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How will we land the colony vab?


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8 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

We don't land it. We build it on site. Once we land and build the tools required to do so.

Im pretty sure you are right. I thought Nate said we landed it. If that is the case, maybe we land a foundation of sorts and then we build it? 

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I assumed it was build on site, many of round modules seen on top of ships are not fuel tanks but parts kits.
But the VAB itself is build by the colony. 
As an colony with an VAB need to be able to produce spaceships as its the point of the VAB and spaceships are more complex than the VAB

Do not know how the colony building will work but I guess you start by landing parts to build an small foundation then some hab modules and power. 
Next step is to extract resources, this can be to fuel rockets or to export.  Then perhaps greenhouses for life support?

But the big step is part production: it might require various resources and might have layers like an simplified tech tree. 
First structural elements like foundations and tanks, then more advances stuff like habitation modules, then all but advanced stuff, this reduced the amount of parts you need to land. Last you can build everything and if they uses a system like this its probably also the VAB as limiting the types of ships you can build will be to complext. 

The orbital shipyard will need to import everything but its has no size limits :) 

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  • 1 month later...

I guess the next question that follows along after this one is "how big is the "thing" that you need to land to get a colony VAB built?" whatever that "thing" may be (is it something that can take in raw metallic ores and spit out girders and the like? Or is it "you send X many tons worth of shipments of girders and such to build a VAB".

I really have no idea what it is we have to land to get a colony even started. Is it individual habitats that are able to be carried by rocket? Is it mining and processing equipment? Is it some of both?

I'd really like to be able to have some sort of "seed factory" part with a simple part module (not 20 parts, and not 20 part modules on one part), that takes input of things you'd be able to find on a planetary surface (ores and the like) and then it spits out "parts" (not actual parts, implement it as just progress on a progress bar) when fed with those resources, and when fed with enough resources it will spawn a colony VAB (or whatever other colony parts you tell it to spawn, capabilities for early or small units might be limited, or it could just take longer with smaller units, or more advanced parts might take less abundant resources, or any combination of those things).

Basically, it goes like this: Land a not-so-small "colony fabrication factory" part on planet (it might be 3.75 m in diameter and weigh 20 tons), include some power source (potentially several hundred EC/second, so a reactor or a lot of fuel cells would be a good choice) and mining drills to extract metallic ores (and maybe fuel ores too, if you want to start launching more rockets right away). This will let you (over time) construct a few basic colony habitat and resource processor parts, a beginning launch/landing pad where ships could land and get refueled with basic fuels, a colony mining drill type thing, and the "real" colony fabrication factory thing.
This would be a part that is so big that most people would consider it impractical to move around by rocket (but please DO NOT make it strictly impossible, for instance don't make it not able to be selected in the VAB/SPH).
Yes, it would be very heavy but I want the option of skipping the 'seed colony' step if I'm willing to build a rocket big enough to move the thing around in space. Say it's 100t of dry mass and is at least 5m diameter, and who knows maybe it's some awkward shape too, I don't care I want the ability to move it around myself.

All I'd need to be able to launch would be the big colony fabricator, at least the smallest size of colony mining drill (if there are multiple sizes), and at least the smallest/most basic size/capability of colony power sources (if there are multiple sizes).

I don't want to launch the Colony VAB. I understand that launching a whole building is quite a crazy proposition, but only because rockets firing and a rocket landing are NOT gentle things when considering the structural integrity of a building. But the colony building fabricator, the big heavy one that you can work your way up to from the small one? Yeah I want to be able to launch that.

 

EDIT: I guess the point I'm trying to make with all this talk is that you shouldn't be able to work your way up from a single-capsule lander to a full-on planetary VAB. You should need an appropriately "industrial-sized" lander to land the parts you need to do that. That's where my "20 tons dry mass and 3.75m diameter" specification comes from. Machinery in general is HEAVY. Machinery that can work metal is REALLY HEAVY, even if it can be quite compact. So heavy that for something like a 50t forging hammer you'd want to build a dedicated lander for JUST ONE of them at a time.

Edited by SciMan
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I would hope that most of this stuff is built on site using resources and blueprints.  I could see something inspired by Subnautica, but done in a more realistic manner in which modular parts are combined to make large structures. What is required to do so are resources.

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The thought is the initial buildings of your colony would be akin to setting up a base using Pathfinder. You will start small inflatable or flat packed buildings that require small amounts of resources to setup. From the starting buildings you can start processing resources to construct the larger permanent structures.

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I assume the process looks like that:

* You assemble a KSP1-style base which is just a stationary craft. This gives you the ability to open the base editor, but so far it can do little more than the KSP1 engineering screen;

* You start some ISRU on your KSP1-style base. This allows you to build bigger parts in the base editor, and unlocks the first "building" parts that are built in situ;

* As you expand your base, build buildings and resettle Kerbals to your new extrakerbestrial settlement, you get more ISRU options and unlock more building parts;

* Eventually you gain the ability to build the runway, the launchpad, the SPH and the VAB;

* Congratulations, you can now assemble and launch spacecraft from your brand new Muna City!

 

Building an orbital colony, I assume, would be the same but with no ISRU options, you'll have to bring resources by big transport ships. The benefit, on the other hand, is that you can build spaceships directly in space, no launch required. I guess the best option for a space base would be a size E asteroid which will provide some ISRU.

Edited by ave369
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8 hours ago, SciMan said:

This would be a part that is so big that most people would consider it impractical to move around by rocket (but please DO NOT make it strictly impossible, for instance don't make it not able to be selected in the VAB/SPH).
Yes, it would be very heavy but I want the option of skipping the 'seed colony' step if I'm willing to build a rocket big enough to move the thing around in space. Say it's 100t of dry mass and is at least 5m diameter, and who knows maybe it's some awkward shape too, I don't care I want the ability to move it around myself.

I'm ok as long as the game doesn't cheat even a single gram of that weight.

What you don't bring with you you have to mine, if you want to land a VAB the kit(s) should weight as much as the completed building, not a gramm less, maybe more to account for packing.

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That's most likely much easier. Surface vab is a huge building with a launchpad on the top. Orbital docks require, well, space, a starting point and maaybe a truss to hold the whole thing in one place.

Problem lies with resources for building because while you probably could install a refinery in space, you still need to bring the raw materials from the surface.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm totally on-board with not having the parts kits of those buildings weigh even a gram less than the finished building would weigh, furthermore I think we should have at least a 5% (likely more like 15%) additional mass penalty due to packaging. However that might be able to be reduced by research into packaging efficiency, there's tricks to be done like "make the box out of stuff you'll need in the final product" that are relatively low-hanging fruit but eventually you might be able to get to the point of the "package" being just a bunch of blocks of the requisite material strapped to a structural spine, along with maybe an additional 1% mass to account for some highly advanced technology (nanotech probably) that would take in power and those resource blocks (and the spine too!) and spit out beams girders rivets bolts and the like that would be useful to make an actual building.

I'm already pretty sure how I'm going to set up my orbital shipyards.

My idea is to basically build it so that it doesn't have any actual containers of materials permanently part of the station (unless that's unavoidable), instead it would (hopefully) build ships directly from resources carried up from the surface.
Additionally, I would take measures to minimize the actual processing of ore into refined goods done in orbit. Instead, basic refining and processing would be done on the surface of the planet or moon that the orbital shipyard is orbiting, with processed materials being launched to the orbital shipyard by the most efficient means (meaning the cheapest expendable rockets or highest performance reusable rockets, assuming there's no "non-rocket orbital launch" methods available).

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14 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

Moar boosters. How else?

 

On 9/9/2021 at 1:49 AM, Master39 said:

I'm ok as long as the game doesn't cheat even a single gram of that weight.

What you don't bring with you you have to mine, if you want to land a VAB the kit(s) should weight as much as the completed building, not a gramm less, maybe more to account for packing.

MOAR BOOSTAZ

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Alright alright, we get it. This isn't some reddit thread where you can post the same thing the last 5 posters said and get 50 karma from it.

EDIT: But really, you should be using nuclear boosters anyways.

Edited by SciMan
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2 minutes ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

how long should it take to establish a colony

For me the question shouldn't be "how long" but "how much" you'll have to do.

I'd like to see a seamless system going from a mere landed outpost for research, then a bit of light mining for fuel ores, then some more advanced mining operation and so on, with the transition to full colony requiring the set-up of multiple resource supply routes and operations and maybe even crew rotations (with support for crew in the automated supply run system) being a concern for non-colony outposts. 

It would be fun to have a main colony on Mun that acts as an hub to receive and ship resources and crews between Kerbin, an orbital Shipyard and some surface outposts like a scientific polar base and 3 or 4 different mining outposts.

What's better to drive between bases on Mun? A long rover drive or a short sub-orbital hop? Maybe ship the cargo by rover trucks and the crew by rocket? 

It's better to mine Iron (random) in the 4%(random again) concentration of the future colony site or to build a mining outpost and use the 20% one 50km south of the colony? 

 

What I hope not to see is having colonies and infrastructure being easy to set-up only to have the game resorts again to abstract and grindy random contracts as a filler.

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