Umami

It could be cool having motherships that can land on larger bodies but also somewhat effective in space... now when NERVA only using fuel and not oxygen. Pick and choose how much fuel you would need for specific burns. See Ore is overpowered thread. That way you wouldnt have to haul around or balance tanks pending on the next burn. EDIT: I did miss the first row of that tread. But still. Balancing tank should be simpler.. hmm, maybe not.

Just started to try this thing out. Never tried any mining mods before so I am completely new to this thing. Frankly I didn't see the reason rovers before now. This is my what I am currently working with. It has four drills and one refinery so it does it all by itself. It can land on the Mun with the supplied fuel from the launch and afte that it drills its own of course. Grappling thingie to refuel other crafts. I try to go for an all-in-one solution.

Started to work on my XKM again. I figured that it should be XKM-10 now since 1.0. It took some remodeling to make the concept work with all the new stuff. I still have a few details to sort out but in general it seems to be working. There is a slight decrease in lift capability but it still gets 36T (100km) as it is now. I think I can get it to 40T. The older version landed on the engine nozzles but that all ends in big explosions now. But with the new heavy landing gear that is not needed. The animation for is looks real neat when the gears are folded between the nozzles. As you can see in one of the pictures I will need to secure the engines better. It is not an exploding problem but still.

I would be interested in joining if possible. Not so much into making things efficient as making things simple and nice looking. I have been playing for about a year now and I have zoned in on big chemical SSTOs, the rocket kinds. I tend to build everything else around them. I have no idea though how the multiplayer mod works.

Slightly smaller than my contribution. Great work.

Thank you guys for the feedback. I am happy to report that Mk.2 is now completed. Not just better but in my opinion also prettier.

This is pure awesome.

I never thought of that, thank you. It would make it come closer to my original design idea as well as a little more efficient. I checked the stats between S3 and Mk3 and S3 have 79.0 fuel/ton and Mk3 have 80.4 fuel/ton. Not a big difference but still.

Thanks for the tip. I might try the 4 x Engine Cluster. Same as you got, right? Would require some redesign. I did a quick test by just switching my KR-2L with the 2 sets of engine clusters and that almost worked. With a more optimal trajectory I think that would do it. The reason it didn't was that I increased the cargo weight to 20T each, so double. Requires a little more tweaking and instead of making it lighter it will lift more stuff. With the extra power from the clusters it might be worthwhile looking into upgrading the cargo hold to full size.

After some very appreciated feedback I now finished Mk.2 XKM-1-C Mk.2 "Crichton" ​ DOWNLOAD: XKM-1-C (Mk.2) (stock) STATS: Cargo Size: Dual bays (CRG50+CRG25) Cargo Capacity: (2 x 18.5 tons) Crew Capacity: Unmanned Engine Cluster: 2 x (S3 KS25x4), 4 x (NERVA) Parts: 158 Launch Weight: 507,000 tons (no cargo) Range: Mun Launch Cost: ~300,000 Return Value: launch cost -fuel INFORMATION: The vessel that I normally use is a mechjeb version. It functions perfectly well without it but landing is a bit tricky (slept through flight school). Just slap a MechJeb module if you are like me. Liftoff: The NERVAs have a tendency to explode a little bit if run at 100%. Around 95% seams to be OK (MechJeb usually sorts that out for me). So no maxing throttle otherwise it goes boom. This is now fixed in Mk2, just punch it. Reaching Orbit: Much closer to the limits than Mk1. Use the main engines as little as possible. Not enough dV to get to RV point otherwise. This is tested and I RVed with my station at 200km orbit with maximum load and got safely back on Kerbin. Landing: It has a whole bunch of radial chutes, and two four drogue chutes. That brings the speed down to 13.5m/s 24m/s. The rest is up to the engines. Make sure that you switched on the big engines before this. They can easily take care of the rest. Don't land too hard. The two main engines is also the landing gear. Action Groups: Well, I built this in my career mode. I dont have a fully upgraded VAB yet so the only Action Group I use is "Breaks" which toggles the main engines and "Gears" that opens the cargo bays. Feel free to make your own. Mk.2 Updates: It now has lights and a bigger docking port. The weight of the vessel caused minor issues when docked and the bigger port gives a little more stability. Mk1 had some fuel flow issues which is solved on Mk2. It also have 50% larger cargo bays than Mk1, a redesigned engine cluster and mostly Mk3 fuel storage. SUMMARY: A big SSTO (no space plane) that brings modules and stuff all the way to the Mun LKO at an end cost of ~30,000 Kredits. Don't know the cost yet, but the fuel cost anyway. /I have created another version of this that brings fuel to my Station. I have not used that enough to suss out the little undesired quirks yet but it is on my little yellow notes of things to do.

Now successfully tested with KSP 0.25.

I have used my rocket SSTO extensively in my career mode. Made for interplanetary trips around the Kerbol system. With the built in pod it can land on most of the moons. I put the whole thing down on Duna once.

at launch both engine types should be activated. you are completely right, nukes works best in space (vacuum) but they get a reasonable isp at around 500-1000m so it doesn't really matter that much. get the vessel up to about 8-9k meters and start the gravity turn. when Ap have reached 100k turn of the conventional rockets (KR-2L) and circularize with the nukes.

Looks good. I am currently looking into similar engine setup for my pod with the four 909

I am currently working on a dockable attachment to the XKM-Pod. First of if making it possible to land on Laythe but the goal of the attachment is to be able to land on Tylo. Maybe I set the goal a little high for this type of design but I want to know if it is possible. I will add XKM-Pod attachments as subassembly. Current status is testing on Kerbin and it is looking promising. The XKM-Pod lacks parachutes so landing successfully with attachement require some breaking just before the chutes on the attachment fully deploy. Otherwise the g-force is to great and everything ends in explosions. Work is being done on the pod itself to make it possible without an attachment to land on Laythe and the attachment will focus on Tylo. I have this idea to have the XKM project pull of Jool-5. Obviously it doesn't qualify with the rules of the official Jool-5 challenge but the concept would still be the same.