DMagic

I updated the initial post and put a section about radial attachments. This doesn't seem to be limited to KAS. I tried this on a stock installation with only kethane added. Using radially attached docking ports (and maybe other connections) can cause weird fuel flow issues. And they don't always match up with how the kethane converter's flow works, either. Using fuel lines across these connections can solve the issue, but that's not always an option when you are docking multiple vessels together. Launchpad testing of more complicated designs is a good idea if you can manage it (subassembly loader helps a lot here with multi-part vessels).

If you want to test a kethane miner design (or just familiarize yourself with how the concept works) you can use the kethane debugger tool to create a deposit directly under the KSC. There should be a link for the debugger part on the kethane thread somewhere. Just attach the debugger to your vessel and launch. You can then use it to show the current kethane deposits, create a new random set of deposits, or create a deposit under your current location (be warned, this will reset all of your current deposit information, including what you have already discovered on Minmus, meaning you will have to rescan the moon). If you are familiar with persistence file editing you can just fill up the kethane tanks on the launch pad, this way you can avoid making any changes to your existing deposit information. You can then test your setup for conversion, docking to other landers, how much power you need, and so forth (and really there's no need to test drilling, a drill anywhere on the vessel will fill up a kethane tank anywhere else on the vessel). There's another thread here on bleeding out fuel from tanks on the launch pad, which can help in determining if your conversion setup works.

There are some defunct satellites, but there are a ton of working ones, too; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation. I wonder if something similar could be added to KSP. Instead of just showing the little tracking reticule, vessels in the correct orbit could be shown as streaks of light across the sky. This would required some way of knowing if the vessel in question is currently in sunlight. It's not exactly a priority. But, it would be cool if you could look up and see a bunch of streaks crossing the sky.

Do you mean Iridium flares? These are a family of communication satellites with antennae that basically act like giant mirrors. There are a quite a few tracking sites and apps that tell you when these will be visible. There are something like 50 or 60 of these things in orbit, so these flares happen all of the time, much more frequently than ISS sightings (though not nearly as bright)

That's a good way to test fuel flow. If an engine can pull fuel in one direction then a kethane convertor should be able to fill it up in the other direction. Later today I think I'll add a section about this to the first post, as a way to test fuel flow.

I've never used KAS. Do the connections have directionality? If they do you would have to connect it from the receiving vessel to the kethane rig. But my understanding is that a KAS winch connector acts like a dock, so maybe something else is going on. If the rig itself has fuel lines on it you could run into some weird fuel loop issues. Can you make the connection directly to the kethane convertor?

Do you mean sketchfab for the completed vessel? I don't think it works like that. You can only upload 3d models, not .craft files.

Ha, those would be pretty useless ASAS units, but they are quantum strut cores, they do look pretty much identical though. The station doesn't have any RCS thrusters, but those 3 cupolas give it a ton of torque, so I use quantum struts to keep things stable when turning it around, especially when I have big things docked to the central ring on top. And yeah, it can't really change it's orbit. Though I guess I could dock to landers to those ports on the bottom (one lander is visible behind the orange tank) and use those to move it. There are a few posts on this stations construction in my Moho thread if you want to know more about it. It's small and simple (just 88 parts without anything docked to it), but I really like how this station turned out.

Nice work, getting to Moho and back is tough. I really like your vehicles, they all make very efficient use of mass. But I think you might have it backward about when to start your ejection burn to Moho. I think it's best to intercept Moho at its perihelion. It requires a bit more delta-v for the initial ejection burn, but the capture burn is much less. You only have to lower your orbit to Moho's aphelion instead of its perihelion. This can save a lot of delta-v. My other suggestion is, instead of trying to intercept Moho at a node with Kerbin, to launch into an inclined orbit and perform the ejection burn at a node with Moho. My strategy is to wait until I'm at the descending node with Moho, then launch into about a 20o inclined orbit (launching when KSC is on the side of Kerbin opposite from the sun). Doing this gets me to within 0.5 - 1.0 of Moho's inclination after the ejection burn (it requires a bit more delta-v to launch into an orbit like this, but not much). Launching at the descending node also allows me to intercept Moho's orbit near its perihelion. Most of the time I don't try for a direct intercept with Moho, instead I treat it more like an orbital rendezvous, this can add 500 - 1000 m/s to the total delta-v, but I think it's easier than waiting for everything to line up perfectly. My record doing this is about 4300 m/s from LKO to a 100km polar orbit above Moho, but most of the time I get more like 4500 - 4800 m/s. And for return a good delta-v is around 2300 m/s. Assuming you're landing on Kerbin the inclination doesn't really matter. But really, anything that makes good use of a rescue donut deserves recognition.

We left off with the first components of the base assembled on the surface of Moho. Now we'll take a look at the next components. Below is the cargo and fuel bay, launched on my 40 ton lifter, and the science facility, launched on my 30 ton lifter. Once in orbit around Minmus they met up with the Hermes tug and prepared for the burn to Moho. After a quick trip down to Moho the tug docked with Moho Orbital and preparations were made for landing. First down was the cargo bay, carried by my skycrane. It came down for an easy landing, then was carried into place by one of my constructor rovers. The docked kethane refinery still had enough resources to fill up the cargo bay's tanks. At some point during all of the landing and docking shenanigans, Seeing Kerman got a little bored and tried to execute a backflip in his lander. The result was this, an upside down ferry and a broken docking port. With no ability to refuel, Neweny Kerman trotted over to the base, while Seeing, taking advantage of the low gravity and the lander can's high torque, flipped the ferry over and brought it back into orbit. Seeing made a quick EVA back to the station. The lander, without enough fuel to land again, was recommissioned as a suicide probe and sent to study the polar anomaly. A course was set for the north pole, where it was confirmed that there is indeed a very deep hole. Back to the base now. The skycrane next brought down the science module. And of course, after docking to the base, both the rover and the skycrane got stuck to their docking ports. This time I decided to figure out what was wrong in the persistence file. Using the information in this thread I was able to get both ports working again and undock the rover and skycrane. The skycrane departed and now the base is nearly complete. I'll end today with the launch of the last two base components. The microwave receiver and the rocket powered rover Big Boy. After assembly in Minmus orbit they are ready for the trip to Moho. We'll finish the base in the next post and send the rest of the crew down as well.

Another part of the problem with energy usage is that the in-game description is wrong. It says they use 12 energy / sec, when they really use about 14.5. It can also be difficult to estimate how much energy your panels will produce in a non-ideal orientation and at different distances from the sun. At Jool they produce half the energy they do around Kerbin, but at Duna it's only decreased to something like 0.9 times the normal energy. Around Moho they produce something like 3 or 4 times as much energy. I never worry much about batteries though. Just put 1 or 2 and let the solar panels take care of the energy. Ion engines consume so much energy that you would have to add a huge amount of mass in battereis to complete a large burn in the shadow of a planet. So you just have to be careful about timing.

Well this is a little weird. This worked in a few different situations, but there were subtle differences in how things were setup. A picture can probably best describe my situation, as it is very complex. Also, I take back what I said about this not necessarily being related to having parts with no probe core/command pod. Although the overall structure shown below has a manned cupola module, the component that I docked to (shown by the green arrow) doesn't have any control point. This was docked separately to the main base part, the one with the cupola. And I think this has been the case with all of the stuck docking nodes I have come across. The red arrow points to the nun-functional dock, the one with the undock option; this is part of my construction rover, it does have a probe core. The yellow arrow points to the receiving port; it is on my kethane refinery, it also has a probe core. The green arrow points to the second port on the rover, it is used to attach to the base. This port works fine and can undock (though it does break off when I try this, I assume because of some stress caused by being stuck to the kethane vessel). This is the docking code for the rover port (the one with the non-functioning undock option): MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode isEnabled = True state = Docked (docker) dockUId = 1787168367 dockNodeIdx = 0 .... snip ..... DOCKEDVESSEL { vesselName = Moho Constructor vesselType = 3 rootUId = 1324404093 } This is where my situation differs from yours. The DOCKEDVESSEL section (I think) should show the information for the other vessel. This shows the information for the vessel attached to the docking node that this section describes. Moho Constructor is the name of the rover, and the rootUId is the number from the rover's probe core. The rootUId value, by the way, can be found fairly easily as long as you know the part name of probe core, or command pod you are looking for. For instance, the rover has an octagonal probe core, so I search up from the docking port for "probecoreocto" then check the UId number, which matches the one given in the description above. I'm not sure about the root id if you have separated the original root, but I think it just moves down to the next part. If you have a probe core on top of a decoupler, then the decoupler will become the root after you separate it, I think. The other docking port, the one attached to the kethane refiner has this information: MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode isEnabled = True state = Ready dockUId = 660524931 dockNodeIdx = 0 The dockUId is correct (this is the 'uid' value for the rover's docking port), but there is no DOCKEDVESSEL section, the same as your situation. So I just copied the DOCKEDVESSEL section from the other port, with no changes. When I reloaded, everything worked fine. The stuck red and yellow ports undocked, and the green port undocked, too, without breaking. The next situation, though, turned out a little differently. Here I have the rover, shown by the red arrow, stuck to the 6 way node above it. Like the last example, this base component has no control point, even though it is docked to 2 other vessels with control points. On top, where the green arrow points, is another set of stuck ports. This time, the stuck ports (the ones with the non-functioning undock button) belong to the base component, not the rover or the lander (the big orange thing on top). Here is the code for the upper docking port, shown by the green arrow, which is attached to the lander called "Moho Skycrane": MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode isEnabled = True state = Docked (docker) dockUId = 2730892197 dockNodeIdx = 0 ..... snip ..... DOCKEDVESSEL { vesselName = Hermes vesselType = 2 rootUId = 764744321 } Hermes is the name given to the base component (it comes from the tug that brought this part down from Kerbin), and the rootUId is for the docking port shown by the yellow arrow above. This port was directly attached to the original probe core, and it is the point used to connect this module to the main base. So far this is no different from the previous example. The docking port on the bottom, however, makes no sense. This is the one shown by the red arrow. Here is its code: MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode isEnabled = True state = Docked (docker) dockUId = 660524931 dockNodeIdx = 0 ..... snip ..... DOCKEDVESSEL { vesselName = Moho Skycrane vesselType = 2 rootUId = 1547116391 } This indicates that the bottom port is attached to the big orange skycrane on top. But that's obviously not the case. And the dockUId value, which represents the Id of the other docked port, is correct. The value shown above is the Id for the rover's docking port, not the lander's (and the same is true for the top port's code shown above, too, it matches the skycrane's Id number). So I just switched everything around, I put the DOCKEDVESSEL info for the skycrane onto the top port of the base, and the info for the rover on the bottom port of the base. Then I put the info for the base component (the "vesselName = Hermes" info) into the rover and the skycrane port sections. And lo and behold, both components were then able to undock. I realize this is long and probably utterly confusing to anyone who hasn't dug around in the docking port section of the persistence or quicksave file. But hopefully this can help someone. The sequence of events required for this to happen is way too complicated to reliably replicate, at least in my case, but it seems clear that something odd is going on with the docking system. The won't-dock bug seems similar to this, but simpler (I'll try to get around to posting a real bug report on that with a clean save, I think I know how to reliably replicate that problem), maybe it's not related though. I'll see if I can't find a way to dock together a few parts with no control points to replicate this in a simpler way than what I've shown here.

Kethane is 2 kg/L, that's somewhere in the update log. And fuel/LOX is 5kg/L, that's from the wiki, or just from looking at the fuel tank capacity and the total mass. So the biggest kethane tank, which holds 16000 units of kethane should have a mass of 32 tons plus the dry mass.

I'll have to try this out as this has happened to me many times. I currently have one vessel stuck to another as part of a three vessel craft. I'm assuming (as this has been the case every other time this has happened) that I will be able to undock two of the vessels, then undock the stuck port. But if that doesn't work this could be handy. And it is definitely not limited to crafts with no control points. In every case I have had crafts with probes on both sections that could not be undocked. And they were all part of a larger complex of several docked crafts (at least 3 crafts docked together separately, each with their own probe core or command pod).

This is a much thornier problem that is probably unrelated to the first issue (and as far as I know, any size docking port can be affected by the won't-dock bug). You can try undocking other sections of the craft if that's an option. This usually unsticks the broken port, but it doesn't always work. There is a possible solution here, but it's not as simple as the first problem's fix.

Yep, I think it's the quickload. That does it to me everytime. There is a thread about this in the support section, so I think they know about it. I'll see about making a bug report later today; it should be easy enough to quickly recreate this on a stock save.

Not really, getting to Minmus requires just a little more fuel than getting to the Mun; the delta-v values are something like 950 m/s vs. 850 m/s for the Mun. And getting into and out of orbit around Minmus requires less, too. It's pretty easily doable with a 4 or 5 ton craft (from LKO), the 2 person lander can might require a bit more, but not much.

You need to find the docking port in question and check its "state = " value. If it is undocked it should be "state = ready", but there is a docking bug floating around that can screw things up. I have had this issue with all 3 regular docking port types. Sometimes broken docking ports will be either "state = acquire" or "state = docked (dockee)" or (docker). Make sure you are looking at the right docking port in the persistence file. It can get tricky when you have multiple docks / vessel, or if you're not sure which vessel has the broken dock.

That sounds a bit overcomplicated. Kethane is 2 kg/L, or 2 tons / 1000 units. So just stack a bunch of fuel on top of your tanker in the VAB to simulate the mass of a full kethane tank. Then engineer or mechjeb should give you accurate values for delta-v.

Done and done, well not quite done, but I'll add more pictures to illustrate things better a little later. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35664-Kethane-Usage-and-Proper-Fuel-Routing If anyone wants to add a section on detectors that would be great. I haven't really used them much and so don't have the greatest understanding of how they work and the ideal way to set them up. Edit: Anyone else feel free to add to it or correct me if I made any mistakes. I'll fix the original post or you can add a reply.

Kethane is a popular mod and one that generates a lot of confusion. To alleviate some of this I'll go over how to setup a kethane refinery that can generate fuel, LOX, and monopropellant. First off, kethane itself is routed the same way as RCS fuel. That is, kethane can move between any two points on a vessel regardless of what is between them. Stack separators, structural hard points or docking ports don't affect the ability to automatically transfer kethane. A drill anywhere on a vessel can fill a kethane tank anywhere else on the vessel. And a kethane tank anywhere on a vessel can be used by a converter anywhere else on the vessel. Generating monopropellant follows the same rule, any kethane convertor will fill every monopropellant tank on the vessel, no fuel lines or manual transfers are necessary. Monopropellant will also flow through KAS pipes. Fuel Lines: Fuel and LOX generation are more complicated though. My understanding, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is that kethane convertors work by consuming a negative amount of fuel/LOX. That is, a kethane convertor works much like an engine does, but instead of removing a positive amount of fuel/LOX from the fuel tanks, it "removes" a negative amount from the fuel tanks. Because of this, fuel flow has to be setup in the same way that you would route fuel to an engine. To ensure that a convertor can make fuel/LOX, fuel lines must run from a fuel tank, to the kethane convertor, not the other way around. As long as at least one fuel tank is connected to a kethane convertor in this way you should be able to generate fuel/LOX, you may have to manually transfer it from this point though. Ideal setup: Of course this is not the only way to generate fuel/LOX, any setup where fuel would normally flow from a tank to an engine without fuel lines or manual transfer should also work with a kethane convertor. Fuel can flow through docking ports (as long as you don't disable fuel crossflow), trusses, kethane tanks, or any other part that allows fuel crossflow. The safest way to setup a refinery though, is just to directly connect a fuel tank to the kethane convertor. You may have to manually transfer fuel to some other tanks, but it will always work with this setup. Fuel/LOX won't flow through KAS pipes regardless of how or where they are connected. Examples: Below you can see a somewhat complex setup. The kethane convertor at the top can fill up all of the highlighted fuel tanks despite all of the docking ports, structural parts, and radial attachment points between them. Even if there were an issue or bug that prevented me from filling up the other tanks, I still have the small tank attached directly to the converter. I could manually transfer from there to anywhere else on the craft. Of course, it is possible that some bugs could crop up on a more complicated designs. Lots of docking ports and other parts between a tank and convertor could cause issues and prevent you from generating fuel/LOX. This is most likely a problem on the core KSP end though, and not an issue with the kethane mod itself. And if someone wants to add something about kethane detectors that would be helpful, too. I haven't played around with those much, I usually just identify a few sites and land at the first suitable one. Edit: Using engines to test fuel flow: One way to test your design is by assembling everything in the VAB, launching, filling up the kethane tanks on the launch pad, and checking if it works. You can use a kethane debugger part, or just edit your persistence file to fill up the tanks. You can see in the picture that the kethane converter in the top right can fill up the tanks shown with the green arrows through all of the docking ports and structural parts between them. It cannot, however, fill up the tank shown with the red arrow. The decoupler shown in yellow prevents automatic filling of this tank. If you don't want to mess around with editing your savefile, or resetting your kethane deposit data you can also use engines to check fuel flow. If you have a fuel tank on one part of vessel that you want to check, just add an engine to it (or to a part that should be connected to it). Disable all but the fuel tank attached to the kethane converter by right-clicking each tank and clicking the little green arrows on the right side, circled in red below. Then ignite the engines. If the engines can pull fuel from a tank attached to the kethane converter, then, in most cases, the converter should be able to fill up and fuel tanks attached to the engines. Below you can see the same fuel flow story. The green arrows indicate fuel flowing from the tank in the upper right to the two tanks on the left, but not the one shown by the red arrow, which is separated by the decoupler. It should also be noted that some complex docking setups can screw with fuel flow. Using bi- or tri-couplers to make 2 or 3 point docking attachments can cause issues and might prevent fuel flow through those ports. Radially mounted docking ports can also cause issues in some circumstances. That's why it can be a good idea to test out your crafts on the launch pad before launching and assembling everything. And generally, a few struts and launch clamps can hold up even very large and complex structures without collapsing. Radial Docking Port Issues: Below is an example of how radial docking clamps complicate things. On the left you can see that fuel does not flow from the tanks on top to any of the engines on the bottom, only the activated tank (far left) can supply its engine. However, kethane, for some reason does not match up exactly to fuel flow. Converted fuel can flow from the converter to the central tank on the bottom, but not the two tanks on the side. I don't know what causes this disparity, but it is something to keep in mind. And even more confusing, the side mounted engines can run on fuel from the central tank, but not the other way around. Obviously there are issues related to how fuel flow works through complicated connections. In most cases though, these are probably due to issues on the KSP side of things, not the kethane mod. If you run into these issues you might consider using 6-way nodes instead of radial attachments. The nodes don't work the same way as radial connections and shouldn't have this kind of problem. This is all assuming, of course, that you want to be able to automatically fill up all of your fuel tanks. In all of these cases you can manually transfer fuel from the tank attached directly to the converter to any other tank. This thread has some examples of what does and does not (and what might not) work as far as fuel flow goes: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/26660-Interplanetary-ship-design-problems?p=329049&viewfull=1#post329049

Well this could get interesting... Has anyone designed a 90o part like this before? I've never seen one.

I've done many of these, I usually get around 2000 -2200 m/s for a good intercept, one that doesn't need much other than a prograde burn. And around 2500 m/s for not-quite ideal burns. But I usually try to have about 3000 m/s, with this much I can always get back to Kerbin and back into Minmus orbit, which is where my refueling station is. I also don't worry about the inclination change, you'll come back to Kerbin in an inclined orbit, but it usually doesn't make much of a difference and I find it easier not to worry about it. This isn't really a good one, but even then I only needed 2300 m/s for it. And that's starting from a polar orbit, which complicates things.

Here are my stations built as part of my Moho mission. First is Moho Orbital, the rendezvous and refueling station in polar orbit above the planet. Next is the power generating station, Helios, in solar orbit between Moho and Kerbol. Much more on both in the Moho mission log in my signature.

When we last left off the first two components of my Moho base were ready to go in Minmus orbit. So now I need to launch the support craft. First up is my reusable skycrane system built with parts from the THSS set and launched on my 30 ton lifter. This is a really simple craft, just two docking ports, four engines mounted around a central core, a bunch of fuel, and four big RCS pods. Next up is another Kethane refinery, this one is meant for making short hops along the surface of the planet to get from a kethane deposit to the base. It can also get back to Moho Orbital, but it would have to refine fuel on the way or come up with less than a full load. And next is the construction rover, just a big docking port on a low rover meant to move parts around on the surface of Moho. Once in Minmus orbit they were docked to the Hermes tug and secured in place. Now that everything is ready to go we blast off for Moho. The Talaria tug with the base components is the first to arrive. Its engines ignite for Moho capture just above the future landing site at the bottom of the crater. And next it can be seen approaching Moho Orbital where it will await the Hermes tug. As Talaria approaches, one of the lander ferries departs. It will descend to the base site and the crew will supervise construction from there. Once the remaining kethane has been refined that lander departs and heads for a low holding orbit. Next up Hermes arrives in orbit. The tug separates from the other crafts to quickly refuel and depart for a higher holding orbit, awaiting a window to return to Kerbin. Now everything is docked and ready to go, and I finally have something with a working small docking port. The first order of business is to rearrange some of the components, allowing the kethane lander to depart. Once on the surface, the refinery fills up on fuel and kethane before making the short hop to the crater. Neweny Kerman can be seen here inspecting the refinery next to his lander ferry. Now at last the first component can be prepared. Here the utilities and garage module can be seen docking to the skycrane. The rover will be carried below the garage, which also carries another, small, docking port to allow refueling on the surface. The descent was a little tricky because the module is so imbalanced; nearly 700 units of RCS fuel had to be used to keep everything level. But everything made it down in one piece and the rover successfully detached from the garage. This is when the fun times began. First, the rover has a tendency to freak out when docking or undocking from anything, it will occasionally bounce up taking out anything above it. And then, once I reloaded, the docking port no longer worked, it wouldn't dock to anything, and nothing could dock to it. So, without really trying to figure out what happened I decided to launch another rover. I also added some small, KSPX, radial engines, to alleviate any problems with the rover not being high enough to dock (something I was concerned about, despite extensive Kerbin-based testing). Here is the launch of the second rover. After getting to Moho it briefly met up with the station for refueling before setting down near the base. And after all of that I realized that I didn't really need to refuel the skycrane (I'll still need it later though). It had just enough to get back into orbit and rendezvous with Moho Orbital. It arrived running on fumes, but it got there. With the skycrane back and refueled it was time to land the central habitation module of the base. This one wasn't as unbalanced as the other module so it was a bit easier to land. It did come down a little further away from the base than I wanted, though. Now we can see the rover in action. And of course, this one had the same, dying docking port issue as the first one. I managed to fix this though, through some persistence file editing. There is an open thread on this issue over in the support section if anyone is interested. Rather than try to drive the extremely top-heavy, unstable hab module and skycrane, I brough the other components over. The rover docked underneath the garage module and brought it over to dock with the hab section. With that in place I drove the kethane refinery over. Using the small, secondary port, I docked to the garage and refueled the skycrane before sending it back into orbit to await the other components. Here are the first two sections, fully deployed. The first, and for now only permanent crew member, Thompcott Kerman, steps to the surface for the first time to admire the view. The little exploration rover on the left drove over to join him. Now all that remains are a few more base components. We'll get to those in the next post.