Messing around with Airships

[SpaceCommanderNemo]

It's always bugged me how all those crazy awesome sci-fi designs we see in movies and video games are terribly non-aerodynamic and generally would have to be built in space. Besides "cheating", it's pretty much impossible to get most designs into orbit, or beyond.

But... I got to thinking... and I downloaded the airships mod... and it got a little crazy.

The Hawk Mk. I. Four Nuclear Engines. Two Aerospikes. Tons of Fuel.

Total disaster.

I'm not sure what happened the second iteration... but... On to Mk. III!

Moar Lift! Better weight distribution! Hideaway SSTO inflatables!

...that don't fit except in the VAB...

...and get stuck when I try to raise them...

Oh well, lets try to crank up the buoyancy.

oh, no...

Nonononono...

Is that part of the ship flying away?

fuuuuuuu....

Successful landing!

But we can do better!

Enter: the Mk. IV...

TEN AEROSPIKES. ENTIRELY TOO MUCH FUEL. THE GIANT BALLOONS FIT THIS TIME.

It truly is a feat of Kerbal engineering. Time to get this bird off the ground.

Infernal Robotics really is a game changer. I can't not mention how awesome the Lackluster parts are too.

hm...

Mesmerizing.

Too much weight on the front end. It's hard to figure out how these airship envelopes mess with your center of lift vs. mass... Not that putting them inside of a cargo bay on a moveable hinge helps.

YES! THIS IS GOING TERRIBLY!

Maybe not so bad. But not what I had in mind.

I think I only added the parachutes for laughs.

And they deliver! I heard something break...

Touchdown!

Everybody's fine!

...except for about 20-some kerbals that gave their lives in the name of "science"!

So here are the craft files if you're interested in checking out the madness. I do think these designs are space-worthy with some modification, the Lackluster fuel tanks have insane capacities and weights that I paid absolutely no attention to.

Hawk Mk. I: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p813bgywhs3ab6z/Hawk%20Mk_%20I.craft

Mk. III: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l1xhvunjy99st56/Hawk%20Mk_%20III.craft

Mk. IV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugpsbqbp9qbu2m4/Hawk%20Mk_%20IV.craft

Mods required (hopefully I'm not missing any used on these designs):

B-9

Infernal Robotics

HL Airships

Lackluster Labs Parts

I'm curious if anyone else has tried such a thing. I saw a Scott Manley video where he used the airship envelopes to make some kind of ship from some... thing... anyway, it was still too heavy and he had to mod gravity to get it flyable. After I saw the Cirrus envelope and started roughly crunching some lift/weight numbers, I figured I had a chance at putting some kind of crazy non-aerodynamic sci-fi hard-on inducing flying brick from the runway to orbit, but I'll have to keep trying.

[Immashift]

I've played with the idea of creating an Eve lander using the airships envelopes. The fun part is Eve's atmo is so thick, you crank the bouyancy up to max on the surface and you take off fast enough to get entry effects within a few seconds. I never got the switchover from buoyancy to rockets correct though. Also experimented with just jettisoning the envelopes but that was hard to get right too. The envelopes wreak havoc on the aerodynamics of a craft when they're not lifting much anymore, and added to that most of my designs were incredibly ugly

Your ship looks pretty good though. Perhaps you'll have better luck than I

I wish there was a radial envelope that folded into the size of a radial parachute. The current ones are just really ugly if you have to spam them on the sides of crafts.

Edited May 31, 2014 by Immashift