RedDwarfIV

I don't think I had it unlocked at the time I launched the probe.

My Christmas present to you all; the completion of Tarasque Station! Mirage still had quite a bit of construction resources left over from Tarasque Upgrade Module, so I felt it best to use it for the Tarasque Upgrade Package 2. This may have been a sub-optimal decision, given what I later learned, but it wasn't particularly bad either. Aside from having to send the upgrade package from LKO to Minmus, the main reason for its sub-optimalness was that Mirage ran out of MaterialKits. I was able to correct that with a single Marauder flight. I might want to refit Mirage to have a second standard docking port. It's not super important, though, since Marauders could just carry a senior docking port instead. The SSTO had used up all its liquid hydrogen propellant reaching LKO. Due to a bug, the vertical stabilisers had monopropellant tanks I couldn't remove, so at least I was able to use the RCS to rendezvous and deorbit. Construction completed, vessel launched. While the TUP2 was on its way, I remembered that the Helium3 mining operation was a thing that existed. The tanks of both the harvester and lander were full, so I sent the lander up to dock with Elysium station and transfer the payload. I also looked in on Valhalla station... and was exceedingly disappointed. Honestly, this station is absolutely worthless. It collected almost no hydrogen whatsoever, and a measly 5 units of antimatter. Pathetic. Back to more useful space stations, the TUP2 arrived at Minmus. The new section allows Tarasque to replenish its SpecialisedParts at about the same rate as MaterialKits, so kit construction should not become a bottleneck. It also has the tug needed for moving construction kits from the kit fabricator to the docking port. As a little bonus; one of the Wayfarer probes arrived at Sarnus. Having set up a gravity assist maneuver at Jool to slow down the arriving exploration vessel, I felt confident in doing the same thing with an unmanned probe. As it turned out, this was the only way the probe possibly could have shed enough velocity to stay in the gas giant's sphere of influence - whilst it had plenty of delta-V, the craft was woefully lacking in energy generation. As far from Kerbol as it is, the Gigantor solar panels barely produce enough energy to power the command unit and comms transmitter, and that's with all four panels pointed straight at the sun. For the 120 m/s or so needed to set up the gravity assist, I was forced to repeatedly cut thrust and reorient sunward, spending days recharging before carrying out another burn. There is no way I could have braked the Wayfarer into Sarnus orbit without a gravity assist using this method.

Looking it up, it seems the bug is a bad interaction with TAC Life Support, which I don't use. So should be good to go!

I've considered it. I may do that at some point, but I've barely started with the extended Kerbol system, so doing so would be quite a ways off. Also, as I understand it the cryo freezing mod is bugged and can kill the Kerbals you put into it, which is annoying because that mod is almost a necessity for interstellar colonisation.

Thanks! To set up the Greater Flats to Minmus Orbit transport route, I designed a lander. It came in at 100 tons fully loaded, so I was forced to design yet another launcher. I didn't name it. This is the Mako WOLF cargo lander. Having landed on the Greater Flats, I set the origin biome and lifted off. Reached orbit, set it as the route destination. Seems this only cost 3 Transport Credits. I was expecting it to take rather more than that. In order to allow Tarasque Station to draw resources from WOLF, it needed physical Hopper parts. I designed an upgrade module for the station and built it at Mirage. Doing so used up all the SpecialisedParts and MaterialKits. Sending up more had me down to my last 300k VF, so I spent a while deorbiting reusable boosters, along with a Wizard SSTO. I'm almost certain this is a bug with Global Construction. The size of these kits are getting ridiculous. Took about a month to build the module. Along with the WOLF hoppers, the module also included an expanded fuel depot and gravity ring for the Kerbals. It did need some rearranging of RCS ports, which a Kerbal engineer fixed in a matter of minutes. As the upgrade module made its journey to Minmus, the IPTV Vanguard entered Jool's sphere of influence. It's still two months or so away from the planet, but I decided it was a good time to set up the arrival maneuver. This would use Tylo for a gravity assist, much reducing the delta-V needed. Not that the fusion powered beast needed the help, but I'll be honest, I've never done a gravity assist before. Seemed like a nice thing to do, since I had the opportunity right there. I had to deploy the solar panels and activate the vessel's reactor. Without them, the habitat and life support systems were rapidly draining the battery banks. The main drive also requires a lot of stored power to initialise a burn. The upgrade module arrived at Minmus and rendezvoused with Tarasque Station. I moved the Workshop over to the port which had previously been connected to the fuel depot. I connected the old depot to the new one, so that the fuel could be transferred across. It also made moving any salvaged parts like the reactor much easier. After everything of value was removed, what remained was disassembled tfor MaterialKits. As it turned out, the WOLF orbital biome is Low Orbit only, and Tarasque was too high up. Happily, I still had some whacking great engines attached to the upgrade module to push it around with. It required a second Mako trip, but all the resources are now reaching the station, and can be withdrawn in usable form. I may want to send a couple more SpecialisedParts hoppers, as they have a much lower production rate than their MaterialKits counterpart. A place to store Machinery would be good, too.

Starwolf 1 had the mission of setting up a self-sustaining WOLF base on Minmus. That was an incredibly important step, but was for all practical purposes useless, because everything it produced was used just to support itself. That's what I spent today rectifying. I wanted to expand the WOLF base's infrastructure so that it would generate MaterialKits, SpecialisedParts and Machinery in sufficient amounts that it would be usable by Tarasque Station. After finding out what parts and Kerbals I would need for the expansion, I found that there was a defecit of MetallicOre. So I launched another Stingray. Happily, Minmus was perfectly aligned for a minimum-energy transfer. Rather than use Mirage to build the vessel in orbit again, I designed a spaceplace capable of carrying all the WOLF parts and Kerbal crew to Low Kerbin Orbit. This is the Oracle. A very heavy vehicle, the SSTO used up most of its fuel reaching orbit. In a lack of foresight, I had not fitted it with a docking port, so I sent two modified Manticore FTVs with grapplers to dock with it and transfer fuel. Two was not enough, and rather than send up a third, I realised there was an easier alternative. The Oracle would not be returning from Minmus. There were many parts that it no longer required in order to fulful its mission. As such, I sent out a Kerbal to dismantle anything surplus to requirements. The result wasn't pretty, but it now had the delta-V needed. Inspecting the cargo. After connecting the vessel to the WOLF depot, the Oracle vanished, and the dashboard updated. There was now 10 Machinery, 15 MaterialKits and 16 SpecialisedParts available to do what I wanted with. What needs doing now, is setting up a transport route from the Greater Flats to Minmus orbit, and adding a means for Tarasque to pull resources from WOLF.

It's time! It's finally time! All that setup, which was kinda getting tedious with how many similar missions it involved, now gets to pay off. That WOLF base I'd been harping on about? Today's the day I finally got round to it. First thing I did was find out what WOLF components I needed, and what Kerbals. The uninspiring craft in the image below was nothing more than a tool for planning the mission, one that would never leave the SPH, but it was useful nonetheless. Once I had everything planned out, I designed a proper spacecraft to carry it all. Since it would be the foundation for my first WOLF base, it was given the name Starwolf 1. I assembled it at Mirage Station. (Unfortunately, there were some part clipping issues which left the vessel unusable, and I was forced to use Hyperedit to move a corrected version of the spacecraft to orbit. I consider this valid because it was a problem with the game, not me. Also, I had just spent 65 days building it, with no recent save file from beforehand.) Mirage ran out of MaterialKits, so I sent up a resupply mission. It did jiggle a bit after docking, but some Autostruts fixed that, unlike the Polecat. Two thirds of the crew were lifted up to Starwolf 1 by a pair of Wizard 2 SSTOs. Inspecting the payload; the base components. You can see why clipping was an issue. I sent the first SSTO to Mirage to refuel, as it had used a non-optimal ascent profile. Unfortunately, all the LFO on the station had already been transferred to Starwolf 1, so I sent up an Olympus FTV to refill the tanks and help the SSTO return to KSC. This flight proved the Wizard 2 was indeed an improvement over the original. Despite empty fuel tanks, the SSTO showed no signs of nose-down tendency, and was able to reach the runway instead of lawn-darting into the terrain nearby. The only issue I noted was its lacklustre glide capability. Without engine power, the Wizard drops rapidly, even while shedding forward velocity. The second Wizard is still in orbit, but only because I wanted to focus on Starwolf. It was getting late. I can always land it later. As I said, Wizards lifted two thirds of the crew. The last third posed a difficulty, because there were 7 Kerbonauts... and the Wizard can only carry six. Rather than have a whole extra flight just for one Kerbal, I instead took an old design for a larger manned spaceplane, and updated it. This is the Lancer 2, which exchanges all the scientific equipment of the original for a crew compartment. Not that the extra room was neccesary on this trip, but if I ever need a heavier crew SSTO in the future, I'll have one ready and waiting. At long last, Starwolf 1 headed for Minmus. It would have taken 20 days waiting for Minmus to reach Kerbin's equator, so I took a quicker 10 day route. The landing burn commences. At the push of a single button, the vessel would disappear, and a virtual base would be created. Success! And now for something slightly different. The IPCV Andromeda mining vessel performed a correction burn. It is now 200 days from Jool. The manned mission to Jool is now less than 50 days out. Don't think I've done any exploration missions for a while, so that should be a nice change of pace when it arrives.

Constructing the depot landers took 4 days and about 5% of Tarasque's SpecialisedParts. So while it wasn't neccesarily faster in game-time, it was quicker for me, and much cheaper too. Due to a terrain-spacecraft interaction conflict, Dragon base no longer exists. According to the logs, there were no crew at the station at the time. As the LH2 refineries were glitched out and inoperable, the facility's only use was mining ore for transfer to Planetary Storage. It wasn't very good at this. A WOLF base will soon be replacing that functionality anyway. Both the Lowlands and Lesser Flats needed to be connected by Transport Routes to the Great Flats. This wasn't difficult for the Lowlands, and in fact I was able to simply drive the Sabretooth rover forwards and backwards between biomes to increase the payload capacity. Rather more challenging was the Lesser Flats, which were in night-time when the rover arrived. I had to drive it the last few hundred metres. Getting it back to sunlight also took a significant amount of time. All the ExoticMinerals and most of the Water on Minmus available to WOLF are now being harvested. Respectable amounts of everything is arriving at the Greater Flats. Next up, hiring a load of Specialist Kerbonauts, designing a WOLF base, and shipping it all to Minmus. This has been a long time coming, and it's the main thing keeping me from either time-warping to the next important Alarm or working on infrastructure elsewhere in the system. Leviathan has been sitting idle for an age. Nor can it sit at Ike forever without resupply.

Not much of an update today, I was basically just refining the Stingray lander and Typhoon launcher. The former for increased control and delta-V, the latter for increased TWR. Three Stingrays arrived at Minmus, all with adjustments to the design. One of the landers had insufficient delta-V to even reach Tarasque for a refuel. Needless to say, it's not the design I settled on. I had to refuel a Manticore at Wyvern 2 in order to rescue it. One of the landers is in Minmus' Lowlands, another on the Lesser Flats. Neither of these biomes currently have WOLF depots, so I will have to set those up. It should be faster to have Tarasque build a pair of small landers to carry the Depot modules down than to launch from Kerbin, and they shouldn't exhaust the station's pitiful supply of SpecialisedParts.

I spent quite a while today trying to design a WOLF base that could convert basic resources into MaterialKits, SpecialisedParts, Fuel and Transport Credits. It got a bit complicated, so I started over with one that would just make Fuel and T-Credits, but stopped when I realised there were some basic resources I simply wasn't getting enough of. Namely Dirt and Gypsum. Dirt is used by Agriculture modules, Gypsum for the production of Fertiliser, which is also needed to make food. Rather than sending a bunch of landers each with a single power and harvester module each, I launched two landers with four on board. This is the Stingray WOLF Mining Lander. To save time, I sent them on 3-4 day trajectories, and Minmus was far off Kerbin's equatorial plane. As a result, they had to dock with Tarasque and refuel before landing. One of them even ran out on approach, taking a transfer from the docked CRV to let it limp in the rest of the way. The Stingray masses 70 tons. I have launchers for 40 ton and 300 ton payloads. Rather than go overkill, I designed the Typhoon launcher for 75 ton payloads. Transport routes are definitely stackable, and I've been exploiting that to its full advantage. I now have plenty of Gypsum flowing in from the Highlands, probably far more than I will actually need, but better to have a surplus than a defecit. Speaking of defecits, I'm definitely going to need more MetallicOre, and I could do with more ExoticMinerals and RareMetals too - though those last two are in short supply on Minmus. I'll have to work with what I can get. There are some improvements to be made to the Stingray, but overall I think it's proven the concept and its worth. I'll be launching more of them soon. I'm also going to need to hire a lot of specialist Kerbals. WOLF bases won't work without them, and larger bases get very demanding of personell. Something to note is that while this is fine for Minmus, with such short transit times, it's far less simple elsewhere in the system. Physical bases are going to see plenty of use yet, even if I get most of my Minmus operations virtualised.

Can't say I have, no. Honestly, I just haven't needed an SSTO that big. The largest ones I use are for retrieving extremely dense loads from orbit. Very heavy, but they don't take up much room. If I wanted a spaceplane for lifting interplanetary spacecraft sections, maybe I would, but I have conventional rocket launchers that are or almost are SSTOs, with return capability. Spaceplanes are just more difficult and time consuming to return to the launch site. Unsatisfied with the Polecat (for reasons that will soon be explained), I designed a new cargo vehicle for carrying MaterialKits and SpecialisedParts into Kerbin orbit - the Spearfish. This is the Polecat which I had previously attempted to dock to Mirage, before the upgrades. It almost immediately (in simulations) caused the station to shake itself to pieces and explode as a result of phantom forces. The newly upgraded station did not shake itself apart, though the Polecat did spend its entire time docked to the station dancing from side to side. After transferring its payload and being released, the vehicle went pirouetting off into space. I was glad to deorbit the thing, and will surely delete its design from the archives next I play. Good riddence to bad rubbish. Using the extra MaterialKits and SpecialisedParts, along with the newly up-trained crew, I set about having Mirage construct a new vehicle to solve my issue of insuffient Transport Routes on Minmus. It took 13 days to build, and 4 days to reach Minmus on a high-energy trajectory. This is the Sabretooth WOLF-GTV, or Ground Transport Vehicle. Capable of setting up a WOLF Transport Route for 30 units of Payload, twice that of the previous rover. I also happen to think it is a significant improvement aesthetically. Either I put the wrong part on it, or using Global Construction to build the rover did something weird, but what I thought was the Transport Computer was only able to "Connect to Depot", which resulted in the rover being eaten by WOLF (in simulations). So I had the old rover and a member of Tarasque's crew rendezvous with it in Minmus' Highlands. The transfer of the Transport Computer was successful, and once the Kerbonaut had safely returned to the station overhead, the Sabretooth carried out its first mission - setting up another Transport Route from the Highlands to the Greater Flats. I was pleased to see that this route stacked with the one previously established. So if I am inclined to do so, I can send down more Harvesters, aquire more resources, and get them to where they're needed. An implication of the route stacking is that I can do it again, possibly any number of times, to ensure I can always move the maximum resources. If true, it means I actually didnt need to send the Sabretooth at all. Not that I'm complaining, with twice the payload it can do the job twice as effectively. Now it's here, no reason to complain. I may need to send the rover to increase capacity on a few more routes. I may also want to land more harvesters. But the time is soon approaching to design a new base for Minmus, to take advantage of all these resources. Possibly even a WOLF base, one for generating MaterialKits, SpecialisedParts and Transport Credits, to be sent directly to Tarasque. Then, finally, I would have a fully operational and independent construction facility in Minmus orbit. No more shipments from Kerbin! And if that is successful, why, I'll have finally proven everything I need in order to expand operations elsewhere. Leviathan will finally have something useful to do at Ike.

Thanks! That's an interesting question. I've certainly evolved my spaceplane designs over time. Originally, I would frequently use forward canards, because they offered a lot of pitch control and stability. I set myself the challenge of making SSTOs that didn't have them. A lot of my spaceplanes are unmanned, which brings an interesting aesthetic all its own. Without a heavy command pod on one end, it doesn't have to be balanced at the other. Or, it means there's no counterbalance to the weight of the engines, which have to be pushed forward to compensate. I really like delta-wings, so most of my craft are delta, cranked delta, tailed delta. So most of them will be shaped like arrowheads. The Ronin science SSTO has a swept wing, and it's one of my least favourite designs from this playthrough. I think my favourite would be the Gladiator. The different designs are very much because they all have different roles, or have been built to perform certain roles better than earlier attempts. I'm also limited by the size of the parts I'm working with. I could certainly mount 3.75m engine nacelles, but there are no 3.75m shock cones and no fuselage parts in that scale so they'd look out of place, which results in craft that have multiple engine nacelles per wing like the Marauder. I could use TweakScale to make larger fuselages and shock cones, but at that point it might not even fit on the runway. Perhaps I'll try it out, just to see what would happen? Trial and error is the main thing, though. I come up with designs, they don't work, so I modify them until they do. I'm always pleasantly surprised when an SSTO works perfectly on the first launch.

Today I inspected Mirage Station to see if there was any way to salvage the Workshops. They're expensive and heavy parts, so reuse is preferable to launching new ones from Kerbin. As it turned out, I'd forgotten exactly what adding those Workshops to Mirage had entailed in the first place. That entire section of the station was actually pretty well built, and had a modern habitat and agroponics to boot. Almost all the parts I didn't want to keep were on the older section of the station, so I just... separated the two. That left me with a station that wasn't capable of generating enough power to support itself, nor did it have the kind of longevity for habitation that I'd prefer. The most important of the two to fix was power, so I dealt with that first. Having fitted a new power supply module - featuring Nautilus solar panels, a hefty reactor, plenty of extra energy storage, and a Fertiliser container (the old one went with the old station section) - the station was ready for its next upgrade. The new habitat couldn't be deployed without crew, and there was no reason not to send them up. The Wizard 2 would get its chance to shine. Crew boarded, the habitat was deployed and activated. Mirage is now capable of supporting a crew of six engineers for 20 years, assuming periodic resupply of Fertiliser. I was very pleased to find that the new hab module also came with an option to conduct Crew Training. Two of the Engineers were level 4, and they were able to train their four cohorts to the same level. This is excellent, because it means they will complete projects far faster than they would have at their previous levels!

Tarasque finished building a set of powered WOLF harvester landers. I sent each of the landers down to wherever had a good supply of the resources neeed, like Silicates, Minerals, ExoticMinerals and Water. Also sent two for Dirt and Ore to the Great Flats, which would provide the neccesary resources for farming and fuel production. Unfortunately, it seems the WOLF Transport Rover did not have sufficient capacity to move all of the neccesary material. Either I'm going to have to send up another, larger rover, or use the old one to set up a diversion route to a second biome, and send the resources to their final destination from there.

It's been a while. I was mostly just busy with other things, including being on holiday. After launching a Polecat MCKV into Kerbin Orbit only to discover that the Asgard freighter I was trying to dock it to was for Refined Exotics and such, I realised I was being silly and that there should be a source of MaterialKits much closer to Tarasque - that being Wyvern 2. I transferred the SpecialisedParts from one large container to two others, and used it to store the Fertliser that the Hydra lander below had been carrying. Then I sent the lander down to Wyvern 2 to fill up on MaterialKits and return. Much easier and faster than whatever I thought I was doing at Kerbin. My faffing about did reveal a serious issue with Mirage Station, however. For some strange reason, the reactor cooling loop was reduced to a maximum capacity of 3 Kelvin. This meant that the reactor was permenantly disabled, and the station's electric charge was dropping rapidly. So I made the decision to have the engineers abandon ship, boarding the Wizard SSTO for an emergency return home. Simulated landing attempts revealed a flaw that had not presented itself in previous flights - with as little fuel on board as it had, the spaceplane's centre of lift would move dangerously far behind its centre of mass, resulting in an unrecoverable nosedive at low altitude. This was solved by the expedient of filling several tanks from Mirage's propellant depot, using it primarily for ballast while also increasing the cross-range dramatically. The Wizard has since been redesigned for increased pitch control, and more lift forward. Time will tell if that was effective. So, Tarasque will have the WOLF powerplants ready in 5 days. That's progress to be happy with! As for Mirage, it's a pretty old station at this point, and attempts to dock the Polecat with it only further demonstrated the seriousness of its problems. I can't have wobbly stations tearing themselves to bits. Rather than replace the reactor and cooling loop, I plan to retire the station. There may be salvageable equipment (such as the construction workshops) and the fuel can be relocated, but I see little reason to keep the rest operational. If I want an orbital construction yard over Kerbin, the technology base I have access to now is far superior to what I was working with when Mirage first launched. Might as well make something better for my Kerbal engineers to stay at.

Oh! I'm afraid the servers will be quite operational when your friends arrive.

As promised, I had a look-see and found that yes, there was indeed an option to switch the WOLF PowerModule to a version that could operate independently. WOLF is back on the menu, bois! I designed a new MHU-500 Bulk Harvester lander with a PowerModule added, and made a vessel with seven of them. Rather than ship it to Minmus, I figured I'd use Tarasque Station. This turned out to be a less than stellar idea, because it likely would have been cheaper and faster just to launch the miners from KSC. Still, it would serve to demonstrate the viability of the mission profile for other worlds, where launch from KSC would not be so convenient. On visiting Tarasque, I went to look at its life support status. Supplies were good for another 200-300 days, but the station was out of Fertiliser. Without it, the hydroponic gardens would be unable to recycle waste. Fortunately, Wyvern 2 had been producing prodigious amounts of the stuff. I sent down a Hydra to retrieve it. As with so much of what I do, it wasn't the best option in hindsight. Unless I want to kick the construction rover free, there is only one Senior docking port available at Tarasque Station. There are several free standard ones, and I didn't actually need 60,000 units of Fertiliser. A smaller MKCV like the Ferret might have worked better. While I was at Wyvern 2, I switched Machinery, ColonySupplies and Recycling manufacturing to the production of more SpecialisedParts. This is something Tarasque was always running out of, and that the surface base had been making very slowly up to this point. Also, I shut down the resource converters, since the Atlas factories could do their job anyway. Speaking of the lack of SpecialisedParts, this dearth forced me to launch a Hydra half-full of SP. This is part of why I earlier said it would have made more sense just to send what I was building. On the other hand, an extra cargo lander is always useful. Unfortunately, I sent it to the wrong side of Minmus and found it was going the wrong direction. Had to send the tug from Tarasque to refuel it. Aaaaaaand now we're out of MaterialKits instead. It's way too late at night for me to fix this, so I'll deal with it next time I play.

After re-reading my previous post, I had the idea that since this is my playthrough, I can change mods to suit me if neccesary. My first thought was to add a WOLF power module that did not require a Kerbal or Maintenance. Call it a Solar Module, give it 10 power output instead of 50. That way, I could power the 500 series mining units without needing an absurdly large base to support it. While editing the PowerModule's .cfg file, I found that it's actually supposed to have an option that does not require a Kerbal or Maintenance points, and provides 5 power. This is actually the same amount of power an MHU-500 uses. I'm not sure why I didn't see the option to change the recipe before, but if it's there... well, that would actually solve my problem, wouldn't it? No modding of mods needed. I'll check this tomorrow.

I spent 15 minutes in KSP today trying to plan out a WOLF base. Honestly, I cannot be bothered with it. For some reason it seems to be geared toward importing everything from Kerbin, when the entire reason I want to use it is for in-situ resources. It's insanely complicated compared to physical USI bases. Everything I add ends up requiring more things to be added, which increases the resources needed until I run out (because only one large bulk harvester per biome can operate without extra power, and the only way to get extra power requires a Kerbal, which requires life support, which requires more Kerbals, who require more life support, all of which requires more workshops and labs and on and on and on and on) I give up. No more WOLF, beyond basic resource aquisition. I will end up demotivating myself if I keep banging my head against that wall, and that would mean the end of my playthrough. So yeah, I'll just have to keep going with physical bases and tank the lag.

mooooooore spaaaaaaaaaaaceplaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanes Following some modification, the Marauder is now capable of landing. Hooray! All the while, the Berserker had been travelling through the Kerbin system. It made a successfull landing on Minmus. Takeoff was rather more difficult, with the craft nearly losing a wing and the cockpit. RCS was just about able to compensate. The transfer window from Eve to Kerbin arrived. The ship that had been orbiting Gilly for over a year left the captured asteroid on a long arc over the purple planet before making the final burn to return to Kerbin three days later. From Minmus, the Berserker SSTO transferred to the Mun, and made a landing there as well. Strangely, it was easier to lift off than it had been at Minmus. Returning to Kerbin required multiple aerobrake maneuvers, as the craft was down to just 520 m/s of delta-V. Several simulations revealed serious instability issues during reentry. Transferring all remaining fuel to the nose and following the prograde marker ensured the actual descent could avoid a loss of control incident, though insufficient fuel remained to reach KSC. The SSTO was forced to make an emergency landing in the foothills of the continet's mountain range, using the last dregs of LH2 to avoid stalling. Mission successful! All WOLF candidates have reached level 2 training! Whilst the Berserker could, with further refinement, carry out this mission again, I suspect it will be far easier to simply recruit pre-trained Kerbonauts with the huge amounts of cash we once again have access to. But if we ever find ourselves with only a few million remaining in the bank and no freighter full of valuables in sight, it'll be waiting for us.

There's always more money to be made. So the SSTO flights continue. I redesigned the Gladiator a little to push the loaded centre of mass back a bit and increase control during return. It worked, allowing the spaceplane to return with powered flight. It did touch down on the runway, but lost control and span off into the grass. It lost a couple airbrakes but was otherwise intact. With the last Gladiator having recovered the remaining Refined Exotics, I decided to try a larger spaceplane to gather as much of Asgard 1's Commodities as possible. I settled on the Marauder, which was originally designed to lift material to orbit, not bring it back down. I'm not sure if there's been a mod update or something, but I'm finding the Project Eeloo engines to be giving me weak thrust now. The Gladiator had the same issue. Despite switching from LFO to LH2, which is supposed to be a third of the weight, both spaceplanes struggled to accelerate. I'm not sure the Marauder could reach orbit with a payload on board in its current state. It barely managed take-off as is. Gl Descent required several attempts (in simulations.) With payload, the centre of mass was too far forward. The flight controls would max out in an unrecoverable nose-down position as soon as the velocity dropped below around 400 m/s. In the end, I had the spacecraft burn to conserve fuel, them pumped all remaining fuel to the rearmost tanks as ballast. It wouldn't be enough to solve the problem, but in conjunction with RCS, allowed the vessel to at least temporarily slow its rate of descent to a manageable 10m/s. It too was forced to ditch off the coast. Like the Gladiator, I'm going to have to make modifications to either move the centre of mass back, or the centre of lift forwards. The latter would seem more feasible. I might also need to replace the horizontal stabilisers with canards, which would provide much more pitch control. At least it paid for itself.

Another name I wanted to recycle was Berserker. That was previously applied to a cargo craft, but this incarnation is a passenger bus. It even retains the nuclear aerospike, though a much more powerful one. Development was fraught, dealing with many CoL/CoG issues before finally resolving it. These images show two different versions, as I found that it didn't need anywhere near as much in the way of Supplies as I'd initially... supplied. Eight turboramjets provide plenty of thrust at high altitude, but for take-off and climb the aerospike's assistance is required. It can be shut off when the jets reach their highest output, then activated again for spaceflight. Once in orbit, it has just under 3,000 d/v to work with - more than enough for travel around the Kerbin system. Range beyond that is limited by life support, and lack of pseudo-gravity. The purpose of this flight in particular will be to train eight or so specialist Kerbonauts to a basic standard, before they're given WOLF assignments. Their destination is Minmus, with the potential for a diversion to the Mun. The better trained they are, the fewer of them would be needed to keep WOLF bases operational, therefore reducing base bloat. The real Asgard 1 braked into low Kerbin orbit after several passes. Cargo retrieval could begin at any time, but first I wanted to carry out a long overdue refit. The vessel's tiny RCS thrusters were effectively useless, and required a second fuel (lithium) which they would scoff like a pig. Their replacements would be a similar electric jet design, using hydrogen instead of lithium for fuel. Just as importantly, these thrusters were TweakScaled to 200% the size, massively increasing their capability. Refit completed, it was time to make some money. I decided to use a Gladiator for the mission. Due to unanticipated mod effects, I had to switch all its fuel tanks from LFO to LH2 to get the Project Eeloo engines to run in rocket mode. I made the mistake of transferring some LH2 to Asgard 1, thinking it was a good opportunity to refuel it. Instead, I ensured that the Gladiator had insufficient fuel to reach the optimal deorbit trajectory, and the spaceplane overshot KSC. Weighed down with RefinedExotics, it was unable to maintain altitude and was forced to ditch. On the plus side, it was entirely intact afterwards. Even the airbrakes survived! 7.1 million VF. Not bad!

I've spent the past 20 days working on something truly spectacular ...is what I would like to be able to say, but I can't. I was busy with other things for a week, and then I had to reinstall Windows because it was taking forever to boot and log in. As a result, all my games were uninstalled. I had to reload every single mod I'd used for KSP. Good thing I listed most of them earlier in the thread, or it might have been much more painful than it already was. To test that everything was working, I loaded my save and made it my mission for the day to get Asgard 1 flying off to Kerbin. It did not start well. PhysicsRangeExtender, a mod I only have installed because BDArmoury demands it, made one of my surface bases explode. I think it was Aurora Base, the fuel refinery. RIP to any Kerbals on board. Away she goes. I'll be seeing if I can remove PRE and keep BDArmoury. No big deal if I can't, it just added some options for late game play.

Small update, since most of what I did today was sending the TREV all over Minmus setting up transport routes. I landed another Heavy WOLF Harvester, this time in the Polar biome. Its job would be collecting Substrate. With this, I would be able to harvest 12 of every basic industrial resource... except ExoticMinerals. I'm going to have to put some thought into what to do about that. Either I accept the situation and have it (and Uraninite) be the only resources I physically mine, or I will have to go much further in developing Minmus' WOLF infrastructure than previously planned. The problem being, in order to add a single 5-power using Heavy Harvester to any biome with no remaining power to use, I would have to set up a WOLF base with Kerbals, life support, farming, lab space, and more harvesters to aquire the resources needed to run those systems. Every component adds requirements that have to be covered by another added component, resulting in increasing requirements that "exponential" doesn't even describe. To aquire one extra resource, I'd be throwing over ten Kerbals into the aether. The only silver lining I can see to that is that if Power is a transportable resource, this one base could support extra harvesters across Minmus. On the other hand... I'm doing all this at Minmus because I'm going to need to know how to do it elsewhere in the system. Yes, it might be cheaper and simpler to set up Transport Routes from Kerbin to support any Minmus infrastructure, but that wouldn't help me learn what to do later on, when that's no longer an option. In other news, I did a massive oopsie. I sent the wrong freighter. Asgard 1 is still in Minmus orbit, with its payload of valuable resources. It's Asgard 2, with its currently empty MaterialKit and SpecialisedParts storage that's circling Kerbin right now.

There was an extra biome, the Flats, which needed a Depot. I sent one as a single mission. Didn't think it worth showing when it's so similar to what was in my last post. A little late, but no great issue. Asgard 2 departs Minmus, performing an escape burn and a second maneuver to adjust inclination. Having established WOLF Depots in most Minmus biomes, I figured now was a good time to start setting up transport routes between them. Good thing I fitted my rover with a transport compu- Frick. After googling the issue (which was rather difficult with the KSP forum's outages) I finally found out what was missing. It seemed I needed more than just the Transport Computer, my rover needed a WOLF Cargo Container as well. These were fairly hefty things. Lifting a 33 ton rover from Kerbin would not be ideal. As it turned out, Tarasque Station had enough SpecialisedParts left to build the rover in Minmus orbit. What it did not have was Liquid Fuel. The Skycrane needed to move the Dockable Kit around had no propulsion. So before I could build anything, I had to send the Olympus FTV up to replenish the station's stores. While the rover was under construction, Asgard 2 made its decelleration burn to enter low Kerbin orbit. Completed! One WOLF Transport Route Establishment Vehicle, ready to go. Silly me, turns out I forgot to fit a BonVoyage controller to the rover. But all is not lost. I directed the WOLF Survey Rover, which was already nearby, to rendezvous at the mining rig with the TREV. Then I chose a random Engineer from Tarasque to take the Crew Return Vehicle down to the surface and move the control unit from one rover to the other. I had no more use for the Survey Rover in any case. The TREV was more functional, and could still carry out surveys if neccesary, rendering the old one obsolete. In an unsatisfactory turn of events, the Mining Rig collapsed. It's not a major issue, as a WOLF harvester is replacing the MetallicOre drill and there is plenty of Uraninite in Minmus' Planetary Logistics storage, but this does mean there is no longer an operational Uraninite drill on the moonlet. The CRV returned to Tarasque once the mission was complete. With its BonVoyage controller installed, and the Highlands set as the Origin Biome, the TREV set off for the Greater Flats - the location of Wyvern 2. I plan to send all resources to this biome before shipment to orbit. On arrival, I set the destination biome in the Transport Computer, expanding Minmus' infrastructure. I then opened up the WOLF Dashboard, and switched to the Routes tab. There I was able to add the resources to be moved to the route, thus making them accessible in the Greater Flats biome! And since I used a rover, which shed no mass in transit, the route costs zero Transport Credits! I'll be able to gather all the basic resources, for free. Excellent. My confusion over how WOLF worked was causing no small amount of procrastination. Now that I've successfully deployed depots and set up transport routes which actually move resources, I am feeling a lot more confident. The next course of action will be to create transport routes from all mined biomes to the Greater Flats, then from the Greater Flats up to Minmus Orbit. That way, all resources I opt not to use at Wyvern 2 (or a potential Wyvern 3) will be sent to orbit, where Tarasque Station will - after upgrades - turn them into MaterialKits, SpecialisedParts and Machinery. When that step is completed, I will (hopefully) never have to worry about resupplying it with those resources ever again. If the resources prove insufficient, then I may have to consider expanding WOLF operations even further. But hey, at least Tarasque will be in a better position to support that expansion!