Inline Cargo Frame Module

[JayKay]

Maybe this is old hat to some, but I never had success with this before. I came up with a way to carry a rover within the stack of a more or less normal rocket:

It's made from a pair of quad adapters and a lot of small cubic girders. A Jr port holds the rover in place by its back end.

Four small decouplers allow the rear of the frame to be jettisoned while descending so that the rover is free to be deployed after the ship has landed.

Then the port holding the rover is decoupled, and it drops on its nose. It hits with the stack of cubic girders first which kicks it back onto its wheels, ready to rove.

I had strapped rovers to the side of ships in past, or made them out of hab modules which were just part of the stack, but this struck me as a more elegant solution; at least it stays within the outline of the upper stage this way. It can also be transfered from one ship to another because it has Sr ports at each end. I also successfully rigged it as a parachute drop from altitude and used sepatrons to blow the one half of the frame away after touching down so the rover could be deployed.

Edited November 4, 2014 by JayKay
typo

[Wanderfound]

Nice frame; well built.

If you're after elegant, though...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1504987&viewfull=1#post1504987

[JayKay]

Nice frame; well built.

If you're after elegant, though...

Yeah, cargo bays are clean. I just can't get a science rover to fit in one of those.

[Wanderfound]

Yeah, cargo bays are clean. I just can't get a science rover to fit in one of those.

Command seats, small wheels and a 0.625m core. And mount it so that any clipping on the edges of the bay is aimed at the doors rather than the floor.

You can fit a Science Jr on one so long as you don't mount anything radially on it.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Wanderfound

[JayKay]

I haven't had much luck with the small wheels. They break easily and tend to make things top heavy. And they look dumb (IMO.)

The thing which makes this thing unusual in my experience is that it involves splitting the structure in four directions and then successfully reintegrating them into one again, with all the parts actually connected properly.

[Oafman]

B9 has bigger cargo bays.

I've done similar to your design, for a 5m SSTO to launch 3.75m stations modules (no cargo bays big enough). But due to part count, I used I-beams rather than cubic octagonals.

The difficulty is that you can only really attach one of them. I used a bunch of extra strong struts to compensate. The I-beams are the things covered by the long air intakes

[Wanderfound]

I haven't had much luck with the small wheels. They break easily and tend to make things top heavy. And they look dumb (IMO.)

The thing which makes this thing unusual in my experience is that it involves splitting the structure in four directions and then successfully reintegrating them into one again, with all the parts actually connected properly.

It is a nice trick.

I wonder what else you can do with it? You could probably stash twenty-odd command chairs along the girders, for some extreme open-air space tourism...

[JayKay]

B9 has bigger cargo bays.

I've done similar to your design, for a 5m SSTO to launch 3.75m stations modules (no cargo bays big enough). But due to part count, I used I-beams rather than cubic octagonals.

The difficulty is that you can only really attach one of them. I used a bunch of extra strong struts to compensate. The I-beams are the things covered by the long air intakes

I picked cubic girders because they are a lot lighter, even with so many of them. As for the connections, all four trusses are connected, even without struts. The key is using Jr docking ports at the top of the frame where it connects to the upper quad adapter; the program allows multiple connections through docking ports in the VAB.

[dryer_lint]

When I read the title, I thought this was just a complicated name for cargo bays.

[Oafman]

Yeah the docking port idea is a clever solution, which I'm going to try out