Northstar1989

I'm in absolute agreement. I think the "loss" of resources (who know, the devs are always free to change their minds again) was HUGE. Especially considering ISRU is the direction NASA is moving with in their own reference mission plans for Mars and Calliston (yes, Callisto- the moon of Jupiter. I was just reading a Design Reference Mission for Callisto created by NASA just a little while ago. Admittedly, its timeframe, which will probably be subject to delay, was 2045-2050...) The thing about Resources, is that it is an entirely optional feature. If players don't want to use it, they can get along without it... There's nothing forcing it down a player's throat, like Science. It's not 5-year old friendly either, but neither is getting to orbit (that you have to burn *horizontally*, or things will fall back, runs contrary to the myths people believe about space)- and yet there are actual 5-year old children who have built and launched orbits to stable orbit in this game... Looking at the chart in the OP, though, that would have been an absolutely horrid implementation of the "Resources" concept. A much better system would be something more similar to KSP-Interstellar, or even Kethane (I prefer Interstellar hands-down). Something with complexity, *gasp* realism (this would make it much easier to figure out what planets/moons should have what resources- for instance regolith you could electrolyze for Oxidizer on the Mun or Ike...), and most importantly, variability... That is, a *GOOD* implementation wouldn't have had the same resources on every planet, like that chart suggested. Rather, each planet/mmon would need to be unique, with its own challenges to exploitation... To make a comparison, the excellent ISRU system in place in KSP-Interstellar doesn't have any source of hydrogen (LiquidFuel) available on Ike. In fact, the only resources you can produce there are Alumina, Oxidizer, and fission reactor fuels. To get LiquidFuel to burn with the Oxidizer, you need to produce it elsewhere and ship it elsewhere... Or Jool, for example, is a gas giant with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. But to profitably harvest hydrogen from it, you need to find a cost-effective way to overcome its gravity well and make it back to orbit (operating Thermal Turbojet spaceplanes in its atmosphere, powered by Thermal Receivers, heated by beamed Phased Beam Microwave Power, from large fusion power plants on Laythe, that operate off elements in its oceans are one effective method...) In short, there needs to be challenge and complexity to the resource system. Add In-Situ Resource Utilization, by all means, but make it COMPLEX and CHALLENGING- those are the things that make this game fun. KSP is *NOT* a game for the instant-gratification seekers among us, and it wouldn't be interesting to implement a system where all you have to do is sit and mine. Put only certain resources on certain planets. Make the players have to locate them (perhaps a system where they can only be detected by taking surface samples- or would that be too hardcore?) And create engineering challenges to get at them in the first place (like any atmospheric resource on Jool), and leave it up to the players to figure out creative solutions how... Of course, all this is worthless talk at the moment, since Resources were officially cancelled. What a shame... Regards, Northstar P.S. The Science system isn't such a failure as people think. Remember, its primary purpose in its current state is to drip-feed parts to new players; not to be a primary game element as of yet. Unless you're playing with mods, of course...

I should add that Mars Direct actually survived in NASA as the "Design Reference Mission", a considerably more NASA-typical plan full of fail-safe's and redundancies that greatly add to mission mass and expense. But it has undergone a number of upgrades and refinements, now having reached "Design Reference Architecture 5.0" status (a bloated version of Mars Direct was the 1.0 version, more or less), and retained at least SOME reliance on ISRU- though, strangely, the 5.0 plan involves shipping methane from Earth to burn with Oxygen produced from the Martian atmosphere, rather than shipping hydrogen from Earth and using it to make the methane- like the earlier 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 plans did... Which makes little sense considering the 3.0 and the preferred version of the 5.0 plan include a nuclear reactor on the transfer vehicle, and are already cryogenically cooling a large mass of LH2 with power from that reactor, for use with BNTR engines (powered by said reactor) developed in collaboration with Russia in 1991/1992- an updated version of the 1970's NERVA program... Regards, Northstar

DRM 3.0 (released in 2001) contained the Shuttle, in a very marginal role (carrying one like crew-ferry to orbit). It was easily removed from the 2008/2009 DRM 5.0 Regards, Northstar

You guys simply MUST read up on the NASA's Mars Design Reference Mission framework... It sounds a lot like something you might do in KSP (with a lot of mods, of course...) Here's a link to version 3.0 (the latest DRM is 5.0) where they first decided nuclear propulsion was a distinct option: http://www.wired.com/2014/01/nasas-mars-design-reference-mission-goes-nuclear-2001/ Here is a link to version 5.0, now re-named the "Design Reference Architecture 5.0" http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373665main_NASA-SP-2009-566.pdf I noticed quite a few important changes to the 5.0 plan, such as no longer generating the return fuel from H2 shipped from Earth, and reacting it with Martian CO2 to generate methane; but instead shipping the methane from Earth, and only generating the needed Oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. Apparently they decided the mass-savings on return fuel weren't worth the extra mass and complexity of a Sabatier Reactor (the 5.0 version directly electrolyzes CO2 to produce O2 instead of relying on the Sabatier Reaction) Regards, Northstar

Your best bet of actually capturing a comet would be to send up equipment to harvest the ice and electrolyze it into hydrogen and oxygen. You could then burn most of the oxygen in conventional rocket engines with the hydrogen (I say *most* because most real-life rocket engines tend to burn oxygen and hydrogen in a no more than 7:1 fuel mass-ratio, usually only 6:1. An 8:1 ratio tends to produce too much heat and slowly melts many combustion chambers...) and save the rest of the oxygen for other purposes (such as for life-support on the ISS, once the comet were captured). Of course, you'd have to have to burn a significant fraction of the comet's mass to move it to Earth orbit, and working with nothing but a handful of solar panels to electrolyze the ice (as opposed to a nuclear reactor, or beamed microwave power- both of which we could make use of for this purpose today if we really wanted), it would take a LONG time to capture the comet with the trickle of fuel you'd have available. On the order of 10-12 years, I imagine... But, it COULD be done with current technology- we already know how to melt ice and electroylze water in space... The Sabatier Reactor has been in place on the ISS for over 3 years now. No problems with it yet that I've heard of... Mar Direct is more than an intriguing plan- it's probably the only one we could actually carry out with current funding levels. The main problem is NASA is only developing some of the necessary technologies (like specialized units to create dry ice from the Martian atmosphere to concentrate CO2 for a Sabatier Reactor- something they're actually currently working on... I'll try to remember to find the article) at a snail's pace... Regards, Northstar

Ahhh yes, but does NearFuture provide In-Situ Resource Utilization capabilities? Nope... KSP-Interstellar offers the EXCELLENT option of beaming your power to a lightweight Microwave Beamed Power Receiver on board your spacecraft to get around that issue. There is some loss in the transmission, of course, but since the power is sent as a relatively tight beam, it's a lot less than you might expect... Like many other technologies in KSP-Interstellar, including the fission reactors and the ISRU options, it's closely modeled and balanced after real-world technologies... Regards, Northstar

No need to make up something silly like that. There already is the potential for great profit in the very long-term. If you could set up a large enough self-sustaining colony on Mars (the gravity there is enough for long-term human habitation), eventually it would grow and colonize the rest of the planet. You could make a LOT of money off taxing e-commerce (intellectual property: like professional photography, songs, and novels in particular) between Earth and Mars, as well as benefit from any scientific discoveries made there. You could even set up some sort of small income or property tax on Martian colonists, if you were willing to risk the possibility of secession and declarations of independence... (the money to pay the taxes would, ultimately, reach Mars through e-commerce with Earth) Simply tempt the politicians with the thoughts of the money to be made off land sales on Mars in the short run (yes, this would require wild speculation once some sort of colony were established, and some sort of international agreement on how to split up the profits- assuming the land would probably be owned by some sort of international commission at first...), and on e-commerce and technological advancement in the really long run... And yes, I did just suggest land-speculation on Mars... People actually OWNING chunks of the planet once the first colony were established might encourage/expedite further colonial expeditions to be undertaken... I bet the Chinese would be mighty interested in buying up large swathes of Mars, considering the already-apparent focus of their space program on developing technologies for long-term colonizationand interplanetary voyages, such as advanced Zero-G aeroponics and silkworm farms... (I think the silkworms are particularly cool- so here are a couple links on that) http://books.google.com/books?id=XaqK7LOVsc0C&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=chinese+space+program+silk+worm&source=bl&ots=8zSca4hepB&sig=Fnij3jRJXFsV-XN5aEK5HZfIzKI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=m1-AU-GtB5G2yAT30oLoCA&ved=0CEcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=chinese%20space%20program%20silk%20worm&f=false http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2009/01/care-silkworm-your-tang Regards, Northstar

I was actually thinking of that particular story when I made my suggestion... Maybe it'll work second or third time around. Regards, Northstar

Install KSP-Interstellar (if you haven't already installed this awesome mod) and set up a Solar Farm in minimum orbit around the sun- the bigger the better! (transmit the electricity wherever you need it with Microwave Beamed Power and a relay) Be warned though- it's going to need a LOT of radiator surface area at that distance from Kerbol! Regards, Northstar

Nothing like watching Kerbin-rise on Minmus to remind you just how big space is... Regards, Northstar

The stock spaceplane bravely voyaged to Minmus... (sorry- no pics of the capture burn, I forgot) At which point I decided after a few (successful) F5/F9 attempts at an Extreme EVA, that while and EVA landing would work, it would be a pain to rendezvous back with the spaceplane each time I wanted to store a new sample for return to Kerbin... So, I choose a nice flat landing spot with plenty of room to takeoff again, near three separate biomes (Lesses Flats, Slopes, and Lowlands), and landed: And then Bill Kerman buzzed around with his jetpack on EVA, collecting some samples: Before the spaceplane, loaded up with Bill, samples, and EVA reports; took off again, ultimately to head back to Kerbin: In short, GREAT SUCCESS! Now I just need to land the stupid thing. In the meantime, I'll be busy with Project Amadeus... Regards, Northstar

I actually designed this to show a new player a few concepts about how to design an all-stock spaceplane, but since I did it in my main Career save, this has also become a part of my space program. The small Clamp-O-Tron Jr. on top should theoretically allow it to dock with other craft (if I had any equipped with Clamp-O-Tron Jr's), though due to the inconvenience of this, more likely I'll just use it to grab a surface sample from Minmus on an Extreme EVA, and ferry Bill and the sample back to Kerbin for a bit of !SCIENCE! Regards, Northstar

I'm aware that the reduced radar profile was the main motivation, but the extra lift was also a definite advantage.. (especially considering how high the wingloads are on most fighter jets- and as it would have allowed even more weapons or extra fuel to be loaded) The LV-909's definitely work, but would force him to cut a lot tighter on the Delta-V during ascent and refueling. Their ISP is less than half that of LV-N's, so they have less than half the burn-time for the same number of fuel tanks. LV-N's are more forgiving of mistakes made during the rocket-powered ascent to orbit, and allow greater range after refueling... I'm glad we're in agreement about the intakes. I think the 8 intakes he stacked into his design (with part-clipping) might have been part of the reason he was having trouble making orbit- as they add a LOT of drag to the aircraft... Interesting design, but like somebody pointed out before, Engine Nacelles make for extremely inefficient intakes (their primary purpose is actually supposed to be increasing fuel flow, and thus thrust- but the code isn't in place for that yet- much like precoolers currently have no function in the stock game). I also always recommend new players stick with single-Turbojet designs, as that way they don't have to worry about asymmetric flame-out, and can focus on learning the other principles of spaceplanes. With sufficient lift, such a design also grants huge range and a high altitude ceiling to most planes- but it's hard to accomplish that in the stock game, as the lift coefficient doesn't increase for multi-part wings like it does for the bigger wings in mods... (that number in the SPH/VAB labeled as "lift" is actually lift coefficient in the same manner as drag coefficient- the game multiplies the wing's mass by it and factors in Angle of Attack to get actual lift... It took some testing for me to determine this- I compared modded parts with low mass but high lift coefficients vs. much heavier wings with medium lift coefficients to confirm this.) Those are some great mods, and I'm planning on implementing FAR in my next career game myself... (after the release of 0.24 and update of necessary mods, as well as when I reach a shopping-point in my current save) I'm starting to wish I had just started with FAR from the beginning, so I actually would recommend it to new players... Regards, Northstar P.S. Many players may be interested to know that the current stock aerodynamics model actually uses essentially the same formula to calculate lift as to calculate drag, right down to multiplying mass by a coefficient and factoring in speed- only with an additional term for Angle of Attack. P.P.S. In real life, lift coefficient increases with wing size- though there are also effects of shielding and increased drag on the wingtips that prevent this from becoming nearly as important of a factor in real-life or with FAR as with stock aerodynamics and B9 Aerospace or Procedural Dynamics, for instance... And due to mach-effects, while bigger wings are still much better on subsonic aircraft, the same holds true to a much lesser degree (and actually becomes harmful much sooner) on supersonics with FAR or in real-life...

It all depends a lot on the design. Some spaceplanes do best just climbing with a nose angle of 30 degrees, activating their rockets when their trajectory starts to level out- like this one... XOIIO, I designed an all-stock spaceplane for you to show you exactly the concepts I was talking about before. I used MechJeb and TAC Fuel Balancer with it, but they didn't really let me do anything I couldn't do unmodded (except quickly move some fuel out of the central tank- which could have easily been accomplished with fuel pipes or careful manual transfers). I was also running KSP-Interstellar, but not using any of its parts- but that actually nerfs the design by causing the Turbojet to overheat if I don't shut it off by around 32 k... (KSP-Interstellar allows stock precoolers to counteract this- but I didn't want to show you an example craft with what would for you be a worthlesss part) You can have the craft file for reference or use if you want, if somebody can just remind me how to post craft files to the forum (it's been a long time since I last did so...) I took a LOT of screenshots to show you every step of the ascent profile, though I forget to take ones showing the drop-off of Turbojet thrust at high altitude (due to limited IntakeAir)... Also note the following: (1) The canted canards, like I suggested to you before. This was accomplished with a combination of the default large-increment angles and Shift+rotation to design the largest cant I felt would look presentable... The spaceplane had plenty of vertical stabilization, and I had no issues with yaw control. (2) The 10-degree built-in Angle of Attack. This allowed me to point the nose closer to the prograde vector- maximizing the effectiveness of both the air intakes and the engines (Oberth Effect means you get more energy if you burn along your prograde vector). It also helped a lot with getting off the runway, by greatly reducing its liftoff speed- since the twin LV-N's made it rather heavy... Even so, it used most of the runway getting up to speed... (3) The presence of only 1 centrally-positioned Turbojet. As you can see from the screenshots, at high altitude there was just barely enough IntakeAir for the single Turbojet. Multiple turbojets would have just produced the same thrust with more mass and drag at high altitude. It did mean that a speed run wasn't practical though, since the altitude ceiling on turbojet-only power was so low... (at the turbojet-only altitude ceiling of around 4200 meters, the same 3 intakes could have run 5 or 6 turbojets...) (4) The increased wing size vs. your spaceplane design. Your design had entirely too high of a wingload, which was greatly hampering its performance. I forgot just how little lift the stock wing parts create- even this design has a rather high wingload considering its heavy load of rocket fuel and LV-N's... (5) The lack of reaction wheels- with properly-designed wings and control surfaces, you don't actually need any SAS torque to keep your spaceplane stable in atmospheric flight. This also allowed me to strip out any extra batteries, and get by with a single Ox-STAT solar panel for generating electricity outside the atmosphere... (you could easily get by with no solar panels, and just be VERY careful with use of the cockpit's SAS torque if you wanted...) (6) The increased wing area towards the rear. Nose-dragging designs (ones with their Center of Lift behind their Center of Mass) are almost always more stable than tail-draggers: and actually improperly named, as in powered flight they tend to stabilize towards the horizon... Regards, Northstar

Ugh, I would never resort to that. Then again, I have a lot more experience with spaceplanes, and play with mods like B9 Aerospace and Procedural Dynamics (procedural wings) that allow me to build precisely the spaceplane I want/need... You clearly don't understand how the jet engines work. Right click on them some time when you are above 20,000 meters, and look at their thrust. They produce less thrust the faster you are flying, and are limited by the supply of IntakeAir. What that means is, near maximum altitude, two Turbojets limited by IntakeAir supply will produce *exactly* the same thrust as one Turbojet- but with less weight and no possibility of asymmetric flameout. Additionally, because of the way jet flameout works, you can keep one Turbojet flying up to a higher altitude than you can two with the same number of intakes... You will actually get MORE thrust with two LV-N's, because they won't be affected by your speed or altitude. And I would hardly consider two LV-N's to be spamming them... Make sure to build the tail fins and front winglets in at a pitch-angle, and a horizontal angle as well on the tail fins; and either angle the delta wings by 5-10 degrees, or add a Structural Wingboard to the back of each delta wing. Either one will raise your altitude ceiling under jet power alone. Also, move the antnenna and any radial batteries as far forward as possible- it will improve your plane's stability. If you were playing with MechJeb, you could use the Surface Info function or a custom window for a radar altimeter. That would be visible without having to go IVA, and would free you to use the Mk2 cockpit and place an air intake on the front, so you wouldn't have to do as much part-clipping (in fact, though it will decrease performance of your spaceplane, I strongly encourage you to take the honorable road and remove all the extra part-clipped air intakes, so you only have 1 intake per node...) Regards, Northstar

Implementing the following changes will help: (1) Build the wings in at an angle of at least 5-10 degrees (Shift+rotate in the VAB/SPH). This will allow you to point the nose closer to the horizon during your speed-run, so your intakes will bring in more air at the same speed. (by the way, did you clip multiple intakes together on the latest design? It kind of looks like it... Personally, I strongly oppose abusing part-clipping on intakes.) (2) Replace the Mk1 Cockpit with a Mk2 Cockpit. The Mk2 has an attachment node on the front- use it for a third RAM intake (3:2 intake:engine ratio isn't unrealistic...) (3) Angle the vertical stabilizers at the back horizontally by at least 15 degrees. This will provide a bit of lift at the cost of no extra weight. It will reduce your yaw-stabilization a bit, but you don't need as much as you have there... Modern aircraft designs such as the F-22 Raptor use inclined vertical stabilizers for a reason: (4) Consider swapping down to just one Turbojet, and increasing to two LV-N's. A single Turbojet located centrally behind the Center of Mass doesn't have to worry about jet flameout, and on your speed run, you won't have enough IntakeAir to run two Turbojets at more than 50% throttle anyways. The extra rocket thrust should help you get to orbit, on the other hand, and LV-N's don't need to worry about flame-out. If you do this, though, move the side-fuselages as far forward as possible so your twin LV-N's won't move the Center of Mass too far back, and add a Structural Wingboard to the back of each of your delta-wings as a trailing edge to move the Center of Lift further back so your plane won't be too much of a tail-dragger (in this case, you won't be able to build your main wings in at an angle... Your front winglets and vertical stabilizers should still have a built-in Angle of Attack though.) (5) Move that antenna (or whatever it is) at the tail-end as far forward as possible (I suggest just behind the cockpit). You will want a Center of Mass that is further forward to make your plane less of a tail-dragger and more stable at low speeds- especially if you switch to twin LV-N's as I suggested. You realistically would want your antenna as far from the nuclear reactors in the LV-N's as possible anyways... The same goes with any radial batteries (are those batteries at the rear- I can't tell) and engines you have on the fuselage- move them forward. Regards, Northstar

Excellent ideas... - Northstar

Ughhhh, if I hear "Frost Waltz" one more time, I'm going to lose my mind! The same music is used for the "Soundsense" mod to Dwarf Fortress- which adds sound to that game (most players won't play without it) I was sick of Frost waltz long before I ever picked up KSP for the first time... Regards, Northstar

I was surprised not to see this on the forbidden topics list (always room for one more, right?) so here goes... MUSIC! Good/varied music greatly improves a gaming experience, and KSP needs more, and more varied, music than just the five ambient tunes you get on the surface of some planets/moons, when you reach stable orbit, and around some of the facilities at the KSC (VAB, Tracking Station, R&D)- only two of which you hear outside of the KSC... It shouldn't be *too hard* to implement- game designers have been adding music to their games for decades now, after all. What would it be to give KSP a few more tunes? There's plenty of freely-available stuff on the internet. KSP designers must know this- as they already use a free music track as the base of the orbital ambiance... (most of you may not realize it, but the "twinkle-twinkle" sounding orbital ambiance is actually a section of a musical track freely available for use in games on the internet- it's seen use in the "Soundsense" mod for "Dwarf Fortress" for at least as long as it's been in KSP- to the point that I was sick of hearing it from years of playing Dwarf Fortress long before I ever picked up KSP for the first time on Steam...) Regards, Northstar

False. Using KSP-Interstellar's plasma thrusters (they are basically scaleable electric engines, and are based off real-life technology that has never been polished as we currently have no way to realistically power it on our spacecraft without nuclear reactors), and fusion reactors or beamed microwave power. You can get ISP's into the thousands with low, but usable thrust. (higher than stock ion engines, at least, with enough electricity) Mod, I know, but so is KAS. Regards, Northstar

Install Krag's Planet Factory and set up an equatorial base on Inaccessible (the speed of rotation on that planet is such that you will get thrown off the surface like a fly on the outside of a wheel without grappling hooks to hold you down...) Regards, Northstar

I strongly agree. I want something that is believable, it doesn't have to be 100% realistic (I have no problem with ion engines, for example) The problem is, of course, different players find different things believable. For instance, I find the patched conics model a little weird, because I know enough about orbital mechanics to expect things like Legrange Points... Not every player does... Better aerodynamics, clouds, re-entry, life-support: things like that are no-brainers. The toughest part, IMHO, is finding ways to implement those that have even less of a memory footprint than the mods that currently implement them like FAR, TAC Life Support, Deadly Re-Entry, and EVE... (none of which I have the spare memory for in my current install) That's where Squad really needs to show their coding prowess compared to the modders- considering they do this for a living... Regards, Northstar

The Amadeus Mission Vehicle began its journey to Asteroid-684 with a Minmus encounter designed to shift its inclination and simultaneously provide a gravity-assist: This may be a bit confusing as to why I'm doing it, so let me explain: Asteroid-684 is on a trajectory where it will be approaching Kerbin from south of the equatorial plane at a high inclination. In order to intercept it, the Amadeus Mission Vehicle is using Minmus to raise it above (north) the equatorial plane, at which point it will perform a burn near apoapsis roughly analogous to the following (don't worry- it's not finished yet) After aligning inclination perpendicular to Asteroid-684's approach trajectory as shown, the Amadeus Mission Vehicle will make a burn more or less directly towards the asteroid. This will eject the Amadeus on the correct side of Kerbin's SOI, but not necessarily on an intercept trajectory. A further burn will be performed to correct the trajectory at the most appropriate point (so as to minimize Delta-V expenditures). After a close approach is achieved, and velocity is matched, the Amadeus Mission vehicle will attempt to grapple the asteroid with its twin KAS grappling hooks, and begin towing it in such a direction shift its trajectory and create a periapsis in Kerbin's upper atmosphere for an aerocapture (though the Amadeus Mission Vehicle will likely have very little fuel left to actually shift the asteroid's orbit...) Regards, Northstar

Thinking through how to refuel the Amadeus Mission Vehicle, a thought occurred to me that probably should have occurred to me before- what about the 350 km Spacedock I set up for precisely the purpose of refueling my missions leaving the Kerbin system? And so, I rendezvoused the Amadeus with the 350 km Spacedock, and... It worked! Yes, there was a little inexplicable jittering- but nothing on the order of with the RCLV- and I actually experienced more jittering from the 2.5 meter docking port holding the two 3.75 meter stack together than I did from docking with the spacedock... I also noticed that the 350 km spacedock's fuel tanks were completely full- maybe I should have been making more stops there at the past... So, the Amadeus Mission Vehicle is now fully fueled, and ready to save countless Kerbal lives. And I have a few extra fuel tankers in orbit to go send to my Munar Spacedock and Minmus Spacedock afterwards if everything goes according to plan... Regards, Northstar

The new extended-tank version of the Reusable Crew Launch Vehicle made a launch and rendezvous with the Amadeus Mission Vehicle: The intention was to have it dock with the Amadeus via KAS winch and wait there until an unmanned fuel tanker could also rendezvous, so that the Kerbals on the RCLV could hook up the tanker... However, due to an unexpected Kraken attack, that repeated itself after restarting KSP and multiple quicksaves/quickloads, I found that I was unable to keep the RCLV hooked up to the Amadeus for any significant period of time, because both vessels would begin to jitter around and then spontaneously explode... Therefore, I did what I could, and after a number of attempts managed to transfer over some spare fuel from the RCLV before having to unhook it to prevent spontaneous combustion... I decided to recover the RCLV, and will have to try again with a slightly redesigned RCLV (since I believe the RCLV was the problem) or a manned tanker launch... You guys will have to forgive me for the large amounts of text and lack of roleplaying- I didn't expect a Kraken attack to occur, and don't wish to try to roleplay it in-universe... Regards, Northstar