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Far Star. The first ship powered by a KrakenDrive hits the consumer market!

Rune

By Rune
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Rune

Rune

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Well, It's finally time. R-SUV is proud to roll out its first consumer-ready ship powered by a KrakenDrive (Mk 2.5, my own version of the Mk II, which works just as good as the Mk III posted here, but is more compact and uses fewer parts):

Far Star Class

Zpmb70D.png

It is a personal ship with a main drive powered by bottled krakens and auxiliary air and vacuum propulsion systems. In fact, I estimate the only place you can't land in and then return to kerbin is Tylo. Not because you can't lift off (you can without problems, I assure you), but because I doubt you can survive the descent, no atmosphere to break with and the KrakenDrive has issues with operation close to the ground, see below. Of course half (or more!) of the credit goes to Comrade Jenkens, the creator of the KrakenDrive, and let's let that clear right away: I just took an awesome idea and designed the package around it, suggesting minor improvements (i.e: I blatantly copied the idea, while stripping it into less than half the parts and SSTOing it, as usual ^^').

So, technical details because there are many:

It's a VTOL SSTO, and launches as such. You could use one of the KrakenDrive modes for it (see below), but best results are achieved when you launch like a conventional SSTO until you achieve an apoapsis outside the atmosphere. Doesn't matter how fast you are traveling, just get to a point where you can quicksave. The VTOL SSTO system also doubles as landing system, allowing controlled landings optionally assisted by parachutes. In short, it is there to make your life easier, just like the RCS system for fine maneuvering and the docking ports. If the worst happens, hitting abort will decouple the capsule and deploy and emergency parachute to save your kerbal. Won't do much for him if you are doing several hundred km/s on a solar escape trajectory, but sometimes you just want to survive that landing.

...and that's where the conventional instructions end and the KrakenDrive user manual begins. Hold on to your hats, because we are talking about handling primal forces with the power to either get you anywhere in the solar system, or spray you as a cloud of debris half across half the solar system. This is after a single test "burn", I later went back to a ~700km circular orbit, then back to the ground:

FtdJ0U6.png

First off, the KrakenDrive has two distinct modes of operation: liftoff, and in-space propulsion. For some highly theoretical inferred explanations, the best minds at R-SUV estimate that the bottled krakens in the drive, when engaged at low speeds close to a planet, fix themselves to the gravity well and push against it. This is the liftoff or ground effect setting of the drive, and its selection is automatic. Beware of this, because you might find yourself changing into this regime inadvertently (i.e: you break too much and go below the threshold of that planet, ~800m/s for kerbin) and the sudden coupling of your drive with the gravity well will rip you to shreds. Be very careful!

While using this "ground effect" setting, the ship will lock itself with the ground, and start ascending at a steady 5m/s, indefinitely, without changing speed and with a negligible lateral drift if you get it firmly pointed upwards. The most amazing thing is that while ascending like this, you will remain synchronized with the ground, increasing your rotation velocity to stay precisely above the same spot of the planet. You can exploit this effect to get out of any gravity well in the game, provided you can engage the drive without ripping you to shred due to excessive velocity, and that you can endure the excruciatingly long climb to synchronous orbit altitude, which is where you can disengage the drive and find yourself in a stable orbit. Just like a space elevator! (Disclaimer:; not actually tested up to KerboSynchronous orbit, just 75kms, stuff might happen as you pick lateral speed).

But what happens when you are going too fast for the drive to lock to the planet? Well, then the in-space setting applies. And boy what a setting. 18.9 Gs at your fingertips!!! Just point yourself in the desired direction of thrust, and engage the drive... well, sometimes. Let me explain: while the drive is very reliable in its ground setting (well, reliable if you don't engage it when going fast :rolleyes:), in space it has a tendency to... well, break. Like half the time you turn it on. You can repair the legs with a kerbal, don't worry about the fact that they snap as soon as you repair them, just press ESC just as you click the "repair" option, and when the game pauses you can click the "raise" option now available and the leg will rise fixed when you resume the game. But, the fastest thing is usually to just quickload before turning it on, and then just quickload until the legs hold.

Well, not all the times the legs hold, sometimes they don't engage in quite the perfect symmetry and you get a huge torque you can't counteract with the reaction wheels, but that's just a matter of turning it off and on again until you get it right. In the end you manage to make a "burn" about 10-15% of the times you turn it on. So I call it 100% reliable by kerbal standards. And considering that burn duration doesn't seem to matter, you can control the ship during burns perfectly if you can control it at all, and you do thrust at almost 20 G's... Yeah, you can still get anywhere with practice, and fast.

Phew, that took some time to write, I hope there aren't too many typos and it makes sense!! So yeah, have a happy day harnessing the power of bugs, and fly safe! (Someone needs to get Scott on this, BTW).

IMGUR ALBUM:

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DOWNLOAD:

http://www./download/ai2ida7lmhrd2sd/KrakenDrive+-+Far+Star+Class.craft

Rune. Ad Astra per Kraken!

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Rune

Rune

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What dark spells are these? :0.0:

Cupcake...

Dark ones. Dark ones indeed. Comrade Jenkens summoned the kraken, showed us how, and we are taming it for fun, profit, and a propellantless, 18.9G thruster. Some people claim they hit 30 or even 40 Gs with slightly less control, an yet others claim they even have reached superluminal speeds!

Rune. Join us! :D

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Comrade Jenkens

Comrade Jenkens

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How did you get rid of the bottom half?

The drive has been miniaturised over time. Its now only a 1/4 of the original size. :)

even have reached superluminal speeds!

This here is the ultimate aim of the project... A controllable, reliable and compact faster than light drive that can propel a mothership from Moho to Eeloo in less than a single in game day and then slow down again at the destination.

Wish us luck. We're going to need it. :)

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Rune

Rune

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The ground effect part works, but in like 30 space trials I've been unable to get any of the legs to not break.

Ok, try a bit more, 'cause I just did a circularization and escape on this file. But somehow the file I uploaded is behaving much worse than the one I did the trials in. They were supposed to be the same! Well, I'll try uploading a new old file... plus I somehow also managed to screw up the action groups, so probably for the best. ^^'

IuW7d3V.png

Rune. This one should work much better.

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Rune

Rune

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So what do you do to engage the kraken drive? I.e. what key(s) do you press.

Oh, it's in the ship's description, but basically 1 is rapiers, 2 rapier mode, and 3 the krakenDrive (or more precisely, the legs that activate the K-Drive). It's the order you use them to get to space.. Have fun! (and remember the abort button is functional!)

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Pauly

Pauly

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After deciphering a warning from a video log of the Far Star's crew going insane and mutilating each other, Jebidiah and Bill Kerman deduce that while the ship's kraken drive did successfully open a gateway in spacetime, it leapt outside the known universe and into another dimension, described later on by Dr. Weir Kerman as "a dimension of pure chaos, pure evil" . The Far Star has since then gained an evil sentience and telepathic abilities, tormenting its occupants with the aim of compelling them to return to Hell.

Be warned this technology is pure evil! :sealed:

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sgt_flyer

sgt_flyer

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After deciphering a warning from a video log of the Far Star's crew going insane and mutilating each other, Jebidiah and Bill Kerman deduce that while the ship's kraken drive did successfully open a gateway in spacetime, it leapt outside the known universe and into another dimension, described later on by Dr. Weir Kerman as "a dimension of pure chaos, pure evil" . The Far Star has since then gained an evil sentience and telepathic abilities, tormenting its occupants with the aim of compelling them to return to Hell.

Be warned this technology is pure evil! :sealed:

Shhhh ! Don't tell it ! Else, the other kerbals will want forcefields to protect them from the effects of krakendrive travels : p

It would set the krakendrive projects years or even decades back ! :)

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thomasjkenney

thomasjkenney

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While hyperspace travel causes a perception effect known as The Blind Spot, where any exposed window or active viewport will appear to close in on itself as if it didn't exist, krakenspace produces a qualitatively different kind of perception effect known as The Wonka Effect, wherein pilots and passengers believe they are traveling down a river of chocolate on a boat captained by Gene Wilder.

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Rune

Rune

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Guys you are hilarious! I'm seriously laughing like an idiot looking at the screen :D

I'm not sure I understand how this works so I am going to download it and try it myself... (*´_ã‚Âï½€)

*edit*

WTF THIS IS ANTIGRAVITY.................

Yeah it is! And also a propellantless drive once you get out of the atmosphere... Two impossible SCI-FI discoveries in one! All hail the KrakenDrive.

Rune. Has anybody got the reference in the name yet?

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Rune

Rune

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It was the name of a ship in Asimov's Foundation series, but I'm guessing that's not the reference you were using.

I knew someone was going to get it! :) The Far Star, to be specific, was the first ship to use a "gravitic drive" that was built into the walls of the ship, also got very rude with classic physics, and the whole ship was very tiny. So I thought it fit.

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