This post will comprise of multiple, smaller suggestions, but by the end, it'll all be bound into a big, really useful one. I've found nothing that says I can't do this, so on to the suggestions! 1. Nuclear engines [can] use different fuel This one seems a bit far out there, but let me explain. Nuclear engines use either water for fuel, or oxygen/hydrogen. This simplifies a lot of things later on, but it does have an actual backing anyways. A lot of liquid fuel rockets are quite literally steam rockets. They burn oxygen and hydrogen together, producing thrust, and, as exhaust, water in the form of steam. As for using water as fuel, there are some real-world ideas out there for rockets that can be effectively powered by water. Granted, these are all nuclear rockets, due to the way these rockets function. In short, the nuclear reactor superheats the propellant (in this case, water) which expands and provides the thrust to power the rocket. So really, this part isn't that far off. 2. Water/metal mining Yes, the whole mining part has been suggested a lot, and by now reminds most people of the Kethane mod. This isn't like that. When you mine water, it goes directly into the tanks for your rocket, which, if it wants to use the water, needs to be nuclear powered. As for metal mining, it won't be used by the spacecraft for resource gain directly, but I'll come back to it. 3. Asteroid Belt Again, another one that has probably been suggested a lot, but once again, there's a difference here. Asteroids in the belt would be small, maybe under a kilometer. These asteroids also have large supplies of frozen water (I believe the technical term is ice.) and metal, just waiting to be mined. These asteroids would be found either beyond Jool or between Jool and Duna. 4. Rockets move asteroids Here's where stuff gets a little crazy. I am, in fact, suggesting the ability to move asteroids using rockets, although at a very slow pace. Let's assume that, since you have rockets, you can stop the rotation of the asteroid, or whatever you need to do. Using a ton of fuel, you can move an asteroid into a very different orbit. Now, how about that fuel? How are you going to get all the fuel you need to do that? Simple. The fuel is in the asteroid. Seriously. You can mine the water in the asteroid and use it for fuel at the same time. Of course, the process would be long, so you'd need to have some way of "locking" your ship onto the asteroid so you can somehow use time-warp and burn engines at the same time. The entire asteroid+your ship could even be regarded as a single ship, in much the same way that docked ships are. 5. Career Mode Metal Mining By now you must be wondering, "WHY WOULD I WANT TO DO THIS?! This sounds so tedious/annoying to do!". Well, you're right and wrong at the same time. First, some background info. It's well known that in the upcoming career mode, you'll have to actually pay for your rocket parts (costs are already shown on part information!), you can do R&D, you hire new astronauts, and to pay for it all, you accomplish missions and such. But who wants to do something like fly to Duna for the 18th time to make some extra bucks when there's real money to be made, out in the asteroid belt? What I suggest is that by using your asteroid-on-a-rocket, you can move it into a new orbit to make it much easier to get to - maybe into an orbit similar to Kerbin's, if not actually in Kerbin orbit - because bigger rockets cost more money, right? Then, you send in your real mining ships. Of course, they're all of your design, so they may mine water, they may not. Point being, these are the metal miners. They mine metal and store the ore in some sort of cargo tank. Then, they fly it back to Kerbin. For every kilogram/ton/whatever of ore you return safely to Kerbin, you get money. As in, a LOT of money, because asteroid metal is expensive, seeing the investment you have to put into it. Of course, there would be a limit on how much you could mine from it, at which point the asteroid might break up or something. Just as long as it's not your infinite cash cow. Now, in case anybody's thinking, "That sounds way too easy. First day of career mode and you do this, and who cares about flying to the planets anymore when you have an asteroid in orbit giving you all the money you need?". That's why this would have to be quite an investment. Something has to be expensive in there - heck, if you could give somebody 50 dollars to do this and give you the profits, we'd all be millionaires by now. So doing the whole mining-asteroids-for-money thing is quite expensive. Sending the rockets all the way out there, moving the asteroids into a more affordable orbit, it's all really expensive, not to mention the R&D costs required to be able to research how to do this in-game. This also has the side affect of preventing people from skipping all the other objectives that may or may not be in career mode - after all, you've gotta pay for this asteroid mining thing somehow, right? Anyways, that's all my suggestions for today. Please tell me what you think of them, or how it could be improved.
