Showcase: Kraken Drives

[Comrade Jenkens]

Now that the technology has matured a bit I'd like to see what you guys have come up with while I've been away!

Pics would be good.

[Woopert]

Excited to see what people come up with!

Edited September 7, 2014 by Woopert

[Chirality]

My Dual Kraken Engine ssto to Anywhere^tm. The workhouse (And only) ssto in the KnoefCo fleet. Check them out here.

Edited March 2, 2014 by Bouncingbunny

[Parallax]

what's a kraken drive?

[Chirality]

what's a kraken drive?

Quoting the KSP wiki,

A Kraken Drive is any assembly that lets the player control a vehicle's position using any of the Deep Space Kraken bugs. Kraken drives can be assembled with stock parts, and are of interest due to their ability to propel or halt ships effectively forever, at no cost.

[Parallax]

I still don't get how this works

[Chirality]

I still don't get how this works

OK, quoting the wiki again:

Kraken Drive

A Kraken Drive is any assembly that lets the player control a vehicle's position using any of the Deep Space Kraken bugs. Kraken drives can be assembled with stock parts, and are of interest due to their ability to propel or halt ships effectively forever, at no cost.

Contents [hide]

1 Background

2 Use and "operating modes"

3 Construction

4 History

5 Notes

Background

Before Krakensbane was introduced in v0.17, the Deep Space Kraken generated phantom forces that would act on vessels moving at very high velocity. Noticeably, when moving at extremely high velocity ex. on an orbit taking the player's ship close to the Sun, the player's orbit would visibly change due to intense Kraken-induced acceleration.

Krakensbane significantly reduced phantom forces but did not remove them entirely. Physics errors can still be magnified, and even controlled, by building certain assemblies. This is the basis of the Kraken Drive.

Use and "operating modes"

Since Kraken drives are usually built using some assemblage of landing legs or other moving part (ex. aircraft gears) tilted so as to clip back into the vessel when extended, they can usually be toggled on and off.

Kraken Drives seem to have two modes of operation: Low-, and high-velocity, with the presence of atmosphere as a possible third variable. At low velocities, below ~800m/s in the vicinity of Kerbin, many K-Drives will accelerate their vessel to a constant velocity that tends to be in the range of 0-5m/s. Above 800m/s over Kerbin, many K-drives will begin to exert constant acceleration on a ship.

This discrepancy between operating velocities can be dangerous to vessels attempting to slow down using a K-Drive. If the vessel falls below the cutoff velocity, but is moving much faster than "low velocity", activating the K-Drive can make the drive try to slow itself to low velocity, instantly.

Alternatively, some K-Drives seem to serve as anchors, holding the vessel fixed to a position relative to the parent body.

Certain K-Drives seem to function differently in atmosphere as well as, or rather than, switching modes based on velocity.

Construction

There is as yet no sure method for building a Kraken Drive. Performance can vary depending on the precise placement of parts, and may depend on hardware specifications, although this is by no means certain.[1]

What is known is that K-Drives are usually constructed out of some moving parts ex. legs or wheels, and some structural parts, as well as reaction wheels. Legs and wheels are usually arranged in such a way that they will clip into other parts of the spaceship when extended. This can be seen in many K-Drive threads.[2][3][4]

[mythic_fci]

Alrighty, here's something I posted on it's own thread...

The Hermes Kraken-Drive Light Spacecraft

At a mere 59 parts, it's potato computer friendly.

The K-Drive is active here. This K-Drive isn't focused on power; rather, it was designed for reliability. The max speed of this K-Drive is 6Gs, but most of the time it'll use 1-3 Gs.

Home sweet home. Yes, there are liquid engines for fine course corrections.

As I said, this has it's own thread. Link: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71215-The-Hermes-Kraken-Drive-Light-Spacecraft'

The link for the Hermes is here: http://www./download/f2...Drive_Ship.zip

The link for the subassembly of the drive is here (I named it the Archer class drive): http://www./download/ya...ubassembly.zip

Credits:

Comrade Jenkins for creating and designing the first K-Drives

Levelord for giving the general idea of a 1m K-Drive.

[CaptainGiblets]

I've made a K-drive car

[Pauly]

Jebidiah: Bill?

Bill: [laughing] The Kraken drive brought me back. I told you she won't let me leave - she won't let anyone leave. Did you really think you could destroy this ship? She's defied space and time. She's been to a place you couldn't possibly imagine. And now... it is time to go back.

Jebidiah: [sounding bored] I know. To hell.

Bill: You know nothing. Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse.

The Kraken Drive is pure EVIL!

Lol sorry but every time I see the kraken drive I think of my favorite space horror movie Event Horizon

[Captain Sierra]

The K-Drive has a showcase and a wiki posting. It's officially a feature now.

[KissSh0t]

An SSTO with a Kraken Drive could go anywhere...

Maybe something to try building... mmmm///

[Comrade Jenkens]

The K-Drive has a showcase and a wiki posting. It's officially a feature now.

However the joint update in 0.24 may remove the feature.

[mythic_fci]

However the joint update in 0.24 may remove the feature.

From our understanding, the K-Drives are powered not by joints themselves, but instead by the reaction when the suspension on the landing legs freaks out about being clipped into a bigger part. Hopefully that means it'll work =D

[sal_vager]

What happens if you lock the suspension?

[mythic_fci]

What happens if you lock the suspension?

No idea. It's never been tested.

EDIT 3/3/14 It still works, at least on my drive.

Edited March 3, 2014 by FCISuperGuy

[mythic_fci]

Another post: The Falcon III

It's a K-drive SSTO with a jet engine for ascents.

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[Rune]

The K-Drive has a showcase and a wiki posting. It's officially a feature now.

Holy boop. I made into KSP's wiki! There's like a tiny mention at the end. I can die happy now.

Rune. And a... link to the Far Star? If I grin just a tiny bit more I'm going to need stitches, guys.

[Captain Sierra]

No idea. It's never been tested.

I've tried it. It just breaks the leg with no propulsion. (then again, it was a very poorly designed krakendrive)

[andrew123]

Sigh... computer still out of action, until I get time to assemble my desktop, and many exams next week. At least I think private school is fun. :)

Also, I want to post that k drive warship, but I have to rebuild it since my hd was fried with the old laptop. More technical power issues.

[Camacha]

This reminds me very much of the contraptions people build in Minecraft, where people punch trees and physics are made up.

I love the proof of concept, although this is not a way of playing KSP that suits me.

[Mekan1k]

Anyone have sub-assemblies with kraken-drives? I want to bolt one into a shuttle bay and get it to Duna and back...

Or, to be more specific, is there someone who knows the principle of how to make a kraken-drive? I am curious to how it could be potentially scaled up...

Edited March 3, 2014 by Mekan1k

[Accelerando]

From my own experiments, you need your landing legs to clip into at least one active reaction wheel or have one in the vicinity of the legs if not touching them, ~1m away  in the latter case, a big structural part beneath the legs can be touching the legs instead. R-wheels provide the torque to jitter the spaceship around and generate forward motion. Largest and smallest landing legs can be used. Not sure about the mid-size, or rover parts/aircraft gear.

I've been able to make assemblies that wobble a lot, but no linear motion.

[mythic_fci]

Anyone have sub-assemblies with kraken-drives? I want to bolt one into a shuttle bay and get it to Duna and back...

Or, to be more specific, is there someone who knows the principle of how to make a kraken-drive? I am curious to how it could be potentially scaled up...

Yes, on my Falcon III post.

[kola2DONO]

I have been experimenting with this technology, and i managed to make a kraken drive making the ship spin around, it may be usefull for large ships so they just can spin around until they get in the right heading and stops the spin with timewarp.