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

[Kerbalwerks]

On 8/14/2019 at 2:42 PM, Phantomic said:

Always good to have more builders, especially small engine builders, they're my favorite to run because they're so simple and you can see the prop in most cases

The new robotics can be good, but playing around with kraken tech is a real joy and some of the best fun I fimd in KSP.

[panzer1b]

Making more progress on duna colony, added a few buildings besides the massive tower i built last week.

For some reason i have a thing for using alot of girders/panels in my designs, its just not really possible to make something look like a building without em...

Ever since i discovered you can use cubic struts and normal struts together to make bendy cables, ive sorta been abusing it like crazy on all my land buildings, mostly between the building itself and power supplies.

Shot from bottom of skytower, more cables, and plenty of structural junk that serves n real purpose but looks cool.

View from damaged interior, originally i had the missing segment being intentiomnal part of design, but i later made it look more like stuff was hanging off the ower via struts and about to fall off with the rest.

And finally a view of duna landscape from the very very top of the tower, its quite tall, but if i can come up with a way to make this thing taller without lagging my KSP install to death, im so going to do so.  Still have plenty of stuff i need to make, fuel depo, a less terrible looking refinery (i have multiple designs, none of which im actually happy with), landing platforms (like refinery, have alot of these, not happy with any of the designs for either looking too bland or having too many parts), and finally some vehicles to transport the kerbins around between stuff that arent tanks, afterall, this isnt actually a military facility or anything of the sort despite what i normally do in KSP (since there is no way im going to load all of that and a ship that will be used to go orbital all within 2.5km).

And made a few minor edits to the dimension-III class warship, mainly redid the torpedo bay by making the doors below and not above the ship (couldnt get a single door to work for the top, needed 2 which was more complexity).

One of my more sleek ships, especially after i added some DLC parts to make the doors slide properly and not rely on aerodynamic control surfaces as makeshift redneck doors (which i did equip the non-DLC variant with, just doesnt look anywhere near as good ofc).

So yeah, now to make my new pulsar class stealth frigate, suprisingly hard to make something with 1005 of its weapons hidden inside the hull, and no major protrusions or engine thrust clearly vesible outside of the ship...

[Servo]

I kinda finished my BF-109. Unfortunately, I looked back at it and realized that I missed a lot of the nuances of the shape and profile. But it looks smooth, is recognizable, and flies really well (110m/s top speed)

So I'm torn - release a knowingly imperfect replica, or basically start over and do it right.

[Yaeah]

3 hours ago, Servo said:

I kinda finished my BF-109. Unfortunately, I looked back at it and realized that I missed a lot of the nuances of the shape and profile. But it looks smooth, is recognizable, and flies really well (110m/s top speed)

So I'm torn - release a knowingly imperfect replica, or basically start over and do it right.

This looks amazing, really well done.

How many parts is it?

[Kerbalwerks]

On 8/15/2019 at 1:22 PM, Kerbalwerks said:

 

 

Definitively Not Stratzenblitz's Helicarrier but wanted to make an atmospheric carrier nevertheless, been playing around with the turbo prop engines a lot lately and can say I am enjoying this build.

A lot more I would like to do but part count is getting high, around 830 parts now, PC starting to struggle.

 

[fulgur]

I built myself something which I think qualifies as a shuttle. It has 4x panther engines which get it up to 800m/s and 15km, which then decouple. The only mod parts are the engines, which come from Kerbal Atomics and have a LfO mode which gives extra thrust.

Doing some Munar rescues, either coming or going. It's still pretty low-tech and I hope that I will eventually make it better, or at least easier to ascend in.

[Chaotic Protocol]

A couple side projects while I ramp up for Project Halcyon. (Can somebody give me a kerbalized name for the R-7 that isn't the K-7. K thx)

[Yukon0009]

 

A prototype for a round-Kerbin flight propellor plane. Uses the structure of a WW1 style bomber, with 5 replaceable engines so they can be replaced en-route if they blow up.

[ScriptKitt3h]

Been working on a lot of planes lately.

 

 

[Zacspace]

So I tried to build a tilt-wing VTOL Eve SSTO with propellers. It went better than you might expect, but I have hit a snag. Almost the entire plane is hitting performance targets, but it drops like a rock out of the sky once it gets to around 7000m on Eve, even though it flies fine on Kerbin. I have some theories and ideas, but I bet there's someone out there looking at the picture thinking "you idiot! you obviously didn't consider x!" I hope that person tells me what to sub in for x. If nothing else, I'll post a craft file and hopefully my aerodynamic big-tilt-wing mechanism can be useful to someone.

https://imgur.com/h7sp1D9

FYI, the propellers, if pointed into the airstream and stopped from spinning produce a pretty manageable amount of drag, about as much a s a regular control surface. So this is possible to do, just maybe not for this plane to do it.

[prgmTrouble]

11 minutes ago, Zacspace said:

it drops like a rock out of the sky once it gets to around 7000m on Eve

How exactly is it failing? Is it losing power or does it spiral out of control? The first can be solved with larger propellers to deal with the air pressure gradient (see V-22 Osprey for inspiration) and the second could be a problem with fuel consumption shifting the center of mass (need to set fuel flow priority and perhaps alter the wing position). Regardless, I think ISRU is the way to go since you can capture an asteroid on the way out. If you go this route, the propellers can be smaller and you can engage the rockets earlier.

[Zacspace]

9 minutes ago, prgmTrouble said:

How exactly is it failing? Is it losing power or does it spiral out of control? The first can be solved with larger propellers to deal with the air pressure gradient (see V-22 Osprey for inspiration) and the second could be a problem with fuel consumption shifting the center of mass (need to set fuel flow priority and perhaps alter the wing position). Regardless, I think ISRU is the way to go since you can capture an asteroid on the way out. If you go this route, the propellers can be smaller and you can engage the rockets earlier.

Falling out of the sky is a little bit dramaitic I guess, it just loses airspeed really quickly if I try to climb higher than that, if I'm climbing aggressively as you'd tend to in something that's supposed to SSTO, the effect is that I stall and have to go into a dive to get control again. I can get higher with fewer propeller blades, but then lose the ability to VTOL. It seems to me that there's something unique about Eve's atmosphere that I'm just not understanding.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Zacspace

[prgmTrouble]

2 minutes ago, Zacspace said:

Falling out of the sky is a little bit dramaitic I guess, it just loses airspeed really quickly if I try to climb higher than that, if I'm climbing aggressively as you'd tend to in something that's supposed to SSTO, the effect is that I stall and have to go into a dive to get control again. I can get higher with fewer propeller blades, but then lose the ability to VTOL

I thing you should try fewer but larger propellers. If that is too unsightly or causes other problems (re-entry, probably), then I would go for an ISRU solution. If you aren't too attached to the SSTO design, I would even ditch the propellers at the 7km mark since they are worse than dead weight at that point (cuz drag). You might as well attach some science and probe cores to them and make them "deploy-able flying drones" to make it seem less like a cop-out and more like a "feature". Regardless, propellers are very difficult to integrate into rocketry because they increase complexity two-fold (which unfortunately means that there are few real-world examples to copy take inspiration from). 

[Zacspace]

2 minutes ago, prgmTrouble said:

I thing you should try fewer but larger propellers. If that is too unsightly or causes other problems (re-entry, probably), then I would go for an ISRU solution. If you aren't too attached to the SSTO design, I would even ditch the propellers at the 7km mark since they are worse than dead weight at that point (cuz drag). You might as well attach some science and probe cores to them and make them "deploy-able flying drones" to make it seem less like a cop-out and more like a "feature". Regardless, propellers are very difficult to integrate into rocketry because they increase complexity two-fold (which unfortunately means that there are few real-world examples to copy take inspiration from). 

I actually don't know how to make a propeller larger. These each have two of the big rotors stacked together for extra torque already and are being pushed pretty much to the limit. ISRU is definitely part of the plan, it'll just come in the form of a separate craft that docks with it on the surface. As for ditching SSTO, the whole reason for this plane is that Eve is the only body in the solar system that I don't have a reusable landing solution for. It's flight profile calls for it to fly under prop power to ~20,000m where the atmospheric pressure is pretty much equal to Kerbin sea-level, probably higher even than that, and then make the run to orbit on those vectors. at the point where it's failing, it's pretty much just a really heavy regular old airplane and the spacecraft part of it hasn't even come into play yet. I thought I had regular old airplanes figured out. In any case, I do appreciate your help. I'll definitely have to consider some more major design changes.

[prgmTrouble]

2 minutes ago, Zacspace said:

I actually don't know how to make a propeller larger. These each have two of the big rotors stacked together for extra torque already and are being pushed pretty much to the limit. ISRU is definitely part of the plan, it'll just come in the form of a separate craft that docks with it on the surface. As for ditching SSTO, the whole reason for this plane is that Eve is the only body in the solar system that I don't have a reusable landing solution for. It's flight profile calls for it to fly under prop power to ~20,000m where the atmospheric pressure is pretty much equal to Kerbin sea-level, probably higher even than that, and then make the run to orbit on those vectors. at the point where it's failing, it's pretty much just a really heavy regular old airplane and the spacecraft part of it hasn't even come into play yet. I thought I had regular old airplanes figured out. In any case, I do appreciate your help. I'll definitely have to consider some more major design changes.

Maybe try a stratolaunch? There could be three parts: the air launch vehicle with the propellers, the shuttle that ferries the payload to orbit, and a station with docking ports for an interplanetary vehicle. I think this might be the best option for this kind of scenario since everything can be reused with a bit of elbow grease and a viable base with ISRU. It will probably be quite an endeavor to engineer such a complicated system, but such is the challenge when designing a fully reusable system.

[IkranMakto]

It's a bug with new propellers. 

[Jon144]

Back from a long leave of absence again.

You guys can call me old fashioned now after having been an innovator for a long time. I don't plan on using any of the paid mods (some might call them DLC) so that anyone who owns any copy of KSP can fly my planes.

Also, fitting with the new DLC release...

This plane's motor is a hybrid system using both dumpling and rcs ball bearings. Finally some solidarity between the vanilla rivalry!

https://kerbalx.com/Jon144/Kerbatros-P-2B-Firetail-No-DLC

Edited August 26, 2019 by Jon144

[Phantomic]

On 8/23/2019 at 1:23 PM, Yukon0009 said:

 

A prototype for a round-Kerbin flight propellor plane. Uses the structure of a WW1 style bomber, with 5 replaceable engines so they can be replaced en-route if they blow up.

 cool to watch other guys start off prop building and not use fairing props. Reliability is a problem everyone faces and everyone gets it fixed differently. Holiday used thicker bearings so they reset themselves when power comes off, i used more bearings and jon used a thicker rotor bearing

 

On a different note, i should really rebuild my B-26

oh wait i did.

[qzgy]

20 hours ago, Jon144 said:

This plane's motor is a hybrid system using both dumpling and rcs ball bearings. Finally some solidarity between the vanilla rivalry!

There was a rivalry? O_o

Must have missed out. I like my 1.3.0 save. 

Good to know it's finished though. 

[Jon144]

1 hour ago, qzgy said:

There was a rivalry? O_o

Must have missed out. I like my 1.3.0 save. 

Good to know it's finished though. 

I was mostly just joking. Most engines I have seen used either rcs ball bearings or my dumpling bearings. This one uses one of each! 

I don't think there was any real rivalry 

Edited August 26, 2019 by Jon144

[Phantomic]

They're Groovin

thank you jon for coming out of your coma to bless us with wonderful engines once again

[Servo]

One of the oddest planes that ever were: the PZL M-15 Belphegor

I built this yesterday in response to a challenge to build a straight-winged plane posed by @HolidayTheLeek

The tanks on this thing were the most difficult part of the build, but I think I did all-right. It's certainly the cleanest solution that I could come up with.

Download link here: https://kerbalx.com/servo/PZL-M-15-Belphegor

[Jon144]

Edited August 27, 2019 by Jon144

[kapteenipirk]

Sorry it's taken so long for me to get any new stuff out, but something really exiting happened to me, that's eaten pretty much every inch of my time these past 3-4 weeks.

After what was nearly a year long search, i got a place at a school here in Ikaalinen. It's all about 3D-printing/modelling (one of my primary hobbies), so should be really fun .

The other exiting part, is the fact that for the first time, i got to move into a place of my own, witch is something ive wanted for a long time now.

 

But, even in the midts of all the chaos and red tape, i was able to put something together that you might enjoy.

 

 

 

The next entry in my long line of Tornado aircraft. I have been trying to keep the tradition of Building/updating them after every major update, but it's been really difficult coming up with a design that feels exactly right, and one that doesn't feel like a repeat of an earlier model (Tornado's 5-7 where basically the same base design with some improvements in each succesing model).

I did have one that would have fit that bill (Tornado-8), but unfortunately something in it broke due to an update, witch caused it to go insane and explode on the runway. 9 just didn't feel right and 10 wasn't really a Tornado craft at all.

 

But this, the all new and original Tornado-F, should fit the bill just nicely.

I mean, how can you say no to a variable swept wing supersonic VTOL interceptor .

I still need to do some more tweaking and testing to get it just right. The VTOL bit is the one giving me the most troubles.

 

So, be on the lookout for that.

[ScriptKitt3h]

Worked on a flying aircraft carrier ship today.