WhiteKnuckle

Yeah in perfect world we'd just be able to open a valve and dump fuel we don't want into space.

How about making a rack that holds all the scansats together and has limited RCS capabilities? I'm thinking something like the 2.5m probe core, with docking ports on one side that line up with the ports in the bay, and the scansats docked to the other side. 4 RCS thrusters around the edge of the probe core and a small Mono tank somewhere. This would mean you only had to do one docking in the bay rather than multiple.

...And it shows (it flies like a bucket of bricks)

Success and Setback: The Moho Chapter

Great episode, great song!

Since multiple docking ports are now a thing, WKA decided to make a rover that could be air dropped (vertically or horizontally) from a Condor and then driven back into the cargo bay and re-docked, no need for struts! http://imgur.com/a/uhyoY

The lander can SSTO off of Kerbin and doesn't use any airbreathing engines, so I assume it'll SSTO Tylo... but haven't tested it there yet. There's no cargo capacity, the lander does have a 2.5m service bay that is mainly full of fuel cells but you could squeeze some scientific instruments in there if you really wanted to. To carry anything big you could just put Sr. Docking ports on ether end of it and add it to the train. That's the advantage of a modular design. You're only limited by how bendy the ship gets (not too bad right now) and how low a TWR you can deal with (leaving Gilly last night with full fuel and full ore was... well slow is an understatement)

I enjoy flying on Duna, it's pretty easy. What isn't easy is landing. This is an older version of my most successful Duna spaceplane, the Boone: In these pics you can see a lot of the tricks I've used to make landings easier: Retro-engines on the front of the nacelles, drogue chutes on the back. Up-angled wings with landing gear designed to prevent wingtip strikes.

When I'm building a VTOL, my goal is always to be able to turn on the vertical engines and have the craft lift off the runway without SAS being on or me having to make any control inputs. Vernors and reaction control wheels are fine for aiding maneuverability, but the craft shouldn't need them just to balance. If you've got any pics of the plane I'll be happy to give specific advice, or you can check the link in my signature to see some of my VTOLs including a few quad engine ones that might give you some inspiration.

Leaving Gilly.

The Nomad was from a few versions ago, the new jet engines will not fit in the Mk2 cargo bays unfortunately. I did make an updated copy, but it's kinda ugly due to the need for air intakes attached to the vertical engines.

Thank you sir, since the forum update I've been pretty lost.

In my signature I've got a link to my thread in the Spacecraft Exchange, I'd like to get that link condensed into a single word (like "Link" for example) rather than show up as the whole web address, and I have no idea how to do that. Thanks.

Looks very stable Zebulonious. I guess I should post a few of mine here since I've been concentrating so much on ISRU stuff recently. The Bramble from Project ABEI: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/132075-project-abei-anywhere-but-eve-indefinitely/ The Condor Mk1: A VTOL Kerbin hopper. And an as-yet untested Duna spaceplane:

Thanks Pete, I think that the post-1.0 world killed huge motherships. At least for my computer. I'd love to have included a small spaceplane for Duna and Laythe, or an Eve lander, but I just can't deal with the lag. Even the RIB at 160 parts gets a little laggy during docking maneuvers. The upside of course is that it's made me a better designer by forcing me to strip all the fat outta my ships. If 1.1 helps with higher partcounts then I can add more modules to give me increased utility, like a lab and a science pod that could be carried on top of Bramble. Modular design FTW.

Haven't had much time to play recently, but did start working my way to Moho by way of Eve and Gilly. In this shot you can see Into has just moved the Krayon from the front of the overall ship to the rear so that Bramble may undock and head for the surface. This was one of the key features I needed to test, but it worked easily, Into has more than enough authority to move the empty fuel tank around and dock it. "One small step for... dammit."

Disclaimer: I don't play career so I have no idea how much things cost. When it comes to ISRU, the main question is where are you converting ore to fuel? If you're converting on the surface, you can be as inefficient as you want, all it'll cost you is a few more seconds at timewarp. This means you can use fuel cells to supplement an RTG when your power demands are high. You can also use the small converter, but it takes 10x as much ore to make a unit of fuel, and that means significantly more time, even at timewarp. Frankly, the more I use them, the more I just suck it up and use the big converter for everything. So for the surface: A few big batteries, an RTG to trickle-charge them when you're not mining, and as many fuel cells as you need to supply your operation going full tilt. However, if you're refining ore in orbit you need to be efficient, otherwise you'll be making more trips to the surface to fill up. This means using the large converter, and not using fuel cells to generate your power. That leaves solar, RTG, and engine power. Batteries are lightweight and (I assume) cheap, so packing a ton of batteries is the easiest/cheapest way to convert fuel. Just let one or two RTGs trickle charge your battery banks while your miner is down on the surface doing it's thing, then use that stored power to convert some or all of your ore. On your last fill up before leaving for another planet, you can use the electricity your engines produce during the transfer burn to power the converter too. Also, I just checked some of my screenshots, I have no idea what you're building that costs 1.8 million. This thing can SSTO from Kerbin, and would just need an interplanetary stage to get around: This is a more basic miner that would fine for any smaller body: Now both of those were earlier versions of a "go anywhere" lander, I don't have a VAB shot of my latest/best setup, but the whole ship, interplanetary stage and all can't cost more than a million total.

Your resource screen shows that you're carrying Oxidizer, unless you're launching a probe out of that cargo bay you shouldn't be carrying that. Aside from that, just what other people have suggested: less drag, more thrust.

@Kuzzter The thought had occurred to me. But I hate Eve, so skipping it in the name of not loosing any parts is no big sacrifice. @loch.ness I too really like Into, and you can see his predecessor in the shot with the ring. That idea got spawned by the need to bring the awful high-altitude ore scanner. It's big, awkward, and needs a ton of power to transmit it's data. So it needs a decent sized probe, and lugging that probe all around the system was not something I was looking forward to. But by making it do dual duty as a part of the main engines made it a lot more palatable since it's not wasted mass when it's not being used as an ore scanner. Into is big enough to be a ship of it's own really. I hadn't planned on docking the Krayon to it, but once I did I immediately saw the possibility of separating the whole mission into two ships if I needed to due to lag or dv reasons.

I can take short videos, but I find that running the video capture software for any long length of time crashes my computer. Balancing power production, stockpiling, and use is probably the hardest thing to get right on an ISRU ship that has low margins. Getting something that works on the Mun isn't that hard. But if you're going out to say Tylo, with high gravity and low solar radiation then you have to really think about every part. Since I haven't taken this thing out there yet, I'm not sure that I got any of it right. But I'm pretty confident. The Bramble has no solar power. Too draggy, too part intensive, and out at Jool they barely work even on the day side of planets. It has 4 RTGs to trickle charge the battery banks, and two fuel cells for keeping the mining and refining going on the surface when needed. Fuel cells are fine on the surface as long as you're above the break even point for the converter, engineer, and ore-patch you're using. But in orbit they'll cut into your margins, so Batteries are key, the big 4k ones barely weigh anything. So when in doubt, simply add more batteries. That way even with a small amount of solar or RTG power you can convert a lot of ore.

Thank you sir, it's obviously not as stylized as the stuff you make for Emiko. My computer gets laggy just looking at some of your pics! So I've tried to come up with a compromise that I jokingly refer to as "elegant industrial" Really it's just using the fewest parts possible in the most aesthetically pleasing way. The Ramble is pretty plain looking compared to my last iteration of an interplanetary stage: Unfortunately it has 50 more parts than the Ramble, and getting the fuel to drain correctly was tedious. But I'll be revisiting the ring design at some point. @Iago and @LiveHereNow I'm glad you guys like it. I'd be happy to put up craft files in a few days. A few small things to do first, one is I actually need to test it out. I'm thinking Moho will be a good testbed for both ships before I head out to the Joolian system to tackle the really tough places (Tylo, Laythe) Another problem is, I don't have a save file for the Bramble. I was an idiot and was relying on the auto-save function while I was fine tuning the design. Then after I got it to orbit I launched a refueling mission and over-wrote the auto save. Hopefully I can dig into the save file and copy the ship without mucking anything up, if not I'll just have to rebuild her from an earlier version. And lastly, for a release version I'd probably add more RCS thrusters. Using this ship requires a lot of docking and close maneuvering. Now I don't mind doing all that with an underpowered and hopelessly unbalanced RCS system, frankly I find docking to be an almost meditative process, and very relaxing. I know not everyone is deranged like that. So it's probably worth adding 8 or 12 parts to the count to have some RCS on the Ramble at least, maybe some on the Krayon as well so that if the Into is docked to the bottom of Bramble and the Krayon is on top the whole combined ship will have a somewhat balanced RCS. But yes, one way or the other I will put up the craft files in a day or two.

@Val We need to see a IVA cockpit view on that one! Also, I thought the cargobay ramp had really low heat tolerances?

A few of them are from me. This thread has pretty much sold me on OPM. And I'm a fan of your distributed approach to mission design.

Bramble: The Bramble is the result of a lot of hard work. Four main designs and hundreds of test runs went into something that can SSTO from Kerbin, lift enough ore to refuel itself indefinitely, be easy to fly, not take forever to refuel, and most importantly: Low part count! Bramble with the Ore Tank on it's nose Here it is lifting off the Mun with 45t of ore on board. Managed to dock with Ramble and only needed to convert about 2.5t of ore back into LF/O to be able to land again. So two trips should fill the whole RIB up from fumes. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. The Krayon: The Krayon is the orange tank, it's nothing but that and a docking port, it has no control of it's own. Is needed for getting the Bramble off Kerbin without a booster, and will be used on Tylo, and anywhere else I need extra fuel to get into orbit.