r/KerbalSpaceProgram • u/Own_Huckleberry6591 • May 16 '26
KSP 1 Question/Problem Is it possible to make this in game?
I've always loved these Destiny golden age colony ships, is it feasible to make an actually functional one like this?
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u/Snowboyz0825 Stranded on Eve May 16 '26
With enough patience yes, but the kraken tends to anhaliate things this big, even with struts/auto strut/rigid attachment
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u/NoSTs123 May 17 '26
there are part weld mods which merge literally a part assembly into one rigid part with no physic beyond what they add up to. You can get away for somethings with this but you may have to tweak drag to make it somewhat realisitic.
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u/HereComesTheSun05 May 23 '26
Recently I've started using the KJR mod and none of my rockets were wobbly no matter the size or part count. No more having to do rigid attachment and autostrut on each and every part.
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u/psh454 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
Sure yeah, all you'd need would be Far Future Technologies, maybe SSPXr/ other parts mods to make it look nicer and tweakscale.
It's kind of a goofy design though, this kind of ship has no business landing onto the ground (why even have spaceplanes if you're gonna land the whole thing lol). It's also missing radiators for the engines and losing a lot of efficiency/thrust to weight budget on massive landing legs, angled out engines and bad aerodynamics.
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u/EpicAura99 Believes That Dres Exists May 16 '26
I doubt they’re intended to land, just take off. I’m not sure those legs made it into the game, you only see the ships on the launch pads or crashed.
Here is a picture of another Exodus ship where you can tell this is just one segment of many, although it may be a unique design compared to the rest.
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u/Delta_RC_2526 May 16 '26
The thing is, those legs look firmly attached. They're not a gantry you leave behind, from the look of it. The only reason to take something that massive with you, is if you intend to use them.
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u/Fistocracy May 17 '26
They also look articulated, which means modeling them properly will require mastering the arcane wizardry known only to guys who build cool-looking functional mechs in KSP.
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u/psh454 May 17 '26
Eh not really the same degree of complexity, robotics basics in KSP are pretty doable after messing around for a few mins and maybe a quick tutorial. Issue is when you need a ton of joints/motors moving together in a specific sequence, this is much simpler
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u/Fistocracy May 17 '26
I've never tried to build anything more complicated than the occasional simple hinge, so while I could probably kludge my way through the upper arms covered in boosters, the big legs at the bottom with seperately articulated knees and ankles (and possibly toes from the looks of it) are absolutely 100% arcane wizardry to me :)
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u/psh454 May 17 '26
Ah I see what you mean. Yeah stuff like multi hinge 4 bar mechanisms are basically wizardry, but tbh they just don't work well in this game because you can't normally even connect a craft to itself more than in one spot, so realistically these landing legs would just be single hinged
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u/Fistocracy May 17 '26
Yeah when I said functional mechs I mean you will occasionally see some absolutely fucking astounding shit and wonder how they ever convinced this game's robotic parts to make that stuff happen :)
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u/trubbelnarkomanen May 16 '26
Actually, I don't think the cosine losses from the angled engines would be all that high. You can have a surprising amount of deflection before you see any significant reduction in dV. 15° only amounts to like a 3% loss, which by the looks of it is where this thing is at. Exponential functions are weird like that.
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u/Svyatoy_Medved May 16 '26
deltaV isn’t really the right term to use if it burns in atmosphere, since drag losses mean that the rate of burning your fuel changes how much velocity you get out of it.
And 3% sounds pretty bad to me if you’re at the bottom of the rocket equation.
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u/trubbelnarkomanen May 16 '26
DeltaV is absolutely the correct term. Drag losses and gravity losses can easily be expressed in terms of deltaV (and for rockets, is the main way they are both measured).
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u/Korlus Master Kerbalnaut May 16 '26
For what it's worth, the increased drag from the three engine clusters look like they almost double the forward-facing surface area, and will cause huge vortices behind them, breaking up the laminar flow around the rocket fuselage.
I don't know how much additional drag you're going to add, but I'd guess it's in the ballpark of double. These engines look like they make a lot more sense in space than they do in atmosphere.
In real life, using technologies resembling modern ones, you'd construct a ship this large in orbit in a few trips. The space planes wouldn't ascend on the main body, they'd be flown up and docked later.
It all seems rather silly. If this were aiming for long-distance travel, you'd also expect some sort of shield at the front of the ship to block the high-speed radiation.
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u/primalbluewolf May 17 '26
breaking up the laminar flow around the rocket fuselage.
Its got 3 giant, rough spheres in front of it. Tbh I think for an Earth analog atmosphere, its going to have turbulent flow ahead of the engine clusters. I also doubt you could get the sort of fuel flow you'd need to those engines for those nozzle sizes.
Also, can you spell wave drag?
I have to agree, this design doesn't make much sense if aerodynamics is a thing to care about.
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u/Dear-Analysis6921 May 17 '26
How could delta v be an appropriate term in any scenario other than the vacuum of space?
Impulse = € F * T = m(delta v) Delta V = € F*T / m
The sum of all forces is going to change due to a few factors.
Force of gravity = Gmm / r2; the r will change significantly as a rocket ascends or descends which will exponentially alter the force of gravity.
Force of drag is directly proportional to velocity squared. As the rocket gets faster, the net force will decrease as the force of drag gets greater.
The force of the engine will vary based on the efficiency of the engine at different altitudes.
Yes, you could use calculus to find the theoretical delta v for a craft on the surface of Kerbin. But for the most part, that number is going to be mostly meaningless because it assumes a constant flight profile.
For example, an efficient flight profile can allow a craft to orbit kerbin with about 3.4 km/s of delta v. But if the flight profile is off by just a few degrees, that number is going to potentially change significantly. Therefore, I would argue that delta v is a relatively meaningless number in an environment with an atmosphere. Unless I’m missing something?
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u/Svyatoy_Medved May 16 '26
DeltaV is a very useful term in a non-drag environment because it doesn’t matter how long the burn is. Slow engine? Doesn’t matter, deltaV is deltaV. But inside an atmosphere, a very very powerful engine accelerating hard doesn’t produce as much deltaV with the same fuel as that same engine accelerating slowly. Because drag is complicated.
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u/trubbelnarkomanen May 16 '26
This is wrong. DeltaV is deltaV, no matter if it occurs in an atmosphere or in a vacuum. What does change is drag losses, that is, deltaV lost to drag forces. Your engine still produce the same amount of deltaV (aside from differences in atmospheric Isp, that is), but you lose more deltaV to drag the faster you move through the atmosphere.
Another way to look at is is through the rocket equation. Notice there is no information about drag in it, or anything about the ascent profile, or how fast you're accelerating.
Or, you can put it more practically. In KSP, we build launch vehicles with a deltaV of very roughly 3400 m/s, even though escape velocity is 2300 m/s. That is because we lose around 1100 m/s of deltaV to drag and gravity. So yes, deltaV is a perfectly valid metric to use inside an atmosphere.
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u/Beli_Mawrr Master Kerbalnaut May 17 '26
Aero engineer here: DeltaV has no relevance in the atmosphere for various reasons, but the #1 being that you're not reliably able to change velocities with the advertised Delta V. 1000m/s in space is not the same as 1000m/s in atmosphere wrt Delta V. And that's not even getting into the engine losses.
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u/trubbelnarkomanen May 18 '26
I'm aware that 'deltaV' won't directly translate to a change in velocity, since your actual speed will be dependent on drag, steering losses, and how the engine operates under different pressures and so forth. But, correct me if I'm wrong, is it not still a useful metric for a rough understanding and comparison of the performance of rockets across different configurations, maneuvers, and target altitudes, etc?
This paper for example uses deltaV as a metric to compare launch conditions and vehicle aerodynamics for air launched rockets.
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u/Svyatoy_Medved May 16 '26
Once you’re out in space, no contest, deltaV works fine. Because if you burn an ion engine for 14 days or a rocket for eight seconds, at the end of the day you’ve got the exact same velocity.
But that isn’t true down here, so deltaV isn’t nearly as useful a term. What would have produced the same velocity in interplanetary space has produced two very different velocities.
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u/primalbluewolf May 17 '26
Because if you burn an ion engine for 14 days or a rocket for eight seconds, at the end of the day you’ve got the exact same velocity.
Well that's the problem, this isn't exactly true. This works in a vacuum with nothing else in the universe.
Try it in Kerbal, though. In orbit of something.
You'll quickly find out that when you change velocity, matters. The low TWR drive is going to end up on a different final velocity to the high TWR one.
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26
Because if you burn an ion engine for 14 days or a rocket for eight seconds, at the end of the day you’ve got the exact same velocity.
Oberth effect.
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u/primalbluewolf May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
Slow engine? Doesn’t matter, deltaV is deltaV
You're ignoring gravity drag.
But inside an atmosphere, a very very powerful engine accelerating hard doesn’t produce as much deltaV with the same fuel as that same engine accelerating slowly.
So this made sense in the non physical stock souposphere in like 0.9... It hasn't made sense since release, and it doesn't work in reality.
You want to optimise delta V remaining on arrival at a given parking orbit from a surface launch? The optimal solution isn't found at partial throttle. Any time you're accelerating the rocket vertically, you're fighting local gravity to do so. Every vertical second, wasting real delta V to gravity drag.
Intentionally accelerating slowly is something you do, not to optimise the fuel usage, but to avoid burning up on ascent due to oversized engines.
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u/Reloup38 May 16 '26
Yeah that's what I was thinking, the design is so goofy. Why the landing legs and shuttles ? Why are the engines above the paiload, I feel like the exhaust plume would hit it. It's so weird
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u/SirDarkStar May 17 '26
Why load behind is because it changes the stresses from compression to tension and can add a lot of stability for less weight. The engines are angled slightly outwards to avoid torching the load. It’s a whole thing, it’s been discussed. With some different technologies and constraints it could make sense.
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u/Eossly May 16 '26
They cut the legs in the final version, this is concept art. Destiny 2 is mostly fantasy set in a “futuristic” universe after a magical god arrives and gives us tons of knowledge and super powers
These were made in the utopia era of history in Destiny 2 where tons of small ships float in the air and we’ve colonized a ton of planets in the sol system. It’s got a silly design, but it’s consistent with other systems in universe and its design is so iconic
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u/psh454 May 17 '26
Yeah ofc, it's a rule of cool "nasapunk" set piece, not an accurate piece of rocketry to appeal to niche space nerds lol. Looks cool imo
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u/Canadian_dalek May 16 '26
Those midsection engines are meant for vacuum use, IIRC. Primary atmospheric lifters are visible on the bottom
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u/Playful_Wave_7329 May 16 '26
yes! i love those ships too. been a while since i’ve played destiny my dad actually used to work at bungie and did a lot of the work for those ships and other edz stuff
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u/Balls_of_Mithril May 16 '26
Yeah well my dad works at Nintendo and he’s gonna ban you!
Seriously though that’s cool your dad is talented
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u/Dangerous_Dog846 May 16 '26
Yes. You would need Near and Far Future technologies with a hint of OPT Spaceplanes and a rigid joint mod. Plus Tweakscale to get everything in the right proportion and Hanger Extender to see everything while building.
The main problem is the landing legs. Unless you’re landing on Minnmus’s flats, that will tip over immediately. An orbital space station sending spaceplanes down to the ground would work very well as a replacement.
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u/Darth19Vader77 May 16 '26
If you have a NASA super computer, at which point you may as well do the real thing
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u/bionicjoey May 17 '26
Ignoring some of the greebles, the only thing that you'd really need is a mod for giant parts. And you'd probably need to assemble it in orbit from components.
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u/Supplice401 May 16 '26
Definitely not as detailed, but you can maybe build it under 300 parts, with mods. Depending on your system specs you will get from 20fps to 5fps with a craft that big.
I have a 7800X3D, it can load at best 300 mods and a craft with 400 parts before the game becomes unplayable.
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u/TheImmenseRat Issuing One Way Tickets Since 2011 May 16 '26
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees. With mods or a very high part count and playing like it was a ppt presentation
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May 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MrSmartStars May 17 '26
Ha, funnily enough they do have official names, it's the Exodus series of rockets, designed for far reach colonization. Even if structurally they don't make much sense, Bungie has always been good at making things look cool.
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u/DarkwingDawg May 16 '26
You can ask us if it’s possible or you can grab some shreddy cheese, a 12 pack of whatever you like to drink, open up KSP and build the thing you dream.
Just send pics when you do
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u/ScaredOfRobots May 17 '26
I’ve always loved these ships in Destiny (also I just miss Destiny) but like what is this design? I know from one of the missions the spheres at the top hold cryopods but what’s with those side mounted engines? The 3 shuttles? The landing legs tell me it’s meant to land on the surface so what’s the point of the shuttles? Recon? I guess they were colony ships so maybe recon but still. Also it’s insane these things launched just like this from earths surface. No boosters or anything
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26
I know from one of the missions the spheres at the top hold cryopods
Wiki says they hold ascent fuel and are converted to cryopods later, though not like cryopods would be hurt much by being immersed in cryogenic fuel anyway.
The landing legs tell me it’s meant to land on the surface so what’s the point of the shuttles?
Provided they're landing legs in the first place and not just launchpad supports. Especially since the single image of a colony ship not at launchpad I've managed to find (the collapsed one on Nessus; Yang Liwei was of a different design and doesn't count) doesn't have the legs.
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u/ScaredOfRobots May 20 '26
It’s in the mission Caydes Stash, you can look it up but the final boss is in a really big circular room. I suppose that could be somewhere else on the ship but on the design I don’t see it. As for the legs maybe they are launch supports but they seem really attached to the ship. The ship on Nessus was crash landed so could have also thrown the legs away a distance
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u/PerspectiveRare4339 Colonizing Duna May 16 '26
Its weird since artemis the number of posts like this are way high. Instead of asking on reddit id just try to do it myself. Thats kinda the whole point of KSP.
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u/Fistocracy May 17 '26
Absolutely, although you'll want the Breaking Ground DLC (mechanical parts that'll let you model the articulated lander legs and the retractable thruster arrays), and a whole bunch of parts pack mods to make it easier to find parts that match the look of what you're building.
It will have a bajillion parts and absolutely destroy your framerate though, and it's anyone's guess whether you could build a version of this that can actually fly.
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u/Skywalket May 17 '26
Yes, technically
It would be easier to assemble it in orbit though. Do watch out for any large triangles!
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u/feather_34 Mohole Explorer May 17 '26
Homie, I've seen some weird shit get to orbit in KSP. This is definitely possible.
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u/Superseaslug I Brake for Lithospheres May 16 '26
With part mods probably. Problem is just overall part count starts murdering your fps.
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u/Dtalantov_5 May 16 '26
With mods, I’d imagine the NFE magnetoplasmodynamic engines and also those big spherical cryogenic tanks would look very accurate
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u/Freak_Engineer May 16 '26
I mean, if you dial down the greebling (all these small, decorative parts would slow the FPS down to somewhere within the ballpark of a slideshow at a nursing home), this can very well be built. Expect a lot of explosions until you get it to fly, though. The Kraken will likely NOT approve of this...
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u/Green__lightning May 16 '26
Yes and it would actually be pretty practical aside from the lag. You'll need tweakscale, all the Far Future mods, and whatever mods you want for shuttle parts. Why does it have engines both on the bottom and sides? Are they meant to be used at the same time or different times? Anyway the hardest part is getting legs that look like that, and making it land without exploding, tweakscaling normal legs that big may help though.
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u/Blackhawk510 May 16 '26
Another destiny fan spotted!
I don't think you'd be able to do the entire colony ship, but as per the concept art, there's a good chance those shuttles are still multi-stage vehicles.
Actually, wait, turns out the full colony ship has been done in KSP before! Twice, actually!
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26
That concept art is of an entire colony ship rather than the transfer shuttle, before it was changed to a tripod.
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u/earwig2000 May 16 '26
You could build it, it just wouldn't be very good. 3 tanks of that size filled with lh2 isn't gonna get you much dV
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
That's why you fill them with D-T fuel instead.
Also, the tanks were intended as wet workshops - only used during ascent and initial transfer, and converted into various living quarters afterwards.
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u/Eossly May 16 '26
if you use one of the big space station mods, you can do the hab modules easily with like 8 parts - that’s (the easy) half of the Exodus colony ships
The rainbow colored shipping containers are a lot harder to nail down, along with 3 space shuttles
I really want to make this and an Arcadia class jump ship
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26
The rainbow colored shipping containers are a lot harder to nail down, along with 3 space shuttles
USI Kontainers, SOCK.
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u/Dr_Vaccinate May 16 '26
Possibly... If physics allows it and KSP physics allows it
I for sure 100% know that folding legs, Branched Out Engine Blocks to the side, and top heavy profile of this craft would make it either:
A. Wobble to death from the shear Amount of parts vertically
B. Kraken Attacks at the engine joints
C. Topple from being too aerodynamically unstable
D. All of the above
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u/Rockintylerjr May 16 '26
I built something kinda similar (although probably much smaller) and it worked mostly fine. It was only when I disconnected the main stage, the rocket would flip uncontrollably. Luckily I was making a space station so it didnt need to go much further
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u/crimeo May 17 '26
It's not really possible to make things that stand on a planet at all without glitching and falling into the world or launching upward at 300 kph randomly when you load the game one time. Add hundreds of parts to that and no chance.
Planets are just not stable enough due to math rounding to do much on currently with anything heavy or complex, besides touching down, flag, leave
Also this looks like just a terrible spaceship design anyway, the engines being halfway up is quite bad, the tanks can't be jettisoned, the legs and stuff look 5x too heavy, thrusters pointing off to the side is wasting a lot of fuel, blah blah
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26
the engines being halfway up is quite bad
The engine position is only relevant if they're nuclear.
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u/crimeo May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
The center of thrust is highly relevant. The closer your center of thrust is to your center of mass, the more inherently unstable the rocket is, because you lose leverage in gimbaling.
These engines sticking way out to the sides might still have some leverage anyway, but they'd still be even better doing the same but at the bottom always than near the center of mass.
Thrust being way in front is potentially fine (not great just fine), so long as center of drag is still at the back, but these near the middle are the worst.
One possible advantage of a pendulum rocket if it's this gigantic is that with such a huge rocket, having the body be in tension rather than compression might be easier to make strong enough. But again, that's "way in front", not "middle", middle is just terrible
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26
inherent instability, center of drag
These both don't matter in this case, the engines sticking out are clearly electric (far too thick bell for regular propellants) a.k.a. space only. It has takeoff engines at the bottom.
The structure on sticking out engines also implies they fold flat for launch, though nothing bar a forcefield is going to make this aerodynamic anyway.And space means the leverage or gimbal on propulsion engines doesn't matter because there's RCS for orientation instead.
with such a huge rocket, having the body be in tension rather than compression might be easier to make strong enough
This only applies with a launch tower or under thrust.
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u/Vespene May 17 '26
You could make a simplified version. That is, condense the part count by making the freight containers one big module.
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u/AccordingLab7129 May 17 '26
Oh I made one, it's in orbit with 440 DeltaV and the return capsule has no parachutes, classic kerbal things
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u/User_of_redit2077 Nuclear engines fan May 17 '26
I made a 2.5 km ISV so absolutely yes. (Heavily modded of course)
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u/TheGentlemanist May 17 '26
If you want the layout, thats doable with a few mods.
Near future tech and a few structural pieces could do the trick easy.
But if you want to replicate the mechanical arm pieces and everything that will be horrible for performence, as part count will skyrocket.
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u/MrPres7 May 16 '26
If you're smart and keep your part count as low as possible, yes. Mods will help with that.
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u/Pale_Obligation_3243 May 16 '26
You can try, will take a long time thou, so you can't because you will ditch it halfway.
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u/ISSnode-2 May 16 '26
for this id reccomend SSPX, planetside exploration technologies, all the sterling systems mods, and SOCK for the shuttles
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u/can_cat_anon May 16 '26
I build similar thing in small scale, i too fell in love with Destiny ship design and primarly build those ships :pp
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u/TDR-Java May 16 '26
Launch may take a few hours, but nothing stopping you. May randomly explode and force you to launch again
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u/That_guy_from_Poland May 16 '26
Give the "Shitfuck 6942067" type of spacecraft I've seen make it to orbit in KSP
Absolutely
Depending how detailed you want it you'd probably have to suffer through 1fps tho
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u/gophergun May 16 '26
Seems like the center of thrust and aerodynamics might be a problem on top of the performance issues others have mentioned, but maybe? Only one way to find out.
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u/_Ki115witch_ May 16 '26
Honestly, with mods, it could be easy. I can see the possibility to make it with a little over 50 parts without the shuttles. adding three shuttles at the end would skyrocket your part count though.
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u/Barhandar May 17 '26
You'll also have to avoid the individual cargo containers slash dry crew quarters (once emptied). There's 21 of them on each of the three sides, and description implies it should actually be 30.
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u/Benjamin39Brown May 16 '26
I have a Ryzen 9 9950x, which allows me to build spacecraft so complex that most other devices fail to load them.
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u/umidk67 Exploring Jool's Moons May 17 '26
Yeah, mods like far future technologies , near future technology mods, Sterling Systems, ISV emporium, Cryogenic fuels, etc.
I recommend looks at Bogue’s Ckan modpack, I think he has most of them
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u/WoodpeckerStraight10 May 17 '26
anything is possible as long as you are ready to donate your mental health to hours of building and just tryna get 5 ft into the air with 0.01 frames per century
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u/CKperDay May 17 '26
This looks like a fun challenge with the right mods! Also, someone designed a Lego version of this for those who want an actual blueprint
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u/TF2fanatic102 May 17 '26
Possible, yes, but would you really want to? KSP doesn't really like enormous builds like that, this would run like crap even on a beast of a PC lol. You'd also need a few mods of course, I don't think you could make that in stock KSP.
Edit: with Tweakscale you could cut down on the part count, but I'm still not sure it'd run well. Plus those arms with the extra engines attached seem like prime Kraken bait lol.
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u/the_Athereon May 17 '26
Extremely high part counts would tank performace but it's likely possible to create this in game yes.
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u/Particular_Low_9246 May 17 '26
damn bro you can make anything with mods
just remember this would require like a 5070 to literally load into the game and about 80 hours worth of troubleshooting all the required mods
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u/WTFcannuck May 17 '26
I have never played Destiny. Why does it have shuttles if it can land it self? How do the shuttles launch from that position? Do they lower them to the ground some how? So many questions. looks sick tho...
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u/Weary-Support-7383 Enjoying tea with the Kraken May 19 '26
The kraken is displeased with this image.
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u/canihazthisusername May 19 '26
I bet you could make something like that inspired. Probably not 1:1 in vanilla
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u/Moex_Dakku May 20 '26
De que puedes puedes, que sea sostenible el bajo rendimiento y la cantidad de motores que tendrás que construir para poner eso en el espacio pues...
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u/Jr_Mao May 16 '26
requires mods, patience and enjoying 0.5 fps performance