Northstar1989

Actually, you don't. You can obtain all your hydrogen (LiquidFuel) by electrolyzing water on Duna. You can then combine this hydrogen with the CO2 to obtain an even greater fuel-mass in methane (CH4). Unfortunately, the SABATIER will produce *TWICE* as much Methane as you can burn with the Oxidizer you can obtain by electrolyzing the water it spits back out at you: CO2 + 4 H2 --> CH4 + 2 H2O + energy [Note that in KSP-Interstellar, FractalUK has the Sabatier Process *INACCURATELY* consuming, rather than producing, energy] 2 H2O + energy --> 2 H2 + O2 CH4 + 2 O2 --> CO2 + 2 H2O + energy In real-life, the Sabatier has mainly been proposed for use on Mars not independently, as FractalUK seems to think it would be used, but in combination with the Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction (a reaction I have been bugging FractalUK to include in KSP-Interstellar for some time now). The RWGS reaction is: CO2 + H2 + energy --> CO + H2O Real-life ISRU reactors would perform both reactions, in separate chambers. Their reactants are the same, so you will *ALWAYS* have both occurring to at least some very small extent, but one reaction is favored over the other by changing the temperature, pressure, and catalysts in the reaction chamber... Regards, Northstar P.S. The excess LiquidMethane doesn't HAVE TO go to waste, though. You can still utilize it as a propellant in thermal rocket- which will happily operate on LiquidMethane, LiquidFuel, or even plain old LiquidWater... LiquidMethane will give you lower thrust but higher ISP than LiquidWater, but lower thrust AND ISP than LFO mix... (making it almost more worth your while to just electrolyze the LiquidWater and use it straight rather than going through the extra step of reacting the LiquidFuel with CO2- especially since FractalUK inaccurately makes the Sabatier Reaction consume electricity like an endothermic reaction, rather than making it the self-sustaining exothermic reaction it actually is in real-life...)

It would be nice if FractalUK would add this to the standard mod though. In real-life, Gamma Ray Spectormeters can be utilized to detect a lot more than just radioactive elements- one of the, *MANY* things they have historically been used to detect is subsurface deposits of water on Mars! http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/mission/instruments/grs/ @FractalUK Are you reading this? You already have the part, the real-life science, and somebody even handed you the code that part needs! It shouldn't be that difficult to implement... Regards, Northstar

Absolutely and completely not. Basic-level fusion is *WAY* better than basic-level fission. Clearly you've been spoiled by playing with the upper-level reactors for too long. Regards, Northstar

FractalUK already announced this is something he's working on... (or am I behind- did he already fix it?) Clearly, you don't understand how a photovoltaic panel works. Photovoltaics generate an electric current directly on exposure to light- NOT thermal energy which is turned into an electric current. Thus, they have absolutely no need for generators, either in KSP-I or in the real world. Regards, Northstar

Like I said, though- the atmosphere is only 40% as thick at 4200 meters. For that reason, terminal velocity is 63.7% greater at 5000 meters than at sea-level... Aside from that, if you remember the Rocket Equation, you know that you pay the highest cost in mass for those initial few hundred Delta-V. Even if a mass drive that starts at the base of a 4200 meter mountain and ends at 5000 meters only saves the rocket 300 or 400 m/s of Delta-V off its total cost, that's a lot more fuel mass (as well as engine mass and control mass) saved than you think- especially for large rockets. Once again, the Oberth Effect is also a bit of a contributing factor here- if you leave the mass drive at 2000 m/s, and start burning your rocket engines immediately (even though most of that energy will go to drag), you still get a lot further with the same amount of fuel than if you start burning your engines at 0 m/s... Finally, that kick-start velocity translates to serious benefits in terms of reduced design constraints. If you start out at 2,000 m/s at 5000 meters, your SRB's will last you until a much greater altitude- which means you may be able to make use of much weaker (but higher-ISP) LFO engines, like NERVA's, for your first LFO engines... Good to know. Didn't realize the implications when you said that before... So join me, come over to the mountain-launch side... I know that assisted-launch ending at 5000 or 6000 meters is a lot less valuable than assisted-launch ending at 14000 meters, but it's a lot more realistic. And I try to keep at least *SOME* realism in all my KSP games... Well I can see why you would say it requires KAS (you need some way to hook the EPL up to a command module and RocketParts storage), but it certainly doesn't require Kethane. At least not for on-Kerbin launches where you have an unlimited supply of pre-made RocketParts readily available. I can see why you would say that, though, as Kethane is very complementary to EPL when launching off-planet, but we're not doing that here, are we? I have no experience whatsoever modeling things , but I'd be willing to learn. IT can't be *THAT* hard, right? Regards, Northstar

Please don't make comments like that. They're not at all helpful. Balloons wouldn't be useful for reusable rocket designs like this, anyways. It would be *EXTREMELY* difficult to stably attach a rocket this large to a balloon, for starters. Second, this rocket design needs some time in denser atmosphere to build up some vertical velocity before its TWR falls below 1. Its ideal launch altitude (about 5,000 meters below where thrust would hit a maximum) would be about 12,000-14,000 meters on Eve (unfortunately, Eve has no mountains that high), so a balloon wouldn't even be that great of a help if you could get one to stably hold the rocket... Re-loading the rocket onto the balloon wouldn't be a trivial matter either (and would likely require recycling the entire balloon and rebuilding the rocket on it each time...) Besides, don't Hooligan Labs balloons have problems with losing all buoyancy (and dropping like a rock) as soon as they exit physics loading range? For obvious reasons, a balloon that went crashing into the ground and exploded shortly after rocket liftoff wouldn't be of any use for a 100% reusable launch system... Regards, Northstar

Now, as to the reusable launch system itself... First of all, the requirements of any rocket can always be understood in terms of thrust, ISP, and payload fractions. In the case of Eve, that means at least 8400 m/s Delta-V even launching from a mountaintop launch site, especially considering you will have at least some steering losses. That's certainly nothing to sneeze at. Half the solution to a problem like this is technology. You simply can't build a reusable launch vehicle like this with standard chemical rockets. It won't work with any kind of a reasonable payload fraction- ever. The question is how futuristic you're willing to allow your technology to be then. In the case of a Duna colony, I generally limit myself to the technology of fission and ion engines that either currently exist (molten-sodium fission reactors) or will soon exist (such as the VASIMR engines from NearFuture pack, or KSP-I's plasmodynamic thrusters: both of which which are basically just upscaled standard ion engines that work slightly differently under the hood...) On Eve, however, I'm willing to accept for myself up through upgraded fusion-power technology (the fusion reactors that become available with Antimatter Power) ; and the other parts, such as upgraded KSP-I fission reactors and hybrid thermal turbojets, that become available at the fusion-power tech node (the upgraded reactors utilize plasma cores instead of solid cores- a fission power technology that is still some ways off as of the current moment.) NOTE: The design I discuss below will also work with antimatter reactors- although the very rapid rate at which they consume antimatter as reactor fuel, as well as their lack of dependence on sea-mining for reactor fuel will make a mountaintop launchpad even more useful... The other half of making a system like this work is design. You want to design a launch system that works *WITH* the peculiarities of the celestial body you are launching from, rather than against them. On Kerbin or Laythe, this means using the readily-available oxygen supplies in the atmosphere to build oxygen-breathing launch platforms wherever possible. On Duna, this making use of the fact that orbital velocity is very low- and velocity curves are absolute (it doesn't matter if orbital velocity is 850 m/s or 2300 m/s, if an engine loses half its thrust at 1000 m/s, it loses half its thrust at 1000 m/s), and building thermal turbojet-powered spaceplanes, which can easily reach orbital velocity *INSIDE* Duna's atmosphere, due to their velocity curves only losing about half their thrust by 1000 m/s (Duna's orbital velocity is about 850 m/s). On Eve... Well, aside from thermal turbojet spaceplanes- which don't work as well on Eve as on Kerbin or, say, Duna- as velocity and atmospheric curves are absolute, and unrelated to the scale height of the atmosphere (which is greater on Eve- so you have more atmosphere still above you at maximum cruising altitude with a spaceplane's atmospheric engines) or low-altitude orbital velocity (which is much higher on Eve- meaning you can't reach as high a fraction of orbital velocity in the atmosphere using thermal turbojets... The much lower orbital velocity of Duna, by contrast, allows spaceplanes to reach and exceed orbital velocity while still in the atmosphere...) what DOES work on Eve are rockets- even if they normally have to be incredibly large... Specifically, the first key technology for a reusable launch system is an AIR-BREATHING rocket engine. Not to be confused with an oxygen-breathing rocket, as no combustion occurs (Eve's atmosphere contains little to no Oxygen to support combustion), but rather thermal turbojets utilized as rocket boosters. This eliminates much of the need for massive quantities of fuel to reach orbit on Eve, and is better adapted to the planet's characteristics- instead of trying to shove massive quantities of rocket fuel through miles of dense atmosphere, you rely on the very long scale-height of Eve's atmosphere (the fact that atmospheric pressure essentially falls off very slowly as you ascend) to derive much of your propellant from the atmosphere itself- which is abundant until you reach rather extreme heights. You essentially get "free" propulsion for your rocket until you reach an altitude where thermal turbojets no longer are capable of producing a Thrust-Weight Ratio greater than one... Of course, nothing is ever entirely free- and propulsion least of all. In order to get decent performance from such a system on Eve, you need to make use of 2.5 meter hybrid thermal turbojets (I'll get into the reason for the "hybrid" part later) coupled to 2.5 meter KSP-Interstellar fusion reactors (the larger-diameter reactors achieve higher power-density, at the expense of more rapid fuel consumption). These will give you great raw lifting power at low altitudes on Eve- but as stated, eventually you will reach an altitude where the TWR of the system falls below 1 (this actually occurs when the air intakes Thermal Turbojets require can no longer bring in enough IntakeAtm, the resource utilized by Thermal Turbojet's and present even where there is no oxygen- as they engage in no combustion- to produce thrust great enough to lift the reactor's mass. You can delay this until higher altitude with a higher intake:engine ratio, but eventually you will reach this point well before exiting Eve's atmosphere unless you do something exploitative like attach 56 intakes for each engine...) Further, fusion reactors make use of the extremely rare resource Tritium, as well as the still somewhat difficult-to-get resource Deuterium. Both of these resources can theoretically be obtained on Eve- the Deuterium from centrifuging the "sea water", the Tritium from breeding Lithium (centrifuged from sea water) in a fission reactor (fissile fuels are also locally available on Eve), but only VERY slowly- requiring a MASSIVE number of ISRU refineries and fission reactors breeding tritium to produce it at any decent rate... Finally, fusion reactors require a continuous supply of electricity to operate. While they can more than provide enough power to keep themselves running once activated; they require an external power source to start them up. As such, I *HIGHLY* recommend installing a large fission reactor (or a fusion one you will always keep running) at your mountaintop launchpad that can be connected to the rocket via KAS winch to jump-start its fusion reactors before liftoff (you can detach the winch, and remove the KAS connector port from the rocket if desired, once the reactors have been jump-started shortly before liftoff...) You'll also need to install generators on your rocket to keep the fusion reactions self-sustaining after the reactors are active (you won't need a generator attached to every single reactor, however- but the number/size of generators you WILL need increases with the total number of fusion reactors you'll be running on the rocket...) The rarity of fusion reactor fuels is one reason you want to launch your reusable rockets from a mountaintop launchpad- the higher the launch site, the less time it will take to escape the atmosphere (you spend the greatest amount of time in the lowermost atmosphere, where drag causes you to ascend more slowly. Though an almost completely negligible effect, gravity is also *slightly* weaker at higher altitudes...) You will be able to deactivate the reactors once the launch stage is safely back on the ground a little sooner- so a high-altitude launch will save some Deuterium/Tritium mix- and with the rather anemic Tritium supplies you will likely be able to produce on Eve, you will want to save every bit of Tritium you can... The other, more important reason you *NEED* to utilize a mountaintop launch site is because thick atmosphere "chokes" thermal turbojets. They have an ideal atmospheric pressure at which they produce their maximum thrust (it is the equivalent of about 4000-5000 meters above Kerbin Sea Level), and at higher pressures than that, the dense atmosphere "chokes" the turbojets, leading to reduced thrust output. Even given everything else I will be describing below, this reusable rocket design is *VERY* marginal, and still only capable of carrying relatively small payloads to orbit (the model version I present is basically only capable of carrying a roughly 8 ton payload to orbit on Eve, for instance- even though it utilizes UPGRADED fusion reactors...) If you make use of a sea-level launchpad on Eve, you'll need to make use of disposable boosters of some sort to get it up to optimal altitude, or accept a lower maximum payload fraction for the same launch vehicle. You will want to make use of a 2.5 meter hybrid thermal turbojet in the "core" of the rocket, but you will also want to strap on 3-6 1.25 meter hybrid thermal turbojet "boosters" to your 2.5 meter core (depending on desired lifting capacity), or even 2-3 2.5 meter boosters (essentially clones of the 2.5m core- 2.5 meter reactor/TTJ combinations get higher TWR than the core- although they will require a greater number of intakes to keep them supplied with air...) These "boosters" SHOULD NOT BE DETACHABLE- they will be part of the reusable launch stage, and are present mainly for the additional thrust they provide. Although your thermal turbojets will be providing all of the thrust during your early ascent, you will want to switch the 3 hybrid TTJ boosters to internal fuel mode to provide additional thrust when your TTJ thrust starts to taper off due to limited availability of IntakeAtm (increasing your airspeed- and thus the intake mass of your air intakes) later in your ascent, when your TWR on TTJ power alone starts to approach 1... (MechJeb's "Vessel Info" window can be very helpful for showing you when this point is approaching...) This will enable you to get by mostly on TTJ power a little longer- by raising the altitude at which your TWR falls below 1... Thermal Rocket Nozzles are another technology introduced by KSP-Interstellar, and they are actually the technology that real-life NERVA designs utilized (the LV-N engines from stock actually look and function more like high-ISP rocket motors than actual NERVA engines... For one, they don't require a separate nuclear reactor. Additionally, they rely solely on LFO mix- whereas the real-life thermal rocket designs can make use of virtually any liquid propellant, including liquid hydrogen, liquified hydrazine, or purified water; as they rely on the heat of the nuclear reactor, rather than the heat from combustion, to generate the rocket's thrust...) They produce significantly less thrust that Thermal Turbojets, but have higher ISP (although they rely on expelling internal propellant you have to lift in the rocket- and TTJ's rely on expelling atmosphere), and when you make use of fusion reactors for these boosters will still produce enough thrust to significantly prolong the useful life of the core Thermal Tubojet during ascent. The Thermal Tubojet, as I mentioned, should be a "hybrid" Thermal Turbojet (this technology becomes available with the Fusion Power tech node in KSP-Interstellar). The advantage of the hybrid TTJ, over a conventional TTJ, is that it will be able to switch "internal propellant modes" later in the ascent, and essentially start to act like a thermal rocket. You will eventually want to switch all of your hybrid TTJ's over to internal propellant mode once you climb too high for the TTJ's to continue to provide a useful amount of thrust to lift your rocket... Fusion-powered or not, thermal rockets don't provide an awful lot of thrust (the fission-powered 2.5 meter variant only ties with the LV-N in terms of TWR and ISP, when powered by Thorium), and with the relatively large amount of fuel you'll need to stack on top of your engines just to get a moderate-sized payload to orbit, you'll be lucky just to be getting a TWR a little over 1 for your rocket at this point... You'll want to package LFO-mix as fuel for your TTJ's, as LFO mix yields the highest thrust of any thermal rocket propellant, at the expense of ISP (fusion-powered Thermal Rockets still get *GREAT* ISP with LFO-mix though: over 3000 with the 1.25 meter reactors, and over 4,000 with the 2.5 meter reactors- which have a higher core temperature). Drag might cause you to actually start slowing down- although to minimize this effect, you should try and slap on as many stack and radial air intakes as you feel comfortable placing on your rocket to keep the TTJ running as long as possible... (Remember, it's an air-breathing ROCKET that shoots superheated air out the back, not a combustion-powered plane: its design could reasonably accommodate a much higher intake:engine ratio than most real-life fuel-burning jet plane designs...) The thermal rocket stage won't be able to efficiently carry your payload to orbit due to its extremely low TWR- and besides, you'll need to re-use this launch stage to carry future payloads to orbit. So, once your apoapsis is a *CONSIDERABLE* distance beyond the atmosphere, and you are nearing the atmosphere's edge (you should be following a highly VERTICAL ascent trajectory up until this point. No gravity-turn here: you'll need as much vertical velocity as possible in order to re-use your lower stage, and additionally your TWR will dip so low as you approach maximum altitude for the TTJ and then switch to the thermal rockets that you'll need to be pointed more or less straight up in order to continue to build vertical velocity...) you will need to decouple this lower stage from your rocket (which should contain the four fusion reactors; the attached electric generators you will actually need for the fusion reaction to self-sustain; a probe core, a small amount of leftover LFO-mix, drogue parachutes, and reaction wheels for re-entry and landing; inline heat radiators to disperse excess reactor WasteHeat, and a considerably-sized nearly-empty 2.5 meter LFO tank as you will be firing your thermal rockets in LFO mode for quite a while before you come close to exiting the atmosphere...) The next stage should be a high TWR upper stage. You will need either the unbeatable TWR that chemical rockets provide (only exceeded by a few specialized nuclear propulsion systems, such as the Orion and DT-Vista, which destroy anything in a several-kilometer sphere directly beneath them- making their use in a reusable launch platform completely unsustainable- unless you want to airlift a DT-Vista several kilometers from your Eve colony; and plasma thrusters with VERY HIGH amounts of available beamed microwave power, on the order of hundreds of Megawatts...), or a powerful NERVA engine like the stock LV-N's or the (slightly better) NearFuture inline fusion-powered NERVA engines with a correspondingly reduced fuel-load (although the engine itself has lower TWR, it is actually possible to achieve a higher initial extra-atmospheric TWR for the vessel as a whole with stock-like NERVA's than with chemical rockets if you compensate for the reduced thrust but more than doubled ISP by cutting the size of the fuel tanks in half) to circularize your orbit enough to raise your periapsis above the majority of the atmosphere (a little dipping a few thousand meters in should be acceptable) before your launch stage comes crashing back down into Eve's atmosphere and disappears due to being unloaded... The higher your apoapsis, the more time you will have to accomplish this- but under Eve's gravity it probably won't be very long at all, which is why you need a chemical rocket... Note that I don't recommend utilizing KSP-Interstellar fusion reactors for the upper stage, even though they out-perform stock-like NERVA's both in terms of TWR and ISP (this is realistic and to be expected, as you are comparing fission and fusion technology when you compare LV-N's and KSP-I fusion reactors. NearFuture fusion-NERVA engines, on the other hand, barely outperform fission NERVA's, but might be thought of as lower-tech fusion reactors more in line with today's technology rather than KSP-I's slightly more futuristic fusion reactors... NearFuture fusion-NERVA engines also become available at a much earlier tech node than KSP-I fusion reactors...) This is as KSP-Interstellar fusion reactors are much HEAVIER than the corresponding stock-like NERVA's of the same radius. A 2.5 meter reactor is too heavy for the upper stage, and a 1.25 meter reactor is going to create structural problems if the rest of the stage is of a 2.5 meter radius... (as it should be- you would need to make a *VERY* long 1.25 meter upper stage to carry enough fuel to get your payload to orbit- and any upper stage that long would have serious issues with the re-entry/landing necessary to re-use the upper stage as well... Though, go ahead with and use a 1.25 meter KSP-I fusion thermal rocket if you think you can keep a rocket with an upper stage that long or with a thinner engine than the stage on top of it stable ascending through the the atmosphere, and plan on leaving your upper stage in orbit...) Once you've accomplished the relatively mundane task of circularizing your orbit; that nonetheless should require a rather significantly-sized upper stage, due to the high orbital velocities around Eve, and your lack of large amounts of horizontal velocity from your lower stage; you will need to switch back to your lower stage *ASAP*. This is the *FUN* part- you will need to target its re-entry so that it lands at a sea-level site near the base of the mountain range where you built your mountain launchpad (if you kept a runway at the initial landing site from before, this is the single best place to target your landing, regardless of its distance from the mountains...) Once again, you will need the following components in the lower stage to safely land it back on Eve: A probe core- for guidance Reaction Wheels- for control Drogue Chutes- to reduce your velocity A small amount of leftover LFO-mix (to adjust your re-entry and landing trajectory) What you will basically do is target your landing (if you *LISTENED* before, and did not perform much or any of a gravity turn with your lower stage active, your trajectory should be largely vertical- which should make this relatively easy) so that it comes down directly over your sea-level runway base or a flat recovery zone, and let drag and the drogue chutes slow your lower stage down. When it gets close to the ground, you will need to perform a suicide-burn using your Thermal Turbojets (which should be at full thrust again by this altitude- and have a bit of Thermal Power left) and thermal rockets to kill the last part of your vertical velocity: which should be relatively small due to the parachutes. Once your lower stage has touched down, you should *IMMEDIATELY* shut down its fusion reactors to save fuel. You then need to reach it with some sort of vehicle (preferably a helicopter or VTOL aircraft, although rovers can also work- depending on the distance from your nearest base/outpost) once its fusion reactors are completely cooled down, and drain the remaining fusion and chemical fuels from them. Then, you can recycle your lower stage for an equivalent mass of RocketParts, exactly as I discussed before with the mountaintop launchpad set-up, and re-build it at your mountaintop launchpad upon transporting the RocketParts there (this is a much better alternative than hauling the lower stage there and literally rebuilding it by re-attaching it via a docking port used to attach it to its upper stage in the first place...) As for the upper stage- you can de-orbit it and re-use it in a similar manner if desired, or you can recycle it utilizing an orbital Scrapper Ship (see the picture below) and utilize it to build something else useful in Eve orbit (like a Microwave Power Transmission Station, or a fuel depot) Regards, Northstar P.S. Here is an album showing images of an example craft for this type of system in use on Kerbin. Note that the rocket was designed so as to be capable of operation on Eve, even though it is being used here on Kerbin (its TWR is sufficient for operation on Eve, as are the fuel loads...) Obviously, this rocket could use some optimization (such as a significant reduction in the lower-stage fuel load, and a corresponding increase in the upper-stage fuel load), and I haven't bothered to show re-entry of the upper stage as well (assume it would be used in this example as a transfer stage for an interplanetary transfer of the upper stage, or its fuel drained into a depot and mass recycled for RocketParts to help build an Orbital Microwave Power Transmission Station...) Note also that, although I utilized LFO to perform a suicide burn close to the ground, this could equally well be accomplished through use of standard parachutes instead of drogue chutes, or through use of the thermal turbojets in atmospheric mode...

Single-stage landers, in fact entire (Space-X style) reusable launch systems, are easily possible in a sustainable manner on Eve- especially with Extraplanetary Launchpads and KSP-Interstellar fusion reactors... (What you CAN'T build, however, is something reasonable that can land and takeoff on Eve without any stage detachment. It requires a colony capable of refueling reusable liquid-stage boosters with locally-produced fuel, and recycling said boosters back into launch platforms, to build a sustainable launch system...) I wrote a rather lengthy reply about *HOW* you would actually go about building a reusable launch system on Eve (starting with how you would build a mountain launch facility there- one of the key steps). But it was *FAR* too long to post in this thread without feeling like I was hijacking your thread on the Kethane Traveling Circus- so I've created a separate thread for it instead. Read it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71020-Eve-Reusable-Launch-System-%28REQUIRES-MODS%29 Regards, Northstar

Combine Extraplanetary Launchpads and KSP-Interstellar, and you've got the beginnings of a transport system. Eve has deuterium supplies in its "seas", so it's sustainable to run a fusion-powered lifter system from there (you'll need to mine Lithium to make Tritium as well, though- which is INCREDIBLY slow. Prepare to spam 20 or 30 ISRU refineries to get it at any decent pace). It also has reasonable supplies of Uranium and Thorium, so you can run fission reactors there (due to its lighter density and higher power, Thorium is a MUST on Eve to get much of anything done though...) Your best bet for a transport system on Eve probably starts with building a launchpad on one of the tallest mountains (not an easy feat in itself). According to the Wiki: "Eve's highest mountain range has a peak of 7526 m." The Delta-V to orbit from an altitude of 7540m on Eve (the height of the CoM of a 20-30 m rocket atop a launchpad on the highest peak) is 7,968 m/s according to the Wiki. It's 11,282 m/s from sea-level according to the same table. So you save over 3,000 m/s Delta-V directly (and there might be some additional savings I'll discuss later...) Building a mountain launch facility on Eve can definitely be done by helicopter. It doesn't require much mass either. Here's an example of the mountaintop launchpad facility I built on Kerbin- which weighs maybe 30 tons empty (most of that is in the large fuel tank) The mass for that was lifted to a little under one scale-height on Kerbin: approximately the same relative height as the tallest mountains on Eve (Eve scale height is 7000 meters- but due to the thicker atmosphere the same helicopter can fly at a larger number of scale heights with the same payload, even taking higher gravity into account). The helicopter I used for that (the HELO had a theoretical maximum lifting capacity of at least 80 tons to that altitude: so you could definitely do it on Eve with something significantly smaller... So, a basic mission-architecture to build an off-planet (this plan can easily be adapted to Duna) mountain launch site using an electric heavy-lift helicopter should look like this. Read it all the way first if you're going to try and use it: (1) Transport approximately 42 tons of material to Eve orbit (18 for a minimal base, 24 for a helicopter capable of lifting it to Eve's tallest mountains with good safety margins). I suggest doing this using Orbital Construction RocketParts Modules, tied together with stock multi-couplers, or an Orbital Construction Medium Orbital Warehouse (the thing pictured at my Mountaintop Launchpad that looks like a Rockomax-32. It's less efficient storage than the RocketParts Modules, but holds a LOT more than 45 tons of material). MAKE SURE there are at least 2 KAS pipe end-points on the outside, or 6-8 in an attached KAS toolbox (I suggest looking at Scott Manley's "Interstellar Quest" videos to see how to use these parts). Extra (more than 2- but only even numbers help) pipe connectors can come in handy later if you miss your landing sites by a little, but aren't strictly necessary... NOTE: Extraplanetary Launchpads also offers its own RocketParts storage containers, though they hold less than the Orbital Construction ones- so you can use those if you don't mind the higher part-count, and don't want an additional mod... There is also a mod somewhere out there that will let you procedurally-generate RocketParts containers, if you'd prefer that instead. (2) Make a targeted (high-inclination) orbital "drop" of the RocketParts modules/warehouse aimed at a flat SEA LEVEL landing spot close to both the sea and a mountain range on Eve (the low altitude will give more time for atmospheric drag to slow you down, and parachutes will also work better there). Slow it down with PARACHUTES: this will save you MASSIVELY on descent fuel in Eve's extremely thick atmosphere... Alternatively, you can make this first drop untargeted (low-inclination, relying on aerocapture from an atmospheric periapsis), which will cost less fuel for de-orbit, and require fewer parachutes to slow down; but it might take a few "simulations" (F5/F9) to make sure it lands on dry land close to a mountain range, and at a sufficiently low altitude for the parachutes to prevent it breaking on impact with the ground... NOTE: If you're feeling *especially* daring, you can try landing the RocketParts module as a glider dropped from orbit instead, to save greatly on part-count. Using Procedural Dynamics mod wings, you can easily get a great lift-mass ratio and land a payload *MANY* times heavier than 42 tons this way. No need to design a proper plane- it will never have to take off again once landed (a couple small rocket engines might help for control though- especially ones pointed downwards to help with pulling out of the initial steep re-entry dive just before hitting the ground...) (3) Drop an Extraplanetary Launchpads launchpad at the same location via a targeted-drop. You should use the Mk2 (self-propelled) launchpad for this as its small amount of internal RocketParts storage will give you a lot more room for error (make sure the internal RocketParts storage is full before de-orbit). Its internal rocket engines will also be necessary to fine-tune the landing site to be as close as possible: it SHOULD land within 50 meters of the RocketParts module, and MUST be within a couple hundred meters (MechJeb will help a LOT with precision-landings like this, it could even land them literally on top of each other with enough fuel and engine power, it's that good...) Once again, rely mainly on PARACHUTES for the landing (you'll probably need to play with their deployment-altitude a little so they don't throw off your precision-landing). If necessary, you can add extra rocket-engines/fuel for small "hops" to place the launchpad within a couple hundred meters of the RocketParts Module. Also, this is *VERY IMPORTANT*- make sure to include a command module or probe core of some sort on the launchpad, or you won't be able to control its descent, and you won't be able to operate the launchpad once it's on the ground. This will all add up to a rather high part-count between the two drops, but don't worry, you won't have to put up with it for long... NOTE: If you opted for a glider design instead, to land your RocketParts on Eve's surface, you *might* find it easier to land the launchpad first, and the RocketParts second- depending on how good you are at glider-landings. I suggested landing the RocketParts first because they should lack sufficient means of propulsion to make a precision landing withing a couple hundred meters of a launchpad if you took my advice and relied mainly on a "dumb" drop with parachutes. The Mk2 Launchpad, on the other hand, has sufficient fuel and TWR built into it to adjust its landing site on the way down- if not enough to hover in Eve's strong gravity without additional fuel and engines.. (4) Deploy the launchpad, and design (or have already designed earlier- but it might help to see the area around the launchpad where it will need to drive first...) a very small rover for use on Eve, with a KAS winch attached to the rear for dragging tiny things (you might need to drag probe-sized fuel tanks) as well as a KAS radial connector port somewhere else on the vehicle that is accessible. It will also need a "Recycling Bin" attached to the front-side. Give it a couple OX-STAT panels, but know it won't need to drive far... You can build the rover now (from the Mk2's internal RocketParts buffer), and drive it around a bit to test it out; or save constructing it for when you will actually need it (or have hooked up your RocketParts module, if you're using the Mk1 launchpad). I suggest an unmanned rover variant (you might need to drive it out to retrieve your Kerbal- who you'll be landing next...) with a reaction wheel- as the recycling bin and dragging things will somewhat mess up the balance. Also, unless you're a fan of *VERY* long rover drives on Eve's surface (as in, the distance from your current landing site to the peaks of the target mountain range, including the long contour-paths necessary to traverse such steep slopes), I suggest placing a KAS connector port directly over the rover's Center of Mass, so you can eventually airlift it with your electric heavy-lift copter (the rover should be relatively lightweight- so lifting it into the mountains with a chopper designed to lift entire launchpads should be absolutely trivial...) NOTE: *IF* you experience bugs/problems with the dock-recycle method I describe later using this rover, with the game not recognizing the docket RocketParts storage as being part of the same vessel, you might need to build an empty RocketParts storage module into the rover itself to allow it to recycle other vessels. Adjust your mission-architecture accordingly. (5) Land *ONE* Kerbal near the launchpad site. Once again, you should rely *HEAVILY* on PARACHUTES for the drop. Make NO PROVISIONS for his return to orbit at this point- don't worry, you'll be taking care of that later... (6) When the Kerbal is safely at the sea-level launchpad site, have him connect the RocketParts module to the Extraplanetary Launchpad using the KAS pipe end-points- giving you access to a much larger RocketParts pool to build things out of. The KAS pipes have a maximum length of about 50 meters, but can be re-attached by hand to connect anywhere along the surface of each "vessel"... If you didn't manage to land the two sites within 50 meters, build on the launchpad (from the Mk2's internal buffer) and drag TINY (probe-sized) empty stock fuel tanks to between the two using your rover (otherwise, you can hold off building the rover), and connect the vessels in a sort of "relay" using the fuel tanks as nodes every 50 or so meters (you will need extra pipe connectors for this) using any extra pipe-connectors you brought along earlier (if you didn't bring any extras, and missed making your earlier landings within single-pipe range, you will need to build additional ones from the Mk2 launchpad's internal RocketParts buffer. If you're using the Mk1 launchpad, you will need to land a small additional lander nearby, containing pipe-connectors, detachable fuel tanks to use as "nodes", and a small rover for dragging the nodes into place...) (7) Build your heavy-lift electric helicopter on the launchpad, take off, and land it on the ground nearby (KSP-I fission reactors/generators help IMMENSELY for powering this- though it can also be done with NearFuture reactors...) Once again, my HELO B works well as a guideline if you're trying to figure out how to design it- but keep in mind you don't need something that over-engineered... Remember to test the helicopter design extensively on Kerbin before even *THINKING* of building it on Eve... The HELO B weighs approximately 32 tons; has 22 paired opposing rotors (opposed to prevent unwanted spin) ; and has two KAS winches located equidistant from the Center of Mass on the bottom, protected inside cargo bays (which can easily be switched out for decouplers for internal cargoes- though this is less useful off-world unless you plan on recycling and rebuilding your chopper each time...) You will NEED two or more KAS winches to prevent pendulum-effects of having a heavy object suspended below the chopper by only one attachment point- trust me on this (the greater the angle between the two winch cables the better- this can be achieved either by placing the winches further apart, or by retracting both the cables so the cargo is held closer to the body of the chopper...) Other than that, the more rotors the chopper has, the higher its theoretical lifting capacity; but the more balanced the chopper is, the more SAS force it has, and the heavier the helicopter is, the heavier the cargo it can ACTUALLY reasonably lift without spinning out of control... 24 tons is a bit on the light side for something that will need to be able to *STABLY* (the real challenge is in stability- not lifting power) lift at least 6, and preferably 12 or more tons of external cargo (a 5-ton Mk1 or 10-ton Mk2 launchpad won't fit inside a cargo bay, or be stable on most decouplers...) like this- but in *CAN* be done with careful design... (the HELO challenge requires airlifting 40 tons to the island runway on Kerbin- and after *MANY* attempts I finally did manage to do it as an external cargo with KAS winches using the HELO B- but ended up bringing my cargo down too quickly on the island, causing it to explode, and decided not to attempt it again as an external cargo after that experience- opting instead for a *much* stabler 40 ton internal cargo, which was a comparative cake-walk to airlift...) (8) Build an Extraplanetary Launchpad (Mk1 or 2- the Mk2 will be more useful, due to its flatter surface that you can actually drive rovers off of- but far more difficult to airlift due to its much greater weight) and airlift it with your chopper a short distance off the original launchpad using your electric helicopter. I find adding structural panels to the bottom gives it a wider base, and thus helps *greatly* in preventing it from tipping over on the ground (the mountain you'll eventually be moving the launchpad to will probably be far from flat, though you should search for the flattest location possible- expect to build your mountaintop launch base on at least a gentle slope...) (9) Build a command module with a sufficiently wide base it won't roll or slide off a mountaintop (the stock Mk2 lander can should work fairly well for this- or a smaller command module with structural panels attached to its base, parallel to the ground.) You'll need it to operate your mountaintop launchpad facility. Note that something as simple as a structural panel with a lawnchair strapped on top, and KAS ports to airlift it and to connect it to the other modules should work for this... (10) Build another RocketParts container of some kind. This one could be extremely large and heavy even when empty, if your helicopter is powerful enough- or it could be about the same mass as the launchpad. I would suggest one of two strategies at this point: either building a moderately-sized pair of RocketParts modules you think your helicopter can easily transport to your mountain base site completely full- and use to build a much larger, empty module at the site; or transporting a really big, but empty RocketParts module to your mountaintop landing site. Personally, I prefer the first strategy: as I find it's much easier to airlift a pair of smaller, denser objects that I can retract and lock (KAS winches can lock into place at close range- preventing any unwanted rotation) into a pair of internal cargo bays on each side of the Center of Mass; than it is to sling a larger object below the 'copter, between two CoM-equidistant KAS winches... Either way, you want the final size of the large and empty RocketParts Module to be great enough to hold at least a mass in RocketParts equivalent to the dry mass of *EVERYTHING* you've built or landed on Eve up until this point (that includes the chopper, the lawnchair-lander, and even any boosters or abandoned probes that were on Eve before this mission even began), minus the dry mass of the rover, the command module, and the launchpad you're going to be landing on the mountaintop... You might also want to build a large enough container to hold the RocketParts for really large launch-platforms now too, so you won't have to build a larger container later... If you need to build multiple, smaller, full RocketParts modules; and hook them all up to the mountaintop launchpad you'll be deploying to build a sufficiently large RocketParts storage unit on-site, after lifting them there in multiple airlifts, then do it- and adjust the mission-architecture accordingly... Also, I said "dry mass" because fuel doesn't count- while you'll be recycling every helicopter, booster, and probe you can find on Eve back into RocketParts; you'll need to build separate fuel tanks to hold any fuel you already have on Eve's surface at this point (if you followed my dumb-drop approach, it shouldn't be much yet...) as well as the very large amount of fuel you'll eventually be wanting to be producing on-planet (even with the launch systems I'm going to describe later, you'll still want an EXTREMELY large amount of fuel storage- I suggest using StretchyTanks to build enormous fuel tank cylinders with very wide bases, so they won't tip over on uneven ground...) By the way, you can also subtract the dry mass of the fuel tanks from the RocketParts mass you'll need to be able to store in the final mountain RocketParts module- as you can build the fuel tanks at some point before you completely fill up the mountain RocketParts storage... (11) Build a moderately-sized, full RocketParts module (or pair of modules, if you will be carrying them locked to two KAS winches equidistant from the helicopter's Center of Mass- most useful if your KAs winches are inside cargo bays like on my HELO B, as it makes landing much easier when you don't have to worry about detaching cargo dangling below your copter first...) You will need this/these module(s) to transport RocketParts from your RocketParts module near Eve sea-level to the larger, empty RocketParts module you will be deploying/building in the mountains... Stick a couple KAS pipe-connectors on the outside of this to make your life easier later on... (you can grab these from the launchpad and sea-level RocketParts storage before step 12 if you'd like) Once again, make sure it won't roll off the mountaintop when landed... Also, as always, bigger is better- I recommend building the largest full RocketParts module you think you can safely and easily transport with your heavy-lift chopper, to minimize the number of airlifts you have to perform, and allow you not to waste RocketParts when you recycle the empty sea-level RocketParts module later... (12) To reduce lag at this point (with at least your chopper, launchpad + connected RocketParts module, an additional launchpad for mountain deployment, an additional RocketParts module for the mountain, and a small lawnchair-lander nearby that got your Kerbal here, plus the possible addition of your rover; your lag should be through the roof by now considering the number of parachutes required to land something as heavy as the RocketParts module safely...) build your recycling-rover, detach the KAS radial port by hand using your Kerbal and attach it to the *RocketParts Module* portion of the launchpad base, connect up the rover to the KAS port via winch in *DOCKED* move, and detach the launchpad from the RocketParts Module (or the RocektParts module from the closest relay node to itself, if using nodes). Then, extend the winch cable to maximum length (you will need some slack), "Activate" the recycling bin, and drive the rover into the original launchpad (the one you dropped with tons of parachutes attached, or as a glider). This will instantly destroy the launchpad, and convert it into an equivalent mass of RocketParts- which should now be stored inside the RocketParts Module if you remembered to attach the winch in "docked" mode. Do the same with the lawnchair-lander, if you rover can reach it while still attached to the RocketParts module by winch-cable (or deploy a chain of nodes like before, to extend the rover's range, deploying and using the mountain launchpad to build the nodes this time- don't worry, you can pack the launchpad back up afterwards...) This will all help with lag a bit. NOTE: You can skip this step if you want to have a runway on Eve, at sea-level (the safest altitude for plane-landings by far). You'll just want to come back later and build an Extraplanetary Launchpads runway at the sea-level site using the launchpad. You can then recycle the launchpad, use the RocketParts at the runway to build a Command Module or probe-core, and another (stationary) RocketParts storage module without all the parachutes or wings attached, use the helicopter or a really big rover to drag each off the runway, and connect them all together via KAS pipe or winch... (13) Now comes the *FUN* part- AIRLIFTS! I hope I don't need to tell you this, but it might be a good time to Quicksave before attempting this. In fact, to design an electric helicopter that can lift this much, you should have already made several test-airlifts of similar or heavier cargos on Kerbin to prove to yourself you can do it with your chopper design... (ideally, landing your modules on the mountains west of KSC to also prove you can safely make mountain airdrops, and your modules won't tip over and roll/slide away on the slope of a gentle mountain-shoulder... This is a MAJOR issue for mountain launch sites- I find, once again, that structural panels parallel to the ground help with this a lot...) The things you will need to airlift to the mountains that should be nearby your landing-site: - Your mountain launchpad, of course - Your RocketParts storage modules (either large/empty, or small/full to build large/empty modules on-site) - Your Command Module (for operating the mountain launchpad) - Your Kerbal (he will be needed to make KAS connections between the launchpad and RocketParts storage modules) The last two can easily be combined- if you lift the Command Module with the Kerbal inside/on-board it... Once all of these have been safely landed at your planned mountain launch site on Eve, use your Kerbal to connect your RocketParts storage modules, your mountain launchpad, and your Command Module together via either KAS winches in "docking" mode or KAS pipes (the three can be connected in a string- they don't need to all connect directly). VOILA! You now have a functional mountain launch facility! (14) While your mountain launch is now functional, it shouldn't yet have anything in the way of RocketParts in it... Go and pick up the full RocketParts module from step 11 with your helicopter, and airlift it to your mountain base. Unload the RocketParts from this to your mountain RocketParts storage using the KAS pipe connectors you slapped on earlier (perhaps recycled from your launchpad and sea-level RocketParts storage, or taken from the the toolbox full of pipe-connectors I suggested earlier...) Return this module to the sea-level RocketParts storage, load it up again, and bring its load of RocketParts back to the mountain again. Repeat this as many times as necessary until the sea-level RocketParts storage is completely empty... (You might leave some behind to build a runway, if you decided not to scrap the sea-level launchpad in step 12 in favor of building a runway there...) (15) Airlift the empty RocketParts transport module back to the sea-level site one or two more times; re-attach the rover to it in "docked" mode instead of the sea-level storage module, via the KAS winch on the rover and the radial connector port on the sea-level storage you used to connect it to the rover, and recycle the sea-level storage as you did the launchpad before. Repeat this process with the lander you used to get your Kerbal to the surface earlier, if you haven't done so already... Each time, airlift the RocketParts back to the mountain launch site before proceeding- as any dry mass you recycle without sufficient storage capacity in the vessel used to recycle it (the rover and the "docked" RocketParts transport module count as one vessel in this example) simply disappears into nothingness... (if your transport module is too small to hold the entire mass of the EMPTY sea-level RocketParts storage- which will be indicated by the transport module filling completely with Rocketparts, usually indicating the actuaal amount you could have obtained is greater than the capacity of the storage unit, and there was some overflow- then decide if you want to build a larger transport module and attempt to airlift it between the sites, possibly with a larger helicopter to airlift it if necessary...) CLEANUP: When step 15 is complete, you're almost done constructing your mountain launchpad on Eve! All you need do now is airlift the rover itself back to the mountain launch site, use it to recycle the helicopter as you should have done to many other vessels by now in this process, and then decide what you want to do with the rover itself. (Perhaps you want to keep the rover for future recycling operations. Perhaps you want to build a stationary recycling bin into your mountain launch site, and attempt to drive or lift the recycling-rover itself into it to recycle its wheels and chassis for a few extra RocketParts... Perhaps you simply want to drive it off a cliff near your mountain launch site to its demise, as you're sick of recycling stuff by this point... ) Then again, maybe you want to keep the helicopter that has proven so capable as an airlift platform for future needs as well... NEXT: I'm going to break it into a separate post, but I also have a lot to say about the vehicles for the reusable launch system you'll want to use on Eve. The mountain launch site, while saving you over 3000 m/s Delta-V on each launch from Eve, was only the beginning of such a system- and worthless without an actual sustainable way to get things into orbit and back... Regards, Northstar P.S. Once again, this plan for putting a mountaintop launch site on Eve can easily be adapted to Duna- and in fact I plan to do so. The atmosphere on Duna is significantly thinner relative to gravity than on Kerbin or Eve, though, and the scale height is less though (only 3000 meters)- so I won't be able to build on top of one of Duna's highest peaks (the mountains on Duna reach as high as 8264 meters- almost three scale heights! The HELO B can't even fly that high on Kerbin unloaded- and in fact might not even be able to fly at 6000 meters on Duna unloaded...)

By the way, here's how I deployed my first Extraplanetary Launchpad (actually to the mountains west of KSC, rather than on another planet- but the principles I worked out about how to do it remain the same). This was the non-propelled variant: Note that I attached it at *TWO* points on the top via KAS winch, each connecting with the helicopter at a point equidistant from and mirroring the other WRT the Center of Mass. I found this greatly improved stability (reduced the tendency to swing like a pendulum- especially when the winches were both retracted close to the chopper body) vs. only attaching it at one point to the helicopter... Oh, and the helicopter I utilized here is actually powerful enough to lift the launchpad on Duna as well- it should be able to carry twice its weight at 2000 meters altitude on Duna, and the launchpad is only a small fraction of the helicopter's weight... (since helicopter thrust falls off exponentially with altitude, it probably can only maintain about 4200 meters on Duna unloaded- too low for the Flying Duna Challenge, or I would have entered it there) I'm considering slapping a de-orbit stage on it, re-building it in orbit around Duna (easier than building a specialized transfer vehicle from Kerbin), and seeing how it does during re-entry... If I can land it, I'll probably land a launchpad via parachutes at some random location, and then use the chopper to airlift the launchpad to where I actually want it (somewhere flat at least- the probability of a launchpad dropped from orbit landing on flat ground on Duna the first time is very, very low...) So, it *should* even be possible for you to move a launchpad around on Duna via helicopter, if you're willing to build a 20+ rotor behemoth like I did, and stick to the valleys when loaded down... Oh, and on Eve- helicopters should work even better than on Kerbin- despite the increased gravity, thanks to the thicker atmosphere and longer scale-height... Regards, Northstar

Aww c'mon, a reality show on Duna? I'm sure it would make MILLIONS on pay-per-view! As for Orbital Construction, it still probably works much the way you remember it. While it is relatively simple, I don't think most players (including myself) have the time to build a realistic-looking spacedock to build things in orbit. I try to limit myself to only building things at really large space stations or specialized vessels meant to acts as orbital construction platforms to simulate there needing to be a certain amount of necessary equipment. If not for the part-count limits imposed by my weak computer, I might also build a really large enclosed workspace out of structural panels in my spacedocks (one of my mods- I don't know which- gives me a really over-sized structural panel much larger than the stock ones...) or something. Extraplanetary Launchpads now has orbital construction parts (which are easy enough to use), ground launchpads, and even an unfolding runway (although I've never tried landing on one yet- so I'm not sure how well it works). In fact, it even added some reasonably-sized RocketParts modules (though they still hold a lot less than comparably sized containers from Orbital Construction- but that makes it more balanced I guess...) for transporting RocketParts, so you don't have to rely on a million HexCans for large projects anymore... As for the ground launchpads themselves- though it often makes more sense to build things in orbit anyways- there are two versions. One is self-propelled, the other is not. Both are quite awkward to integrate into any rocket- but the propelled variant has a smoother launchpad surface you can reasonably drive a rover off of, and also holds a very limited quantity of RocketParts. Your best strategy (and the one I'm going to utilize to set up my first Mun outpost and Duna bases) is probably to simply land the variant with integrated engines and fuel+parts storage from low orbit where you want your base to be, and either utilize the built-in RocketParts storage to build on-site, or land separately, a large *EMPTY* RocketParts module nearby- and connect it via KAS winch or pipe. The tricky part is getting the launchpad to the planet or moon in the first place- it will either require a *highly* specialized launch vehicle and tug to bring it from Kerbin, or that you build the launchpad in orbit around the planet/moon... It's then just a matter of landing moderate-sized full RocketParts modules there (RocketParts are quite heavy- so don't expect to safely land a full large module without a *VERY* large rocket), and unloading them to the larger ground storage unit via KAS winch or pipe until you have enough RocketParts in one place to build something useful- like crew quarters, fuel storage tanks, or KSP-I ISRU refineries at the base... Regards, Northstar P.S. Anything you build at an Extraplanetary Launchpad will spawn ON THE LAUNCHPAD, so you will need some way to get it off if it's a base facility- whether a rover to drag it, a skycrane, or a helicopter. Oh, and keep in mind, the launchpads look quite strange in the VAB unless you "deploy" them via tweakables- which will allow you to see what it looks like when it's actually deployed (via the right-click menu) on a planet/moon surface...

I just went ahead and terminated the tanker debris, because I remembered I already had THIS abandoned fuel tanker (the SSTO version I launched quite a while ago) in a circular orbit near the spacedock: Recycling that, with a sufficiently large scrapper ship, should provide over 300 tons of RocketParts. So, I don't think I will be starved for RocketParts any time soon. The greater issue is actually constructing a larger scrapper ship at the 350 km depot (I'll need to launch a ship with the necessary construction tools to make use of all that recycled scrap- i.e. one with a spacedock identifier) and getting enough fuel there to move the parts back to the depot... Speaking of which, I noticed the depot was already very close to a transfer window with the Mun- something I had been waiting for quite a while. I went ahead and plotted a transfer for the Heavy Scrapper Ship to the Mun: And made the transfer: Once there, the Heavy Scrapper Ship will rendezvous with the Munar Spacedock (located at an approximately 300 km Munar orbit), refuel, and then set out recycling some of the debris (two empty fuel tankers and the Munar Science Module) I left in Munar orbit. That should provide me more than enough RocketParts to finally get my Munar outpost (and fuel production) started- provided I have enough fuel left to land everything safely after the scrapping operations are finished... Regards, Northstar P.S. I don't feel particularly bad building my Munar fuel production equipment out of recycled rockets. After all, basically all I realistically need is a few metal chambers for resource storage, electrodes to electrolyze stuff, metal drill bits to mine ice or regolith with, and electric motors to drive the drill bits. All those parts can be found in the Muanr debris- especially the Munar Science Module, which I must remind everyone was a regolith-mining and electrolysis vessel built on Kerbin...

The Light Moon Explorer Mk2 circularized smoothly: And then I rendezvoused the Heavy LFO Tanker with the 350 km Spacedock, and transferred over the fuel: I ended up leaving the main launch stage of the tanker in a highly elliptical orbit that passes very near the 350 km depot's orbit though... In hindsight, I'm not so sure *THAT* was such a good idea (I should have just detached it in its circular 84 km orbit, even though it still had some fuel left- my Scrapper ship could have retrieved the leftover fuel later...) Now it's both a potential collision hazard with the depot, and is extremely difficult for the scrapper ship to rendezvous with in the future.. I'll probably just end up "shooting it down" (i.e. terminating the flight) rather than recycling it, since it's too late to load a quicksave and undo my mistake... Regards, Northstar

OK, so I got the Light Moon Explorer Mk3 over to the 350 km depot, and transferred over Chadlas, Thompfrod, and Malman Kerman: Then, while the LME Mk2 approached its circularization burn around the Mun (at approx 450 km- to phase into a transfer position with the Munar Spacedock- which should take a while to do...), I decided to launch an LFO tanker to the 350 km depot rather than put it off any longer: It should be noted that this new Unmanned Heavy LFO Tanker design (with SRB's strapped onto the earlier design- at the expense of some large radial Rockomax liquidfuel engines) is only possible due to Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. Prior to that, the unrealistically large wobble on the launchpad with such a large rocket would cause random parts to fall off with this few launch clamps. Even so, the current design pretty much pushes the maximum limits of how large of a vessel I can launch with 16 launch clamps with the default KJR settings... Interestingly, the main stage was able to make it to low orbit with the addition of the SRB's. I wouldn't have actually intentionally brought it to orbit, due to my current fuel problems with my scrapping operations (I wouldn't have nearly enough fuel to bring the entire mass in recycled RocketParts back to the depot), as well as the fact that the stage greatly exceeds the storage capacity of the Heavy Scrapper Ship (meaning I would need a larger scrapper ship, or much of the mass would go to waste when I only received 20,000 RocketParts from a stage worth a lot more...), but I needed to establish a low phasing orbit in order to get the upper stage of the fuel tanker to the 350 km depot in reasonable time anyways... Perhaps someday I will find the fuel to bring a larger scrapper ship to the main stage of the tanker and back- or perhaps I will just accept the loss of part of the value and use the existing Heavy Scrapper Ship (I should have enough fuel to bring *it* back to the 350 km depot with a full load of RocketParts now...), but this whole situation does highlight an issue I have been anticipating for quite a while now- that inevitably, with recycling of fuel tankers launched from Kerbin and diversion of fuel to ships leaving the solar system, I would end up with a higher and higher ratio of RocketParts to fuel in my orbital depots- and effectively would have enough parts to build far larger rockets than I could ever hope to fuel... My solution to this problem might also be interesting to some of you- aside from eventually producing fuel on the Mun without producing any RocketParts until the ratio becomes more reasonable, I also plan to divert an ever larger mass of RocketParts to static space stations. The majority of this will be the construction of newer, larger and more powerful Microwave Power Stations in higher orbits closer to the 350 km depot than the existing station; but I also plan to replace the 350 km depot itself with an even larger spacedock with higher fuel and RocketParts capacity at some point... The idea will be to construct a space station large enough to construct an Orion in-orbit; which will both alleviate the roleplaying issues of detonating thermonuclear devices in Kerbin's atmosphere, and also allow me to make use of this system's unparallelled ISP and thrust to move *MASSIVE* payloads to the Duna system... (what might I do with that much payload, you might ask? Well, aside from solar farms and orbital labs; I plan to build similarly massive space stations there, so that I can eventually construct a gigantic rocket in Duna orbit to colonize the Jool system in a single go, without the need to send an entire armada...) Regards, Northstar P.S. For those curious, the Light Moon Explorer Mk3 is currently on a collision course with the Mun. I plan to perform an adjustment burn just inside the Mun's SOI to target it at one of the craters, and hope it's one I haven't visited before... A suicide burn near the surface will kill off its velocity- by far the fastest and most fuel-efficient way to make a Munar landing, if incredibly dangerous...

Yep, that went as expected- another no-show. As far as I'm concerned, online dating can stick it where it doesn't shine... Anyways, meet the Light Moon Explorer Mk3: It's equipped similarly to the Mk2, except it has a slightly longer main fuel tank (carefully adjusted to make the rocket's total fuel load as close to the maximum capacity of the Mountaintop Launchpad as possible), and a couple additional solar panels on the command module. Here are the rest of the screenshots of its ascent to orbit: The plan is for this thing to swing within EVA range of the 350 km depot, where it will pick up three of the four occupants of the depot (there is also a fifth Kerbal on board the Heavy Scrapper Ship currently docked with it). It will then proceed with a Munar insertion, much like the LME Mk2. The idea is to deploy the seismic sensor probes from both missions before de-orbiting either command module, to maximize science gains (science reward increases with each additional sensor landed when you perform an impactor experiment). The fuel tank between the command module and the seismic sensor probe on each vessel will serve as an impactor experiment- being detached as soon as the orbital periapsis passes within the Mun's surface during de-orbit (which will then give me a finite period of time to land the command module each time before the respective impactor collides with the surface somewhere on the opposite side of the Mun- which will happen later than the landing due to its longer trajectory to impact). I'm not sure which biomes on the Mun I've already visited, other than the Midlands, the Highlands, and the Poles (I know I've also been to one of the craters this save). The Science Archives system doesn't work in this save since it was started before the respective update. It doesn't really much matter, though- the point of this mission is more to clean up remaining surface sample points (which, with one returned sample per biome, I haven't exhausted *anywhere* yet) and get the impactor and vessel retrieval science points, than to exhaust the science points available. I didn't even remember to slap gravity scanners or thermometers (which are better-suited for probe missions anyways- and I don't want to advance scientifically too quickly, for roleplaying reasons) on these missions, so it's not like they're optimized by any means... Regards, Northstar

Ok, so I decided to just go ahead and recover the Kerbals right away to reduce lag. Here they are posing for one last picture before their (simulated) helicopter ride comes to take them back to the KSC... Now, off to prepare for a date that I'm pretty sure will end up with my being stood up instead of actually meeting the girl... Regards, Northstar

Another day, another (imaginary) dollar- I'll start you guys off with a few images of some scrapping operations I've been engaged in of late: Unfortunately, I quite literally ran out of fuel performing these operations (to the point where I had to dump some of the RocketParts from the last vessel scrapped in orrder to make it back to the 350 km depot). As such, in the next couple missions, rather than cluttering up near-Kerbin space with debris I can't recycle in the short run, I'll more often be trying to dump spare stages on re-entry trajectories with Kerbin or impact trajectories with the Mun (which will also yield me some Science from the seismic sensors stationed there...) Speaking of new missions, I present the Light Moon Explorer Mk2 (I changed the name, since it can reach either moon of Kerbin), and its mission to the Mun: Note that the launch platform is significantly lighter in this version of the mission, as it is designed to launch unmanned from my mountaintop launch site (I find it exceedingly difficult to get Kerbals into my rockets from the launch site- so I will probably actually be removing all those Kerbals except two in the command module necessary to control the launchpad via the "recover" function... The Hitchiker modules themselves I can roleplay as being occupied by supply storage supporting my rocket launch from the site...) I also swapped the lander for a detachable seismic sensor probe, as I found the last lander design somewhat wanting, and the command module itself is capable of Munar landings... The mission plan there involves rendezvous with the Munar Spacedock, where it will pick up Jerbo and Donely Kerman- who will both get one last chance to set foot on the Mun before returning to Kerbin. Expect some roleplaying there... Regards, Northstar

The Raven Mk2 is now in circular orbit over Minmus at around 17.8 km. Here are the pics: Got to run now, but I look forward to seeing the return of the Light Munar Explorer to Kerbin, the sending off of a planned mission to the Sun's SOI and back (for !Science!), possibly some more LME-style missions- and soon the arrival of the first ships of the flotilla at Duna... Regards, Northstar

Great to see this show is on the road again! Sorry I hadn't been keeping up with it until now... Interesting idea with the Great Probe Massacre- but next time you need to get rid of some obsolete ships, could I suggest... a scrapping ship? It works for me- all you need is to install Extraplanetary Launchpads (for the "recycling bin" part on the front and RocketParts storage containers). Don't do anything with the RocketParts if you want- it still makes sense from a roleplaying perspective (better to collect the material for future use than to throw it away). Or, if you're ready to embrace the awesomeness that is recycling and orbital construction, utilize Extraplanetary Launchpads' spacedock parts to turn those RocketParts into something useful- like empty fuel depot tanks... (personally, I use Orbital Construction Re-Redux instead, because it spawns vessels some distance away from the spacedock, and it was around before Extraplanetary Launchpads added spacedock parts, but that's an additional mod to install...) Regards, Northstar P.S. I've got a purpose for your Duna colony- movie making. Have the Kerbals start recording films, and selling them back to Kerbin. It'll both increase publicity AND raise money for the space program at the same time! And it'll be a first experiment in intellectual property trade from Duna- the necessary financial backbone of any profitable self-sustaining extra-planetary colony in the long run, like I've been telling you... (if the Kerbals can grow their own food, produce their own oxygen, provide their own medical services etc. on Duna)

Did you try and land there intentionally, or did it just happen? (the odds of that...)

That's really cool! Interesting that you choose to make it blog post instead of a Mission Reports thread... If you're interested in seeing something kind of similar in a way to your own blog, I have a Mission Reports thread myself (at times, I go into narrative- in the same way you do) http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57509-Kerbin-and-Beyond-a-Maturing-Space-Program Regards, Northstar

Also, some of you might be interested- I moved the solar panels and battery pack from the fuel tank/engine section (which will be detached before re-entry and burn up in the atmosphere due to its lack of heat shielding- or rather disappear once it reaches a certain altitude when unloaded, as I don't have Deadly Reentry or anything like that installed) to the command module. Sure, it will increase my touchdown velocity by a trivial amount- but you never know what scientfic data you might end up collecting... I might end up landing on or passing over in a biome I haven't exhausted yet (or that got reset with a later update to the base game)- or I might find I haven't taken enough crew reports to exhaust the subject in the upper atmosphere or something like that. If one of those situations comes up, I'll be glad for the extra electrical equipment to power my antenna. It was also interesting to note that the battery pack retained its charge even when picked up and moved by my Kerbal. I wonder if I could find an interesting use for that at some point... (maybe in my next Career Mode game, before solar panels?) Regards, Northstar

My position for returning to Kerbin (from the north pole of Minmus) was sub-optimal compared to an equatorial launch site, but I didn't realize just HOW sub-optimal until it actually came time to return home... First of all, I set off just pointing straight at Kerbin (specifically, my Mountaintop Launchpad near the KSC, because there's no way to target Kerbin directly), and burning. From the poles, that's actually a pretty time and fuel-optimal trajectory, as Kerbin will always be near the horizon, and you basically just establish an orbit pointing in the correct direction for a transfer burn... Of course, I didn't just burn for a little while to establish an apoapsis, and then circularize. I saw no point in doing that. The most fuel-optimal transfers actually leave from a sub-orbital trajectory, as you can be moving faster just after liftoff than at an orbital periapsis.- taking maximum advantage of the Oberth effect.. (specifically, all your energy is still kinetic- very little has been turned into gravitational kinetic energy yet) Of course, this did require a second adjustment burn to cancel the component of my velocity moving in-line with Minmus orbit of Kerbin (the liftoff burn gave me escape velocity in an inward radial direction, but I still needed to cancel most of Minmus 274 m/s orbital velocity at that position in its orbit...) And I was left with only 14 m/s fuel to spare afterwards (I did the burn manually, with help from MechJeb's ASAS- so steering losses were a bit higher than trusting it to the autopilot) Combining a sub-optimal launch site (at the poles, you have very little of the rotational velocity you do from an equatorial launch site) with a fast but fuel-inefficient return plan (the most fuel-efficient plan would have involved burning a tiny bit towards Kerbin just to get my ship off the ground, then immediately turning and burning against Minmus orbital velocity, such as to have close to 0 m/s relative to Kerbin upon exiting Minmus' SOI) I ended up *just barely* making it back... But, thanks to the radial inward component of my burn, the entire return should only take around 21 hours, guesstimating at what point my "orbit" (which has a periapsis *INSIDE* the planet Kerbin) actually enters Kerbin's atmosphere... I used that last 14 m/s Delta-V to set my periapsis a tiny bit further from Kerbin's core (giving me a shallower re-entry angle) once I exit Minmus SOI (overshooting due to SOI-transition inaccuracies, and setting the periapsis outside the atmosphere would be fatal for my Kerbals from a roleplaying perspective- if I miss the aerocapture, I'll go shooting out into a solar orbit- and they would eventually run out of oxygen...) I did that without any screenshots, but here's an image of the final trajectory: Note the "negative" value for periapsis on the "Orbit Info" screen indicates a collision-course (don't worry, drag and my parachutes should slow the capsule down to a safe speed). The massive negative value for apoapsis, on the other hand, indicates I would shoot off with more than escape velocity if I missed the planet... Regards, Northstar

The Anthraquinone Process also needs to be fixed (along with the Sabatier Reaction- which is exothermic). As currently implemented, it is: H2O + H2 --> H202 The *ACTUAL* reaction normally used in the real world is: H2 + O2 --> H2O2 If a player wants to start from LiquidWater, they should have to perform electrolysis first. On the other hand, if a player wants to start from LiquidFuel and Oxidizer, they should be able to do it (there is currently no way to combine the two, short of burning them in a rocket engine- open cycle fuel cells to combine the two and produce electricity might also be nice- as a separate part). Not shown is the Anthraquinone catalyst, or intermediate steps in the reaction.

The three reactions I'd very much like to see added, again: Haber-Bosch Process: N2 (IntakeAtm) + H2 (Liquidfuel) --> Ammonia + Energy Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction: CO2 (IntakeAtm) + H2 (Liquidfuel) + Energy --> CO (Ignored) + H2O (LiquidWater) Methane Pyrolysis: CH4 (Methane) + Energy --> C (Ignored, recycled by reaction with atmosphere) + 2 H2 (LiquidFuel) I noted which reactions were exothermic and which were endothermic because this should affect the amount of electricity needed to run the reactions. The Haber-Bosch process is exothermic, and as such should only require electricity to warm it up at first (like a Fusion Reactor). The Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction, on the other hand, is endothermic- and thus should require considerably more electricity than the Sabatier Reaction, which is actually exothermic (and thus shouldn't require *nearly* as much electricity as it currently does).