Have you ever had those days where ...

[RW-1]

You look at all the other spaceship contributions on the board and think, man, I have got to get my imagination in gear!

So many of you have intriguing designs, I'm beginning to think I'm trapped inside a box hehehe ...

I'm envious, but at the same time I think it's grand that we have an exchange whereas those of us who may not think it up (yet...) can share in the joy of flying (Or blowing up) the creations

of those who can.

[Klingon Admiral]

Just steal other people's designs, sooner or later you will see the techniques they used and be able to use them yourself.

All art is derivative and all that.

[boomerdog2000]

Or steal little bits that you like from a bunch of peoples designs and throw them together into something new. Remember stealing from one person is plagiarism, stealing from many is research.

[Madrias]

Try what I do sometimes: start just randomly putting parts together until it works. I tend to make some interesting spaceplanes doing that.

Alternatively, try doing weird things. Watch a YouTube video from someone awesome and try to recreate the ship they used for the mission. Build a rover to drive up the VAB. Put a biplane in space.

If you're up for a tough challenge, make a four-seater SSTO. I can say from experience that it is incredibly tough. Mine just barely made it into orbit (72km x 101km orbit, no remaining oxidizer).

Another good challenge with the buffed ion engines would be to make a solar powered, manned ion plane and fly around Kerbin.

[Xacktar]

Quite often. I see a cool ship and try and figure out just how they managed to put it all together. Its good imagination fuel to browse through these forums.

[Alymon]

I am frequently flabbergasted at the creations people have come up with. They make my rockets look like paper airplanes.

[sal_vager]

Same here, my craft are all low part count high efficiency designs as I am used to playing on slow hardware, even though I can load others 1000+ part creations and not have much trouble

[zekes]

Try making military ships. It's harder than you'd think.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/74234-Gentlemen-s-Naval-Battle-Club%28Ready-to-begin%29

[Levelord]

Shameless self-plug

[Boris_T_Roach]

I've restarted my career since installing 023.5

But I cant be bothered to do lots of missions... so I thought lets stick all my Jool system probes on 1 ship:-

4 identical probes mounted radially on a carrier, each probe has a materials lab to be dropped after its collected science near each moon and some goo and measuring stuff for when its landed (or floating down in Jool)

Nuclear powered as well...... and launched in 1 go...

Boris

And its still very wibbley wobbley on the way uphill

[Quiana]

Sometimes designing efficient things can be an art form in and of itself. When given requirements, making them fit precisely into it while minimizing waste is key. In this, it was a satellite built for a challenge. Had to have RCS, its own thrust, three science devices, one long and short range communications system, and be at least 1.25 tons while self-powered. I managed that with 1.26 tons, in fact the hardest part was making it look pretty and actually weigh up to the requirement. I could have made it significantly smaller than that (one design I was so proud only weighed in at 0.6) but it wouldn't have met the requirement.

EDIT: In fact I probably spent nearly as much time balancing out those two RCS thrusters on it than I did on anything else. It is perfectly balancing in both rotation and translation even down to empty tanks.

[WillHop]

I've restarted my career since installing 023.5

But I cant be bothered to do lots of missions... so I thought lets stick all my Jool system probes on 1 ship:-

-snip-

4 identical probes mounted radially on a carrier, each probe has a materials lab to be dropped after its collected science near each moon and some goo and measuring stuff for when its landed (or floating down in Jool)

Nuclear powered as well...... and launched in 1 go...

Boris

And its still very wibbley wobbley on the way uphill

Just out of interest, when you decouple one of the probes and move on to the next moon, how will you deal with the asymmetrical center of mass?

[boomerdog2000]

Just out of interest, when you decouple one of the probes and move on to the next moon, how will you deal with the asymmetrical center of mass?

Looks like with the 2 SAS units on the nose and one for each engine pylon plus RCS he's going for the brute force approach.

[Boris_T_Roach]

Just out of interest, when you decouple one of the probes and move on to the next moon, how will you deal with the asymmetrical center of mass?

The plan is to aero-brake at jool and bring the carrier in for a 22milliom km AP and about a 250Km PE, then release 2 probes, one will be de orbited into Jool for science, the other goes into Laythe, then move out to Vall, release 1 there, and then deal with the center of mass problem by the brute force method mentioned below...., once I'm close enough to a Bop orbit the probe will be released, the carrier marked as 'junk' and the Kraken will be prodded...

But thats for tommorrow

Boris

I'm off to bed