ELITE: DANGEROUS - Falcon DeLacy Sidewinder MK I

[GabrielG.A.B.Fonseca]

For quite a long time, I have been wondering about including the amazing ships of the Elite: Dangerous universe into KSP. The fact that they all have internal cockpits and the newtonian nature of the game make them a perfect fit for KSP.

Unfortunately, my inability with both coding and 3D modeling have hampered any kind of progress I could have made on this mod, with the exception of two very nifty things:

Research and Math.

As mentioned above, I have absolutely no ability in the 3D/programing business, but I've been trying to get my mind over how such a vessel could be implemented in KSP.

Here's what I've came to so far:

The way I see it, the Vessel could be a single piece. It helps to save memory and is pretty easy to use. We could have the following on it:

Engine_module: We have the main drive system. We can use the UV Map feature of engines to make glowing and actuating radiator fins as seen in Elite: Dangerous.

Landing_Gear: Pretty straightforwards. Press G, landing gear extended/retracted, business as usual.

Lights: Believe me or not, ships in Elite have floodlights! Retracting ones, like those from that 80's car! Yeah, how cool is that?

Internals: From here on it starts to get tricky. I'm not sure it is possible to replicate the holographical displays from Elite in KSP. We may get away with RasterProp Monitors, but I'm not sure. :/

RCS: I'm not quite sure on this one too, to be honest. The RCS is an amazing part of the Elite Ships that help give us the feel of realism. It would be plain wrong not to have them. The problem is: I don't know if we can use the RCS Part Module to exert rotational forces on itself. I've never seen a KSP Capsule with integrated RCS, so... Yeah.

In case this last affirmation is true, we can always have a separate RCS part, increasing the part count of the mod to two. (Huh.)

A nice note I think it's worth to add: I've been doing some math on the drive systems in Elite, and so far, it seems they are very advanced pieces of machinery, made of the finest quality Handwavium! Please, bare with me:

Let's take the good Sidywindy here as an example: It weights beautiful 14 Tons. The Metric ones. 'Cause really. Who uses the OTHER Tons? But I digress...

Anyway, the Sidewinder weights 14 Tons. This nifty little ship can reach a top speed of 220 m/s, 320 with boost. (Yeah... this is were the hole "Newtonian" thing gets kind of... Spaghetti...) Watching some youtube videos and counting how long it takes to reach said top speed, we can figure it's acceleration.

In the video I watched, the Sidewinder was traveling at 233 m/s. The pilot boosted and it reached a top speed of 323 m/s in 3 seconds. That is, in 3 seconds, it accelerated 90 m/s. That is an amazing 30 meters per second per second! Which, in other words, is a 3 Gee acceleration. Quite the kick, huh?

Ok, so moving on... Knowing the ship can accelerate at 3G, we deduce that, assuming the sidewinder is at it's minimum possible weight, 14 Tons, the thrusters produce hefty 420.000 Newtons. That is 420 KiloNewtons.

Wow.

Ok... Now on the the ISP. This engines are electrical. (Wait, really? Those are quite powerful for... well, moving on...) The basic Sidewinder has a 6MW powerplant. Now let's assume that all of this energy goes into the engines. We apply our values to the following formula:

EnginePower = ExhaustVelocity * ThrustPower / 2

Ok. Let's plug-in our numbers. 6.000.000 = Ev * 420000 / 2. So, our Ev = 28,5714 m/s

...

28,5 meters per second.

...

That is an ISP of 2,9124 seconds.

And that is assuming the thrusters are 100% efficient.

This is... woah. Really? How do this things even fly?

***

So you see my point. Changing the MW to GW solves the problem, tough: we now have an amazing 28.571,42 m/s Exhaust Velocity, that is, an ISP of 2912,4 seconds.

Much better.

After all this rambling and idea-presenting, I finally come to you, good reader:

What do you think?

Would you like an Elite: Dangerous Ships Mod? Is it possible to do it? Can you help me make this come true*?

*Because I know for sure I can't...

Thanks you all for reading, and have a nice day!

"Wright on, Commander!"

[gmpd2000]

CMDR Gmod Agrees!

Now, who is going to make an Orbis space station?

Real Scale.

[GabrielG.A.B.Fonseca]

I've been looking into what size would the Sidewinder be. The one in Elite: Dangerous is 5x14x20 meters high, long and wide.

Of course, Kerbals are smaller than humans. The average Kerbal stands about 0,75 meters high without the spacesuit.

With some basic math, we can figure the Kerb-ified versions size:

If we assume a normal human male stands at 1,80 meters, we can do the following:

Human Scale: 1,8 Kerbal Scale: 0,75

Ship Size: Heigh1/width1/length1 New Ship Size: heigh2/width2/length2

So, the new dimensions will be: 2,34375m x 5,833333...m x 8,333333...m in heigh, length and width.

So here comes a good question, if this is to be made, will it be 1:1 or in a Kerbal-ified scale?

Hum...

[SquaredSpekz]

Found this.... literally searched - Elite Dangerous KSP and this came up : http://imgur.com/a/lLV0O