Saltpeter

The Barghest Habitation Module has docked with the Triskelion. This view shows all the sciency bits attached to the underside. In the event of running empty while landing, the engines provide enough crumple zone to protect everything else. Unintended feature, but decidedly good.

Somehow, KSC scientists managed to launch an enormous flat object faceward into a 100km orbit with plenty of fuel left for maneuvers. The next launch will have the Barge travel to Hexaflexagon Station to dock with the Triskelion.

Further testing has resulted in this: (5x5)+9 squares of free space, easy walk-on ramps from the water for kerbals, smooth handling across water, max speed 4 m/s. This should be large enough for my needs. I'm calling it Barghest Barge, for reasons that would be obvious to Scott Manley.

A few tests later and something serviceable appeared! This will be the basic construction block for the base. I want it to be a port of sufficient size to simultaneously dock a VTOL spaceplane and the proposed amphibious vehicle, as well as contain all of the necessarily modules to complete the mission.

Thanks to the discovery of a coastline roughly half a mile east of the KSC, scientists have been able to test the floating base before shipping it to Laythe. The first test was promising!

In the first mission, the Triskelion became too low on fuel to make the planned Joolian grand tour. That gets remedied today, in style! Joolian Fuel Economy/Floating Base on Laythe 1. Establish a floating base off the coast of any Laythan island with crew capacity of 3, science tools, a kethane mining/processing plant, and the ability to move across the surface of the ocean. 2. Deliver an amphibious vehicle to Laythe for land exploration. 3. Establish kethane mining operations on Bop and/or Pol. Scan Vall for kethane deposits. Briefly consider trying to land a CKC on Vall and change mind. 4. Transfer from Jool to Eeloo and collect science. 5. Return to Jool and deliver a kerbal to the floating base for permanent residence.

The mission is complete! Kethane has been shown to be an extremely useful substance for lengthening missions and reducing the need for costly refueling launches. Exactly what everyone hoped it would be! And Donory thinks the hex planet overlay is cool! Stay tuned 'til next time, when the Triskelion embarks on its longest, most difficult mission yet!

A near miss is still a miss. And the Triskelion crew couldn't be happier.

The CKC has docked at Minmusopolis. Since Minmusopolis doesn't actually have any housing, Bill will have to make himself comfortable in the CKC's capsule. Probably for the best, the walls of the capsule are padded.

The Triskelion is fully fueled! It took three trips of the CKC to fill up the tanks from 20% capacity. That's not bad! The mission is almost over! All that's left is to navigate the CKC to Minmusopolis and return the Triskelion to Hexaflexagon Station for refit and debriefing.

The CKC has docked with the Triskelion and is providing fresh fuel to the ship! With a device like this, the Triskelion could conduct a major operation in Joolian space without any need for expensive rescue missions! The crew obvious has many comments: Donory: "It's beautiful!" Jebediah: "Definitely better than the last attempt!" Jerwin and Merkin: "We're not going to the moon, are we? ;_;" Bill: "It...it was so quiet on Ike. The gentle libration of Duna played its silent music for me. It is the only peace I've ever known..." Bob: "Bill, are you okay?" Jim: "Why are the drills still online?" The CKC will continue to make trips down to Minmus until the Triskelion is completely restocked, at which point it will transfer over to Minmusopolis and commence supply runs to its massive tanks. Finally, the Triskelion will return to Hexaflexagon Station and await the attachment of a second CKC. This means Bill Kerman will be a permanent resident of Minmus. KSP doctors and Donory and Jebediah and Bob and I-think-Jerwin-too think it's best for Bill and the crew if he stays close to Kerbin, in the isolation he seems to enjoy.

Bill Kerman has returned! Apparently the KIA has completed their debriefing and psychotherapy of Bill and have given him the greenlight to fly the new Croud-Sourced Kethane Collector, or CKC. Bill had this to say: "It's more like a really fancy module than a ship, really. The damn Mechjeb was installed the wrong way, so I had to fly in the reverse all the way from launch to Minmus. Dropping the booster tanks fixed it, but so much wasted fuel...wasted fuel...all those years..." ...before the transmission cut out. Here is an artist's impression of Bill's current status. There appears to be some artistic license with this impression. In the image, Bill's skin is a color not yet observed of any living thing.

Alright! The time has come to continue the epic adventure of Donory Kerman and crew! Schematics for brilliant new vessels have been uploaded to the KSP. KSC scientists are crowd-sourcing their rocketry from maker hobbyists and especially fanatical players of the official game of the space program, and are confident that these uneducated shut-ins are the solution they need to the complex problems they face getting kethane off of Minmus. Preparations are being made as we speak to launch the new generation of kethane production! The miner and ferry modules are being retired. In a satellite press conference, Donory and Jebediah weighed in on the old vessels: Donory: "Terrible." Jebediah: "Not even found lying by the side of the road would produce such roadkill." Jerwin and Merkin: "Let's do the going-to-the-moon dance again! We're going to the moon!"

Well, I've not been in school for about three years now. Just, life things happened. Like I mentioned earlier, there was a car accident(no one was injured), a lot of thinking, some changes, etc. Have to get it sorted out, settle into the new routine. But once that's done, I will return to the Triskelion project, I promise. @.@

Just want to let the viewers at home know that it'll be a while longer before I can get back to this. Don't worry, I have not abandoned the adventure!

I don't think the damaged rig is still there. That was a 126k kethane loss. The other 150k is still intact, I just need to recover the tank, which is proving most difficult.

Sorry about the delay, pilot error in my Combusting Personal Translation VehiclE (CPTiVE) resulted in an unscheduled metallobraking maneuver into the hatch module of someone else's CPTiVE. No one was seriously injured. We'll return to your regularly scheduled programming in a couple days.

Something has to justify the expense of landing on a surface, mining it, and bringing it back into orbit. I'm more concerned with the usefulness of kethane, the amount of kethane-equivalent fuel lost in the process of refining it and bringing it to space. The mass can be whatever you think is right, I just want gainful quantities of fuel.

I believe the medium converter is a one-to-one weight ratio. The large one is supposed to be slightly more efficient. I don't mind kethane existing as compressed fuel that's more weight-efficient to have around as long as you can cover the energy cost of conversion. I'd prefer to keep it as is. I have nothing against mods that make the game easier in some ways, as long as it's not like god-moding. Having lots of xenon and monoprop isn't really a big deal to me, since they don't have much weight in the first place. ;>.>

Sweet. It's a shame I wasted nearly 130k kethane off Minmus, and the 146k on the new tanker still has to be recovered, but with a better system, I can continue my mission. The next mission will be on a much larger scale than the previous two, and will feature a flotilla of vessels with the Triskelion bearing the flags! Why thank you, Pyranz. I've plan on continuing these adventures for quite some time. With any luck I'll be able to think of something new and interesting for each one.

That new ship is brilliant! It even resembles the Triskelion. It could be a companion ship. Connect it to the Triskelion by their central ports and you get a giant ship with all the engines pointing the same way. It kinda makes me wish there was a proper multiplayer, because this would be an awesome collaboration. Also, having flown to and landed on Gilly, I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it would be to mine it for kethane. The gravity is so low, you can make multiple round trips to and from Gilly orbit on a single tank of EVA fuel. Unless those new grabbing arms work on railed bodies like Gilly.

I like making fancy crafts, too, otherwise there wouldn't have been a SPACE TRUCK. But my specialty does seem to be orbital flight. Attaining Kerbin orbit over and over again with failed crafts gets tiresome when I'm trying to make a Minmus base. D: So if someone else makes a vessel that works the first time, as long as it fits with the Triskelion's style, I'll use it.

Ooooh. I like the idea of a combination drilling/ferry system. I wouldn't mind using your Tortoise drilling system as well. That way I can get on with this mission and go to the next one. It'll be more interesting than this one has been. Also, I have no idea what mode I play. My save was from before Career Mode was a thing. I had to unlock the tech tree, so I think I'm playing Career mode.

That's fine, a Titan-class depot is more than enough. It has the right look for my aesthetic, too. I don't know of any larger Xenon mods, but if you happen to find one, I'd be quite interested to hear about it. Having to individually fill up 50 tanks is awful. D:

That's really...big. @_@ I like it. Now if it could have more ports on the sides and have Xenon storage too, I'd totally use it for my next mission.