Io Program; Stage One

[Mister Kingdom]

Hello, people who stopped to read this. Allow me to introduce:

THE IO 1 LIFTER

Taking it's name from the long-ago de-orbited Joolian mun, the Io Lifter (or as this picture shows, Lifter Mk. 4) is an attempt to create a single Kerbal, very short range multipurpose vehicle, or SKVSRMV for short. In an attempt to generate funding for the Space Centre which designed the machine, a new program of tests has been ordered, in order to understand the potential of the vehicle, and hopefully to generate some interest from the automobile and transport industry.

Test 001: Lifting Capabilities (Potential for use as substitute for ladder)

In the first test, I decided to focus my efforts a little closer to home. Having planned for the second test to take place in the atmosphere of Kerbin, the ideal opportunity for a first test presented itself: Testing if the device was capable of acting in lieu of a ladder, as the builders of the rocket pointed out that there was economic sense in using a re-usable system, rather than building a new one every time they launched a mission.

The first step of the build was attaching the devices that I already had the plans for (read: I had a subassembly) onto the back of another vehicle: In their present form, the lifters have just enough fuel to get from one end of the space centre to the other, if the operator is untrained and inexperienced (This was the very first test run with the MK.1, which performed very well, considering that I made it to mess about with RCS). The vehicle in question is this:

The car is open to the elements, with no roof over the driver's cabin or the launch platform. The entire vehicle was developed over five minutes, and is only really designed for driving to and from the launchpad: There is one small docking port on the back, that could conceivably be used to chain several cars together or attach it to a lander, but I can't really see myself doing that in the near future. It performed its function remarkably well, considering the other first attempts at rovers that I have made before, and before too long Bill was at the launch site (Doubtless wishing the car was a little slower).

After arriving, I moved around a little, until I had space to get Bill off the driver's seat without knocking the car backwards. Then it was time to unpack the equipment, and set up the landing legs, so that Bill could climb on.

Then, it was the moment of truth: Could it replace ladders?

At first, no.

I hasten to add that this wasn't a shortcoming of the device: it worked perfectly, other than some bug (or how I turned the command pod over in the SPH) meddling with the RCS transfer keys. (For some reason, K-I and H-N had swapped places). But, being inexperienced with RCS in-atmosphere and inexperienced with the device as a whole, I ended up overshooting the top of the rocket numerous times. I notice, by the way, that every time I crashed, the machine was never totally destroyed. The only time Bill actually died was when I purposefully thrusted downwards.

After 8 tries, and several quicksave loads, I finally managed to get a decent ascent, and actually landed on top. The trick, as it transpired, was to retract the landing gear before touching down on top of the capsule. I landed just off centre to the docking port here, quicksaved, and made for the capsule door.

So, in the end, was it worth it?

Well, I'd say it was, after I got a little practice. The machines responded exactly as I expected them to, which is relatively rare for me: usually I forget something basic, and have to go back to the VAB/SPH from the middle of a mission. However, with a design like this, the situation is rather uncomplicated, and so hard to get wrong, when you have a plan of what you want out of it. If the game did indeed run a money system, I think that a small fleet of these would be ludicrously expensive, but fun to use. However, the ships did have some glaring oversights, the most obvious being the same as most rovers: When it flipped over, it was very hard to get upright again. In the capacity of a space station tug, this wouldn't matter so much (Or maybe it would, I'll work that one out for myself next time), but as a lander, or ladder substitute, it remains a problem that should be fixed.

So, what do you think? Unfortunately, I haven't got any way of putting the .craft files up for download at the moment (although I would wonder why you want them); The machines should hopefully be easy enough to copy from the pictures. If you would like to see the next test, then I would happily oblige; if you don't want to see another, then if you could tell me how I could make them better, I would be very grateful.

Thank you, and so long.

[dr_pipe]

I made similar machines... I put the probe core between the two tanks for balance. Also I don't think legs are completely necessary. My two tank version was un-manned, with jr. docking ports on both ends, and served as a station tug. I also made single tank versions with a probe core and jr port on the back and a command seat on the front. I put a small cubic strut sticking off the front of the tank, toward the bottom, and set the command seat on top of that, so the tank would be at the kerbal's back, not beneath him, if that makes sense. That way the controls make sense when controlling from the seat.

[Mister Kingdom]

Yes, I can see that making sense (it resembles an MMU in the picture). Actually, the second prototype had the probe core in the middle, but I needed to put the thing in a subassembly (you can't put probe cores in assemblies), and moved it to the top for convenience. The plan from now is to make two different versions, a station tug version (which I made a one tank variation of already), and a probe lander for very low gravity objects, where larger Landers would be superfluous. The idea is to put one on a rocket headed, for example, to Duna, and send it down to land on Ike while the main mission goes on. That being said, I think that your tug is more pleasing, at least from an aesthetics point of view, and I can see why the legs seem superfluous; truth is, the mission report is of the first test run, because I couldn't be bothered to go back and restart the mission sans legs. Usually, I don't tend to control from the seat; it's just there to make him feel like he's in control. Usually, I just use the probe core. I decided that the risk that Jeb would get hold of it somehow and see if it made orbit was too great, which is probably why the RCS was odd.(Sorry if this comes across as condescending or anything, I wrote it on a tablet, and was tired.)

Edited April 14, 2014 by Mister Kingdom

[dr_pipe]

So, I was having all kinds of trouble with sub-assemblies until I figured this out; I would make a rover and build it around a probe core and make it a sub-assembly and then I couldn't stick it onto anything by a docking port, it would only want to use it's root part to attach to other things. Then I learned to start with a docking port and build the rest of the sub-assembly on that, then you can save it as a sub-assembly and stick it onto things with the docking port. Or, build it however you want, and use the Select Root mod which lets you change any part to the new root part, extremely handy! Not sure if this is the same issue you're talking about, but in my experience you can include probe cores in sub-assemblies, I just had trouble with them being root parts.