[.90] WIP : Stanford Toruses

[michaelhester07]

Long time ago I kicked off this project and saw it through .25. Now that .90's come around i've gotten back into it. Since .90 broke the hangar extender I decided to tackle the whole editing process.

Normally when you would try to add a torus hull it would look like this in the VAB:

But look at that new button "editing mode." That's what I'm wokring on. Click that and everything shrinks by a factor of 50... like so

If I can't make the VAB bigger I can shrink the torus. Every part shows as the shrunken version

Those little mushrooms inside the ring are my science station which is bigger than most stock parts. There are some thing with this yet to be done

• Have to disable editing mode by clicking the button again before saving
  
• alt-click to duplicate a part doesn't shrink the part
  
• 5x editor mode: normal editor goes 1 2 3 4 6 8... no 5 in there
  

I'll polish this a little more before I release it.

Original thread:

I've been wanting to give my Kerbals something more comfortable to live in than a 2 meter tank. I've begun "construction" on Torus shaped stations. The first 2 screens are below:

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The station parts above are for a 25 meter radius station (50 meter diameter).

This project will culminate in a colossal 1km diameter Stanford Torus that I'll eventually put in orbit of Duna.

Edited February 20, 2015 by michaelhester07
next release parts on the way!

[Helix935]

love the idea, good luck with it

[Tex_NL]

Looks promising.

I know a thing or two about circular building (see my signature) and I'd like to suggest you keep your mod as modular as possible. If your parts only fit your parts people might not like it. If they fit at least the stock parts and perhaps other mods they become much more usable. And people might even find ways to use them to build things you didn't plan or thought of.

[michaelhester07]

Looks promising.

I know a thing or two about circular building (see my signature) and I'd like to suggest you keep your mod as modular as possible. If your parts only fit your parts people might not like it. If they fit at least the stock parts and perhaps other mods they become much more usable. And people might even find ways to use them to build things you didn't plan or thought of.

Modular would make it easier to make to be honest. I just want to avoid ending up with huge part counts when I go for the full scale torus (or have it be impossible to assemble in the VAB). If it ends up too big i'll give it docking port parts and actually build it in space. Woo that would be awesome actually.

I'll redesign this to make it modular. It would help me that way to do the internals for the garden module and crew quarters module.

[Commander Zoom]

Looks like a good start. I wish you good luck with it, and will be following this thread.

[Dix2lespace]

very good idea!

[kiwiak]

How about delivering it inti orbit?

WIll you add some specialized fairings, or something like that?

[michaelhester07]

I've currently scrapped the torus idea to start on something smaller: the actual garden plot i wanted to have in the first place. Here's the first test on it:

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The inside is "open". My startup space company Netherdyne knows how to make small forcefields to keep air in.

[Pondafarr]

If "open", how will you get around the helmet problem?

[michaelhester07]

Well... I have to close it and make the inside from IVA. There is indeed a problem of my kerbals not trusting the forcefields and just keeping their helmets on.

I worked on the IVA now and stumbled upon a fairly important Gotya: The main IVA model can't have a mesh collider on it or it collides with the ship.

Scene from the IVA in the garden module. I plan to add tables with snacks on them and little drinks on their chairs.

[Xentoe]

Wow cool. I waited long for real Gardendomes :-)

the ones from ZZZ are cool too but he used them never real.

[Commander Zoom]

Very nice biodome.

[horndgmium]

I like the looks very much, but having a large non-spherical garden part might 1. be very complicated to launch and 2. doesn't make very much sense to not have glass on all sides, since there is no down in space.

Just some thoughts! Keep it up my friend.

[Hattivat]

^ Actually if we were to be realistic it doesn't make much sense to have any glass on any side at all, as it results in enormous heat losses (lets UV radiation get out) and massive structural weakness for little gain (you could just as well collect the sunlight with lenses and transmit it into the module with fiberoptics, or even simply use solar arrays to power artificial LED lighting).

Regerdless of that, the model looks awesome, I'm very much looking forward to trying it out.

[RoverDude]

That's one gorgeous model

[michaelhester07]

I took this little biodome as inspiration to start workin towards actualy Sanford Torus models:

Now that I realize that the internals actually render over top of the external model always I can give this and the biodome a proper inside. I think i may release early versions as early as tomorrow. I wanna make sure they fly right.

The 1km torus I still plan to build will have to be built in space though.

[michaelhester07]

Wrapping up work on the 25m Torus. Here's screens from inside

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[Xentoe]

Hmm are the connections from the torus Center to the torus ring not a bit thin?

(looks not like the poor Kerbals could use them to reatch the stations center to go into other rings).

[Tommygun]

Very nice, now I can make my own mini Valley Forge.

I just need to rename three Kerbals Huey, Louie and Dewey.

[Space_Kraken]

*activating lurk mode*

*lurk mode initiated*

*initializing ghost mode*

*Ghost mode initialized*

[Boamere]

*activating lurk mode*

*lurk mode initiated*

*initializing ghost mode*

*Ghost mode initialized*

Same here

Also I love the fact that you can spin the torus and give them artificial gravity

[michaelhester07]

Waiting for Curse to approve the mod and I can post it. I'm releasing the Biodome and the 25m torus. There is now a 1200 meter diameter torus in the works now that I know what i'm doing. That will take significantly longer to make than this mod did if only because there is more involved with it.

I may also do a 15 meter biodome. The current one is 8 meters across (if i recall, i don't exactly remember)

[hieywiey]

Now I will make a cool Space Station V, but now all I need is an Orion III Space Clipper, an Ares IB moon lander, a Clavius add-on for KerbTown, the Moebius moon bus, and to convince Squad to make an excavation site for one of the existing Mün monoliths.

[michaelhester07]

0.0 release Stanford torus and biodome models

http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/221181-biodomes-and-stanford-toruses

They're ready for their first release! And here's what's coming up

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After that trip through the Netherdyne holodeck here's whats coming up:

The torus you saw up there is a structural component to which the following modules can be mounted (modules which will be built as separate parts!)

50 meter diameter spacedock module: will have mount points for extraplanetary launchpads and storage space for rocket parts

surface mount biodome : the biodome module, only surface mountable for installing inside the station

The villa- 8 person crew module for mounting in the torus:

Science module: This science lab will be used for processing materials

Surface mount docking port: so you can park a cruiser at the station

And more things as I come up with em.

[Garek]

How in all of Kerbin would one get that thing into space? This dwarfes anything I've seen in KSP, it doesn't fit on the launch pad, not even close. I assumed the structure would be split into parts which would be still big, but at least be possible to lift with a rocket which fits on the launchpad. But looking at that....even a slice of the ring would still be too big for the launch pad.