhaps hes using a color changing mod to put together a city out of parts...?
-edit- scratch that, hes changed the ground shape and such.

Edited March 5, 2018 by He_162

[Azimech]

14 hours ago, Castille7 said:

Can you elaborate on this a little, is it a mod you are working on or with?

Nothing fancy, just Kerbal Konstructs.

I am however a little bit disappointed with the performance. What you see in the picture really slows down my pc a lot (I7700K/GTX 970). I think the fact every model has its own collider, is to blame.

Either KK or KSP is incapable of showing large amounts of models on the screen. Maybe now we know why all planets are barren.

But maybe I'm too quick to judge and I just need to change some settings.

[selfish_meme]

8 hours ago, Azimech said:

Nothing fancy, just Kerbal Konstructs.

I am however a little bit disappointed with the performance. What you see in the picture really slows down my pc a lot (I7700K/GTX 970). I think the fact every model has its own collider, is to blame.

Either KK or KSP is incapable of showing large amounts of models on the screen. Maybe now we know why all planets are barren.

But maybe I'm too quick to judge and I just need to change some settings.

There is a mod called Kerbal Cities, which uses KK, and it too sucks the performance, even though the buildings are very minimalistic

[EvenFlow]

So I made an Eagle.

Unsure whether I like the new fairing textures or not but I think I kinda made it work here. I wish you could still use the old texture too though.

[selfish_meme]

I built a really nice Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy (40t+) and (150t+) to LKO respectively, plus have juice for return (waiting on editor extensions to update so I can strip symmetry and have three engines for landing) so I worked on something for them to do

[kapteenipirk]

So, 1.4 is here and the making history DLC is a few days away, to celebrate that, i think it's time to go back to space for a change.

I taught id start this space-project with a nice good-old fashioned lifter.

 

And here is what the new lifter looks like.

I's nothing too flashy, as long as it gets the job done, that's fine enough for me.

 

Im currently in the process of building a space-station that im going to lift in to orbit with this thing. It was supposed to be a modernized recreation of something i built in my first 10h of KSP, the Spacelab, but now i have already started building modules to it that will turn this small multipurpose space-station in to a Kerbalized Hermes from The Martian.

I tested the lifter to make sure that it could do this.

I made it carry 1/2 jumbo-tanks worth of fuel to orbit, as i taught that the station probably wont be much heavier than that dummy payload.

Well, i didn't actually take the payload to orbit, i was at 100km and noticed that i had about 50% fuel left in the core stage. It was late and i wanted to go to bed, so it was proof enough for me.

 

I still have to do some tweaking as the Kraken likes to toy with the top of the rocket.

I did some changes to the rocket after that test-flight (mainly removed a stage and replaced it with a mid sized fuel-tank to give the core stage more fuel), and the rocket apparently didn't like all of them.

 

I currently have plans for a Mun landing (proper this time, not the usual broken on it's side like my first one), i would also love to send a rover or some kind of base there.

I would also love to visit Duna and send a small base there.

And i will also be for the first time learning ow to do orbital rendezvous so that i can start building bigger better space-stations, and some interplanetary ships that will carry all the stuff needed to explore and colonize other planets.

 

It's gonna be a lot of work and i haven't really done this kind of stuff in the past (minus that one accidental Mun landing and me sending some junk to orbit), but with all these new shiny rocket parts, im gonna give it a shot . Wish me luck.

[Skylon]

Just thought some of you might want to know...
Stage and a half designs are now possible; here's a bad example: 

Edited March 9, 2018 by Skylon

[selfish_meme]

3 hours ago, Skylon said:

Just thought some of you might want to know...
Stage and a half designs are now possible; here's a bad example: 
 

They have always been possible, just a tiny bit tricky

https://kerbalx.com/SelfishMeme/Atlas-Mercury

It seems that by osmosis I have developed a fleet of SpaceX  vehicles, may release a pack, the Falcon 9 is solid, the Falcon Heavy just needs some updates passed on and the BFR is still WIP