Cyrious

Nah, too expensive. Hell half the reason why I've built this station and begun prospecting is because enriched Uranium sells for a pretty penny via spacecraft recovery. Landing that Enriched Uranium without losing to lithobraking or a hard splashdown will be interesting though. But, if I can sell it, I can spend the resulting cash on things like bigger ships and more kerbals, the latter of which I need at the moment because yeah, I sent almost all of my spares to Duna.

Well, good news. Seems the issue with the lander did stem from the launcher configuration (Must have had struts connected between the payload and the upper parts of the rocket oddly). Docking with the station and timewarping does not get the Kraken's attention. I'm debating on whether it's worth the 600k cash to sacrifice a kerbal to appease the beast anyways.

Then by that definition it does not have kerbalized thrusters, just enough + a set of reaction wheels to get the job done.

Define "Kerbalized".

Right, lets dock to the fuel station and see if its a mass issue tempting the Kraken, or its just the way I had the launch vehicle configured. Does handle quite well for something weighing over 50 tons though.

! The Kraken is displeased with my design. There's a fault with it that causes it to rigorously kick when physics is applied. Must fix that before I launch it because last thing I need is for it to rip my fuel station apart.

Welp, looks like my only viable option for my mun harvester is to use the LV-N engines. All of my other options are either too big (Wolfhound's engine bell is too big) or dont develop enough delta V with a full 6000 units of ore to get into space let alone to the station. I'd have to use the onboard converters to refuel during and after ascent, and I'd like to avoid that. On the plus side, the whole thing is nuclear powered now, with nuclear thermal engines for propulsion and a pair of small Near Future Electric reactors providing 120EC/s, I should be set there. Lets just hope I put ample radiators on the thing. BEHOLD! (BTW, I seem to have forgotten to install my RCS thrusters. Not to worry, it will launch with them) As a minor bonus, since the station is equipped with so much radiator capacity, what waste heat the onboard radiators havent taken care of can be rejected by the station. As a second minor bonus, having a nuclear power source actively in use with the station allows me to convert the spent nuclear fuel into Xenon for ships and probes.

11.7% Ore and very close to the equator, with the added bonus that the site is pretty flat is a good find I think. Pretty good amount of Karbonite too, which allows for Ideas™.

Docking bar is attached, the octo-girder port was being squirrely about it but locked after some working. Turned on the mid-station service light so it is better seen (docking bar is to the right). Without the service light on the whole station is bathed in a blood-red glow, like so: Tomorrow (provided the northernmost reaches of Hurricane Florence doesn't knock out power to my area), I'll be bolting on the raw materials and fuel pods, then send out the various cargo barges that will be attached to the docking bar.

Yeah, generally don't do that unless you have lots of lights (Stack Inline Lights is a godsend for general floodlighting, spotlights are also useful) to illuminate the landing site and/or you already know the landing site.

Did you do a "spur of the moment" landing? I ask because what I usually do is scout out a suitable landing site in the desired biome for mining using a rover, and one an area with a flat enough slope is found, I aim for the rover and land nearby. Helps enormously in preventing messy or otherwise awkward landings for mining craft.

Tadaa! And now the station's center of mass is way off balance, so this thing's not going anywhere anymore without another 133 ton counterweight on the other side. Edit: Y'all remember that xbawks hueg fuel module in the combi-shot earlier? Turns out its a somewhat suitable counterweight. Yep, its gonna have to wait until the raw resources module and the docking module (going up next) are installed.

Hardest part is done! It's in space, and on its way. On the pad: Definitely pushing the record for my heaviest rocket launch at 1600T on the pad (Record was 1900T). First attempt at launching it went exactly as Jeb intended: Snapped in half in the middle and promptly and violently exploded. Adding more of the ever trusty struts rectified this problem, but apparently I wasn't paying 100% attention during the design stage as one of the separated boosters whacked the core engine cluster and took out an engine. Supposed to be 9 engines. The missing one decided it wasnt going to go to space today, the slacker. And after the transfer burn to the Mun, already oriented and ready to go for the capture burn. Tricky part now is actually docking it to the station as I'm pretty sure at 133 tons it out-masses the target station by a good 85% or so.

So erm.... I think I *slightly* misjudged the empty mass of the processing module. By about 90 tons. I have to get this thing to the Mun and docked. That chunky tank and engine setup in the back is the capture and munar maneuvering block and gets about 800m/s dV when attached. I need about 4900 more to get it from Kerbin to the station. The launcher this thing will be something Jeb will like I think.

Couple days ago, I decided I was going to get a fuel station constructed around the Mun, and decided on a modular design instead of a more monolithic design that I usually go for in things like this. I ended up with a 400+ ton dry 45Hx35Wx24L (meters) behmoth. BEHOLD! Bit hard to see, but there's a mess of girders and solar panels on a girder pillar beneath the center module of the station. It also has the cooling necessary (10MW core heat capacity!). Center of the image is the core module, containing some service girders, extra monoprop, some living space for a crew , and 4 docking ports for crew transfers from the main Mun station, Kerbin, and the Mun's surface. Background Right is the Processed Materials Module. It holds 4 Jumbo tanks, 2 XL Liquid Fuel Girders, 8 Xenon Kontainer tank clusters, 8 Large Nuclear Fuel Drums (both for use and for sale, nuclear material is valuable stuff ), 2 XL Xenon Girders, and 8 XL Lithium Girders. I'd rig up some Argon as well, but none of my spaceborne converters do that. Background Left contains the Converter Module. It contains some ore and Large service Girders as the structural elements, with a whopping 16 Convert-o-Tron units in 4 clusters of 4. Additionally, there's 4 Whirlijig nuclear reprocessors and 4 Karbonite Converters. Front Right is the Cargo Docking module. Exactly what it says on the tin, 7 docking ports meant for handling the cargo this station sends and receives, while also serving as the mother-station for the various transfer barges and lander barges. Also, more service girders. Finally, Front Left is the (Incomplete, still need some tech unlocked) Raw Materials module. It simply holds a crapton of ore (I'm aiming for something like a quarter million units reserve, whats currently there is just a placeholder) and lesser but still significant amount of Karbonite. Ore-based outputs are purely for cargo/payload. Karbonite subsequently is for fueling the crafts visiting and leaving the station. I'm debating swapping most of the solar power module on the bottom of the station for a chunky 2000EC/S reactor unit just so i can do the "Ore > Enriched Uranium > Depleted Uranium > Xenon" entirely on-station, but that requires tech unlocks for the requisite reactor units and about 700k cash by itself. Something to think of for the future. Naturally, since I've started this, I've also got ore mapping satellites online (their contracts are paying for the station), and once the station is fully up, I'll be hucking landers (and eventually base hardware) at the Mun. Figure if I have 37 in-game days before I have to capture my Moho probe, I might as well do something productive with it. Just need to get KAS, and then the fun begins.

Aside from the persistent ~4kNm roll thrust from the side girders not being in perfect alignment during the dock, it works. The engines are gimballed though and I've got ample reaction wheel and RCS, so i can still maneuver with it and not make it a spectacular flailing mechanical Kraken. Future variants will have trim engines anyways. Which actually leads to my next question: Should i chuck this into the atmosphere and let it burn, or should I repurpose it into some form of space station?

I'm going to experiment with large-scale multi-docking using this target here. Because it's purely experimental, I used the power of Hyperedit The Kraken to get it into space. Note the lack of engines. The modules I'll dock to it will contain engines, and I'll maneuver it around a bit to see how it handles before deorbiting it. If it pans out, I have a design from KSP .23 (I think) that I wish to revisit for a bulk cargo hauler, as well as a potentially *landable* variant meant for Station Science on Kerbin's Muns. The landable variant will be... interesting to pull off i think.

Well, if I'm gonna sundive, I'm doing it with a shield. The panels completely encase the spacecraft inside except for the engines and solar arrays. Inside, there's the radiator set for the reactors as well as general heat rejection, should keep the rest of the hardware cool while I'm close to the sun. In the event I do blow up the solar arrays, the reactors hidden inside the sunshield will provide enough power to allow for maneuvering to continue. Edit: So I've got the escape burn plotted... its a 2 hour 40 minute burn with nearly 7km/s dV going into it. This is not including the monstrous (0 to 60 degrees) required plane change maneuver I need to do to meet mission requirements 48 days after I leave Kerbin. Worst part about it is there's no planetary window for me to go out to to get the assist of of currently open.

Quick Question: what is considered Low Kerbol orbit? Cause I have a magnetic survey mission that requires low Kerbol orbit for 2 of the objectives. Looking up the delta V maps say its 610km (which is stupidly close). Naturally, I'm gonna do it, just need to know how well shielded and cooled I need this thing to be.

Launched this tiny little thing to the mun for a contract. Heres the kicker: I decided to challenge myself a bit and built the launcher entirely out of solid rocket motors, including the transfer stage/Payload Assist Motor (which I think came from a mod pack). Turns out with all solid launches/high TWR launches its much better to start the gravity turn the moment you're clear of the pad, and make it a extremely aggressive turn that turns you into a meteor by 30km altitude. Fins are naturally also highly recommended.

TADAA! My adapter idea and use of the Clamp Sr ports worked like a charm. The second bar is linked at both ends. Lets just hope it doesnt become a 480 ton expanding debris field when I switch back to it in the future. I MIGHT be able to use one of the senior ports inside the square once the centrifuges are up and running for crew transfers. The one directly in line with the main station shaft though is probably never going to be used again. The centrifuges are simply too big. Once I get another engineer out here, I'll get the centrifuges online, then start thinking about adding a Fuel module to the other end of the station. If I dont have the space, the fuel module will likely end up running as its own dedicated station. Speaking of which, I need to start ore and Karbonite mapping.

Welp, apparently its not going to work with the octo-girder docking ports. Shame. I could only get one side to lock, but the other pointedly refused due to how stupidly precise 90 degree only ports have to be. So, now its time to add some Octo girder to Sr port adapters to the station, then launch the bar again with Sr ports instead of octo ports. Lets see what this does.

Now I get to launch and attach the other bar to the Mun station, so the original bar, the two centrifuges, and this bar form a square. I really do hope the multi-docking works. I've done a multi-dock test, and that worked out, but nothing on this scale. Edit: for the record: Multi-docking is much easier when the target ports are fixed and arent 50+ meters apart or wobbling around after first contact.

Got around to delivering the 2 centrifuges to the Mun station. Havent expanded or spun them up yet cause I need more engineers to do so and I kinda sent most of my unassigned Kerbals including all of the spare engineers to Duna. Speaking of the Duna mission, the main mothership did its course correction burn, and I made the rather annoying discovery that apparently the engines for the relay satellites were all active during the escape burn, wasting propellant. Go me. I was considering sending a tanker during the middle of the Duna window but in the end went against it. The Jool mission had a hiccup. I wasn't paying full attention to the burn (it was a 32 minute Ion burn), and the autopilot following the Node Prograde indicator resulted in the probe going bonkers when I ran down the burn time. Instead of the neat Tylo-Vall-Laythe triple flyby for the Jool system entrance, I now have to settle for a Tylo-Vall capture flyby. Knew I should have used bigger solar panels or gone nuclear for it.

Well, coming up on the first mid-course correction burn for the Duna station, gonna try to use RCS thrust to augment the engines, see if it helps my fuel situation. Really though, the whole situation with that station stems from the fact I didn't use good enough engines in the first place. Flubbing the escape burn simply made things worse. Edit: Burn complete, it definitely helped. I think i got an additional 60-70m/s out of it augmenting the burn with RCS. Not much, but it changed my burn to depletion capture orbit from an elliptical orbit that would play chicken with Ike to an 83km x 209km orbit. Using the RCS thrusters again during the capture burn should give me just enough fumes to circularize. Once the Mothership shows up I can send the empty fuel pod over to it and grab the additional LF/OX i saw fit to pack for the trip.