Building a Space Swing on the Mun!

[627]

Hi everyone,

after lurking through this forums for month I finally registered here so... hi everyone:D

I had a new idea in my head after visiting those arches on mun... why not build a swing there?

This is what I have in mind:

At least for one of them it looks like fun

On top is a claw that I planned to attach on one of the arches at mun.

So now the tricky part, you (or better I) can't lift that whole thing into orbit, the swing seat will ("surprise") swing all the way wobbling and distracting the rocket until you'll explode.

So how to get it up? and after that, brake it and get it down in one piece?

My next idea was to build some rovers who then dock some girder parts together on mun. But then you'll have the whole swing lying on the ground and I doubt you'll get it up without the same problem of wobbling.

So... any ideas how to give our kerbals their mun theme park?

[Wanderfound]

Lock it in place with struts and girders that can be detached via decouplers once it's delivered? That's what I do when I'm launching my one piece spacestation/lander combos (a single docking port wasn't giving a strong enough connection).

Love the idea, BTW. I wonder if a single EVA jetpack would be enough to get it swinging on the Mun...

Can you get it to do a 360?

Edited July 11, 2014 by Wanderfound

[cantab]

Turn it so the chain hangs down and attach a pair of launchers to the rigid metal frame.

[viktor19]

Can you do the full circle

*evil laugh*

[TechnicalK3rbal]

Claw's can't attach to the terrain of a moon/planet. At least, not in my experience.

[Zephram Kerman]

What a great idea! I hope to see a Mun arch swing someday soon.

If you don't mind using a mod, UbioZur's Welded Parts was meant for just this situation. You can use it to weld most of the swing into one rigid part, then add the claw, seats, and thrusters to that. It's nice for rovers too; rigidizing (is that a word?) the frame helps eliminate suspension problems.

[Zephram Kerman]

Claw's can't attach to the terrain of a moon/planet. At least, not in my experience.

Oh drat! Well hopefully the arch, being an anomaly and not terrain, is claw-able. There's only one way to find out: make 627 do it!

[butterknife]

Even once you got it on the mun, wouldn't the mun's rotation and lack of atmosphere cause it to swing like a pendulum? I can see game physics getting all kinds of wonky around this thing.

[Wanderfound]

Claw's can't attach to the terrain of a moon/planet. At least, not in my experience.

Make a hook from girders and hang it over the top of the arch?

[butterknife]

What if you just made a chain of a few dozen landers with three or four long struts, and claws on the top?

[Aethon]

Love it. Welcome new guy! That's the kinda stuff I expect outta my Varsity letter men. I agree with the hook concept, maybe a few claws with freed pivots along the tethers? Any way, love it.

Ok .24, I am willing and ready to accept you into my life right now!

[627]

Claw's can't attach to the terrain of a moon/planet. At least, not in my experience.

Sadly this seems to be true

You can't connect to it...

Building a hook from girders could work, the arch is smaller than i thought. Problem will be if it slips down one side...

[Wanderfound]

Building a hook from girders could work, the arch is smaller than i thought. Problem will be if it slips down one side...

Two hooks, one each side of the peak of the arch. Possibly with station-keeping thrusters built in for fine tuning.

What else do we need? Merry-go-round? Slippery dip? Rover dodgem cars? Roller coaster?

[TheSquirrelPatrol]

I had a new idea in my head after visiting those arches on mun... why not build a swing there?

This is KSP, we need to think BIGGER. Forget the stupid arms, put the center of mass of the swing in synchronous orbit, make it long enough to come within a good leap of the surface, then you can hop on at the bottom of the swing, and hop off in high retrograde orbit. I don't think it's possible on the Mun or Minmus, but Eeloo has a synchronous orbit around 680km up. Surely we can make a truss 1,360km long and get it out there...

[627]

So here we go again!

I build a girder hook to get it on the arch. Here it is on transfer with my dancing carrier:

dropped and trying to align to the arch:

Needs moar RCS fuel

and finally!!!

Damn it!

So this won't work... beside it was really hard to get that thing there, at least for me. Start again I think... man I need a crane...

[Kamuchi]

Here is entry from earlier today, would have added a streak of failures, but that would require 2 days of editing lol

Blew my engines with the controlled crash so couldn`t remove the ship and the crew is still stranded there, swinging

[627]

Nice!

kinda meditative to watch

Now we need to go bigger

[Kamuchi]

After Wanderfound mentioned about upping the scale in another thread I have been thinking about it.

With also the mentioning of creating a rocket sledge around the Mun, I am considering using Extraplanetary Launchpads.

Haven`t used it so far so that would be the third challange, moving sooooo many parts from Kerbin to Mun is a waste of time when you only need to either mine it locally or transfer materials.

Doing an SSTO recording in career but it`s next on my todo list

Need to rescue the crew anyway