Modular Hexagone Medium orbiter (stock)

[Apotheosist]

I\'ve been playing with this design for a few weeks now. Using only stock parts myself, I found the stock repository very useful. I would be grateful if this design could be added so others can have as much fun as I do with it. It has very high thrust to weight and is good for getting somewhere fast! T/W could be improved using non gimballing engine if you really want it, but I like having more response, also the concept for this design is that it is modular, with the gimballing engine the amount of control you have does not decrease with added modules. Tanks are in pairs, with fuel lines to the next pair. I always launch at full thrust, so at launch you can expect it to be raining fuel tanks on the space center. The design was inspired by rockets such as the Falcon 9 heavy, I was interested in the advantages it\'s configuration gives (fuel crossfeed of common cores; lower cost due to economy of scale, efficiency of not having to carry engines doing no work etc.) and I took the concept to the extreme. It\'s a good feeling to read 'seperation of stage 20 confirmed' in the flight results

Added pics now

[Feragorn]

Pictures?

[sal_vager]

Totally kills my frame rate, looks like you took the Pepperpot concept and turned it up to 11, very nice and powerful

It needs a Mk2, maybe with more struts from the upper stack decoupler down to the outer tanks to prevent it flexing, it starts to rotate because of that.

Or wings maybe, you have plenty of power to handle any extra weight

Btw, I like to call it a daisychain fuel system, no one else had a term for it so I had to make one up.

[Feragorn]

Still, any pictures of the spacecraft so we can see it?

[Braun]

sal_vagar postet the pic.

[Feragorn]

20 minutes after I posted. Anyways, that thing looks like an ungodly duct taped box of rockets. I like it.

[Braun]

and 12 minutes before you asked again.

[Apotheosist]

Totally kills my frame rate, looks like you took the Pepperpot concept and turned it up to 11, very nice and powerful

It needs a Mk2, maybe with more struts from the upper stack decoupler down to the outer tanks to prevent it flexing, it starts to rotate because of that.

Or wings maybe, you have plenty of power to handle any extra weight

Btw, I like to call it a daisychain fuel system, no one else had a term for it so I had to make one up.

It certainly slows the framerate. About 1 per second at launch on my underpowered laptop DX. I have seen your Pepperpot design, I started off with something similar and added another layer to it. When I got bored of that, I decided to add yet another layer. It took me a while, the VAB gets very slow and my mousepad doesen\'t help. I\'m also something of a perfectionist, trying to get all the tanks at the same level, down to the same pixel. I\'m not entirely happy with it, I think some of them are out, but I didn\'t feel like going to all the trouble.

I have many versions; 7 tanks like your Pepperpot, 19 tanks (add another layer), 37 tanks like this one. I have another where I started with a 19 tank base and added two tanks to each module, giving three tanks per module. I then added winglets to the middle stages of this and tried a few mun landings. One trick I like to do with the modular 4 is to max it vertically til 70km, then turn 90 degrees until the apoapsis reaches munar orbit shut the engines off, and you will get caught by the mun . It\'s a quick way to get there. I have an 'rcs return' version of the 'modular 4', used to test returning from the mun rcs style. Any changes to the last stage deletes a few fuel lines, though, and it takes ages to re-plumb all the layers correctly. I\'m slowly working on a 4 or 5 tank per module version of the modular 4, that should have a massive delta-V capability Takes ages, would be cool if someone could make it for me.

Daisychain fuel system sounds good, I think I\'ll use that from now on

[sal_vager]

You\'re welcome mate

There seems to be a sweet spot with power to weight ratio, 3 fuel tanks to 1 engine gets you about the right speed for an efficient ascent, the max the gimballed engine seems able to lift is 6 though, it\'s 7 for the bigger engine.

I know fuel economy isn\'t a concern of ships like this, but if you pitch over at about 12k to 45 degrees, you get a ballistic trajectory that can save you a bit of fuel, it\'s supposedly how you get the best range from stuff like cannons but rockets need to get above the thickest part of the air first.

I know how bad the VAB can be, and I wish there was an easy way to line things up vertically, if your ship hasn\'t got enough engines on the ground some snap off.