Vim Razz

If you plan on playing with MKS/OKS, then you'll want to pick one or the other. I've run them side-by-side (with Snacks in there, too) without MKS though, and they can work well enough that way as long as you're not using them with any other mods that expect you to choose either one or the other. Comparing the two, USI-LS is greedier than TAC-LS in the sense that it will pressure you to design your craft around USI-LS components more aggressively then TAC-LS will. USI supplies are much bulkier and heavier than TAC resources, and USI recycling hardware is very light in comparison to TAC, so pretty much every mid-range+ USI-LS ship ends up being a resource recycler. With TAC-LS the boundaries are a bit fuzzier, and the components are easier to bolt on to another design rather than having to build your design around them. Of course, USI-LS is designed to work very well with MKS, which is already a super-greedy mod anyway. And it's worth noting that when I call these mods "greedy", that's not meant to imply that they're bad or anything. They're great mods. It just means that they're very demanding in terms of player attention and design decisions centered around their particular components and mechanics. An MKS game is first and foremost an MKS game. Any other mods you happen to have installed will pretty much be secondary.

It seems that much like my process for building the station itself, I need to start kicking these sections out the door. Otherwise, I run the risk of twiddling and fiddling with them forever. The first spaceplane section isn't done yet, so these are just the first rockets. Part 2 -- Launching the First Bits into Space. The first new module finished for this build is the drilling assembly. Fuel cells turned upside down blend nicely with the top of the tanks, and a few small batteries add some nice little detail. I'm still not fully up to speed on stock ISRU balancing, but four drills seem like a good place to start. They're bundled with some hab and hub modules to simplify construction on-site. One decision I made that I'm not sure about in retrospect was removing the docking ports between modules. It does reduce part count by a little, but it also reduces flexibility in terms of re-arranging the base or replacing modules if something gets broken. This will be something to think about. I may end up redirecting it to Ike, where the lower gravity makes replacing large blocks a lot easier if needed, and send another package up for the Duna outpost. The command tower is a vital and integral component that is essential to effectively managing our base operations, and is not just a silly decorative flourish who's entire function could easily be handled by a simple probe core placed just about anywhere. I like to require as little assembly on-site as I can get away with, but doing things that way leads to some pretty awkward delivery packages. This is how I like to approach that problem: Our two-stage launch vehicle is being guided into glory by veteran pilot Theoby Kerman. He'll be leading our efforts on Duna, having spent the last several years stationed on Minmus. I have no idea why Reaction Systems Ltd chose to abandon him there, or why they were so happy to pass him over to us when we found his pod, but he's clearly got the right stuff and we're happy to have him. Someone needs to be the one to sit in the seat of things like this. I'm a big fan of serially staged rockets for the natural stability they provide, especially for sloppy payloads. The important thing to note is that they keep the center of mass pretty far forward while passing through the lower atmosphere. You can lock the upper fuel tanks on single-stage or boosted-core rockets during the initial stages of a launch to get a similar effect, but there's nothing quite like the feeling of stacking one stage directly on top of another an blasting off into space with it. I'd normally arc a payload like this rather high and slow, but Theoby's a bit of a hotshot and wants to see how far he can push it this time, so we're taking it along a more conventional flightpath. He told me before the launch that this is exactly what he wants to do and is not at all surprised or disturbed to be following such a low trajectory curve in such an inherently unsuitable vehicle. Really. Predictably, it gets a bit unsteady around 10km up at a little over 300 m/s. There's a limit to how hard you can tweak the nose of aerodynamic forces in KSP before they start tweaking yours right back, but the value of a high center of mass at low altitude is well demonstrated here. Even with the ridiculous sail that we've got on front, Theoby is able to drop thrust and bring the nose back in line for the recovery. Well done, Captain Theoby. Now if you can manage to land successfully on Duna then we'll name the new outpost after you. If you fail, then we'll have to send another tower next year and you'll probably just get a plaque. Or maybe a colorful mention scribbled on the bathroom wall. Good luck. The fuel silos and large landing pads are a little too bulky to stick on the ends of other things, but not quite big enough to justify their own transfer stage or landing assemblies. I plan on rafting them together with some other small modules to be hauled by tug from Kerbin to Duna, and carrying them down to the surface with a lander. And those are the first few bits in space, waiting for everything else to get done. In the next installment we'll be taking a break from aerodynamic abominations and parking some smaller packages in orbit with spaceplanes.

Not so much. Modern boilers run pretty cleanly. And it's actually easier to burn petro-chemicals cleanly than biomass fuels, for example, because they have simpler and more consistent chemistry. In either case, there's more pollution involved in the extraction/collection, processing, and transport of materials than final combustion. Transport energy is inherently inefficient because it needs to be portable, and efficient combustion hardware is too heavy to move around like that. The biggest challenge in CHP development is finding enough reliable customers for the heat within an economically viable range of the plant -- customers that are going to be around and pay the bills every month for the ~10 years it takes to pay off the cost of the plant and distribution system. This one gets my vote.

You've found a great voice and for this narrative. Roll with it. Anyone turned off by the word count probably isn't going to be interested in this sort of story to begin with.

"awesome looking bases" are often the result of playing more VAB than KSP, tbh. "junkpiles" have a certain kerbal charm to them that you can never really get if you try. You know just by looking that it was an adventure getting them there -- in this case a good one.

I tend to play for a few weeks or months, then go off and do something else. KSP has been pretty unique, though. I've never returned to any game as often as I've come back to this one.

Thanks! heh, "how to get those sorts of constructions into orbit" is actually where this thread sort of started. I did the first round of launches over the weekend, and as I was prepping the second one I thought it'd be fun to take a bunch of screenshots and do a little tutorial on balancing and launching awkward, asymmetrical loads. It ended up being less a tutorial so much as a mini "how to" with some of my thoughts and stuff about launching payloads with bad aero. Then I wasn't sure what to do with it. I've been wanting to do a mission report thread of some kind for a while now, so that ended up being this. The "how to" thing is pretty much the core of the second installment as I've been putting it together. Unfortunately, I don't have many images of most of the first-round launches (3 rockets and 4 spaceplane flights) since I hadn't decided I was doing the documenting thing yet. It's mostly pics of the payloads in the SPH/VAB taken post-launch. That should get me more-or-less caught up to where I'm currently at in-game, which is in the middle of rover development to help scout out a specific build site. As far as precision landing goes... It's been a while since I've spent any real time on Duna. I did a pretty extensive build about 2 years ago in a sandbox MKS game (a little report thing I did of the first mission of that game is online. I posted it to celebrate the first "full release" of MKS), but nothing since then and nothing since the new aero was added. We'll see how things go and work from there. And before I go, 2 minor corrections to the OP: I double-checked the date I accepted the Duna contract. It was year 1, day 156, so not quite "over 13 years". Changing OP to read "over 12 years" I must have got something mixed up when I was looking at the cost of reaching Duna over the weekend, because it's not very expensive in year 14 at all. Removing that statement.

Hi. I'm building a new surface outpost on Duna and I've decided to document. For fun and stuff. I've developed a pretty nice look for my contract bases this game that I think is worth showing off a little bit. The new models with 1.0.5 have opened up a bunch of new design possibilities that I've been very happy with. Also Ike, but I haven't started working on that one yet. Sadly, I have no compelling or engaging back-story for my current space program. It's a normal career game. Stock. I have no particular goals or constraints; I've just been goofing about until 1.1 rolls around. The tech tree has been filled out for some time now, all facilities are fully upgraded, and I have 5 or 6 million funds on hand to throw at something fancy. Winter Owl Aircraft Emporium offered the contract to bankroll a Duna outpost and I felt like taking them up on it. I figured it would be handy and fun. That was over 12 years ago. It's funny how easy it is to get distracted by other stuff. Gene and Mort have been very patient with me, but it's about time to get it done. Also Ike. Probodyne Inc approached me 5 years ago with that contract, and I've been slacking on it, too. I don't really have a plan (aside from checking off the boxes on the contract to keep my sponsors happy), but I figure the modular components I need to develop for Duna should allow me to throw something suitable together without too much trouble. So that's where things stand. It's year 14, day 30. The next transfer window to Duna is around day 125. Let's get to work. Part 1 -- Initial Planing and Prior Works This is what I have in mind so far. It's sort of a rough sketch to serve as my guide for building the individual components. Winter Owl wants housing for 8 kerbals, a science lab, cupola, and 6,000 units of liquid fuel reserves on-site. I don't want to haul that much fuel down to the surface and having a strong refueling capacity would be nice anyway, so I'm adding in an ISRU assembly. A solar array and some refueling docks are going in too, and that's about all I've decided on so far. It's general style is one I used earlier in this game for contract outposts on the Mun and Minmus, so a few of the components are already pretty polished. Earlier Projects: Lutha Crater on the Mun, initially built for the Experimental Engineering Group, with a housing expansion commissioned by STAEDLER Engineering Corps. Sanena Basin on Minmus, initially built for FLOOYD Dynamics Research Labs, with a lab and housing expansion for the C7 Aerospace Division: Come to think of it, both of those facilities could use some freshening up at this point. I've been kind of neglecting them since, well, forever. In the next installment, I'll be looking at the first round of finished launch packages and start throwing stuff into orbit to wait for the transfer window while I figure out the rest. In the meantime, here are some archive images from the launches of the Mun and Minmus outposts shown above: Thanks for reading!

"Dissociated" is a pretty strong term in this case, but the jist of it is correct. By the time you've melted the salt you've applied enough heat to provide the activation energy required for the sodium break free from the chlorine and react with things that it likes more than chlorine, like the hydroxyls in water. The bonding energy of NaOH (sodium + hydroxyl (OH)) is lower than the bonding energy of NaCl (sodium + chlorine -- salt), so the reaction is exothermic. Anyone interested in exploring the topic further can google the terms in bold. It's pretty cool stuff. Also highly relevant: properties of alkali metals.

As Snark noted, the portion of the radial decoupler that's attached to the main body will disappear when the scene is reloaded. So will the secondary attachment nubbin left behind by struts (the one placed 2nd in the VAB/SPH ). So if you want to strut your payload to a disposable bracing assembly, attach the struts to the brace first then run the second end to your payload. After staging, the nubbins will then only remain until you save/reload or visit another ship or the KSC.

It sounds like it would be an interesting way to simulate some of the feeling of n-body physics-type interactions without requiring it's full complexity or consequences.

An option to select an orientation for the rovemate (or other cores/pods) would be awesome, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it. As long as it's necessary to pick one or the other, then vertical is more flexible, imho. Having a forward-facing navball on the ground is great for tracking targets or markers on the surface, but you've get command seats at the same tech or jr docking ports are already likely unlocked -- both work very well for that purpose and are very light. Most of my own rover missions don't need to be able to spot target points on the horizon at all, so I can't really see the ability as essential. Vertical orientation works well enough on the ground to hit up biomes for science or check ore concentrations. Vertical control orientation is pretty critical to deploy a rover as a self-contained entity so that it can properly manage the LV and/or skycrane, though -- especially since it's COM is so far off-center from the front or back. If a separate control block is going to be required anyway, then I don't see any reason to insist that the rovemate core be the forward-facing one. Overall, changing it would limit mission flexibility for some convenience that's already easy to obtain. I don't think that's a good trade.

How fast are you generally moving when you flip? Your rocket has quite a lot of engine, and the problems you're describing sound a lot like aerodynamic troubles arising from trying to go too fast while still too low in the atmosphere.

tbh, "skill level" doesn't really matter. Learning to play without quicksaves or reverts involves developing it's own set of habits and paranoia that otherwise don't have much relevance to the rest of the game. The real question is whether you're ready to deal with several nights worth of work getting wrecked in a hearbeat through some stupid mistake, clumsy fingers, or a game glitch. Some people just cant handle it.

The information is also available in-game by focusing on a body in map view and opening the info box on the right side of the screen.

I often do. It helps me remember what I made the craft for, which I tend to forget a few days or weeks (real time) after the initial launch. It's also a handy place for performance notes and listing things that should be fixed or modified in the next build if I ever want to re-use the design.

Most of the Duna missions that people show off do tend to be on the fancy side. Awesome to watch, but definitely rough to try and copy. This is the basic design that I learned to fly to Duna in (and to return again), if you're interested. For lack of a better name, I'll call it the "Duna Road Trip" (craft file on KerbalX). It's easy to fly and pretty forgiving. Pics, flight plan, etc:

While I appreciate the thought and effort that goes into proposals like these, they always seem much better suited for mods or optional content. The problem (which I think the OP's suggestion also suffers, though it's doesn't have any terribly bad ideas) is that they tend to over-dictate the course of the game when compared with the current stock system, forcing you into some specific predetermined path that can be fun once or twice but quickly get just as tedious as the "grind" it's supposed to be replacing. There's just too much variation in player experience and interest to try and set fixed paths or progression based on "skill level". The current system may not be perfect, but I think it has some strengths that are under-appreciated and I'd hate to lose them. I guess part of the issue may be differing opinions of what constitutes a "grind". What's tedious and grindy to me is being forced to run completely trivial missions over and over again in order to progress. I can hit orbit (and return) at 5 science, and land on Minmus (and return) or the Mun (and not return) for 30 science plus an LV-909 test contract. Launchpad lv 2 fully opens up the Mun, and Tracking Station lv 2 then allows landing on Duna, Ike, and Gilly as well as flybys of Eve and the Jool neighborhood. Playing under these kind of margins with tight slider settings is always tense and uncertain (I leave quicksave and reverts for sandbox), and never feels like a grind to me, though sometimes it can take quite a lot of missions to hit the next benchmark. Playing under normal career settings, it's nearly impossible to go anywhere before you unlock the the tech that makes that voyage completely trivial. The game just throws the money and science at you too quickly. Even though "progression" is faster, I find playing under these sorts of conditions to be extremely tedious because every step feels like pointless repetition by the time you've been down that road once or twice before. That makes things a lot more grindy to me. Locking content by skill-selection is kind of an interesting concept to consider, but don't think it would be an improvement for everyone. It would frustrate many new players because it would force them to abandon everything they've accomplished whenever they want to try exploring a new aspect of the game (even if you allow changing "difficulty settings" mid-game, their stuff probably wont be equipped to handle the next tier and will often need to be scrapped completely), and it would frustrate many experienced players by locking them into an arbitrarily determined gameplan that might only be considered "hard" by newer players. (stations, life support, etc -- these things are really quite easy once you get the hang of them.)

Are the outer columns supposed to be sitting on radial decouplers? It looks like they might be directly attached to the inner tanks instead, which can be pretty easy to do with the skinny decouplers until you become totally paranoid about checking and rechecking them.

Just started hitting the outpost contract phase in my current stock career. It's still pretty early, but I'm unusually pleased with the modular base aesthetic that I've managed to put together so far this time around.

Whaaa...? Blasphemy! But really, there's not much better reason for anything in KSP. Beauty demands blood. Sacrifices must be made in the name of fashion. The important thing to note is that half the lander's thrust will currently give out just before the final stages of landing in some cases -- exactly when that extra thrust is most important to have. The list of options above is not complete, or even "the best", it's just what happened to spring to mind most immediately. For example, another approach is to put some LV-909s on cubic struts and to clip them slightly into the tank above. This allows a 2.5m decoupler to be fixed to the fuel tank above (rather than the engines) in a way that prevents the engines from getting ripped off during staging and creates a very different sort of look: (The launcher has so many engines because it had been rush-built with the assumption that Skippers were not unlocked yet -- and even then it still has 3 engines too many because I was too lazy to properly rebalance the fuel distribution. So I just added 3 more engines to even the flow.) Anyway, good luck! Whether you continue with the same save or not, the lander design is worth keeping in your back pocket. It's effective and has a low part count with a rather nice and distinctive took.

So much this. Awesome Space Rabbit is awesome. I whipped up a copy and took it for a spin from 80k LKO to a quick equatorial Mun landing and came back to Kerbin with ~50 fuel to spare. If you package it with a dedicated transfer stage then it should be able to hit any biome on the Mun and return home safely. I do have some technical concerns that I'll get to in a moment, but overall it's a fun and effective design. Val and her friend Cardrien had a great time. I hope your first flight with it went just as well if not better. eh... The OP asked for thoughts or concerns regarding the functional viability of his lander as it is. Most of the advice in this thread does not pertain to that. Instead it encourages him to adopt entirely different gameplay styles and design philosophies for no other reason than "I like my way better." That sort of suggestion is not inherently bad, but pretending that it's about helping someone to better explore their current direction rather than encouraging them to adopt elements of your own is in poor taste. I see it clog up thread after thread, year after year, every time I wander through the KSP forums and it does get tiresome after a while, so I fully empathize with "no no no no no no no".... Anyway, the lander! I did make a few modifications in the version that I checked out, so I should specify those up front: I lowered the side tanks and legs as much as I could without looking totally goofy for the same reasons mentioned by others. Ground clearance is important wherever possible, and coming in hard is a particular concern in this case since the lander has such a low TWR and light legs. Since lowering the legs gave it such a high CoM, I added a pair of RCS blocks to the shoulders of the lander (one quad and one linear on each side) to help prevent it from tipping over when landing on a slope. If you're using RCS this way, you just switch them on right before touching down and let SAS fire them as needed. As long as you're not using them for maneuvers or anything then there's more than enough monopropellant in any of the standard pods for this purpose and you don't need to add any additional tanks or anything. Instead of trying to figure out exactly how much mass you have tucked into the service bay, I just threw a pair of locked monoprop tanks in there for ballast. As a result, the lander I flew is probably around 3-5 tons heavier than your actual design. I added some lights because I like to have lights. Thoughts, observations, etc: The fuel and engine arrangement is the biggest area of concern. Specifically: When the side tanks run dry the 48-7Ss die out, requiring you to finish the landing with just the single LV-909 if you're touching down at anywhere near the lander's max effective operating range. The lander's overall TWR is on the lowish side to begin with, and if your relying on the 48-7Ss for support than it could be a real problem if they gave out at the wrong moment. There are a number of possible ways to address the fuel/engine issue: If you happen to have the Poodle unlocked, then using one of them instead of the LV-909 + 4x 48-7S would be great for a lander this size and would eliminate any issues without having to adjust fuel lines. Since you're not already using a Poodle here, I'm assuming it's not an option at this time. Moving the 48-7Ss to the outer rim of the central tank is another viable approach, node-attached to girders or cubic struts that are surface-attached to the tank itself. Running a second set of fuel lines from the central tanks back out to the side tanks (in addition the the fuel lines you already have) would also ensure that the 48-7Ss don't die at the wrong moment, but it would require you to remember to manually drain what's left the side tanks into the core tank before lifting off to return home -- tedious, and very unreliable if you forget to do things as often as I do. It has lots of fuel which is great, but that also means lots of launch mass. This is not a terribly small lander. By the time you've added in a transfer stage you could easily be looking at ~250 tons on the pad, so make sure it's sufficiently upgraded. Landing on a moderate slope, the high CoM of the build I used combined with the softness of the legs were a bit concerning. The RCS blocks eliminated any risk of tipping over in this case, but I would rather not try to take this down on any kind of uneven terrain without them. The return portion was aerodynamically stable, and handled a direct return from the Mun to an atmospheric periapse of 30k very comfortably. The 5t of ballast I was carrying in the service compartment probably affected that, but I don't think that running a lighter load would cause problems in this case. One parachute was fine. Overall, I rather like the look (omg, space rabbit!) and feel this configuration, and may use it myself in the future. The only changes I can think of to make in my next revision are a Poodle engine and LT-2 landing legs.

A boat might be fun, then. There aren't enough practical reasons to use boats in KSP.

It would depend heavily on how much actual "grinding" might be required to hit this first node you speak of, tbh. (And additional nodes after that.)

Take a look at the way you've got fuel set up to drain from your tanks. All the top-most tanks are draining out first, pushing your COM back pretty far down the rocket. That alongside your reasonably draggy payload isn't helping your stability any. Your TWR is also extremely high -- especially for a rocket with bad aero. A quick-and-dirty thing to try might be to shift your asparagus boosters down lower in relation to your core assembly so that you maintain a big chunk of weight out in front more effectively. Personally, I'd start by putting the orbital orange tank on a poodle instead of a skipper (? - hard to see) and have that entire stage sitting on top of where your 2.5m SAS currently, striping the relevant parts off the current orange tank for it and just letting that remain as part of the launch assembly . That would keep that chunk of mass way out in front of the rest of the launch assembly while passing through the atmosphere, which should help -- and tbh, it looks like you're overbuilt enough that you can handle the extra weight without substantially redesigning your rocket.