Ciber

The ship and module design is where this game really shines for me. It is a really detailed simulation. I made an entire ship out of diamond and gold and it was terrible but so shiney. Also I found out that tantalum and tungsten makes the best thermocouple.

How about "Hard" and "Soft" fails. You get notified when hard fails happen and they generally result in full loss of function. Soft fails however will not be reported and will be harder to tell. Think things like your tank springing a leak. You would only notice soft fails by right clicking a part. Tech should play a role. Experimental parts should have a much higher chance. Perhaps keep a count of the number of ships that have contained a given part, and lower chance of problems happening as this increases. Testing contracts should significantly reduce failure rate.

@ Everten P. That plan is not related to the topic that I want to discuss. To reiterate: The goal of this thread is to come up with a plan for sending people to mars that is as sustainable as possible, as quickly as possible, and as cheaply as possible.

Extracting moisture from the air is very simple and low energy, though also very slow. There is a sort of compound that I think had zinc in it or something, it was talked about in the book "The Case For Mars" which I lost a while back. Essentially the energy cost is just a fan blowing air over the sponge, and the energy to heat the water out of the sponge when its full.

Didn't see any threads about mars colonization, so thought I'd start one for my pet idea. The goal of this thread is to come up with a plan for sending people to mars that is as sustainable as possible, as quickly as possible, and as cheaply as possible. We can start with something similar to Mars Direct, using reasonably short term technologies like the Falcon Heavy Lifter and Dragon Capsule from SpaceX. Math I've seen says we can get about 8 metric tons to martian surface using fully propulsive landing and modified Dragon Capsules. Assume we can send at most say two landers per launch window (about every two years). Since we want to establish a permanent base and have limited means, it seems to me that it would be far far cheaper to find an astronaut that is willing to live on mars for the rest of their life than it would be to waste a launch on the earth return/ mars ascent vehicle. Not bringing that means we don't need to figure out how to bring several tons of cryogenic hydrogen along with us. Instead for isru water and air we can likely get along with the much slower method of collecting what little water is in the air. Of course for most real industry we will need lots of water, which means either wait a long time and recycle well, or go out and find some ice. More tomorrow.

For some strange reason every time I try to connect my fuel ferry with my kethane miner via pipes and ground pylons, the things tip over or, in one case, start floating off into the air.

Is there anyway to calculate areobraking while using this mod?

I have found that 3 of the largest tanks is just enough to nearly get into orbit, with a second stage consisting of a single small 1.5 meter tank and a small 1.5 meter engine being sufficent to fully acheive orbit and trans lunar injection.

'Urethra!' ... ... Spell check fail?

I will be unable to fly, feel free to skip me

Please add me to the stock list