I like both manned and unmanned exploration they have their own challenges. But manned 1st is irresponsible towards astronauts. One thing with com mods I saw is that they require satellites everywhere instead of large dishes on main planet or several large comm satellites orbiting it. We don't send com satellites to mars before sending 1st probe there. Probes can talk over long distance. Maybe I misunderstood though. About battery, don't they have solar panels? I think you can use those. Also deep space exploration use nuclear batteries (like latest NASA mars rover, but it started ages ago, USSR used to have beacons in North Sea which had those kinds of batteries). Was hoping to make lunar lander with the automatic stage to return experiments data back home. P.S. I do use mods sometimes.