Odonian

Today I finished assembling Leafcutter 8, and watched the sun set on its first day on Minmus as a fully operational base producing fertilizer, organics and supplies.

USI LS parts give a great boost to the form and function of any space. Above is the interior of a NOM-O-MATIC agridome I am preparing to send to Minmus. Thanks for all the amazing work you do, @RoverDude!

The new Acromyrmex series agridome has passed inspection. Now to ship one to Minmus!

The station uses the Mk3 Cupola from InsanityAerospace's Mk3 Expansion, the Observation Cupola from Nertea's Station Parts Expansion, and the Planetary Cupola from Nils277's Planetary Base Systems. Glad you like the design!

Decommissioned my old Atta water extractor, transferred crew and turned the lights on in the hub module of Leafcutter 2. It's a beautiful Minmus morning.

Delivered a few more modules to Acromyrmex 1, now named more colloquially Leafcutter 1. Above is the last one making its final approach. Below is the finished product.

Has anyone else experienced a bug where kerbals cease to produce mulch? I'd appreciate hearing from anyone else that has seen this happen before I start experimenting in a clean install with the most recent version of USI LS. Thanks! Edit: Turning off all of my life support recyclers did the trick. I did not realize they had an impact on mulch production/use. I guess that makes sense.

Here is about 2/3rds of Minmus base Acromyrmex 1. It still needs modules for distributing machinery and colony supplies (and support bases for producing these resources), but its fertilizer and agroponics facilities already make it pretty much self-sufficient. It is also already capable of producing some other resources of less short-term importance. It's been a nice break from asteroid base building. Too many bad meshes on the really big ones needed for anything approaching self-sufficiency. Too many unexpected explosions. Anyway, with my Acromyrmex colony modules I'm going for an asymmetrical, city-like look. I'm very pleased with the results so far. Here's Acromyrmex 1 from another angle, with one of the early (now abandoned) Atta colony modules in the foreground. Atta modules had a tendency to explode due to overheating when they came into physics range of piloted vessels. They also could not be welded together with other modules. I'm still dealing with overheating in the Acromyrmex modules, but the situation has been much improved.

Attach a fuel hatch. Through the fuel hatch's right-click interface you will be able to inflate an internal tank inside your asteroid and fill it with fuel. The fuel will be accessible for refueling your spacecraft through the fuel hatch interface, and not through the asteroid interface.

That's a really cool idea. Are you committed to the Jool 500 challenge or just inspired? I see the Extraplanetary Launchpads mod is banned from the challenge, but it should make it possible to make this base and drop it into Laythe's ocean. Also, with Karbonite's seawater extractor it would be possible to actually make it a functioning fuel platform.

Thanks a lot, looking forward to trying this later tonight.

Today I caught up with a healthy 2.5-million-ton asteroid high in Kerbin's gravity well and started laying the foundations of what will be Megaptera Station.

Here is a link to a dropbox folder with the version of the KeridianDynamics-Converters.cfg bundled in your latest release on github: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rge8pmmjlp3wte5/KeridianDynamics-Converters.cfg?dl=0 I'm not seeing a lines in it for the "MetalOre" resource.

I'm interested in using this alongside MKS, but I'm not seeing the option to convert metalore to metal in the furnace, just ore->metal.

Not really. I've had to quickload once after the parent asteroid's position shifted relative to the attached modules after initiating a time warp, causing one of the modules to shake off some attached resource tanks upon return to normal time. I learned a long time ago that you always have to quicksave before initiating time warp with something attached to an asteroid. To help with stability and to avoid summoning the kraken, rather than use the klaw to attach modules to the asteroid surface, they are welded to KAS pylons using Konstruction docking ports. Klaws are too unstable for base building, and too many of them attached to the same thing seems to invite disaster. Parts along the outer edges of station modules are also autostrutted to the heaviest part, the asteroid, which further helps with stability. Quicksaving before using time warp is probably the most important thing for asteroid safety.

Today I delivered additional crew and supplies to Myxine Station. More crew and additional modules are needed to deal with bottlenecks in my supply chain, but it looks like I may well be on my way to making Kerbin irrelevant except as a source of Kerbals. I really need to redesign my modules so that they are wider, flatter and fit closer to the parent asteroid. Everything sticks out too much. No point in being post-planetary if you can't be elegant too. At least my transport vessels have a nice piscine look.

Today I delivered a large quantity of fuel and construction materials to Tremella Shipyards. I am preparing to build another, more portable orbital construction vessel intended for chasing down oversized ART asteroids and building new, self-sufficient stations into the rock (this is theoretically possible with a few edits to the asteroid.cfg in the community resource pack). Anyway, I am very pleased with Tremella Shipyard's performance. It is very strong and stable, handling very large shifts in its COM with ease. The five vessels currently docked range from about 250 tons to 1200 tons fully loaded, and were able to attach and transfer resources into the main station without any wobbling. The only accident involving the shipyards so far was when I stupidly turned on SAS after a 1200 ton ship loaded with material kits had docked, causing the docked vessel to bend, snap and explode at the docking port. The shipyards suffered no damage. Here is a bonus screencap of a hydrogen lighter preparing to dock with the shipyards: Edit: And here is the first Taraxacum construction vehicle in drydock, designed to build asteroid installations. This is what all of the supplies were for. Edit edit: In profile.

Just put the finishing touches on Tremella Shipyards. All those launches from Kerbin's surface felt so primitive.

Today I managed to destroy the VAB with a booster accidentally shot from the launchpad. Whoops.

Just finished assembling this supply scaffold for an asteroid base near Kerbin. Really pleased with it's appearance.

Took a break from asteroid hauling to put some communications satellites on a solar orbit.

Today I successfully tested the use of a replaceable NPU magazine cluster in my "Plicata" asteroid tug. The first picture shows the tug with a cluster loaded, the second shows a cluster being discarded. Thank you @eloquentJane for the suggestion of using SpaceY parts, they vastly simplified the logistics of getting designs tested in the field.

I really like this mod's dome design. Any chance of getting tweakscale compatibility? Perfectly hemispheric domes would be a neat feature too, so that one could assemble perfect orbs. Who doesn't love a good orb?

@eloquentJane I'm a little overwhelmed with parts right now, which is especially troublesome with the flickering UI bug, but I may have to check SpaceY out anyway. Thanks for the recommendation.

Today I managed to get my "Monotropa" replaceable NPU-2500 magazine cluster into orbit without it simply exploding into an enormous fireball on the launchpad (launching a 1200 ton payload - 8000 on the launchpad - into orbit can be a little tricky). One of these clusters should provide a yet-to-be-developed nuclear-pulse-powered vessel with around 60 Dv for pushing around the 6.5-million ton asteroid I have captured in a very eccentric orbit around Kerbin (it should only take 6 or 7 of these clusters to get it fully circularized! no idea what it will take to get it's inclination to 0º).