NHunter

Sent the cargo ship towards Kerbol. While its departure burn was 6 days later than that of the crewed one, it will arrive slightly ahead and start mapping out Drozhe, which was selected as the body where the outpost / EL base would be established.

While still not a stock solution, you can use Extraplanetary Launchpad or a similar mod to build the ship in space (bleh, you'll need to ship 300+ tons of rocket parts up there) or on a low-gravity moon and then launch it into orbit with decouple-able engines. Just like Dr.Lxweei suggested. With NFLV, you might be able to launch it by sticking it between 2-3-however-many stacks of rockets with mounting point being up and between stacks with Frisbee hanging down from there (with lots of struts to keep it in place until released in orbit). Yes, this is something that will not work in real life, but meh. I've actually come to love stacking three of those together using one of NFLV engine mounts and some offset tooling. Can get 0.1 TWR - yeah, not something to write home about, but you can play with that even without persistent thrust - for a 160 ton ship in reaction products like that with some quite good dV to boot. The only real issue with such a configuration is that it is somewhat attractive to kraken and depending on its mood might just shake itself apart as soon as you try to change ship's orientation in space. Nuclear smelter part allows you to rebuild ablator on the engine. Yeah, you'll have to lug around that big heavy part - and maybe some ore tanks as well - but it will let you refuel the engine. It works well in atmosphere, though, unlike most of the other engines offered by FFT. So, assuming you're okay with causing an ecological disaster (in roleplay, at least), you can make a single-stage-surface-to-anywhere NSWR-powered ship.

Finally got around to actually sending KSS Venture to Kerbol. To cut down the travel time to the (un)reasonable duration of 2 years, a massive burn of nearly 40km/s was needed. Thankfully, the ship pack so much dV that it will still have about half of the fuel after it arrives to its destination and decelerates.

I have a stopgap solution for you: just MM yourself scaled up radiators if they aren't TweakScale-able already. Something like this:

Just how much AM/LH2 does your ship carry? As for TWR - that's actually pretty easy: the damn thing is really really really heavy. I think the engine and radiators I need to run it - and there are 40 (!!!) of those, my X-7 craft has less parts in total - alone account for like 200+ tons. It also has a huge battery so that I can actually get fusion reactor to charge up and start before I run out of power on tanks.

I present you: the flying radiator thing. Unfortunately, it's stats aren't that great for its cost and complexity: only 81 km/s dV with something like 0.9 TWR. I think I'll stick to X-7. It's cheaper and doesn't require anywhere near as many radiators while offering similar performance in afterburning mode

No, I do not -- which is why I'm not saying there should be 3.75 tanks for FiP. I just love my stacks neat and without varying part diameter... Which, I guess, you can maintain with fairings or hollow parts (with 2.5m tanks hidden inside them). So it's not a big deal.

While I'm all for having less parts when it comes to fuel tanks, I still find it a bit annoying that FissionParticles inline tanks are size2 only when the only engine using them is size3. Yes, there are also surface-attachable versions of those thanks, but still...

@Cochies, assuming you want the updated radiators (ModuleSystemHeatRadiator) to have same rejection as they used to with ModuleActiveRadiator, you'll need to give them the following curve // option: use deterministic temperatures // Power radiated per temperature temperatureCurve { key = 0 0 key = TEMP REJECTION } with TEMP being max temperature of the radiator and REJECTION being calculated as maxEnergyTransfer of vanilla ModuleActiveRadiator divided by 50. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like temperature curve will accept variables, so making universal patch doesn't look possible. ---------------------------------------- LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING!!!

Uhm... I meant <off>, not <idle>, but either way, it's temperature falls below that of environment, which should not be the case: "space temperature" in LKO is around 200K. And speaking of fusion reactors... while should probably go into SystemHeat, I'll still post it there since we're talking about it here already anyway: - FX-2 and FX-3 reactors seem to have wrong icon for SystemHeat overlay. Shouldn't it be <science> or <nuclear> ? - Both reactors also show temperature output of NaN in VAB. KSP v1.10.1 build 02939 (steam/master); FFT v0.9.2; SystemHeat v0.1.3; Waterfall v0.2.3; SpaceDust v0.1.4 As for mods... Well... I might have a bit too many of those. But as far as I know, none should interfere with models from FFT to cause the highlighting issue.

@TR_HyDra, which radiators did you use? If they were static, did you actually turn them on? At least of non-folding radiators start as deactivated but SystemHeat helper doesn't account for that while in VAB/SPH. That said, such a quick overheating looks suspicious. (on a loosely-related note, should an idle fusion reactor have MBR temperature of 3K?) Yeah, I see white dots too, but it is generally not something too bothersome, so I can safely ignore it. And as far as I've experimented, JR-20 is the only engine that has the problem with "something ghostly" being attached to the actual engine.

Played around with new Far Future Technologies a little: I might have cheated a bit with using WBI OmniStorage for Fission Particles tanks, but in the end, this monstrosity had 22 km/s dV @ 0.77 TWR in afterburner mode (limited by LH2 supply) and whooping 876km/s in base mode (with abysmal 0.06 TWR). It also looks pretty okay, though I need prettier radiators for this thing...

- Enabling fusion reactor via the part actions popup doesn't enable it in "Installed Reactors" control window (one summoned via the button on the righthand side of the game window). Thus, when the control window is open, reactor shuts down. Enabling reactor in the control window, however, correctly marks the reactor as enabled in part actions popup. (FX-2, FX-3, JR-15 'Discovery', JR-20 'Ouroboros', JR-45 'Fresnel') - When you highlight JR-20 'Ouroboros', this happens:

I've finally launched my interstellar mission to Kerbol. The cargo ship was the first one to depart from low Rhode orbit. The first part of the burn was done with plasma thrusters and the remaining liquid fuel (these engines were used to launch the whole thing off Armstrong). And once LFOx was gone, the ship switched to its primary antimatter engine: The second ship - the one carrying science and exploration equipment as well as a number of brave kerbals - followed an orbit later: Plane correction burn are scheduled in 55 days. After that, both ships have dV to spend, so I will be playing some high-speed catch-up with good ol' Kerbol.

In preparation for my expedition to Kerbol, I've assembled at my Armstrong Extraplanetary Launchpad and Launched to Low Rhode Orbit for refueling the cargo ship carrying a packed Castillo outpost (will be deployed either at Tribute or at Drozhe), a mapping satellite for resource survey and a local communication satellite group. Once this ship and KSS Venture, which carries crew and science lander, are fully refueled, I'll launch both ship to Kerbol.

you aren't including the Tsunami sphere yet? you'd need only 6 of those for 3600 EC/sec

IIRC, big lithium engines indeed produce noticeable amounts of heat (though, don't trust me, I rarely ever use them so can remember things wrong).

I'm assuming, you're talking about MARGE VTOL warpjets (the big, boxy ones). Their closed cycle mode is designed to function like an ion VASIMR engine (low thrust and reasonably high ISP that can be adjusted for even lower thrust with higher ISP) with stored intakeAtm used as propellant. And given what you're saying, it looks like you're trying to run them closed-cycle while in atmoshpere - you need to use open cycle more as long as you have enough air around. MARGEs in open cycle should have something like 400 kN at standstill and ~850 kN once they gets going. ------------------------ My spaceplane in the SPH. Note how the part info shows two engine modes with the first one having higher thrust (480) and ISP range of 240-300. This is the open mode, meant to be used with intake atm collected through air intakes. This is what you use while flying in atmosphere. The other mode is (WJClosed) VASIMR-like with vacuum ISP of 3000 to 6000 depending on what VIsp mode you choose. While in this mode the engine produces nearly no thrust in atmosphere - it's the vacuum mode (with intake atm being drawn from whatever internal storage you have). This is my plane beginning to accelerate on the runway using open mode of MARGEs. It already has thrust of over 400N and it's not even at its optimal altitude/speed for this mode. Flying high and fast. Each MARGE is now outputting over 800kN of thrust

Expanding on that: Unless you use Extraplanetary Launchpad / some other mod that lets you build ships away from KSC. An EL site on a low-gravity world like Minmus allows you to build and launch ships that can't be launcher from Kerbin at all or are too difficult to launch from Kerbin even with orbital assembly taken into account. And if you're in career, it also saves you money. Larger interplanetary and interstellar ships are big and expensive. And require even bigger rigs to put them into space from Kerbin. Being able to skip that makes your life easier, though, of course, you first need to build a surface base that is capable of building stuff first. (This is also how most interplanetary missions will be done in real life in the future: industrialized Moon will be used to build and fuel ships, which will then be crewed in Moon's orbit before departing for their destination) With mods that let you construct stuff offworld you need a base that is capable of producing and storing fuels and materials needed for ship construction (production chains may vary). All in all, it will probably be something way bigger than a simple outpost. Most of these mods will at least recommend KIS/KAS, so you can use it to connect various modules of your base together, so you're at least spared from having to dock them together with docking ports. ---------------------------------------- And to answer OP's question: First and simplest, you can just build a ship that will be the entirety of your 'base' (mostly useful for fulfilling contracts) and just land it on the target planet. You can also build a base that consists of several parts. Usually used with mods that make surface bases actually useful, though can be used in stock as well if you want a refuelling outpost that can store large amount of fuel and transfer them to another ship on demand. Your options here are: Docking ports. Probably the most cumbersome of approaches to connect parts of a base as it requires that at least some parts are mobile and all of them have compatible docking ports sitting on the same level when landed on target body. CLAWs. With these you don't really have to care about aligning your base's parts as much, though CLAWs might not work well on smaller parts. You will also need half as many "connector" parts as CLAWs don't need a mate to connect two ships. Docking ports/CLAWs + Robotics (either from DLC or from mods): gives more freedom in how you place and connect parts of the base (to the extent where parts may not even need to be mobile if you can precise-land them within each-other's reach). You will have to deal with robotics' interfaces, though. And those might be confusing. KAS. Has pipes that can connect two ships together and may be extendable to considerable distances. Pipes within KAS itself have a source and a socket (you pick a pipe from the source part and insert it into a socket. once done, ships can be set to 'docked' and the game will treat them as one until you undock them). Other mods based on KAS may allow building connections between two identical parts. Who needs connections anyway? If you're using MKS, logistics module will allow resource transfer without physical connection between parts of the base. Potentially on a planetary scale.

I'd not say that it's "on the back" since it actually starts from the ring near the first set of radiators. (yes, that thing is like 35 meters long) It's the "AEX-XE 'Cochrane' Beam-Core Antimatter Engine" from the old Far Future Technologies mod. (with a pair of 1.875 LFO engines and fuel tanks attached to the sides. Those were used to move the ship from EL on Armstrong to Rhode orbit and since there is still some dV left in them, I haven't ditched them yet)

Getting back into KSP after a break... Attached a set of relay satellites (4x, each capable of reaching Rhode from low Kerbol orbit) and a science lander to KSS Venture. Also moved the crew there - all that is left now is to fully fuel this monster with antimatter, and it's ready to depart for Kerbol.

A pure-LH2 OPT spaceplane for visiting Kerbin orbit. Quite lightweight at 33 tons at runway and very stable in flight, but doesn't have too much dV remaining once in orbit. unfortunately.

Well, assuming it stays more or less the same as it is in the old version of FFT, it will also be able to make ablator for engines that uses it for propulsion. But, overall, yes, it is used to extract nuclear fuel for ore. Or process depleted fuel into some still-usable enriched uranium (or xenon gas).

This is normal: prograde direction changes (as do retrograde, radial in and radial out) as ship moves along the orbit - it's a local "forward" and is a tangent to orbit in local movement direction at the specific point. And since the ship by itself isn't rotating with T = orbital period in that direction, your RCS thrusters have to work to keep it pointed in prograde direction. The ship rotation adjustment threshold might be a bit too sensitive, but the described behavior is expected and is correct.

Was the drone part removed recently? I haven't updated to the version with the finished cockpit yet, and I most certainly have the drone core.