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Work-in-Progress [WIP] Design Thread


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3 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

My latest stuff is revolving around modular Space Station components

Hum. Great minds think alike? Mk3 shuttlebutts work great to hide the seams. :)

qR0qnBN.png

 

Rune. Interesting dockings to make stuff line up when building rings, right?

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10 hours ago, Rune said:

Hum. Great minds think alike? Mk3 shuttlebutts work great to hide the seams. :)

qR0qnBN.png

 

Rune. Interesting dockings to make stuff line up when building rings, right?

Actually yes, I did think about the shuttle butts, but then as you have shown, thought it would limit the size and I was looking for low part count but large. I really like that station you have there.

Again yes, I thought about twisting when docking, I am thinking of adding two jnr ports to each side of a module, so it forms a tripod connection, which should auto line up and greatly reduce frustration.

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12 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

Actually yes, I did think about the shuttle butts, but then as you have shown, thought it would limit the size and I was looking for low part count but large. I really like that station you have there.

Again yes, I thought about twisting when docking, I am thinking of adding two jnr ports to each side of a module, so it forms a tripod connection, which should auto line up and greatly reduce frustration.

Well, the size of the wheel is mostly defined by the length of the sections... You could use a big payload bay instead (or several Mk3 sections), and it would grow directly proportional to the length of your segments.

As to docking alignment, a single Jr port would do, I think, to lock an alignment. As long as it is off-center of the Sr. it will force a perfectly aligned double-dock. I also thought about that sort of solution, but I haven't implemented it yet myself.

In related news, I have successfully assembled my awesomest interplanetary stack yet, IMO. More than 4km/s in there without nukes, courtesy of using the lander as the propulsion section. Incidentally, said lander is a Vega, meaning it can land anywhere but Eve... and it also has the ability to land a small emergency refinery, too, or one of the ore tanks. In other words, in an emergency the lander can work as both a miner and tanker, making this a potential Grand Tourer on its own.

LCRZJnA.png

Other interesting stats of the assembly:

-About ten or eleven separate ~50mT launches. In the future it will be ten or less, but I was faffing around with how to package that ring efficiently. All done with reusable chemical SSTOs.

-318 parts in total, divided among 31 independent pieces docked to each other, some no more than eight part ring sections, or five part fuel tanks. Also a few commsats to establish a local network linked back to kerbin.

-All pieces were delivered inside a Mk3 payload bay, except the lander, which SSTOed itself. No space littering was conducted during the making of this pic.

-More dockings than I care to remember, most of them with <0.1º tolerance. Lots of double-docks in the tankage section, the Klaw Pod sure earned its keep!

-About 300mT IMLKO. dV without staging any tanks is ~4.2km/s, ~1.2 before refining any ore, TWR at the first burn is 0.3.

I am mighty pleased with myself for pulling this off so smoothly. :)

 

Rune. And SnapDock was glitchy, so most of the dockings are thanks to @NavyFish.

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6 hours ago, Rune said:

making this a potential Grand Tourer on its own.

If you started out by launching everything from Eve (I think there's a mod for that) you probably could do a grand tour with it all. Though it'd be a bit of an odd one with Kerbin as a temporary destination instead of the finish line.

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10 hours ago, Rune said:

Well, the size of the wheel is mostly defined by the length of the sections... You could use a big payload bay instead (or several Mk3 sections), and it would grow directly proportional to the length of your segments.

As to docking alignment, a single Jr port would do, I think, to lock an alignment. As long as it is off-center of the Sr. it will force a perfectly aligned double-dock. I also thought about that sort of solution, but I haven't implemented it yet myself.

 

I meant the angle of the shuttle butt, though it probably covers a multitude of angle sins

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6 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

If you started out by launching everything from Eve (I think there's a mod for that) you probably could do a grand tour with it all. Though it'd be a bit of an odd one with Kerbin as a temporary destination instead of the finish line.

Yeah, well, I ain't building a reusable launcher to get 300mT out of Eve's souposphere anytime soon. Besides, Grand Touring isn't the intended purpose! It's main purpose is serving as depot above one of Jool's moons (haven't decided which yet), where a decent surface base will also be set up. But the base is launched as an unmanned, nuclear-powered separate flight, mostly because of part count. So being able to to refill the manned ship by itself in a pinch is just a nice extra, in case things go horribly wrong somewhere, I run out of dV short of my goal, or the surface base that is supposed to supply the fuel at a decent rate gets lost in transit. Another emergency option is to load everybody in the emergency escape capsule (there is one, built around a Mk1-2 pod and little else), load that on the Vega and use it as a booster back to kerbin, then as ablative shielding if need be. Contingencies on the contingencies!

But if I was to do a Grand Tour, I'd just preposition a disposable lander to do that leg of the trip. Have you seen the size of reusable stuff for Eve? I'm sure you have seen the wonderful monstrosities people have built for that. And that's launching from the tallest mountain!

2 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

I meant the angle of the shuttle butt, though it probably covers a multitude of angle sins

The angle of the joint only defines the number of sections of the many-sided polyhedron ('cause it's never a true circle). Using the shuttlebutt's natural angle, you get 18 sections like me. But if they are 4x the length each, you will get 4x the diameter. Then again, you are showing 10º sections there, which would make the whole wheel 36 sections, so maybe you want the smoother curvature.

 

Rune. To each his own as I always say!

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2 minutes ago, Rune said:

Have you seen the size of reusable stuff for Eve?

Yeah. If I recall, my last "successful" Eve ascent vehicle was for quite a few kerbals or several tonnes of payload and was partially reusable (the top part which reached orbit) but I've since become convinced that there must've been several bugs which allowed it to work because I haven't been able to replicate anything like it. I can make Eve landers still, but they're far bigger, expendable, and carry less payload (and also more of a pain to get down to the surface and have them stay upright).

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SL7JoU7.png

 

Experimental multi-purpose shuttle-esque thing I made.

Hopefully it'll be able to both return crews from orbit to KSC, act as an atmospheric lander for both Duna and Laythe, and also be used as a vacuum lander.

3.5k vacuum dV, and 2.5 TWR on Kerbin. Yeah, a bit overkill but I like my vector engines. Just shy of SSTO, probably going to either use drop tanks or side boosters

 

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On 11/25/2017 at 8:29 PM, Azimech said:

If you can build that without the framework, I think you should. Take a look at my Excelsior, 2000+ parts. With this scale you'd easily come close or need even more.

https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/77I--USS-Excelsior-v11

You are correct, I continued on with the build but due to the vast number of objects with the grid it crashed my PC and now will not let me load it into any hangar. I was just planning on using the grid work as a reference ten deleting.

 

I will check out your build, should be great I am sure.

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On 11/27/2017 at 6:58 PM, Yukon0009 said:

SL7JoU7.png

 

Experimental multi-purpose shuttle-esque thing I made.

Hopefully it'll be able to both return crews from orbit to KSC, act as an atmospheric lander for both Duna and Laythe, and also be used as a vacuum lander.

3.5k vacuum dV, and 2.5 TWR on Kerbin. Yeah, a bit overkill but I like my vector engines. Just shy of SSTO, probably going to either use drop tanks or side boosters

 

I built a very similar craft a while back(1.1) with 5 RAPIERs and Big-S wing tanks. Worked fine as an SSTO, with about 900 m/s left in LKO(80km). I'm not sure how much has changed since then, but I reckon it'd still work.

(And with a refueling in orbit I could fly Mun landings. Wasn't a big fan of NERVs back then)

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I've been really busy with school lately, but I found a few spare hours this week to finally work on another of my 1:1 replicas.

cOeJAsG.png

This one isn't quite ready for release, but once I have a bit more time it will be.

5QJ1tFT.png

As with all of my replicas, I try to replicate all the functionality of the original craft. True to the original Harrier, the lift jets swivel, allowing the craft to transfer seamlessly from VTOL mode to horizontal flight and back.

V6Yn4Z8.png

I'm not 100% happy with the looks  (the tail and wings, particularly), so I will be updating it in the future.

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