Tiktaalik's Orion Bits

Tiktaalik's Orion Bits

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Parts to build an Orion spacecraft that aren't part of Nyrath's Orion drive mod.

(Most updated resources https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/586/TD Industry's Orion bits 10m Curse edition updated 22/03/2015, may or may not be as up to date as KS version.)


Things I know I need to do;

* Textures.  I've recently got my head around bump maps and most of the object modelling is done, so it's time to texture the parts.  Not really tricky, just time consuming.
* Internal spaces.  I've done some test internal spaces and it's not too tricky at all.  Except the internal spaces of space craft are insanely busy, so it may take me a while to get good looking internal spaces.  A test unfurnished 7.2m internal space makes it pretty clear that there's a truck load of space inside the Orion main quarters.
* USAF Parts.

(http://i.imgur.com/YWouGOW.png)

An early stage collection of parts for adding on top of Nyrath's Orion drive
(found at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom).

Parts are at various stages of completion, many without appropriate notes etc in
cfg files. Several pieces have very basic texture maps or a
generic "off white" patchy thing. Again, still testing things and I just couldn't be
bothered creating complex texture and bump maps for structures that will change (thus destroying
all the texture work).

Basic top down idea is as follows;

Nav Centre Cap (in Science parts)

Nav Centre/Pod

Adapter (in the Utility section. Has emergency power supply and battery, would normally also have emergency food and air n stuff for 90 days)
Control Centre (in pods)

Bunk Room (in pods, should be in Utility)

Fuel tank (technically optional, but worth having)

Upper Engine plate.  This (if KSP supported it) would also contain the main shielding plate of depleted blutonium, so during powered flight, kerbals should be in sections above this piece.

Engines - small rockets scattered around the edge of the engine plate.  There's some small solid boosters provided.  Place the solid boosters before the lower Engine plate so you can actually place the lower engine plate without KSP build spazo.

Lower Engine plate.

Escape Vehicle rocket nozzle.

Decoupler - the included decoupler is a basket thing.  Should have it's activity tied to the solid boosters to escape the main craft, although that does thend to result in explosions.

7.2m Top cap/dome. In Structural.   Attached to this are;

 - Fairing - In two halves, on the stack points on the top rim.

 - Transport tubes, on the round attachment points.  Stack these and then top off with the joint piece that then should fit to the upper spine.  This (if KSP had the detail) allows kerbals to move from the upper sections to the lower sections without having to have a break in the shielding in the engine plate.


7.2m pieces.  Normally one of each. Kerbals should spend the main time of any long voyage here, as it has tennis courts and swimming pools etc (just kidding, but it does have staterooms and a galley FFS)

7.2m bottom cap/dome.

3.2m parts in any combination/order you wish. I find at least one RTS, and Misc part, plus 2 or more fuel seems about right.  Original spec would call for one of the Misc/Sciencelab parts directly under the main quarters sections.  Then undisclosed extra spine.


Nyrath's bits
Also, along the side of the upper spine section,tunnels are supposed to go up opposing sides, to join the main living areas to the control sections above. These are just for Kerbals moving about, as the engine plate blocks access.

NOTE on Nyrath's Orion.

Bomb supply is low compared to Orion Project specs.  There seems a minor calculation mixup with the prebuilt stacks of magazines.  And the Central spine is the wrong size.

Originally I thought the whole engine was scaled to 80%, as it's a fairly common trap for KSP parts.  There's an implied 1.25 rescalefactor unless it's specifically set.  But the pusher plate (when imported into blender) is clearly a 10m plate.  But the spine is less than 3.2m diameter.  It appears to be a smidgen under 3m.  I'm intending to have a look at what can be done about this without screwing things up horribly, and the end result will probably be a new spine piece.

I've made the following changes to parts in my Nyrath parts.

Engine Part: mass = 91 (call me a silly realist, but I wanted to see how that worked out).  (note, there's two part definitions in the engine cfg file)

SmallOrionMags: bombStockpile = 92, the original plans were for 90+2 "Pulse Units" per detachable magazine.

Large OrionMags (aka the spine+6 stacks of 10 small mags): bombStockpile = 5520 (92x60)

I found when I'd made these changes I ended up using the 20MN and 10MN units to get off the ground. The 3.5MN units would bunny hop me around until local Kerbal Hiroshima events.

And another thing.  Nyrath's bomb units cause temp increase per pulse of 250 <whatever units KSP is using for temp>.  The various tests done with explosives and radiation sources, on scaled models suggested that the actual temperature increase per 1.5kt pulse was a surprising 0.18F.  250 <units> is certainly better for a bit of drama and glowy engine, and it doesn't usually cause any issues.  I found that mixing it with the Lethal Reentry mod resulted in frequent explosions.  I've personally dropped my temp increase to 2.0 (it's a very easy to find setting in the magazine cfg files).  This change isn't needed for anyone not using some alteration to heat/aero physics.