What have you made with Mk 3?

[Aragosnat]

I'll let you know once I unlock them.

[AbacusWizard]

I'm still using Mk1 and Mk2 for my spaceplanes, but I'm finding Mk3 parts great for making interplanetary spaceships! This one has plenty of fuel and atomic engines in the four engine nacelles, and the main fuselage includes a shuttle bay (with lab and lander) and a cargo bay (currently holding seven tiny parachute probes that I'll be dropping into Eve's atmosphere).

[Melcom]

I also like the Mk3 for interplanetary spaceships. But it's still a small craft on a mission to Ike:

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/44241471298887386/8CE4C4837E9070F889A5D0B3AA0F1333F345C7B0/

[Crimson Sunrise]

Nothing yet. Main issue is not the parts lacking sensible adapters for other sizes, but the lack of bigger wing parts.

[RAINCRAFTER]

A Shuttle Replica that won't get off the ground. Pic soon.

Now here's a few:

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Edited January 11, 2015 by RAINCRAFTER

[FlyingPete]

I've experimented a bit with the Mk3 parts, and have to say that I don't like them. I get that they're sized to fit 2.5m parts into the cargo bays, but they just seem so enormous compared to the 'supporting' parts that are currently available. At least the mk2 parts are fairly sensibly sized in that they work with current landing gear/wing parts etc. I very rarely use the big 3.75m parts either, but at least they have appropriate engines etc to go with them.

Personally, I think I'll be sticking with Mk2 spaceplanes for crew and small payloads, and leave heavy/bulky stuff to rockets.

[Engineer of Stuff]

I still prefer to lift heavy stuff from Kerbin via rockets, however I did design a VTOL SSTO for going to and from the surface of Laythe, and so far it's my only successful (ie functional) application of the Mk3 parts. On Kerbin, it can marginally lift off vertically with no payload and full fuel tanks, and comes up just shy of. -snip-

Can I have the .craft for that?

[AbacusWizard]

What I'm really liking is the variety of size conversion parts that are full of fuel.

[Wanderfound]

Nothing yet. Main issue is not the parts lacking sensible adapters for other sizes, but the lack of bigger wing parts.

Bigger wing pieces would make it easier, but they certainly aren't a showstopper.

[Kerano]

I made a Mk3 spaceplane which is SSTO capable on Kerbin and Laythe.

It has two cargo bays, one with a laboratory and the other with a rover for surface science. The rover is redockable with monoprop engines.

Here's what it looks like launching from Kerbin.

After the main boosters detach.

One time I got overambitious and flew too far around Laythe, eating into my liquid fuel reserves. I didn't have enough fuel to return to orbit, so I had to design a second plane to rescue it.

This second plane was of similar design - shorter due to the lack of a lab, but instead of a science rover it had a liquid fuel tank rover.

The tanker rover made use of a claw for docking.

Refueling was a success.

Both spaceplanes made it safely back to the station in orbit. You can see one of the "return tugs" at the far end of the station, which docked to the spaceplanes to give them the extra delta-v necessary to return to Kerbin.

[Axelord FTW]

Nothing, I have yet to unlock the parts.

[problemecium]

I wonder how much mileage I'll get out of this shot xD

[Liowen]

Not the best lighting but my Kerbal Tour bus in orbit around Mun. This is nearly all stock except for the landing gear, nose cones, and a couple of the fuel tanks that are in the MRS mod pack. That mod was very helpful filling in the holes in some of the parts in the stock system.

[panzer1b]

Only use ive had out of them (due to stock game's limits on their use in SSTOs as it stands), is structural parts of capital ships.

Pretty much all my run of the mill frigates use some amount of MK-3 (mostly cargo bays) as either hull segments, or fuel.

[Loligoat]

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Buranish. Had a few hours of free time and decided to make something useful with the Mk3 parts. It's pretty sloppy, i'll admit, and there's definitely room for improvement, but it's not that bad. It can manage ~25t to LKO.

[Sidereus]

Funny you should ask....I'll upload more pics in a bit, but today I created the Jooligan I.

It's an unmanned probe destined for Jool that consists of two Mk. 3 cargo bays -- a medium one and a short one, separated by a monopropellant tank -- and is carrying three landers destined for Laythe, Val, and Tylo. I was originally going to use the Mk. 2 cargo bays, but the Tylo lander wouldn't fit...It's powered by four LV-Ns, with enough fuel for somewhere around 7000 deltaV.

My first attempt (pictured) failed, because while I had enough deltaV, my TWR was too low...despite using two of the big 25x4 engine clusters and two S1 SRBs. I removed some of the upper fuel tanks and the S1s, increased the total number of 25x4 engine clusters to four, and asparagus staged them. That worked.

[PB666]

I made a vertically launched rocket capable of putting 16 kerbals almost anywhere in the Kerbol system (not necessarily to return them, though), with some 5 km/s delta-v and about 60 tons of weight.

The OP didn't mention anything about spaceplanes

I'd like to use the MK3 cargo bays to deliver rovers, but the wider rovers still don't fit. Squad should add retractable rover wheels

2.5M wide tank with landing struts barely fit, once out they may not fit back in.

Good idea however, using the cargo bay to deliver rovers.

[Sidereus]

So here's some of the screenshots I promised:

Jooligan I in orbit, having ditched the first asparagus stage, and using the last one to get a head-start on the burn to Jool.

Main burn to Jool.

It cannah' take much more, captain! Or, "Look at the pretty glowing nuclear potential warheads engines."

Arrival in the Jool system.

Say hello to my little friends!

Uh, Kerbin, we have a problem.

<tangent>So, yeah. I tried to shove a bit more fuel onto these things without increasing overall length by stacking toroidal fuel tanks and burying a 48-7S engine inside the "stack". The game even created a little tunnel/heatshield going down the center of the tanks, so I thought it would work. It even shows the engine flame going out beyond the fuel tank, but I'm getting absolutely no effective thrust. I guess the last tank is acting as a cap, negating the thrust. So, two out of three probes are worthless.

At least my Laythe lander worked...</tangent>

Edited January 31, 2015 by Sidereus

[Carsaxy]

I made some tests with Mk3 but none of them went good, but then I managed to make a Mk3 SSTO to Laythe succesfully out of nowhere!

It uses Tweakscale and Stock Extension, MechJeb and Mk2 Stock Expansion.

It can fly with jet engines to 2300m/s at an altitide of 40'000m, then uses atomic engines.

Here a pic on Laythe:

It has space for cargo, but the delta-v was just enough even with the empty bay. When I got there I noticed a thing: I forgot the ladder! (and the RCS thrusters, but that was not a problem)

It returned safely to the Kerbin SOI, but...

I made two version of the craft, but i tested only the first:

Jule 1

Jule 2

Any improvement suggestion is well accepted

Edited July 14, 2015 by Carsaxy

[Dawnkeeper]

*snip*

Any improvement suggestion is well accepted

Don't necro threads?

[Skylid]

I'll just leave these here:

http://imgur.com/a/GkSo0

The above has since been succeeded by a B9 SSTO design as it performed better and proved safer to fly, as follows:

http://imgur.com/a/APSAi

They are both reusable carrier shuttle launchers for the smaller Mk2 shuttle that's piggybacked.

------

1. Aerodynamic Nose Cone.

2. Mk2 wings can lift the Mk3.

3. Easy enough to make your own double-sized copy of the stock landing gear.

4. Mk3->2.5m adapter into multi-couplers/engines.

5. Same goes for all other stock parts, though.

Is there any reason why the second is named after a type of cheese?

[Captain Sierra]

Don't necro threads?

Since he is actually adding something to the thread, it can be considered an acceptable necro.

What have I done? Not much that works.

Most recent failure:

Also . . .

The Mk4 is back . . .

[Alshain]

You are welcome to keep the thread alive if the mods say it is ok, but the intent of the thread was design ideas without large wings and landing gear (i.e. pre-1.0). You might be better off with a new thread now.