Kerbal Cargo Bay

[Captain Vlad]

Aside from the equipment bay that's now basically included on every spaceplane I make, I've used cargo-capable spaceplanes to haul fuel and RCS propellant to my space station, to haul up new parts for my space station, to deploy money-making probes to other Kerbin-system bodies and (in a test), to recover a probe I had orbiting Kerbin. They've also saved me a ton of money as, for smaller cargos, I don't have to expend most of a rocket just to do these things, instead going most of the way in a 100 percent recoverable craft.

Wish every part was so useless.

[klgraham1013]

I like that rover design quite a bit, drewscriver. Might have to try that out.

[montyben101]

They are a bit small as its been said, bigger ones are coming with .90

[phunk]

I don't think anyone's mentioned it, but holding the Mod key down while attaching will disallow surface attachment and only attach things via the attach nodes.

Now there's something I wish I knew a long time ago.

As for the uselessness of the current cargo bays, this little ship landed on dres and the only part of the entire mission that wasn't fully recovered was the fuel.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Erm... I'll just leave this here!

and this...

[Fingal]

...and rovers...

http://i1378.photobucket.com/albums/ah120/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Kerbodyne%2025/Kerbodyne%20Investigator/screenshot676_zps0ac91ed3.jpg

I love that rover. It's so much fun for driving around the flats of Minimus and doing some very silly things with the RCS

[Wanderfound]

I love that rover. It's so much fun for driving around the flats of Minimus and doing some very silly things with the RCS

I wonder if I should start a Minmus rover racing challenge...

The recovery into the cargo bay working okay for you? I made it as user-friendly as I could, but it's still a little bit fiddly in high-G environments.

Hopefully there'll be stock ramps or winches some day.

[Geschosskopf]

The stock cargo bays are indeed useless, you can only launch probes, which are also useless. However .90 with the huge cargo bays and Fine Print this should be better.

The Mk 2 cargo bays are extremely useful. The Mk 2 parts set lacks a decent SAS unit, a battery, and a mono tank that isn't enormous. So you can use the small bay to create a service module for your spaceplane with a couple of 1.25m SAS, a couple of RTGs, a 1.25m mono tank, and some small batteries. Then close the door and you don't have to see all that stuff. You can all fit the science parts in there. The large bay is useful as a probe carrier. If 0.90's version of Fine Print is anything like the original mod, you'll have lots of contracts to launch probes. And all these cargo bays can also be installed upside down and used as bomb bays .

And I saw SWDenis' 0.90 preview video where an orange tank fit inside the new Mk 3 cargo bay. This will be useful for building stations.

[Wanderfound]

The Mk 2 cargo bays are extremely useful. The Mk 2 parts set lacks a decent SAS unit, a battery, and a mono tank that isn't enormous. So you can use the small bay to create a service module for your spaceplane with a couple of 1.25m SAS, a couple of RTGs, a 1.25m mono tank, and some small batteries. Then close the door and you don't have to see all that stuff. You can all fit the science parts in there. The large bay is useful as a probe carrier. If 0.90's version of Fine Print is anything like the original mod, you'll have lots of contracts to launch probes. And all these cargo bays can also be installed upside down and used as bomb bays .

Incidentally, if you build it right a small cargo bay can fit both a full science payload and a probe with enough native ÃŽâ€V to hit escape velocity from LKO.

[Starwhip]

How are you guys getting your ships to look like that? KerbPaint only lets me paint the wings...

Has there been an update?

[KerikBalm]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97562-I-love-using-Rescale-factor

I set the rescale on the cargo bay and some adaptors to 4 or 2.

It was quite useful.

[Spatzimaus]

Yeah, not useless. Here's my interplanetary mapping probe, fit into one of the SMALL Mk2 bays:

18km/s of dV, which is enough to reach anywhere in the system from Kerbin orbit. Kethane scanner, ScanSat mappers (hi-res and SAR), antennae, thermometer and atmosphere scanner (for Jool death-dives). I've now got one in a polar orbit around every planet and moon, plus a close-in equatorial orbit around the Sun itself. And again, that's the half-sized bay, so a full-sized bay could launch two of these, or something much larger. I've got a similar design for an unmanned probe lander, but those aren't really useful at the moment so I've only got a couple on Eve.

But those are just launched stuff. Here's a vehicle I finished today, the Pteracuda:

(And yes, it uses a lot of mod parts, plus a few of my own parts.)

It's a combination hydrofoil-rover-propeller plane-SSTO rocket, with ion engines so I can get it to Laythe. Now, how is this relevant to the discussion? Well, if you look behind the cockpit, there's a large cargo bay facing downward (underneath the ScanSat sensor and solar panels). Inside that bay is a Kethane drill attached to a KAS winch. So, this thing drives/flies/floats to a Kethane deposit, opens its bay, lowers the drill to the ground, fills its tanks, and turns on the refinery module (also inside the cargo bay) to make whatever fuel is needed for this craft or anything nearby (it's got ways of docking). Once it's done, it retracts the drill, winches it back up into the bay, and closes.

The cargo bay is necessary because otherwise the water would shear off the drill/winch assembly when it's operating as a boat. (I've also got another winch with electromagnet in that bay, so that'd get destroyed as well.) Nothing is getting launched, but the bay is still necessary. Other folks have done similar things, using the bay to hide VTOL engines, asteroid claws, and so on, so it's not just a function of the KAS winches or anything.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Spatzimaus

[drewscriver]

I like that rover design quite a bit, drewscriver. Might have to try that out.

Well, you're welcome to give it a whirl, if you'd like. It has quite a bit of delta-V, and I designed it to be as balanced as possible. You will probably want to bind an action group to toggling the torque on and off, though.

Spike Mk2 Rover

[Wanderfound]

How are you guys getting your ships to look like that? KerbPaint only lets me paint the wings...

Has there been an update?

Some partial updates: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/50008-0-23-KerbPaint-Paint-layering-for-parts-(September-23rd)-(Same-Old-Still-Works!)/page44?p=1462688#post1462688

[shadowfax]

The stock cargo bays are indeed useless, you can only launch probes, which are also useless. However .90 with the huge cargo bays and Fine Print this should be better.

I get lots of use out of mine. It brings Station Science experiment modules back and forth to my stations orbiting Kerbin and the Mun. Brings animal food up for the zoology module. It's even brought a few of the smaller station assembly sections up. It also brings up KAS containers full of things like struts, etc.

[spikeyhat09]

Is it just me or does it seem that the cargo bay that comes stock with KSP has no real function? I can't put anything in there that I can launch into space because of the shape of the bottom floor. Anything I try to attach sticks halfway out the other side. Any ideas?http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cargo_bay

would you mind explaining the purpose behind the italicized blue text

[Specialist290]

Dropping this in Gameplay Questions, since it's a question about how to best use an in-game part.

[Fingal]

The recovery into the cargo bay working okay for you? I made it as user-friendly as I could, but it's still a little bit fiddly in high-G environments.

It's never survived long enough for me to try. The temptation to get up some very high speeds and then fly around with the RCS has been too much