lvk
Insider
Unique in its kind! In honor of SG, I've launched a Sui Generis logo-shaped satellite into Kerbin orbit.
Here's the logo again if you missed it (it's also on the forums frontpage, lower right):
The first step was making the actual satellite. After a good 45 minutes of placing struts, it looked pretty neat. The solar panels function as the sword's crossguard. The letters turned out to be a bit too small, but replacing the struts would be super painful, especially since I was sort of satisfied with how they turned out.
Due to its awful thrust-to-weight ratio (sane satellites tend to not come with letters made out of struts), something had to be done about payload delivery. Strapping an orange fuel tank or two tends to do the job...
...except structural failure happens because I attached the largest fuel tanks currently in the game to flimsy decouplers.
Adding a ton of struts seemed to keep it together much better, though the bottom half was still too heavy and it kept coming off the top half.
After adding even more struts, I got it into space, and eventually orbit! Mission accomplished!
I would've taken screenshots mid-flight, but thanks to the strut letters it kept gyrating, making it incredibly hard to control. I couldn't actually take my hands off the keyboard until it was in orbit, not steering for over a second or two made it point straight down.
The satellite serves absolutely no purpose other than looking cool, and I will probably eventually crash into it on future missions. Thanks for reading!
Here's the logo again if you missed it (it's also on the forums frontpage, lower right):
The first step was making the actual satellite. After a good 45 minutes of placing struts, it looked pretty neat. The solar panels function as the sword's crossguard. The letters turned out to be a bit too small, but replacing the struts would be super painful, especially since I was sort of satisfied with how they turned out.
Due to its awful thrust-to-weight ratio (sane satellites tend to not come with letters made out of struts), something had to be done about payload delivery. Strapping an orange fuel tank or two tends to do the job...
...except structural failure happens because I attached the largest fuel tanks currently in the game to flimsy decouplers.
Adding a ton of struts seemed to keep it together much better, though the bottom half was still too heavy and it kept coming off the top half.
After adding even more struts, I got it into space, and eventually orbit! Mission accomplished!
I would've taken screenshots mid-flight, but thanks to the strut letters it kept gyrating, making it incredibly hard to control. I couldn't actually take my hands off the keyboard until it was in orbit, not steering for over a second or two made it point straight down.
The satellite serves absolutely no purpose other than looking cool, and I will probably eventually crash into it on future missions. Thanks for reading!
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