Concept Rockets

[Sauron]

Good call. I'll do that this evening

[optimusjamie]

These are awesome. I'd love to see them in-game, but they're being made for RSS, aren't they?

[Krevsin]

These look absolutely spiffing.

[Sauron]

My understanding is that Orbitus (see his thread) is making them for stock and other people are doing RSS configs. For my part, I'm not making these with any particular focus on KSP. This is a fictional space proram's stuff.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Sauron

[Krevsin]

I'd actually like to know more about this fictional Space Program. Does any side posess a moon base? I'd expect the badguys to have one as it seems more in line with their way of doing things.

[Sauron]

The bad guys' space program isn't quite big enough for a proper moon base--this is meant to be a fairly realistic and conservative set of rockets. They would be considering long-stay moon missions with multiple launders (one Autahi direct-ascent stack and one large habitat lander), but an actual base is beyond both sides at this point.

Mars missions are also in the cards since NTR and ion propulsion are options, but they would represent a very substantial investment nonetheless (2 or more super-heavy launches minimum. More realistically 6+ to duplicate NASA's DRM.)

[Krevsin]

Interesting, thanks.

I'd love to see some badguy LL concepts.

[Sauron]

You did! (The better part of one anyway)

They use a direct-ascent profile with an Autahi orbiter on (essentially) an LH2 tank and an airlock.

[HafCoJoe]

These are awesome! I might built off these concepts with kerb paint. The coloring and general design is beautiful.

EDIT: Sauron, I'm going to try and make the Autahi as closely to your concept as I can. It should be made easier with the PS+ wings too. I may or may not use procedural fairings. I think I will though. Judging from post 31 where you first showed it, it seems like it's just an orbiter but if you scaled it up considerably, I'd say it could make a sweet Duna mission (The color scheme would be perfect too!).

Edited August 21, 2014 by Avera9eJoe

[OrbitusII]

These are awesome! I might built off these concepts with kerb paint. The coloring and general design is beautiful.

EDIT: Sauron, I'm going to try and make the Autahi as closely to your concept as I can. It should be made easier with the PS+ wings too. I may or may not use procedural fairings. I think I will though. Judging from post 31 where you first showed it, it seems like it's just an orbiter but if you scaled it up considerably, I'd say it could make a sweet Duna mission (The color scheme would be perfect too!).

I'd be interested to see how your replica turns out! It may make designing the mod parts easier if I have a baseline to compare it to.

[HafCoJoe]

I'll have a rough picture in a bit. The annoying thing is I'm not using kerb paint and so the ship is a weird color scheme.

EDIT:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

It's pretty ugly, but it does the job. It also doesn't fly xD. At all. I suggest you do this shuttle instead. It has a MUCH better chance of flying .

Edited August 22, 2014 by Avera9eJoe

[Sauron]

I'll have a rough picture in a bit. The annoying thing is I'm not using kerb paint and so the ship is a weird color scheme.

EDIT:

It's pretty ugly, but it does the job. It also doesn't fly xD. At all. I suggest you do this shuttle instead. It has a MUCH better chance of flying .

These things aren't built for KSP. If you object to the lack of body lift, you should speak with Squad (or clip a wing or two into the hull if you're playing stock). Also, it should really only fly without any fuel.

[HafCoJoe]

These things aren't built for KSP. If you object to the lack of body lift, you should speak with Squad (or clip a wing or two into the hull if you're playing stock). Also, it should really only fly without any fuel.

Indeed. I was thinking it would make a neat shape for a Duna reentry vessel. Wings only to keep it upright and forwards rather than steering. I won't be doing more work into it though. On another note, I used a different one of your models to create a new 2 person LKO crew transfer ship. I call it, the mk2 egg:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Do you know of a mod with a tweakable fuel tank size? Fairing mods are the only mods I've found that has an easy way to increase/decrease the diameter of a circle.

[Sauron]

Indeed. I was thinking it would make a neat shape for a Duna reentry vessel. Wings only to keep it upright and forwards rather than steering. I won't be doing more work into it though. On another note, I used a different one of your models to create a new 2 person LKO crew transfer ship. I call it, the mk2 egg:

Do you know of a mod with a tweakable fuel tank size? Fairing mods are the only mods I've found that has an easy way to increase/decrease the diameter of a circle.

Yah. Procedural parts has what you're after. Pretty respectable replicas by the way!

[HafCoJoe]

Yah. Procedural parts has what you're after. Pretty respectable replicas by the way!

It gets to orbit and looks pretty good . I may try replicating some of your other stuff too. These replicas are pretty good but I can do better I did that one in about an hour (with testing included).

Oh, if you want me to make a replica of a different one of your concepts, please say! It was fun making these. I basically downloaded procedural fairings and experimented with them until I got something that was presentable.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Avera9eJoe

[Sauron]

Here's an example of the bad guys' core space station module. Crew of ~7-12 and mass over 120 tons. Somewhat larger and much more habitable than Skylab. Can be extended with more modules. Diameter of ~25 ft. ~80 ft. long.

[OrbitusII]

Goodness gracious! That is one epic space station! Seems a bit excessive to me but it would definitely be useful as a laboratory.

Edited August 23, 2014 by OrbitusII

[astropapi1]

That is one big damn space station! How would they launch it?

Diameter of ~25 ft. ~80ft. long.

*grumbles away*

[Sauron]

Well, it's smaller than the ISS by weight and only somewhat larger than skylab. So you're essentially talking about a single-launch ISS (ish). They'd do it with a Takero HLV (which can carry the whole thing comfortably). It'd then be serviced by smaller launchers.

[Joe8]

How would the Autahi spaceplane generate lift? It's wings seem pretty small, unless it uses more of a lifting-body approach. Even then, it seems... less than ideal at that. Still really adbass-looking .

[Sauron]

It's a lifting body--but it's quite light empty too. Also, it's kinda designed to be pretty. In practice the lifting body should be more pronounced. But that wasn't as pretty.

[HafCoJoe]

What would be super cool is if a fairing or stock part texturepack was made for these concepts. The colors are partially what caught my eye on these.

EDIT: I've been learning how to recolor the fairings from procedural fairings with blackhearts mod and I should have some colored versions of these sometime soon. Be prepared .

Edited August 25, 2014 by Avera9eJoe

[Nicholander]

Avera9eJoe, you just made a completely better Mk2/blue spacraft and launcher then me! Also, I sorta forgot about this thread for a moment, derp.

[HafCoJoe]

Avera9eJoe, you just made a completely better Mk2/blue spacraft and launcher then me! Also, I sorta forgot about this thread for a moment, derp.

idk. I don't judge other builds and to make that one I used a ton of part clipping. I'm happy with it though.

I just downloaded "procedural parts" and blackheart's "procedural fairing textures" mod and I've been spending the last while adding the "acid" green, gray, and black colors from the SRB first stage launcher and the orange from the bad guys' rocket. Now I should be able to build with tanks and fairings in CORRECT color (not that it will match stock ). I made a strange looking but correctly colored launcher. See here:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I'll be building without the correct textures though. It doesn't match stock well enough. And, sorry if my message and remake spamming is getting annoying...

Edited August 25, 2014 by Avera9eJoe

[Nicholander]

That's amazing! Good work!