Raptor9

Meh, they live for that.

Hopefully the expandable heatshield @RoverDude was working on is still planned for 1.1

Ha ha; lander, sure wasn't too bad...but when you land two of them next to each other....

They've all been made for quite some time (as seen in "Red Planet Rivals" link in the OP), in fact the EV-4 series craft were based on NASA's Mars DRA 5.0 MTV variants. The HLV-5A Duna Cargo lander and HLV-5B Duna Habitat lander are pretty heavy in part count so I'm holding onto those until 1.1 is out, at which time I'll finish tweaking them with some of the new parts from 1.0.5 (and any 1.1 parts that might work better, if any). The HLV-5's just haven't been a priority.

I wouldn't hold your breath. The thing with these surface modules is making sure they all work together when placed on the Mun. Not only do the small docking ports that link them together have to be the same relative height on all the rovers, but they have to be able to dock whether the rover is riding low or high (ex: empty fuel rover versus full fuel rover). Same thing with the outpost pieces, wheel heights need to be adjusted since each outpost piece weighs differently than another. If for some reason I need to redesign one outpost module or one surface rover, the others may need tweaking as well. It just takes time, and I haven't been able to work on them as much this week as I would have liked due to real-life commitments. Believe me, I want to finish these and get them working so I can use them myself. I'm afraid that's not on my list of things to do. I don't have any accounts for such a thing (ie Dropbox or Github).

You just had to, didn't you, lmao

In my KSP install, it depends heavily on the mission or task. I have anywhere from light- to heavy-lifting rockets, small to large spaceplanes, some spaceplanes that take off from a runway, some spaceplanes that launch vertically like the Shuttle or Dyno-Soar. Each one has their strengths and weaknesses, and certain missions that they're optimized for. I don't have any craft that's a jack-of-all-trades.

I tried that immediately after the test in the screenshot, welding the Mk3 fuel tanks along with the flight deck caused it to flip over when I got close. And by flip, I don't mean rolled over, I mean the nose of the ship pitched down into the water until it was pointed back the other way in the span of about 5 seconds, lol. Still curious what will happen after I add the rest of the carrier such as refueling points and the "island" superstructure on the right side.

I felt your pain at one point too. To post an image, click "Insert other media" at the bottom right corner of the reply window. Also, if you want to skip to the next line without the default space, press "Ctrl-ENTER" and you will look like this, otherwise "ENTER" does this.

Those are some keen observations. 1) Not all of what you see in the picture is necessary to generate propellant from ore. Besides the fact that there are two identical fuel storage rovers in that photo, some are just options or ideas I'm playing with. The SRTG and MPC for example are just some supplemental power generation options that I built emulating NASA concepts of DIPS and FSPS rovers. 2) These systems aren't designed to supply a full refueling station or back-to-back lander refuelings. The expected turnaround for surface crews would be in the timetable of months, not days. Maybe "outpost" would be the better term to use for what I'm going for rather than "base". 3) Bottom line: these are still in their early stages. I anticipate a lot more refinement and redesigns on the horizon. Again, this is my first venture into dedicated mining/ISRU.

Installed KJR and put it out in the ocean. The thing bounced a little in the water as I got close to landing, but she held together. Thanks for the help.

Before I can move forward with my Mun surface base modules, I need to come up with some sort of surface sustainment strategy in the mining and ISRU field. For some clarification on my design methods, my goals are as follows: 1) Create surface base modules that are easy to move around on the Mun surface, and easy to dock together; and have a logical crew passage way between habitation and science modules. 2) Create a family of rovers for mining, ISRU, fuel/ore transport, & mobile power generation, with a common docking port location to ensure modularity and non-reliance on mods (such as KIS/KAS; these mods are awesome , but if someone doesn't want to use them, I don't want to force their hand if they want to download the craft files) 3) Create a system of resource transfer between the above rover family, surface base modules, as well as LV-3 series landers to support lander refueling if necessary; or actually utilizing LV-3A/LV-3B descent stages as propellant depots/power generation units as the brochure prints advertise. This system will need to be modular and rely on stock parts for the same reason as bullet #2. I've created the majority of the family of rovers to support bullet #2, along with some first iterations of some base modules and resource transfer equipment. Here's a preview of a mining and ISRU testing site: I know the small drill and ISRU have their drawbacks, but the large versions would be pretty large and cumbersome to be carried aboard the LV-3B cargo lander. Baby steps, this is my first serious attempt in the mining & ISRU strategies. Keep in mind some of these may change in appearance or function as my overall infrastructure design matures.

I don't use KJR. Yeah, there seems to be a discreet inner physics range. I've seen this demonstrated in several youtube videos where additional "stuff" happens within about a kilometer, separate from the 2.2km load range. I'll keep trying different ship configurations, see if anything different happens.

First spoiler is the flight deck part.cfg without a ski jump. Second spoiler is the flight deck part.cfg with the ski jump. EDIT: When I previously tried to remove the Module Lifting Surface from the flight deck, I was looking in the craft file of the ship, not the welded flight deck part.cfg file itself. After posting these I spotted it at the end, removed them, and did a test. No flying into the sky. I'll do some more tests to make sure I can repeat the success. I apologize for the haphazard troubleshooting, code isn't an area I usually poke around in. EDIT 2: Placed it out at sea about 20 km from the KSC (with Hyperedit I admit). And it held together just fine. Flew a jet out there and the ship spawned in at 2.2 km as usual, again no problem. But as soon as I got within a kilometer, it blew apart again. As I flew away the flight deck sort of hung out a couple hundred meters above the water (screenshot). As I turned the jet around toward the wreckage, when I got within 800-500 meters of the flight deck, it fell into the water.

That Shinden looks amazing, I'm going to have to try it.

Piggy-backing on what @Finox said, you could do the Apollo 9 thing and launch to low Kerbin orbit and do some more tests there. Look at your vacuum burn times, staging/action groups set correctly, etc. And it will also let you practice rendezvous maneuvers if you plan on doing a Lunar Orbit Rendezvous method (Apollo command module waiting in Moon orbit). Even though Apollo 9 launched on a full-up Saturn V, you don't necessarily have to do that in KSP for some Kerbin orbit tests. You could easily launch your test lander on a much smaller rocket. This!

Hmmmm. You think the total combined lift rating of the flight deck is throwing it off? I'll try manually editing it in the .cfg file if I can.

I'm liking this. I was laughing when I saw the picture of Bill peeking over the edge of the launchpad at Twig-3

In general if you're talking about large, crewed, interplanetary ships, it can be a long-term pay-off in funds and effort to build a ship that is modular like you are suggesting. The reason being is that if it's a ship that is assembled in orbit, or is one-piece that requires a massive launch system, than it requires a lot of time, effort and/or career mode funds to replace the ship. If you make a ship modular so you can change propulsion modules or fuel tanks, than you can refit your ship for follow-on missions. Example: Let's say you assemble a ship in orbit capable of going to Duna and back, and after you return you want to go to Eve next. The ship may not have enough delta-V and/or thrust-to-weight ratio to make a round-trip to Eve and back. Instead of starting over and building a whole new ship, you just swap out a module or two, put some more fuel in it, and send it on it's next adventure. Instead of doing a series of launches and rendezvouses, you may only have to do a few to refit the ship for the next mission. The downside to keeping all the tankerage with your ship is that by the time you've finished your mission, you're going to be hauling around a lot of dead weight in the form of empty fuel tanks. If you make portions of your fuel tanks jettisonable, you can save delta-V by loosing weight along the way, but it will of course cost funds to replace the hardware if you want to reuse that ship. How much delta-V gain vs funds lost really comes down to the design of your ship and the mission profile. My general rule of thumb is to save engines, crew compartments, utilities like batteries/solar panels, and comms/science equipement, since these are all either really expensive or have a lot of mass to put into orbit. Fuel tanks in general I just toss away since they are relatively cheap compared to the others. My most advanced design I roll with on interplanetary missions is in the picture below. As you can see, it has multiple configurations depending on where it's going (ie Duna, Dres, Eve), and has reusability in mind. Portions of the fuel tankerage are jettisonable, either from a 'Saddle' truss or from a 'Star' Truss. In the case of the 'Star' truss, it only takes one launch to replace the four drop tanks with new tanks already full of fuel. I found it's more economical to refill the larger 3.75m fuel tanks since launching new ones cost more money in the form of a heavy launch vehicle, versus several smaller launches with a refueling ship. So sometimes I use both methods. Bottom line: replacing tanks or refilling tanks depends on the mission profile and where you're going, how big the ship is, etc. What is advantageous in my opinion is modularity to refit ships for multiple missions to different destinations. Imagine having a fuel-efficient highway car that could rapidly be reconfigured into a muscle-car for high-speed trips.

In this case, the contract was completed since the station contracts don't limit how many modules you can send up to meet the requirements. I believe the OP is asking whether his already half-completed station will qualify as a new station since the first module was sent up before the Sun station contract was accepted. As @Nich stated above, in 1.0.4 simply adding more modules to an existing station did not qualify the station as "new", if that station already existed prior to the contract being accepted.

I'll do that and post the results here. Thanks for the input. It is pure stock, just a ton of wing panels with a couple of girder pieces under the ski jump. I'll do what @Stone Blue said above and see what happens, hopefully it's a Hyperedit thing. EDIT: Ok, I removed Hyperedit, and started KSP again, and welded a brand new flight deck to be sure it was done in a 100% vanilla KSP. Restarted KSP, threw some Mk3 fuselage pieces under the welded deck for use as a floatation hull, and then put a series of large wheels mounted to the hull sides by decouplers, and tried driving it over. After slowly going over the hump that surrounds the runway, the ship blew up with the welded part flying into oblivion and game crashed. Next attempt I put a series of "Verner" LF+O thrusters on it, hacked gravity on the debug menu, and tried floating it over. Same thing happened when it touched down again. Game didn't crash this time, but the flight deck did get flung a couple hundred meters. Not really sure what to think of this. Maybe I just need to try it with a welded flight deck consisting of fewer parts. (Be less greedy with my carrier design )

Aw heck, I'll throw a few of mine into the ring...

That rocket is neat and all, but it doesn't really do anything for me. If I need to do a suborbital tourist mission in KSP for a few extra funds, I'll slap a pod on top of a cheap solid booster and send it on it's way. I don't spend much time, effort or money on suborbital tourist contracts. (Just my preference)

Very nice I built one a few months back (called mine the "X-18 High Supersonic Flight Test"), but mine couldn't reach orbit, it was strictly an airbreather. I wanted to experiment with altitudes and airspeeds to see where the most heat generation happened. I knew that if you went higher you could go faster before you would overheat since there was less air, but you would also loose engine thrust for the same reason. Quite the double-edged sword, but it helped me narrow down a few things for building and flying my first successful SSTO spaceplanes. Another thing I learned was that above 1,250m/s (Mach 4.20) the tail cone piece that we both used as the nose of our aircraft overheats within moments. The Mk1 spaceplane cockpit has a slightly higher heat tolerance at the same altitudes, so it can go faster, but is also heavier. The X-18 helped me narrow down some important design principles for my spaceplanes I built afterwards.

You should try flying the Mi-8 in Digital Combat Simulator (DCS). It's a monster...not as lethal as the DCS Ka-50 though.