RedDwarfIV

I'm not gonna do half-measures. The transfer station will have a substantial habitation capability, along with a large amount of tankage for He3, LH2, and LFO. That way it will be able to service all the needs of a fusion-drive spacecraft... except for deuterium, which can't be mined on the Mun anyway. That will have to be lifted from Kerbin, but it's so much cheaper than He3 that I'm not too bothered about it. Rather than send Asgard 2 interplanetary as previously intended, I decided to bring the MaterialKits and what SpecialisedParts had been loaded on it back to Kerbin orbit, to be transferred to Mirage. The size of the kit is deceptive. Sometimes Global Construction just does this, making the kit way bigger than the vessel inside. While that was being worked on, the inclination burns for Valkyrie and Arkangel came up. I'm quite sad that PersistentThrust isn't compatible with the current version of KSP. BetterTimeWarp is good enough for small craft with low-thrust engines, but even stock PhysicsWarp had Valkyrie wobbling about. I had to have the 4 minute burn happen in real-time.

So, it turns out there's no Helium 3 on Minmus. None whatsoever! Which presents a problem in that all my infrastructure is around Minmus, not the Mun. The project Tarasque is working on requires Helium 3. So I will either have to pay through the nose to lift Helium 3 from Kerbin, or start putting some new infrastructure around the Mun. Here's how that went: This is the Reaper Mining Rover. I did try launching it from Kerbin, but the tracks broke immediately for no apparent reason, and even the cheat panel couldn't fix them. Once they're broke, they're broke. I aimed to land in the spot of highest concentration. It's 80% here. Veery Kerman inspects the mining equipment. All good! Mining operations have commenced. The Reaper harvests He3 at a rate of 0.1 units per second. Next up, putting a transfer station around the Mun for storing He3, ready for transport elsewhere, and making a lander for shipping He3 from the rover up to the station.

As planned, the Long-Range Communications Satellite, designated Odin. I launched two of these, one to Urium, the other to Sarnus. These satellites have a plasma drive, Garnet 1.25m nuclear reactor, Nautilus solar arrays, and a fold-out robotic arm for deploying a giant reflector. Odins will serve as comm relays in the outer system, helping keep other craft in contact with KSC even when line-of-sight to Kerbin is blocked. With the exploration ships being years away from Kerbin, the ability to transmit science home will be paramount. Endeavour, the second mission to Duna, returns to Kerbin. In order to recover the crew and research data, I sent up another Wizard SSTO, with the wings moved a bit further forward. This seemed to solve its issue of pitching irretrievably nose-down after using all its fuel. Another highly profitable venture! Tarasque starts work on something new. Another surprise. Valkyrie, Arkangel and one of the Odin LDCRs all started their burns for Sarnus. The latter two were able to complete the maneuvers in two orbits, while Valkyrie required three. Science gathered around Kerbin is no longer worth very much to recover, but provides data for the on-board research lab. Gilus and Seeuki at least will have plenty to occupy them on the journey. The vessel's pilot and engineer, not so much. I'm sure there's a Skrabble set in the hab somewhere, and they can play I Spy with the space telescopes. The last burns are particularly long, leaving the vessels' engines still running long after Kerbin has started receding into the rear-view mirror. Valkyrie happened to intercept the Mun's SoI on its way out, allowing it to collect some extra data high above several biomes. The next alarms on the list are 56 days away, when Valkyrie, Arkangel and the Odin relay Sarnus Voyager all make their inclination burns to intercept the gas giant. After that, they face a six year journey out. Tarasque Station's latest project will have finished kit construction in 80 days. After that, it will take about the same to turn into a vessel. That should give me plenty of time to prepare for the project's completion. Minmus will need some new infrastructure shipped in from Kerbin.

I reused the Honey Badger rover with some slight modification - removal of the LFO tanks and fuel cell, replaced by a second heavy duty RTG. Also, having learned during my last update how comms reflectors work, I decided to install the largest reflector possible on the Valkyrie. It's possible that the extra 50 gigameters of range won't be needed, but if it is, then I'll be very glad I bothered. By comparison, the reflector on the Arkangel only adds 5GM. Speaking of Arkangel, I was only able to lift it on the 300 ton to LKO Blizzard booster by leaving the LFO tanks unfilled. I sent up two of these unnamed refuelling vehicles top it off, and to refuel the Meerkat mining lander I also sent up. With that, Arkangel will be capable of resupplying itself until the lander's reactor runs out of uranium. Urium Surveyor 1 was launched and sent on its way. It will arrive in 17 years. Like Neidon Surveyor, I expect it will be overtaken by craft with high-end drive systems, but given the relatively low expense, I figured why not launch it anyway. I'm also going to send a com-sat with a reflector dish, because I suspect the on-board comms of the Surveyor series probes aren't going to cut it over such a long distance. Sarnus window in 20 days.

No screenshots of it, but I actually ended up scrapping most of the WOLF section of Wyvern 2. The loading lag was just way too high, I was waiting 30 seconds with KSP on the edge of crashing. Kept the chemical plant and one WOLF hopper that probably won't get used. The transfer windows for Neidon, Urium and Sarnus all came up within a month of each other. I have nothing ready for voyages into the deep end of the Kerbol system, so the only thing I launched to Neidon was a surveyor probe. Another will head to Urium, and I'm probably going to send one to Sarnus too. Yes, I already have Sarnus Surveyor on course to intercept, but that will arrive in 19 years. If I launch a new one now, it will arrive in 4. No brainer, really. My first shipment of SpecialisedParts from Wyvern 2 using the new Cerberus SPCV lander. One of the moons of Sarnus is Tekto, and rumour has it Tekto has an atmosphere. I could reuse the Samurai design, but the aerospike would be massive overkill. Technically, an SSTO this large is overkill as well, but it does have the advantage of plenty of Habitation. An away team could spend between 25-50 days down there. This is the Lancer research SSTO. Comes equipped with a full suite of ground and atmospheric science instruments. Aboard are the new Valkyrie crew, consisting of a pilot, engineer and two scientists. The engineer has been making themselves useful, carrying out the demolition procedure to remove the propulsion and propellant tanks of the Valkyrie. The reactor was destroyed in the process, which is a shame, as it would have provided some nice redundancy to have two. I launched the Utility/Power Module. This has the lander/SSTO docking ports, RCS/lander LFO storage, nuclear reactor and solar arrays. In order to dock it, first an extra docking port had to be moved from the UPM to Valkyrie's open end. Docked together, it becomes clear that the size of the Lancer will pose a problem. We can't spin up the hab like this. Fear not, I have a cunning plan. See, Valkyrie was designed as a transport, not a science vessel. It had very few instruments on board, something that would need to be fixed for the mission. So, why not slap as many orbital experiments onto a structural extension as possible? There we go! No more inteference! Also, the original solar arrays have been moved forward, so as not to conflict with the science experiments. The new propulsion has now been installed. Valkyrie has her wings back, stronger than ever. For Slate, I'll be needing a lander of similar beefitude to the one Vanguard is carrying to Tylo. I took the Lemming and removed all science instruments, while adding electrical production, adding a probe core for control, and swapping the landing legs for something better. As with Tylo, I plan to land a rover for the science gathering, using the lander simply as a means of going from orbit to surface and back again. The lander docked opposite the Lancer, once the docking port had been changed. A Lemming full of fuel weighs the same as an empty Lancer, so the centre-of-gravity should be back on the axis of thrust. I sent up two FTVs with fission pellets on board, transferring them to the IPTV. Valkyrie cannot carry all the fuel that will be required on this mission. In particular, the empty Lancer can't be used if it remains empty. So I set about launching an unmanned tanker that would go to Sarnus with Valkyrie. This is the Arkangel. 350 tons of liquid fuel, and about 50 tons of oxidizer. It even has a comms reflector, increasing the range of its radio antenna. So if Valkyrie finds it can't reach KSC with its own comms, perhaps it can bounce through this. I'm quite pleased than I finally figured out how the antenna/reflectors worked. Had no idea until now that "Render path" was supposed to tell you whether it was pointing at a dish or not in the VAB. Next time, the Slate rover, and Valkyrie's departure.

Not enough MaterialKits, but a docking with Asgard 2 soon solved that problem. There are four basic resources Wyvern 2 does not have access to on-site. Water, MetalOre, RareMetals and ExoticMinerals. It also can't get gypsum, but that's only useful in the production of Fertiliser, which I make with Minerals instead. These are the resources I designed a WOLF hopper module to provide for the base. It also has a chemical plant, because the base wasn't producing enough chemicals. They're needed more than the other two advanced resources - Polymers and Metals. Once a WOLF network has been established on Minmus, Wyvern 2 will be the only base on that Moon I need visit. Unless I decide to build a Wyvern 3 that does all the same jobs, but in a more streamlined way. Valkyrie finally makes it home. The Odyssey crew's ordeal is now well and truly over. ...this is an insane amount of science. With the Far Future Technologies mod, Science is used to purchase Antimatter. This is why I've got such an aggressive exploration programme going, despite having basically unlocked the entire tech tree at this point. It will go to funding the most advanced spacecraft, when I get round to building them. The Sarnus transfer window is coming up, and I wanted a way to move huge amounts of SpecialisedParts up to Asgard 2 before its departure. This is the lander I designed. It can carry 60,000 SP to Minmus orbit with a comfortable margin of error on fuel. As it turns out, I don't actually have 60,000 SP on Minmus. I had 50,000. After shutting off ColonySupplies and Machinery production, the production rate was up to 0.01 per second. Maybe I'll need another base after all. One dedicated to producing MaterialKits and SpecialisedParts. That way, Wyvern 2 can handle producing the highest tier resources (Machinery, ColonySupplies) without worrying about shipments of lesser resources disrupting the supply lines. Probably a good idea in any case, as it now takes upwards of 15 seconds to load the base when entering physics range. A smaller base wouldn't take so long. In the next exciting episode of Making Life Difficult, I'll be refitting Valkyrie with a new drive section and sending it off to Sarnus.

Had a couple of hours free to do KSP today, and I knew exactly what I needed to do. Wyvern 2 as designed could only support the current crew for a bit over a year, and while it could produce its own food, I was a little disturbed by the 60 day food reserves. I designed a habitat and life support module for the base, and used Tarasque to construct it in orbit. The Kestrel Skycrane proved much easier to use than the older LH2 powered vessel. I'm considering dismantling that one for MaterialKits. I'd also removed the truss extension, but it's still attached to the station, so it can be re-attached if needed. With the new base section installed, Wyvern can now support its current crew for six years. A hydroponics filtering system increases the food reserves to 150 days, and the extra Agroponics dome increases the capacity for the base to recycle waste products. I made sure to include an extra Kerbitrail docking port, to support future expansions. At present, my only plans for further improvement are a separate radiator loop for the Ore Converter (at present it is overheating the laser drills) and a WOLF hopper, which will allow Wyvern 2 to pull resources from WOLF bases which have, as yet, not been created. Speaking of WOLF, it gave me some ideas for Eve colonisation. Rorigh "Rory" Kerman's visit to the purple planet confirmed that the surface was quite inhospitable. Wild temperature swings, a toxic, corrosive atmosphere... but WOLF bases are hidden. Or, shall we say, buried? Underground habitats could certainly get around many of the issues with Eve as a destination. But at the same time, do Kerbals really want to travel across the Kerbol system just to spend the rest of their lives in a metal cave? Well, maybe some of them do, but it's hardly ideal. So Eve WOLF bases would be primarily used for basic resource extraction, nothing more. So where are the Kerbals going to live? That's where I took some inspiration from IRL plans for Venus colonisation, which faces similar difficulties. Why does the colony have to be on the surface? With a WOLF hopper supplying the resources, the colony could be floating above the clouds, supported on balloons, where it would not just be safer, but also have full access to sunlight! Between WOLF, airship mods and AirPark, a colony like this is eminently feasible. The only problem is that it could not construct vessels. There would be no surface for Ground Kits to attach to, and while I can envision ways a Dockable Kit could be used, the engineering difficulties would be substantial, and the risks of failure enormous. All heavy industrial capacity would have to be in orbit, or more likely, stationed at Gilly. In other news, Valkyrie performed a maneuver to refine its approach to Kerbin. the Dres mission will soon be entering the homeworld's SoI.

Yesterday, I sent Asgard 2 home to Kerbin for a very expensive resupply. I believe the mission had a total cost of around 10 million VF. With so many trips using the exact same resupply vehicle (plus being tired from IRL work) I was too exhausted to do anything more. Skipping forward to today. Valiant arrived in Kerbin's SoI, and captured around the blue marble. As planned, it rendezvoused with the capsule which had brought the crew up a couple of years ago, so that the crew could make their descent. There was one small problem with that plan. I only noticed after transferring the crew and science across, but the capsule has no parachutes. I wouldn't dare try to deorbit this thing. I haven't made many passenger SSTOs. The small ones can be especially tricky, but I pulled it off quite nicely with the Wizard. It drops like a rock when unpowered, owing to the minimal wing surface area, but it can carry out a surface-to-orbit-to-surface mission with a fair amount of liquid fuel to spare. Running out is quite unlikely. I'll be moving the wings forward a bit, as the centre-of-lift is a bit far back. I had to move the fuel to the tail so I could bring the nose up for landing. Ah, the fruits of my space program's labour! And this is just from the mission to Gilly, that happened to pass over Eve. What Comet brings back is gonna be super juicy. Much of its data will be the same as Valiant collected, but not the Eve surface and atmospheric experiments. Given the difficulty of returning from Eve, I'm expecting something good. I've unlocked almost all of the tech tree at this point. All that remains is Antimatter technology, but I see no reason to mess with that until I've made use of the fusion tech. I've barely made full use of fission! Asgard 2 returns to Minmus, nearly fully loaded. Turns out I only needed a fraction of what I put on board. Well, waste not, want not! The transfer windows to the three outer planets are approaching. I had been intending to launch survey probes, but it would certainly help future colonisation efforts to have plenty of MaterialKits on standby. If I do go ahead with that plan, I'll want to transfer the remaining MaterialKits in the rear cargo bays to Tarasque Station, configure those bays back to SpecialisedParts, and fill them up from the Minmus planetary logistics stockpile. In order to do that, I'll need something first. That something being... Wyvern 2! The new Minmus base is finally complete! It has supply chains for pretty much everything I could need, and the 10m Atlas factories provide it in bulk using a minimum of parts. At first, the base had no power. I hadn't designed it with solar panels. But by connecting it to the Anansi FTV-N, I could use that craft's panels to jumpstart the base systems. Uranium was transferred from the lander to the reactor, at which point the reactor could be brought online. All well and good having power, but the base could do very little without the ability to pull resources from planetary logistics. It could only mine a few resources. Enter the Quartermaster. This Kerbonaut was stationed on Tarasque, organising the transfer of resources to craft constructed in orbit or just passing through. Neither of which were happening at the moment, so there was no pressing need not to transfer to the base below. With the logistics module manned, I could now bring in Machinery that had been produced by Wyvern 1. in order to get the factories, processing facilities and farms online. The base could now make advanced resources all the way up to Machinery, but it would need a much larger crew to fulfil its duties optimally. For the second time today, I designed a passenger SSTO. This one with the delta-V to reach Minmus, though it required some refuelling to return. I said I'd like to reuse the name Berserker, and this is what I used it on. The passengers disembarked. We had machics, technicians, a biologist, and even a Kolonist - a Kerbonaut with no particular skills, but who would help boost the planetary Kolonisation score, and thus improve the base's output. Also riding the Berserker were eight Farmers, tasked with operating the base's large agricultural facility, producing the Organics needed for ColonySupplies - the essential resource for pushing back Kerbals' hab timer and ensuring they could remain in any given colony for an extended period of time. Two extra crew would not be staying at Wyvern 2, instead joining the engineers on board the Kodiak GCV. One being a Quartermaster to take up the vacant post at Tarasque, the other a pilot. Landing the GCV had been difficult enough. Returning it to orbit took skill. Now the GCV can drop anywhere on Minmus that it might be needed, and the engineers can return to their posts in the orbital workshops. This thread is supposedly about a colonisation playthrough. I've been doing a lot of exploration missions, and they're both fun and neccesary for the future colonisation efforts. Can't build a base without doing surveys first! But it's been nice to finally get back to what I started this playthrough for. Shoving huge numbers of Kerbals into tin cans on distant alien worlds.

Whoops. Forgot the science. Comet burns for Gilly. It doesn't have an Engineer on board, and the Technicians aren't qualified to construct spacecraft. There's no way to detach the scanning arm from the transport and move it over t the lander, still attached to the nearby space station. There was only one viable plan. But it would mean hazarding the spacecraft, the science, and the tourists. Fierce debate raged over whether to proceed, or do something boring like launch a probe at the next Eve transfer window. We went with the exciting option. An option made possible only by Gilly's exceedingly low gravity. Comet's main drive had been used to bleed off most of the craft's orbital velocity, but after performing a flip maneuver, only RCS could provide any form of maneuvering capability. Having landed on its nose, the scanner arm deployed. Worth it? Aaaaand back in orbit, rendezvoused with the return capsule. Wouldn't wanna forget the second of this mission's contracts! While all that had been going on, construction began on Wyvern 2. Ignore the saved name, I'll change that when it's finished. After running out of MaterialKits, the Ferret resupplied at the Asgard 2 and returned. Then it ran out again. Asgard 2 is empty, so the only option is for it to return to Kerbin. It's entirely possible that I'll have to do that twice , given the enormous amount of resources needed. Either that or I'll send someone up to reconfigure the SpecialisedParts cargo bays to carry MaterialKits instead.

Today's play session has been dedicated to a single mission - the Eve landing and return. Our brave Kerbal is a scientist who I will refer to as Rory because it's easier to spell. He's taken his protein pills and put his helmet on, as ready as he could possibly be to face a mission with an entirely uncertain outcome. Should the Samurai prove inadequate, he could be trapped on the surface of a hellish world indefinitely. Data gathered from the robotic Tarantula mission indicates that conditions can vary from boiling hot to freezing cold, in a toxic atmosphere entirely devoid of oxygen. Simulations suggest that any deviation from the long pitched-up descent could result in entry heat destroying the spaceplane. Even without the risk of insufficient delta-V, Kerbin's evil twin is a dangerous place to go. The aerospike fires up briefly, lowering periapsis below the purple planet's Kerman Line, around 75km up. Trajectories confirms this will result in loss of orbit. Once inside the atmosphere, there is no abort procedure. Rory cannot command the Samurai to accelerate, not if parts are already at risk of overheating. Rory is now committed to the descent. Though not a pilot, he has access to a sophisticated autopilot system along with the stock ASAS operated by the spaceplane's remote probe core. He provides the neccesary inputs to shepherd the Samurai through a long and nervewracking decelleration from 3km/s to a third of that speed... and makes it through one of the most dangerous aspects of the mission profile, having lost just a single RCS cluster. The boffins back home are quite confused as to why it was lost while its sibling on the port side survived. According to temperature guages, it should not have gone above 2/3rds. He begins to drop through the cloud layers, slowing further as he goes. After finally getting under the clouds, Rory confirms his location using the atmospheric analyser. Midlands. Tarantula already carried out most of the science that could be done in this area. He continues on until finding the Highlands biome, and begins final approach. The landing is more difficult than expected. Eve's thick atmosphere proves a blessing and a curse - it provides plenty of lift, greatly lowering the stall speed, but it also dramatically increases drag. Without engines, or with them incorrectly set, it is very easy to drop below the stall speed regardless. Simulations also suggest that attempting to land on a downward slope could result in stall if a sudden rise in terrain forces a go-around. Rory makes it down. He stares in wonder out the cockpit window. Tarantula's camera already confirmed there was plant life on Eve, but he couldn't quite believe it. Now, the giant leafy shrubs and bushes that envelop the landing gear surround him. How could these plants survive under these conditions? How could they grow so large with Eve's higher gravity? Mysteries he hopes to solve before leaving. 5.6 atmospheres of pressure. Rory has a lot of weight on his shoulders, in more ways than one. Research at the Highlands biome complete, he takes off again, heading for Eve's Craters. A weather system surrounds that biome, severely reducing visibility. This almost caused a terrible end to the mission, when Rory attempted to land in the Peaks biome surrounding the crater. He found the ground suddenly plunging away from him, just as he was about to touch down. Now inside the crater, visibility was much better. Once again, he lands, carries out his research, and launches back into the overcast sky. He will attempt another landing in the Peaks, more carefully this time. Or at least, that was the plan. The angle of attack needed to surmount the crater rim from such a low altitude robbed him of speed, nearly causing a stall and crash, but by putting the nose down and risking flying close to the peaks, Rory successfully saved the spacecraft. This place is dark and spooky. If there weren't so many bubbles, Rory might wonder if he were surrounded by the ghosts of some ancient civilisation. There has been some speculation at home that Eve was once a habitable world like Kerbin. It certainly isn't now. Rory glances at his vessel's control panel, a worrying number of warning lights lit up. The atmosphere is not just toxic, it's corrosive, slowly eating away at the spaceplane's systems. Perhaps the R&D boys might find a solution to that, but it wouldn't come in time to help this lonely explorer. He thinks it best to get on with the mission. The sooner it's complete, the sooner he can leave. Eve is not a welcoming place. As difficult as it was to get here, it's not worth prolonging the stay. Rory turns south, heading for the southern polar biome. The last stop. There are a couple of other biomes still to survey, but the closest has been lost to Eve's night, and Rory has no interest in trying to land the Samurai in the dark. Fog was bad enough. With all aboard that's going aboard, the spaceplane returns to the equator, and lines up for the final stage of the mission - ascent. After reaching just 1,100 m/s on the Project Eeloo engines' open-cycle mode, they began to lose thrust. Rory activated the nuclear aerospike. Useful at many atmospheric pressures, the aerospike helped boost the flagging Eeloo drives until the air was too thin to use, and they switched to closed-cycle. Liquid hydrogen was burned at a prodigious rate, andthen the tanks were empty. The aerospike shut down, leaving its liquid-fuel companions to complete the burn to orbit. Rory watched as his fuel level dropped, while the delta-V indicator stubbornly remained at 1,800m/s, an obviously false reading. The corrosion might have done more damage than he'd thought. Would he make it? His apoapsis soared above 90km, but he still had to circularise. Was his fuel gauge accurate? Would he make it? YES! Squeaking into orbit with a mere 255 units of liquid fuel remaining, the Samurai had successfully escaped the hell-world, one of the most difficult planets to leave in the entire Kerbol system. The scientist Rory, first Kerbal on Eve, was safely back in space. Radiators glowing, the Samurai performed one last burn to get its periapsis and apoapsis to roughly the same altitude. Having received word through the comm system, Comet (which had been on the other side of Eve, unable to watch the proceedings) altered its inclination and prepared an intercept in five or so orbits. Rendezvous complete, the transport shed its relative velocity. With only one docking port, and that already taken up by the return capsule, Rory would need to EVA across. Goodbye, Samurai. We salute your effort. If you are needed again, we know where to find you. I must go, my people need me. Our hero recovered, the Eve mission has come to its conclusion. Comet will leave the hazy purple planet to its own devices, and head for its moon Gilly in search of a way to scan a Ridgeline.

Thankyou very much! Tarasque Station completed the Wyvern 2 kit today. Of course, it still needed to be brought down to the surface of Minmus before any further work could be done to it. I had Tarasque build a skycrane for the job, more simple and reliable in design than the LH2 powered one I already had. However, I underestimated the width of the kit, and found that the engines would be pointing at it. I needed to add a truss structure to put the skycrane's engines further away. That addition made, it could begin the descent. With a 300 ton payload and a TWR of 4, I had to begin the landing burn at around 5,000 meters in altitude, or else slam into the ground and lose all that hard work. Landed! The skycrane detached and returned to orbit for reuse. Sarnus Surveyor made its second burn to intercept the giant red planet. I then set up a maneuver node that would have the probe intercept Slate, a gravity slingshot that would ensure capture at Sarnus. I could then capture at each of the moons at my leisure. Samurai arrived at Eve first. It was soon followed by Comet. Little inclination change of 20 degrees. Then finally, the Harrier FTV. The craft rendezvoused with Samurai, transferring all of its LH2 and most of the liquid fuel. Both the Workshop lander and Wolverine GCV had been lost in the Great Migration, so I had to launch a new vehicle. I chose to go with the same vessel as I'd had Leviathan make out at Ike - a Kodiak GCV. I'd had no issues with its design, so it seemed ideal. I transferred six Engineers to the rover, leaving just one Engineer and the Quartermaster left on Tarasque. Some of them will return when the base is built. Construction begins. Meanwhile, Comet and Samurai rendezvoused, so the Scientist could transfer across, ready for the first Kerbal's landing on Eve. In simulations, it appears that a long enough descent at a high angle of attack can prevent part overheating. Stall speed is about 40 m/s.

Today was a busy day! Call me a flip-flopper, but I decided maybe SSTOs weren't the best option for bulk transport after all. Oh, I fully plan to keep using them to stock Mirage, but the Asgard 2 was thirsty for resources in a way only a 300 ton-to-LKO launcher could satisfy. This is the Polecat MK/SPCV, atop the new Blizzard booster stack. I launched it twice, filling the freighter's SP cargo bays to... 2/3rds full. Yeah. My first time making use of the inflateable heatshield, and having it work properly. All my previous experience of it usually resulted in the spacecraft flipping around. I know it's standard practice to put one at either end, but that always looks silly to me, (EDIT: Just remembered I used it for the Tarantula rover. Though in that instance it was a much smaller payload, with an aeroshell to make it look like one of NASA's rover capsules.) The booster followed it down. It has many, many parachutes. Some more neccesary than others. As stocked as I could be bothered, I sent Asgard 2 off to Minmus. Heavy as it is, and with limited TWR, several burns were needed. As the Eve to Kerbin transfer window opened, Valiant headed home. I'd considered leaving the ship's engineer behind at Gilly, but only thought of that when it was too late. Heaven knows how I'm going to scan those Gilly ridgelines. Asgard 2 arrived at Minmus and rendezvoused with Tarasque Station. Even after bringing up an empty Ferret MKCV from the surface, there still wasn't enough storage on Tarasque for all the MaterialKits the freighter was carrying. To avoid any Kraken-y mishaps, I sent Asgard 2 away after the transfer was complete. Ferrets can shuttle between them later if neccessary. The return window at Duna also opened up, and Endeavour made its own burn for Kerbin. Annoyingly, Tarasque Station's reactor overheated and melted down during timewarp, despite having adequate cooling in all other situations. I was forced to send a replacement, which I fitted much more effective cooling arrays to. Sarnus Surveyor made its first burn, bringing its apoapsis out to Jool orbit. It will make another burn in a few months to intercept Sarnus. The Duna transfer window arrived. Three craft orbiting Kerbin made their escape burns. Only the first, Phoenix Station, was able to do so on a single pass, with its nuclear saltwater rocket. That's a spicy meatball! Basilisk went next. And last, but certainly not least, Antelope. Coming up, the arrival of the Comet and Samurai at Eve.

Asgard 2 has been launched. I forgot to take any screenshots of it, but it basically looks like Asgard 1 with larger forward cargo bays and half the fission particle capacity. Lifting MaterialKits was easy enough that I nearly filled Mirage's storage. Not all the flights went to plan, but that was entirely my fault. This particular Marauder was damaged by 8x physics warp. The landing was not a conspicious success, but it did land, despite having lost an engine, a vertical stabiliser and a tail canard. SpecialisedParts are a different matter. They're heavier than MaterialKits, making takeoff more difficult, and reducing delta-V after reaching LKO. To remedy this, I tried sticking a 2m turbofan on the tail. It worked well enough. I'll have to send up quite a few of these missions to completely fill Asgard 2.

In an effort to avoid the faff of deorbiting reusable boosters, while recovering more of the cost of the launch vehicle, I began working on a new cargo spaceplane for carrying MaterialKits up to Mirage Station. This resulted in two variants of a viable design, the Berserker and Marauder. Anticipating that I would need a lot of thrust to reach orbit with such a heavy payload, I fitted the Berserker with four Project Eeloo engines, two OPT Turbo-Ramjets and a pair of nuclear aerospikes. That was reduced to a single aerospike when I found that two of them could run through the LH2 supply in the time it took the spaceplane to reach the end of the runway. So far, so good. It was perfectly capable of reaching orbit, but the weight of the craft meant it needed to use the Eeloo drives in closed-cycle mode until reaching 300 m/s, This was not exactly optimal. Perfect landing! Though I did have a couple of failed attempts, until I realised that autostrutting the nose gear was a bad idea. Next up, Marauder. I figured the nuclear aerospike and the turbo-ramjets were actually unneccesary, and in fact were only required because of the weight of the fuel they were using. So I removed them, leaving just the four Project Eeloo engines. I'm starting to wonder if the Samurai would have been better served without the aerospike, too. I think this might be the best screenshot I have ever taken. Overran the runway, no damage. I tweaked the landing gear in the SPH afterwards to ensure that it would have enough braking power to stop, next time. Evaluating these designs, I think the Berserker might have some promise as an Eve cargo SSTO, but It's far too expensive to justify using it in anything but niche roles - 700,000 VF, vs 330,000 VF. It's even possible the Marauder could be an Eve SSTO as well, in which case it would have no use whatsoever. I like the name too much, though, so I might reuse it for a different design. In general, the Marauder is a highly effective design, and one I anticipate I'll be using a lot. When Mirage completes the Asgard 2, I'll be using it to hault up MaterialKits and SpecialisedParts for transport to Tarasque Station.

This is the tanker design I came up with for refuelling the Samurai at Eve. The Harrier FTV carries enough Liquid Fuel and LH2 for a single Eve descent/ascent. The nuclear lightbulb engine means it can reach Eve without having to dig into the payload. 50k VF would be expensive for a single-use engine, if I weren't swimming in funds. Tarasque Station is running low on Specialised Parts, which it needs to continue work on Wyvern 2. I could have sent several carriers to Minmus, but instead chose to have Mirage construct a freighter that could shift huge amounts of the resources about, and when Wyvern 2 comes online, it can ferry MaterialKits and Specialised Parts from there to wherever in the Kerbol system they might be needed. The Eve to Kerbin transfer window is coming up, so Valiant departed Gilly for a circular orbit high over Eve. It'll be another week or two before it heads home. The stock alarm clock lied to me again.