Terwin

What does the agriponics inline from SpaceStationExpansion do? That sounds almost like you are running two life support systems in parallel, and that could be why you are running through fertilizer much faster than expected. With USI-LS and nothing from SpaceStationExpansion : If you started with 100% supplies, then mulch should not actually go down, as it will only be used to replace used supplies. In fact, as 10 mulch+1 fertilizer produces 11 supplies, you should see your mulch reserve grow at roughly the same rate your fertilizer goes down, as your mulch reserves are basically acting as 'overflow reserve' while you keep supplies topped off. in detail: while your kerbals convert 11 supplies into mulch, your nom-o-matic converts 10 mulch and 1 fertilizer into supplies, leaving you with full supplies, 1 additional mulch and 1 less fertilizer. Usually I will launch with lots of fertilizer, a reasonable stock of supplies(leaving room for growth if it will be a long mission) and no mulch. Some of my mining bases will also have a refinery set to produce fertilizer so that long-duration missions can top-off when they visit. note: Recyclers are very much your friend when it comes to long-term missions. 18 kerbals use 32.4 supplies per hour(1.8/hour each) One RT-5000 will set your max recycling efficiency at 79%, and for a crew of 18, you will want to supplement it with 20 RT-500 recyclers to have all crew covered at 79%. This will let you keep your supplies full with either three Nom-O-Matic 25000, or one Nom-O-Matic 25000 and one Nom-O-Matic 25000 inline. Supply usage should be 6.804/hr or ~3.71 fertilizer per day, or just under 4750 fertilizer in 3 kerbin years. (But make sure you turn on all your recyclers!) Without recyclers you would need almost 22,600 fertilizer for 3 years(and almost 5 times as many nom-o-matics to keep up) Recycler maths: the RT-5000 supports 3 kerbals at 79%, each RT-500 supports 1 kerbal at 60%. 15 kerbals *79%=1185% 1185%/60%=19.75 RT-500 recyclers to cover the other 15 at the RT-5000 level. (1 RT 5000 weighs 3.5 tons, and RT 500 weigh 0.1 tons each, so total recycler mass: 5.5 tons)

Not by themselves, you would need to use docking ports or have an engineer connect them with KER(probably need a fork-lift if it is not empty).

That depends on the part and the modification made. Some attributes are put in the save file and some are collected from the setup files. I know that some mods will cause additional values to be saved in the save file(tweakscale and R&D for example), but beyond that I could not really say which attributes are kept where. In this case I guess you will just need to verify your change in the VAB and then check an existing craft to see if it populates.

It was explained on this thread, I think by RD, who then reduced the max cooling of the MKS drills to something more reasonable so that more than one drill can operate without overheating(but still too high for nuclear plants to work properly, so the recommendation is to use fixed radiators for those) There is a *lot* of information in those 375 pages...

MKS uses the stock cooling system, so the only place you would see anything is if you compare the max cooling of MKS drills with the stock drill or other heat-generating parts. The stock cooling system goes through the parts and allocates ship-wide cooling potential based on max cooling, and if there is not enough to go around, then some parts just don't get cooled(even when other parts are not using all of their potential cooling), and for some reason the stock cooling system prioritizes MKS drills over MKS power plants, so if you have MKS drill attached to your vessel, folding radiators will not cool your power plant. If you do not have MKS drills, I would expect extendable radiators to work ok for cooling a MKS power plant(assuming you don't have double-heating from having two cores in one reactor)

When I use near future electrical, I always drop the MKS patch for NFE. Perhaps I did not spend enough time looking at them, but NFE reactors seem less reliable and more prone to catastrophic failure during time-warp or catch-up. Perhaps this has been fixed, but I am pretty happy sticking with just the MKS version of the reactors.

I think the nuclear power plants are supposed to last ~5 years at 100% usage, so if you only use it at 50%(perhaps using two reactors or a larger reactor than you strictly need) than that means one refuel every ~10 years, and only for bases that do not have local uranium refining. So unless you are time-warping for decades and either ignore solar or always come back at night, nuclear refueling is not a common occurrence. I generally throw a medium plant on my mining bases and have never had to refuel them, and my main processing bases are usually refining uranium anyway, so they keep their reactors topped off automatically(automatic maintenance+refined uranium storage and refining=topped off reactor)

1) are your radiators turned on? 2) is your power reserve at or above 90% charged? MKS nuclear power reduces output to stay at 90% charged, and will shut down if other power supplies keep you above 90% charged(but will turn back on if the charge drops below 90%, like at night) The behavior you describe could happen if your radiators are off and your generator is off or running at low power during the day but when you time-warp into night the power plant ramps up but has no cooling and causes other parts to overheat. Also, you want to be using the fixed(not extendable) radiators for MKS nuclear plants if you have drills on your base, as the extendable radiators look at the whole ship, not the part they are attached to, and will reserve their available cooling based on the max cooling the other parts can demand(and because colonization bonuses can really ramp up drill output and thus heat, MKS drills have a large possible cooling output, which then gets reserved and prevents the power plant from cooling at all, even if the drills are off). Fixed radiators only look at the part they are attached to, and any parts attached to that part, so unless you have both drills and radiators attached directly to your power plant, the radiators attached to the plant will reserve most or all of their capacity for the power plat, and thus be available to cool it as it heats up.

I thought the plan was to have cargo modules attached at the bottom where they could be off-loaded with a fork-lift on the surface

I know that MKS parts can turn on a ground anchor which should greatly reduce sliding/moment. Combined with the reduced on-load bounce a ouple versions ago, that should address most of the problem if your base is on reasonable level terrain. I use the Kerbal Alarm Clock mod for all of my timed alarm needs. An actual 'there is an emergency' alarm is not really doable as nothing is simulated outside of the 2km physics bubble, so the alarm would not be able to go off until it was doing the catch-up in 6 hour blocks when you next visit. Before that next visit there is literally nothing happening at your base, so there is no way to trigger an alarm.(this is also why the estimated life support in the USI-LS summary page is only a conservative estimate, and not a real-time read-out) Note: W.O.L.F. works around the physics bubble by not actually having a functioning physical base, and just having everything go by an 'available capacity' metric so that no processing is needed for W.O.L.F. outposts and bases.

The stock surveyor is the only way to scan for lodes form orbit, but you can also scan for lodes from the surface. I think the pioneer module can do this? Note: orbital lodes are much larger, but surface lodes tend to be much closer to your base(as in within physics range)

The first value is what is currently configured, the second value is what will become configured when you change the configuration. This matters because outside of the VAB it costs material kits to change the configuration. Kolonization rewards are based on kerbal residence but requires a pioneer module. Each kerbal provides one type of bonus: engineer is mining/production, Scientist is farming and science, I forget the name of the one pilots give. Kolonists give all three, but don't give any other bonuses(like the engineer boost to production or scientist boost to farming). The governor is used to scale back production when a process is using more power/resources than you want it to. it will slow down a process, but may not have an immediate impact if it is already below max. example: module A can turn 100 metallic ore into metals per time unit at max. If you set the moderator to 50%, it will not process more than 50 metallic ore per time unit If you only have 40 metallic ore per time unit, then the moderator does not have any impact unless you put it below 40% because the inputs are already limiting it to 40% of max On the other hand, if you are getting 60 metallic ore per time unit but you want to accumulate 10 per time unit and only process 50, then reducing the moderator to 50% will let you store that extra capacity for use elsewhere/later. You need to scan for resource lodes before you can find them. Big ones can be scanned for from orbit(it is added to the PAW for the stock ore scanner), smaller ones can be scanned for from the surface(is it the logistic moule with this?) Lodes act like a container which hold a special 'extra rich dirt' which can then be processed by any attached processor that process dirt(such as the sifter) Lodes look like a large rock sitting on the surface. I believe you can select it just like any other uncontrolled part.

The only stock nuclear reactor that I am aware of is the thermoelectric generator, which does not have a life-span. MKS has nuclear reactors which use enriched uranium for fuel. If MKS is the only mod you have installed, then those reactors will work until they run out of fuel, and then start working again once they get refueled with no other limit on life-span. The PDU is a little different as it has replacement parts as well which also wear out and need replacement, but any PDU which is full on both replacement parts and enriched uranium will work regardless of previous usage or age. (and replacement part usage is one of the game-wide settings in MKS that you can turn off if desired) Other mods may put other limits on nuclear reactors, but that is from those mods, not MKS. A drill will move up and down when drilling so to avoid shaking your vessel, you need the arm to be a meter or two above the surface with just the drill bit extending down into the dirt. MKS parts generally have an engage anchor option on the right-click menu that can help things be more stable on the ground(so long as you don't have the drill arm vibrating against the ground)

max-usage = producing the max possible power. Enriched uranium is fuel, and if you run out of fuel, it will stop working until you add more. Just like a fuel cell, but much more efficient because it is using nuclear power instead. If it has integrated enriched uranium and spent fuel containers, then you can refill it if you have fuel on-hand.

Most of the nuclear power supplies have enriched uranium fuel which can be replenished if you have some on-hand(may require an engineer). The expected life-span is generally an estimate based on the current usage(or max usage when in the VAB).

If you are harvesting rare metals or exotic minerals on the Mun or Minmus, it is likely to be fairly cost-effective to launch an empty cargo vessel from kerbin, land it near your base, refuel and load cargo from your base, then return the cargo to kerbin for a nice profit(but make sure to have enough parachutes for a full load) I have found that returning resources from further away is usually not sufficiently play-time efficient to be worth my while, but if you are playing on a harder difficulty or trying to challenge yourself you can give it a try. (currently you can even harvest those resources on Kerbin, but I think there is a plan to remove those resources from kerbin in the next release of MKS)

I believe the 'eva assembly' in this case may be referring to inflating some inflatable parts. I think that you need an engineer for the parts that require material kits, but anyone should be able to inflate inflatable storage modules for example(I think they can even be inflated without a kerbal on EVA) When an engineer performs maintenance, they top-off the machinery to restore the module to maximum productivity. These parts take care of that for you so you don't need to worry about efficiency loss over time due to used up machinery. The specialist bonus is for the entire ship and only takes the bonus from the highest ranked(stars) kerbal of the appropriate type, I believe this also applies to disconnected bases. In the past my bases would usually have dozens of modules, one scientist(two if I have a lab), one engineer, one pilot and the rest filled with kolonists. The engineer provides the mining and manufacturing bonuses to all modules, the scientist provides the biological bonus to all farming type production, the pilot for logistics, and Kolonists for the planetary bonus(Kolonists don't give any specialist bonuses/abilities, but count for all three planetary/colonization bonus types, so the quickest and cheapest way to get your planetary bonuses up is with Kolonists).

Pushing is a ship-wide ability that affects any USI-logistics enabled storage, only pulling requires a consumer of some sort. But remember, pushing will only drop local storage to half of max, so if you can produce 50 ore per 6 minutes, you need at least 100 logistics enabled ore storage to avoid lossage during catch-up processing.

The Material Processing Units(1.25m, 2.5m, and 3.75m) can push(but not pull) with no personnel(or even seats) on board. These are intended to provide logistical support for unmanned mining bases. I am not sure if the pioneer module will provide logistics without a pilot on the craft.

In real life you have send only(radio station), receive only(radio, pager, GPS), and send-recieve(cell phone). I suppose you could have antennas that are or are not compatible with the Deep Space Network, but there is no real reason they could not use the same antennas for the different types. I always just imagined that the difference in KSP antennas was primarily in the processing/amplification hardware and the power supply, with the antennas only visually different so people would not confuse them in images.

I believe this may be related to the orbital construction activity having a separate configuration flag than the ground construction activity, so some configurations that may not have been updated may only have the ground only configuration. It sounds like this may be the case for the MKS part in question. The config changes are probably in a config script as opposed to part of the parts definition. If it is out of date, probably something from the MKS directory.

New York, NY to Australia is ~10K miles, and I don't see too many routes that might be notably longer than this. P2P was supposed to be 30 minutes to anywhere, so one jump. Many flights will probably need SH, but if SH can get SS to orbit, then with the right orbit(or sub-orbital path), SS can land anywhere it wants with just one jump.

Grab it with a claw and just pretend it is a container full of dirt(connect it to a sifter of some sort).

MMA would be an awful ting to try and convert to zero-g: effective striking would be almost impossible, and attempting to maneuver would be iffy at best. Something like ballet or gymnastics might work much better. A zero-g ballet or gymnastics exhibition would get people thinking about grace and artistry in relation to space, as opposed to thinking about blood and death in space. Imagine a small troupe of acrobats performing in zero g similar to a group of trapeze artists but without all the swinging back and forth between stunts, using the wall/ceiling/floor along with some carefully placed poles or handles. Could easily become part of the attractions at a space-hotel.('Like no show on earth!').

The ISS is a one-off government funded research station that is more of an international partnership than a research station. If someone wanted to make a much more cost-efficient space station, it should not be too hard to do so. The cost per person in space is also a factor of tradition over need. With an easier to resupply station, built and resupplied by starship, it need not be overly expensive, and much of the monitoring done right now could cover additional stations with little or no extra cost.(monitoring and emergency readiness for one station is not really cheaper than emergency readiness for half a dozen stations) The ore people we get into space, the more experience we have working there, the lower the cost per person, and the safer/more reliable things will get. in short, if you have the only car in the county, you need to retain your own mechanic, but if you live in a city with 10,000 cars, you just hire a mechanic when you need one.