Terwin

In theory, if you could somehow produce pure antimatter(not matter+antimatter like we do now, but just antimatter) with a high enough efficiency (more mass produced than energy wasted, so > 50% efficient) You could potentially end up with more energy from the matter+antimatter reaction than you put into producing the antimatter, because you get the full energy bound in both the matter and the antimatter, giving the reaction a 200% 'efficiency' compared to the mass of the antimatter. (you would also need to capture nearly 100% of the energy released and convert it into a more useable form, including the gamma rays and other forms of radiation that we cannot currently capture) Of course both the matter+antimatter and the energy-> antimatter reactions would both need to be highly efficient to give more energy than just using the energy you started with. I think star-trek does something like that, using dilithium crystals to control the reaction and convert some of the energy into thrust. I have difficulty seeing a society without similar levels of 'space magic' being able to pull this off however.

To grow coral, you just need a solid anchor(ie not sand) in a flow of nutrient rich water. Barnacles are an example of a hardy coral that is happy to attach to ships or docks, and then thrive as the movement of the ship or waves keeps it well-fed.(until they get forcibly removed, of course) So in theory, the idea of cement burial domes should work, but you would likely get a lot of push-back on turning the water just off of tourist-attracting beaches into cemeteries. Because you want surface exposed to the current to encourage coral growth, I think that a thin lattice would work better than a dome(like a garden trellis, but probably more sparse), and probably something other than cement. As this is something you want coated in coral, it should be ok if the skeleton is something that will rot a way after a time. Even wood might work, if you can get it to last long enough without being toxic.

That is what I was thinking. It would be awesome if they got the first booster to just hover in place at tower catch-height over the water for like 20-30 seconds until it runs out of fuel. Ideally this would be caught in high-def. This would be a very strong argument for allowing a tower catch attempt with the second launch...

Not the automated drills, but the automated processors(the ones that can turn harvested metal ore into metals) Also, only half of the contents of warehouse enabled storage will transfer at any one time, so you will want 12 hours of storage so you do not lose anything during the 6 hour catch-up processing chunks.

The MKS automated processors have unmanned logistics capabilities(push only), and that is what you need to push resources from an unmanned base. Normal logistics requires an appropriate kerbal(pilot or quartermaster, I think), and provides both push and pull, but automated processors can push without a kerbal.

How many scenarios will the helicopter mitigate and how long will it last before it fails, compared to increasing panel size by the same amount of weight? Sand storms don't just get the panels dirty, they also block light, Winter also reduces light, will there be enough power to fly your helicopter during that time? I expect that there are hundreds if not thousands of scenarios that will shorten or end the mission, how many of those can you mitigate with your helicopter? Is that more or less than the number that will be mitigated(and by how much) by using that weight for solar panels. You need to remember both the design constraints(very heavily mass constrained for example), and the project goals(Maximum planetary science/$). Every ounce of helicopter, or air bottle, or other mitigation plan will reduce the weight available for scientific experiments and solar panels. A rover designed for maximum life-span looks very different from a rover designed for maximum total science, and maximum total science is far more important for current rover designs than maximum life-span, especially as a longer life-span requires increased ground-support costs, and that will only be paid for if the science/$ is worth while.

Producing highly energetic fuel/oxidizer for a flame thrower requires a lot of energy, and every time you use it, you are prone to destroy the local plant life(you know, those things that collect energy from the sun, which is then consumed by animals for energy) I think that the greater adaptation to natural fire breathing would be what is required to live in a scorched wasteland. Lithovore perhaps? Either that or you need something that would harm individual animals but would not harm plants. Of course if you are talking about a 'flamethrower that does not hurt plants' then you are back to spitting venom.

Complexity is one reason. There are fewer modes of failure if you just increase the size of the solar panels to account for dust accumulation. If you have a gas cannister, it will eventually run out of gas, so if switching that weight to more solar panels will last as long or longer, then solar panels are the simpler solution. After all, our Martian landers have all lasted much longer than the original plan(possibly because they put in additional redundancies if the mission is likely to go under the minimum desired period).

Unfortunately, the only form of metallic hydrogen we have evidence for thus far would require very high pressure containment, thus the tanks could very well weigh more than an order of magnitude more than the fuel contained therein. This would make it useless as a rocket fuel. If metastable metallic hydrogen exists(which is what they have in KSPI-E, I believe), then that would be a wonderful rocket fuel, but unfortunately, the only paper that suggests metastable metallic hydrogen is even possible(as far as I am aware) has been debunked(to the best of my knowledge), and there is not currently any strong hope that metallic hydrogen can exist at pressures where it would be useful for rocket fuel. On the other hand, you can combine just about anything with ClF3 and get a strong exothermic reaction, too bad it is so hard to handle and has very toxic combustion products.

I would assume that the gold mod would have already added the abundance to appropriate biomes, so hopefully that part is done, so hopefully you only need to update the drill and refinery configs. (they are text files, so you should be able to look at the existing entries, and just duplicate one of those, changing the values to match the gold related tags that the gold mod has presumably already added to the stock drills and ISRU config files) You may also want to add gold as an option to the storage parts, or possibly just add it to the existing rare minerals/metals storage config on the large MKS storage crates(1.25m and larger).

In a Tokamak, magnetic fields will hold the hydrogen(Probably deuterium and tritium) fuel in place because it is an ion after stripping away the electron. Because the hydrogen fuel is missing electrons, and the number of protons does not change, the waste(Helium) will also be ionized and can be held by those same magnetic fields. But D-T fusion(the whole point of the tokamak) also produces neutrons, which do not have a charge, and as such, those neutrons will escape the magnetic confinement. The fact that there is a plasma involved has nothing to do with the neutrons, it is just that plasma(aka magnetic) containment does not work on neutrons, so they escape while the plasma does not. Note: Hydrogen has 1 proton, and no neutrons, Deuterium has 1p 1n, tritium has 1p 2n and helium(the waste) has 2p2n, so combining deuterium and tritium gives helium+1n and the neutron goes flying off. D-D fusion should not have waste neutrons, but is also much much harder.

Look in your save file(probably KSP/saves/GameName/persisteence.sfs ) Open in a text editor (notepad if you do not have anything else you prefer) Search for: "name = WOLF_ScenarioModule" Should look like this: SCENARIO { name = WOLF_ScenarioModule scene = 6, 7, 5, 8 DEPOTS { DEPOT { Body = Kerbin Biome = KSC IsEstablished = True IsSurveyed = True RESOURCE { ... You can remove a depot by deleting the appropriate DEPOT [...] entry from the save file. (I recommend backing up your save first, as it is easy to miss an opening or closing bracket and leave the file in an invalid state) You could also 'back out' adding modules by manually adjusting the resources back to what they were before the module was added.

WOLF is an add-on that can be used to support MKS, but is not required in any way. WOLF is a way to handle mining/production/logistics bases without needing to visit them for catch-up mechanics to run.(also without increasing the part-count in your game, as WOLF bases are not rendered and do not participate in physics) WOLF is primarily intended for support or mining bases, and also handles interplanetary logistics. The only interaction between MKS and WOLF is through hoppers. Hoppers let you pull resources out of WOLF and feed them into your MKS base.(this is one-way, and you cannot feed resources back into WOLF) A MKS base and a WOLF base in the same biome will be 100% independent of each other unless you have a hopper on the MKS base and pull resources from the WOLF base using that hopper. You can have as many MKS bases in each biome as you can physically fit, but you can only have one WOLF base per biome.

Drills and refineries can be reconfigured to harvest/refine a different material, but I believe it takes an engineer and material kits to do so. If you do a planetary scan from orbit, you should be able to configure everything before landing. Just assume that Rare metals and rare minerals will be in different spots and have those pre-configured on different miners to save some kits.

Machinery is a setting, so easy enough, but if your remote miners are solar powered, make sure to only do catch-up when they are in sunlight, as the catch-up mechanic looks at current status, so 3 days worth of catch-up would calculate based on how much sun is hitting the panels when it enters physics range. (this can mean you do not need batteries to mine all night long, but can also mean losing a months worth of harvesting because you switched over 15 minutes before dawn)

3 biomes is more realistic than 2, unless you are willing to work with everything being less than 5%, in which case two biomes might be doable. No idea if scavenging even works across biomes, but I know that a single vessel will be in whichever biome contains its center of mass.(can you guess what I tried to do?) If you can refuel without expanding anything that would make taking off again difficult, you can adjust your location with small hops if needed(or use wheels if you have them)

I think the math goes: harvest rate = drill production * resource concentration(Survey tells you this) * Engineer harvest multiplier * MKS colonization production bonus(starts at 100% goes to 500%, I think) Generally the easiest way to get the actual rate is to test-drill. If you do not have enough storage, you can always add more later, and 'too much storage' just means it transfers the resource in larger chunks . It may have changed, but I think you can only access the planetary warehouse if you have a logistics module and a pilot present(or a remote processor which does export-only logistics and does not need a kerbal)

The unmanned refineries are a good way to add logistics to an unmanned base, and if you will have the refinery, then you might as well make use of it. When using planetary logistics, there is no transport cost between biomes, so the two biggest benefits of having on-site refining are: 1) you do not need to worry about the refinery running out of resources from the drills being too far behind(you must visit each location for the catch-up mechanics to run, and they process a 6 hour block at a time when doing catch-up, and planetary logistics leaves warehouses half-full, which is why 4+ days of storage is suggested), and 2) if the refinery is on your unmanned base, then that is fewer parts on your primary base, reducing the processor load when it is loaded.

Yes, all refineries need machinery, but if you set the machinery consumption to zero, then said machinery does not get used up. Also, unmanned refineries have a larger machinery store than a similar manned refinery so that they can be re-stocked less often. Don't forget to send some organics so that you can eventually produce colony supplies

I do not know how much SP it takes to go fully self-sufficient, but specialized parts production and full self-sufficiency is not usually an aspect of early colonization. I would suggest that sending a few resupply missions is entirely reasonable. Parachutes are your friend, and in KSP you can have an arbitrary number of them in a small space without worrying about tangling, interference or other real-world parachute issues, so just add lots of parachutes and some air-brakes to help keep you slow enough to open those chutes. If you use your engines to slow you down until you run out of fuel, that should help as well, as fuel mass is usually the bulk of a rocket. (but make sure you have enough fuel to slow your horizontal velocity to pretty slow, as you do not have a lot of air on Duna for aero breaking, and a little bit of fuel for final breaking can save a lot in parachutes if you are proficient at such) Unmanned refinery parts also provide the ability to push to planetary stores, so one or more drills, sufficient storage for ~4 days worth of production storage for both raw material and processed material, and an unmanned processor unit should provide the desired functionality(when supported by appropriate power and radiators). If you only want the raw materials, then you need not even start the processor, and the smallest available should be sufficient(I think this is lighter than the pioneer logistics unit when without machinery, but not 100% sure).

This means: Currently drilling Uraninite, if you switch you will drill Rare Metals. It is set up like this because it costs material kits to switch, so cycling through all of the options like you do with storage would be very expensive. If there is gypsum in your current location, then a powered drill and a powered refinery set to convert gypsum to fertilizer should allow you to produce fertilizer. The refinery will need equipment if you want a non-zero efficiency, and an engineer will increase the efficiency of the drill/refinery (more boost with more stars, I think it is ~10% efficient without an engineer at all), and, as with everything else, power and waste heat will need to be addressed to keep everything running. I would not consider it free myself, but you can certainly make money with mining rare resources from other bodies. If you can SSTO and refine fuel, consider setting up a zero-cost WOLF transport path to 'automate' this transfer.(you do this by refueling before completing the path soo that your ship is the same as when it left, does not work as well with staging)

No clue on the exact rate, but I vaguely recall having perhaps a dozen Kolonists for more than a year and being somewhere in the 300's. In any case, I would expect it to take more than ten Kolonist years to get to 500%, possibly less if they are all 5-star kolonists(I forget if the star-count matters, but it does for lots of things), and I would not be surprised if it takes more than 20-30 kolonist years to get to 500%. Drill resource and heat production are affected, but radiators and drill heat dissipation are not(last time I checked), so over-provision your head dissipation if you plan to grow your production multiplier.

https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/wiki/The-Kolonization-Dashboard#kolony-statistics Basically, each type of Kerbal will slowly increase one of the bonus types(or all three for kolonists) the longer they stay on a body. Funds can be collected from a connected pioneer module, and production/habitation bonuses will automatically increase the efficiency of the appropriate production types across the entire body.

The whole point of ranger modules is to allow you to launch your base with smaller rockets. The material kits represent all of the bits and pieces that you left out when you launched the initial collapsed shell. Since the initial shell is small and light, and you can launch small containers of material kits, you can build your base off of a large number of small launches/vessels instead of the larger launches/vessels needed for the other part families. You still need the same amount of mass however, so the primary benefit of using ranger modules on a ship that is also carrying the material kits to expand them is easier fairing coverage.

A pusher-plate design is incredibly inefficient. The ONLY reason to use a pusher-plate is if you have a hugely efficient reaction with a high minimum size. Fission has this with 'Critical mass' as the simplest fission explosions just involve just putting together enough plutonium (approx 10kg) and you get a nice big explosion. This explosion is too powerful for any known materials to contain for a normal nozzle-type arrangement, so they designed a huegly inefficient pusher-plate design to potentially make use of the 8000x efficiency of nuclear over chemical. Unfortunately, the gross inefficiency of the pusher-plate means that it is only about 13x the efficiency of the space shuttle main engines. (giving the pusher-plate an efficiency of roughly 0.16% or 1/615 the efficiency of a nozzle) So unless your explosion is more than 600 times the efficiency of a hydrolox engine, you will not get any benefits for using a pusher-plate, and if your reaction is small enough to use with a nozzle, you can get roughly 600x the efficiency by using a nozzle over a pusher-plate. Note: Fusion pellets can be(and currently must be) made small enough for a nozzle, so pusher-plates only work with fission. In short, pusher plates are great for steam-punk fission rockets, but fail miserably for anything better.