Sephta

Land with your miner - and launch west again (270° instead of the normal 90° east) against the rotation. You don't need that much more fuel for that on Mun and you don't need to launch any more ships. after you carry back the fuel to Kerbin, you can check the next trip to have a prograde orbit at mun. Problem solved.

Problem is: with going close to light speed © your mass increases: the Oberth effect only is defined for a small object passing by a(n infinite) mass, that is not affected by gravitational effects of the small mass (i.e. your ship). If you're going to reach significant amounts of c so relativistic effects kick in: your mass increases - significantly! If you go fast enough, you will be able to pull a planet out of course, if you come close enough. So you're applying an Oberth effect on the planet - if it had thrusters So to say so...

The question is, do you need a spaceplane for Kethane mining on Laythe? If yes: you can use air breathing engines on Laythe, so slam enough intakes on it or use the sabre-engines from the B9-Pack (very useful for larger planes! I also recommend the procedural wings to lower the part count.) Nukes are a good choice there, because the air is thinner than on Kerbal. therefore: use more wings! If you can fly it on Kerbin with 50m/s at ground level and 2000m/s at 26000m, you're good. I'll try and get a design together today evening... the other thing you can try: a mining jet: get a big tank, slap a reactor to it and some drills, practice water landings and off you go for Kethane mining directly on Laythe

Kethane is registered as an ordinary resource, when installed properly - you can transfer it with every system, that can handle regular fuel transfers. Be carefull though: Kethane is quite heavy compared to the normal fuel components - it might be a good idea to refine it low the gravity well and only ship the fuel into orbit.

give it fuel, let it breathe... If it coughs up - give it more air...

Couple more things: * Jets don't really need much fuel, so use them as long as you can. * with enough intakes you can reach 30000m and more with speeds well beyond 2000m/s - go for it. * you can achieve an apoapsis >80km on jets alone - when you have done that you need a rocket engine only to circularize. a stable spaceplane is hard to make, but good ones don't need much parts. For spaceplane design: less is more.

there is a small game called Lunar Lander - there you can practice exactly that.... Keep your lander up-right, turn on asas, burn a bit until you go upwards, then hover and steer with the RCS. Keep hovering, until you reach your goal. Remember: do not exeed speed limit! (which should be around 5m/s )

One reason for the spin can be clipping of parts - if that happens in an unlucky way, the game engine induces force on your ship from nowhere. This can actually rip ships apart without a big explosion. Struts touching a tank can be enought there. Another reason I found: built too rigid - small rolls or maneuvers can induce stress to one piece that breaks, and then your ship falls apart. ASAS or MJ with their constant adjustment of the position of the ship induce the stress, yes - but the explosions are often caused by something in the game engine the ship can't handle. Only way out in this case: build another ship, don't make it too rigid and try not to clip anything.

I wouldn't bather with a rover anyways... you have to get it up in orbit to use ist, so I went for mining landers. No hassle to dock in orbit and I can reach every Kethane deposit on the moon easily. The only rover I had designed was a rescue vehicle - for stranded landers (I ran down one deposit and forgot - next mining op there was sucking on dry ground^^). This one had KAS on board. worked really well!

I did make a suggestion in that area as well - nevertheless: it's not the case, that we will be flying to that other system. So there is no need to have a base set up... (for game mechanics anyway) If you'd like to know, where the best place is to set up such a station: in the orbit of the planet with the best infrastructure and most resources - in our case Kerbin. In comparison to the needed dV for interstellar travel any fuel used to go "further out" is wasted. For that distances to point to it and start your engine...

Where did you get this information? As far as I can read the planned features interstellar travel is not on the agenda. (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Planned_features) It is requested quite some time, but it was never confirmed afaik.

It's not that difficult, actually: 1. Make a lander with a Kethane tanks and sensors and some drills - and enough electricity to run the drills. The small converter is practical, because you can refill your own craft (means you have to have less tanks!) 2. Land on a kethane deposit 3. Activate the drills and wait until your craft is fully loaded up (and your fuel is replenished) 4. ship your haul back to wherever you need it. Some general tips: If you stack a fuel tank with a converter, you don't need fuel lines, if you need some, make sure, the lines run FROM the tank TO the converter. Kethane is like electricity - you can access it throughout the ship The conversion rate is not very good - if you can manage it, convert it to the fuel you need on the ground and haul your end product up in orbit. This is much more efficient than getting Kethane itself into orbit. Most of the mining vessels are designed for low gravity moons - to keep the dV cost as low as possible. Therefore the most mining vessels also use nerva engines.

I have a "mobile staton" (Kethane processing, tanks, Solar arras, many, many docking ports of all sizes) and it has 3 orange tank capability (in six grey ones). It can reach any planet and brings a Kethane mining vessel with it. It works, and I found, I don't need more than 3 orange tanks as capacity: refueling with Kethane on a moon takes soooooo long...

Home can produce fuel in an atmosphere with electricity afaik - there is nothing else out there besides Kethane. Dev already announced a resource system, so there isn't really much drive to develop an own...

Hm, can you do another dry-run and post the log, that's displayed afterwards? There probably some useful information, what is actually happening.