LISA interferometer Mk3 (BIG CONSTRUCTION) - finished!

[Urben]

I've finally finished something I worked on for a long time and needed some tries.

It's a replica of the gravitation wave detector LISA! You don’t know what that is? Click here.

The first try didn’t worked. The second one neither. But on the third run with some know how I've finally managed it!

I had a bit troubles at doing the final connection of the third satellite because the arms are no matter what never perfectly aligned.

But with some pushing and twirling both docking ports connected to the construction. It's now under some stress but who cares!

It took 3 starts for the satellites and 3 more starts for all the girders. I also made a vessel which realigned some girders and refilled MonoP.

Its manned and has three large dockingports on each satellite so it could be upgraded to a space station. It's mass is about 56 tons.

Arm lengh comparison: (distance satellite-to-satellite)

• Real-life LISA: 5.000.000.000 meters (almost ten times of the Moon orbit diameter) canceled (too expensive)
  
• Real-life eLISA: 1.000.000.000 meters (more than 40 times of the Mun orbit diameter)
  
• My first LISA: 40 meters (12 girders) canceled (faulty design)
  
• My second LISA: 360 meters (108 girders) canceled (too big for KSP)
  
• My third LISA: 100 meters (30 girders) finished!
  

Images (click to expand!)

^shown from above

^focused on one satellite

^last docking (but not the last try )

^IVA, if you look closely, the right one isnt connected right (yet)

^IVA zoomed on one satellite

Thats it.

Comments please! Was alot of work.

Thanks NavyFish for the docking Plugin!

Edited January 28, 2015 by Urben

[zekes]

nice job! Looks good, and BIG.

[Urben]

A little push with a picture which shows how the girders were placed:

Since the girders have the dice-like connector in the middle, I could stack them with RCS tanks and ports in between them.

Together with a computer on the top of the stack it was pretty easy to align them to each other.

Once the work was done the four small RCS parts were disconnected and the computer did the same with sepratrons.

Too bad I have a dozen pieces of junk orbiting very near of LISA. Since it has no engines I have to clean the space somehow later...

[Prof. Endwalker]

Jeb demands bigger.

But seriously this is a crazy big craft already. Dang.

[Urben]

It can be easily enlarged! Maybe this will happen someday..

[problemecium]

I thought the real LISA had "arms" made of laser beams. Why not just put three satellites in stationary orbits with something to represent the beam emitters aiming at each other satellite?

[SofusRud]

I thought the real LISA had "arms" made of laser beams. Why not just put three satellites in stationary orbits with something to represent the beam emitters aiming at each other satellite?

That's the problem with replica's, isn't it. You gotta decide what to sacrifice and what to replicate, stats, aesthetics, concept, whether to build to account for things that KSP doesn't model, etc. For example, the eLISA up there is (according to the Wikipedia page) a zero-drag satellite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-drag_satellite), which means that it is built to compensate for the drag, light-presssure, and other things that aren't included in KSP. Also, based on the description of zero-drag satellites I think it would be impossible to do. But I guess just putting a few satellites in formation orbits trailing Kerbin wouldn't look as cool.

And BTW OP, it does look cool, so kudos.

Edited January 29, 2015 by SofusRud

[Urben]

I could put three satellites on the same orbit but in 120 orbit-degrees (or how thats called) together.

But you wouldnt see them all at once and they have to do one full spin per Kerbin orbit (like the IRL moon does). But that doesnt happen without plugins.

And if you put them like 1km to each other, they wont stay like this since parallel orbits dont exist.

tl;dr: they dont face each other the same way all the time if not conected.