How to play KSP like an American

[ArmchairPhysicist]

I’m going to start off by saying that this mission is not possible stock. You need extraplanetary launchpads, the K&K base’s mod, kspi and some config tweaks to pull this off. That being said this mission was too awesome to not share.

 

On my current career save I’m not very efficient with my funds. All of my spacecraft are large, expensive, and offer powered by unreasonable amounts of xenon. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. However playing like this gets very expensive, and the contracts system couldn’t compensate for my xenon habit. 

This lead me to investigate setting up xenon Isru support. While my original purpose for mining xenon out of magic moon ore was initially to reduce the cost of ion probes, it soon turned into something much more sinister and ludicrous. I remembered that the game pays you for all the fuel you recover on kerbin.

Next thing I knew I was flying an abomination of a rocket to Minmus. 5m core with 4x3.75m strap ons, Carrying a literal stack of outpost prefabs all piled onto a nerv powered lander. Still not sure how I managed to get it into orbit, much less land the stack on minmus, maybe Jeb was piloting the drone from the Space center. 

The base setup consisted of 3 main parts, although I’ve since expanded. It has a mining core with isru, a workshop with engineers and enough snacks to keep them working for years to come, and a launchpad. 

Dubbed Xenon CO, this base works by mining xenon out of minmus’s lake, pumping it into a drone rocket containing an IFS pressurized gas tank. This drone, when full and fueled with Liquid fuel blasts off from Xenon CO, sets up a re entry trajectory with kerbin, and lands a tank of xenon back on the surface. Pilots get a bonus check based on how close they land the tank to the KSC. Pilots that bullseye the KSC get a rocket ride with Jeb.

Currently I’ve already payed for the base with the xenon shipments, my model one tanker can net me anywhere from 200k funds to a whopping 500k if I land it near the SC. 

The moral of this story, capitalism of minmus = profit. Profit = bigger rockets. Bigger rockets = more science. Capitalism = science.

Edited March 4, 2018 by ArmchairPhysicist

[DatBoi]

Interesting... Very interesting.