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  1. Immersive Chemicals Immersive Chemicals is a collection of mods which overhaul and expand the stock resource system to enrich the experience of heavily modded KSP. The component mods are designed to be played together, but you can pick and choose any subset to play with, like Nertea's Near Future Technologies. The goal is to provide many ways to acquire and process resources into other resources which are useful not only in the the domain of these mods, but many other popular mods too, connecting everything into one cohesive web. There are many resources and resource chains similar to what you might find in RealFuels and MKS, but the Immersive Chemical suite aims to be less complex and more modular rather than centralised and all-encompassing The individual mods are listed below, with the feature progress marked like so: [concepting]: I have a pretty good idea of what this will look like, but haven't started making anything. [development]: I've started making something, maybe even nearly finished it. [ready]: First-pass "done", ready for pre-release. [pre-release]: Available in a v0.x pre-release. [release]: Available in a v1.x release. Immersive Chemical Propulsion 0.3.0 [pre-release] Download Requires: ModuleManager, B9PartSwitch, Immersive Chemical Core, Cryogenic Tanks Replaces stock propellants with a small handful of real chemicals, with engines matched to their real-life inspirations where applicable. I'm mostly targeting rocket engines provided by Nertea's mods at the moment, but suggestions for other mods are welcome. You can think of it as a Nertea-like soft alternative to RealFuels. Monopropellant engines and tanks have a choice of two propellants: HTP which is cheap and low-tech, and Hydrazine which is more expensive but yields a significantly higher specific impulse. [pre-release] LiquidFuel/Oxidizer engines are categorised into one of four types, each of which similarly has a pair "basic" and "advanced" bipropellants with fixed mixture ratios: [pre-release] Hypergolic: 1 Kerosene / 4 HTP 2 Hydrazine / 3 NTO Kerolox: 3 Kerosene / 5 LqdOxygen 5 Pentaborane / 11 LqdFluorine Methalox: 7 LqdMethane / 9 LqdOxygen 3 Diborane / 5 LqdFluorine Hydrolox: 3 LqdHydrogen / 1 LqdOxygen 3 LqdHydrogen / 1 LqdFluorine Near Future Launch Vehicles' KR-701 'Cougar' and KR-74 'Lynx' are bimodal hydrolox engines with an additional kerosene-augmented mode, based on their real-world analogues the RD-701 and RD-704: [pre-release] 1 Kerosene / 4 LqdHydrogen / 3 LqdOxygen Jet engines use Kerosene, with the rocket mode of multimodal engines running on Kerosene/LqdOxygen. [pre-release] Nuclear engines are changed to use LqdHydrogen. [pre-release] All the fiddly little bits like ISRU, fuel cells and RCS are all brought in line accordingly. [pre-release] Various stock and modded engines have their performance adjusted to bring them in line with the new propellants. Note that the values listed here correspond to the advanced pair Hydrazine/NTO in the hypergolic engines, but the basic pairs Kerosene/LqdOxygen, LqdMethane/LqdOxygen and LqdHydrogen/LqdOxygen in the other types. As well as these changes, a couple of plugins are planned for enhancing the experience of chemical rocketry: Hazards: Hazardous propellants create regions of environmental danger when: Leaking from CryoTanks [concepting] Fired in rockets [concepting] Released by more explosive means [concepting] Hazard regions can be cleaned up for a cost at the KSC [concepting] Hazard regions decay at a rate determined by the local atmosphere [concepting] Ignition (might be a fork of Engine Ignitor): Non-hypergolic engines require an ignition source, chosen in the VAB: Single-use pyrotechnic [concepting] Refillable starter fluid (TEATEB or similar) [concepting] Reusable spark plug [concepting] Stock [pre-release] The tech tree starts with small hypergolic engines and progresses to kerolox and hydrolox. There are not too many of the latter types, so Cryogenic Engines, Restock+ and Near Future Launch Vehicles are especially recommended. Making history [pre-release] The Wolfhound doesn't need such weirdly high Isp when you have methalox and hydrolox to play with. Labradoodle [pre-release] The Poodle and the Labrador are made much more distinct by their different propellant types. Missing History [pre-release] These two engines also appear in Restock+, though with slightly different stats, but I've just left them as is. Restock+ [pre-release] Most of these are cheeky Making History knockoffs (which are obviously higher quality) with equivalent stats, so aren't present if you have the DLC installed. Near Future Launch Vehicles [pre-release] Very handy kerolox engines of all sizes, including some fancy multimode bipropellant/tripropellant engines based on the RD-701 and RD-704. Cryogenic Engines and CryoEngines Extensions [pre-release] Existing liquid hydrogen and liquid methane methane engines are automatically converted to use LqdHydrogen/LqdOxygen and LqdMethane/LqdOxygen respectively. Immersive Chemical Storage 0.1.0 [pre-release] Download Requires: ModuleManager, B9PartSwitch, Immersive Chemical Core, Cryogenic Tanks Highly configurable tanks which store single chemicals, useful for chemical factories, rocket stages and giant spacecraft. Three types of tank: Basic [pre-release]: stores stable, non-cryogenic resources. Lightweight cryogenic [pre-release]: Mass-optimised, balanced to be equivalent to CryoTanks. Heavy-duty cryogenic [pre-release]: Much heavier with way less boiloff, for storing chemicals on surfaces or orbit long-term. Five diameters: 2.5m [pre-release] 3.75m [pre-release] 5m [development] 7.5m [development] 10m [development] Spherical tanks at double those diameters [development] Several Length options [pre-release] Several structural options: Trusses [pre-release] Legs [pre-release] Horizontal mounts [pre-release] Radial mounts [development] Several surface options (each tank type has its own set) [pre-release] Immersive Chemical Harvesting [development] A resource harvesting overhaul. A plugin to change the way surface mining works which should encourage building mining colonies vs. small mining probes. [concepting] Several parts for harvesting from oceans and atmospheres. [concepting] Both stock Drill-O-Matics and all seven drills in Stockalike Mining Extension come in three varieties which each acquire a different category of resource: basic minerals, ices and metals. Basic mineral drills are the stock drills which can mine Ore, as well as the other generic mineral substances Rock and Hydrates. [ready] Ice-specialised drills can directly mine Water, LqdAmmonia, LqdCO2, LqdMethane, and Organics, and perhaps others in future. [ready] Metal-specialised drills can directly mine Spodumene, MetallicOre, Uraninite, RareMetals, and ExoticMinerals, and perhaps others in future. [ready] Immersive Chemical Conversion [development] Provides suites of new ISRU parts with semi-realistic chemical conversion processes for many resources in the Community Resource Pack, replacing the uninspiring universality of turning Ore into everything else. Carbonate decomposition Rock → LqdCO2 Hydrate decomposition Hydrates → Water Ore reduction Ore → LqdOxygen Water electrolysis Water → LqdHydrogen + LqdOxygen Ammonia electrolysis LqdAmmonia → LqdNitrogen + LqdHydrogen Electrochemical reduction of CO2 LqdCO2 → LqdCO + LqdOxygen Haber process LqdNitrogen + LqdHydrogen → LqdAmmonia NTO synthesis LqdAmmonia + LqdOxygen → NTO + Water Hydrazine synthesis LqdAmmonia + LqdOxygen → Hydrazine + Water Sabatier process LqdCO2 + LqdHydrogen → LqdMethane + Water Reverse water-gas shift reaction LqdCO2 + LqdHydrogen → LqdCO + Water Bosch reaction LqdCO + LqdHydrogen → Carbon + Water Fischer-Tropsch process LqdCO + LqdHydrogen → Kerosene [low yield] + Water Polymer synthesis Organics → Polymers Kerosene synthesis Organics → Kerosene [high yield] The above process are provided by the following parts: Convert-O-Tron 125: Carbonate decomposition; Hydrate decomposition Convert-O-Tron 250: Carbonate decomposition; Hydrate decomposition; Ore reduction Electr-O-Tron 125 [development]: Water electrolysis; Ammonia electrolysis Electr-O-Tron 250 [development]: Water electrolysis; Ammonia electrolysis; Electrochemical reduction of CO2 React-O-Tron 125-N [development]: Haber process React-O-Tron 250-N [development]: Haber process; NTO synthesis; Hydrazine synthesis React-O-Tron 125-C [development]: Sabatier process; Reverse water-gas shift reaction React-O-Tron 250-C [development]: Sabatier process; Reverse water-gas shift reaction; Bosch reaction; Fischer-Tropsch process Mobile Processing Lab MPL-LG-2: Polymer synthesis Organics Factory (3.75m, name TBD) [concepting]: Polymer synthesis; Kerosene synthesis If Immersive Chemical Propulsion is not present, Kerosene and Hydrazine are changed to LiquidFuel and MonoPropellant, and Oxidizer can be configured to replace either LqdOxygen or NTO. Immersive Chemical Metallurgy [development] Ore sorters and smelters. Spodumene sorting Ore → Spodumene [low yield] Metallic ore sorting Ore → MetallicOre [low yield] Rare metal sorting Ore → RareMetals [very low yield] Exotic mineral sorting Ore → ExoticMinerals [very low yield] Lithium roasting Spodumene → Lithium Carbon reduction MetallicOre + Carbon → Metals CO-injected reduction MetallicOre + LqdCO → Metals + LqdCO2 Hydrogen plasma reduction MetallicOre + LqdHydrogen → Metals + Water The above process are provided by the following parts: Small Ore Sorter (1.25m, name TBD) [concepting]: Spodumene sorting; Metallic ore sorting Large Ore Sorter (2.5m, name TBD) [concepting]: Spodumene sorting; Metallic ore sorting; Rare metal sorting; Exotic mineral sorting Convert-O-Tron 125: Lithium roasting Convert-O-Tron 250: Lithium roasting Smelt-O-Tron 250 [development]: Lithium roasting; Carbon-fired reduction Smelt-O-Tron 375 [concepting]: Lithium roasting; Carbon-fired reduction; CO-injected reduction Plasma Arc Furnace (5m, name TBD) [concepting]: Hydrogen plasma reduction
  2. The already highly anticipated party pack for @Nertea 's ISRU overhaul, Space Dust. Dust Bunnies ensures the presence of not only the resources used by his mods but resources relevant to some popular outside use cases: Life support, Mars Direct, Exotic rocketry. Space Dust + Dust Bunnies can run in parallel with Rational Resources. Note that converter and tank patches will not be provided here. Only resource placement and the related options for the scanners and harvesters. Use Rational Resources Parts and your favorite fuel switch mod for those. You will find LqdAmmonia, LqdCO2, LqdDeuterium, LqdMethane, LqdNitrogen, Rock and Water (the added resources) in many interesting new places. Let me know if I should switch out Oxidizer for LqdOxygen. Supports: Stock JNSQ Support is planned for: OPM No promises on an RR-alike template system happening. The resource placement nodes here have a higher granularity and complexity than stock ones. DOWNLOAD :: GITHUB License: MIT
  3. I am setting up a system to make methane with ISRU. As I understand it, making methane on mars needs CO2 + water. The CRP includes a LqdMethane resource, CO2 resource, LqdCO2, and water. The CO2 resource has extremely low density, but has pre-configured resource distributions. My intended resource chain is: gathered CO2 -> LqdCO2, LqdCO2 + Water -> Methane. The question is, what should be the ratio of CO2 to LqdCO2 & LqdCO2 + Water to Methane. Anyone have some ideas? Ideally based off of the density values in CRP & real life science, but approximations are fine. I'm also adding custom tankage, so I need some help: If a tank holds 3750 methane, how much of the other resources should the same tank hold?
  4. Quite annoying that NASA won’t be including any instruments on the VIPER lander to detect heavy metals at the lunar South pole, only for detecting water and light elements. Nor will the Astrobotic Peregrine commercial lander. The LCROSS mission provided tantalizing hints of valuable metals from its orbital observations: Moon Blast Reveals Lunar Surface Rich With Compounds. Science Oct 21, 2010 2:05 PM EDT. There is water on the moon … along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That’s according to a more detailed analysis of the chilled lunar soil near the moon’s South Pole, released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/its-confirmed-there-is-water And a Japanese lunar orbiter gave indications of uranium: Uranium could be mined on the Moon. Uranium could one day be mined on the Moon after a Japanese spacecraft discovered the element on its surface. By Julian Ryall in Tokyo 4:58PM BST 01 Jul 2009. The space probe Kaguya detected the radioactive element in samples of the Moon's surface with a gamma-ray spectrometer, along with thorium, potassium, magnesium, silicon, calcium, titanium and iron. The discovery opens up the possibility of mining operations on a commercial basis or even nuclear power plants being constructed on the Moon. https://web.archive.org/web/20110423155534/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5711129/Uranium-could-be-mined-on-the-Moon.html The later Surveyor landers on the Moon since the 60’s all contained x-ray spectrometers(XRF) for detecting heavy elements. And all of the Mars landers since the Viking landers in the 70’s either had XRF spectrometers or more accurate alpha-proton x-ray spectrometers(APXS) for detecting heavy elements. Moreover, both the Indian lunar south polar lander and the Chinese lander to the Moon’s South Pole will contain instruments for measuring heavy elements. It’s bizarre that the U.S.’s landers VIPER and Astrobotic Peregrine to the lunar South Pole will be the only ones to ANY space body, probably numbering into the couple of dozen now, that won’t have instruments for detecting heavy elements. There’s no guarantee that India or China will share with the U.S. the discovery by their landers of valuable metals or other minerals on the Moon. They would probably figure if the U.S. didn’t see the importance of including such instruments on their own missions to the lunar South Pole, then that’s their problem. Robert Clark
  5. Potential Game-Changer for Generating Propellant on Mars. https://https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/07/potential-game-changer-for-generating.html Rather than needing football fields of solar cells to generate propellant, by instead collecting free O2 and CO in Mars atmosphere the process can actually *generate* power. If the gas separation of O2 and CO out of the CO2 of the Martian atmosphere can be done at low energy, it is possible it could even be done at sufficiently low cost to profitably ship the hydrogen to Earth. Robert Clark
  6. Baha EPL Redrilled BahamutoD's Drills & Parts for Extraplanetary Launchpads. The is an updated version of @BahamutoD 's original Baha EPL mod. The drills are compatible with stock and now animate and behave like stock drills. I'll be maintaining from now on, or until BahamutoD returns. You can Download it from SpaceDock Here! Albums: Change Log: Version 1.3.02 [KSP v1.5.1] - Fixed attach node direction for 3D Printer and Compact launchpad. - Removed crew compartment in launch pad and added probe core. - Cleanup of launch pad config. Version 1.3.01 [KSP v1.5.1] -Updated dependencies -Included Module Manager Version 1.3 [KSP v1.3.1] -Full update to KSP v.1.3.1 Version 1.2 [KSP v0.23] -Added expandable containers -Added Launchpad -Added 3D rocket parts printer BahamutoD's original thread as of (3/2/14), also posted below: These are a pair of animated augers (one large, one small) for the Extraplanetary Launchpads mod by skykooler and taniwha. They do not overwrite any parts from the mod and aren't officially part of the mod, just my own addon for them. -Known 0.23.5 bugs: -Launchpad dances while being deployed -3D printer falls through things/things fall through it Version 1.2 -Added expandable containers -Added Launchpad -Added 3D rocket parts printer Notes: Includes an early version of my Animation Modules plugin that allows the container and 3d printer animations. I'm not entirely satisfied with the 3D printer yet but I thought I'd let people play with it for now. Source for the plugin: bdanimSource0.1.zip Download: EL Drills and Parts v1.2 Download =========================== [Legacy Imgur Album Code Omitted] ============================== Surface Sample Drill Also, a science drill was requested. I wanted to make a separate part for that eventually but for now, a rescale and retexture: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  7. Less simple ISRU So, you’ve been there. Just using the stock engines don’t cut it anymore for you. You have a bunch of hydrogen powered engines, be them from Cryo Engines, SSTU, BDB or some other mod I don’t know or remember. Or you’re using LH2 powered nuclear thermal rockets. Or you love Nertea’s lithium powered engines from NFP. Or the few methalox engines available (I think only from a patch of NFLV). And maybe you also like off planet building, with either Global Construction or EPL. So you set up a mining site well beyond Kerbin. Ok, maybe “well beyond” means the Mun. But it’s not the VAB. And you convert ore to LFO and monoprop. And also to liquid hydrogen. And also to lithium. And also use it for building stuff with Ground Construction. And into other stuff. It’s ore for everything. KSPI-E and Kerbalism have their resource chains, but they are complicated mods. Is there something in the middle? Something that’s not as daunting as KSPI-E but also doesn’t mean ore is almost magical? Yes, this. Also Rational Resources. But this too. What does it does and what it doesn’t? First, it doesn’t preclude any stock dynamic. Ore to LFO and monoprop is still there. I’m also not overwriting or deleting stuff from other mods (that wouldn’t be cool at all), so Nertea’s ore to hydrolox/lithium/methalox patches remain. If you want to continue refueling ships at Minmus or the Mun, you can still do it, as usual. What it does? It adds simple new resource chains using existing CRP resources for liquid hydrogen (plus oxidizer), lithium, sabatier processes for methane production and atmospheric harvesting of xenon (and argon, but if you’re using NFP, Nertea already had you covered with that). Here’s the simple run down Now for the resource explanations (you can skip this): Oxidizer Yes, theoretically, the in-game oxidizer isn’t based in liquid oxygen. But the mod community has long equated both for simplicity (and that LF burns with oxygen in the stock jets, I guess), so I’m going with that. The idea of this mod is to keep things somewhat simple, after all. Hydrates Based on what I see from CRP and Roverdude’s mods, “hydrates” represent several types of inorganic salts like chloraluminite or hydrates formed by cobalt chlorides (the people who included them in CRP can correct me here if I’m wrong) which have roughly 50% of water, or a corresponding mix of hydrogen and oxygen. So as a rule, I’m going with “if you can do it with water, you can do it with twice the mass of hydrates”. What can you do with water? Well, high temperature water electrolysis (so you still need radiators) as well as the Sabatier process to produce methane and oxygen. Why are both available instead of just water? Well, because while hydrates are common, water is not. I did add a bit of water to some specific biomes of the Mun and Minmus to make sure you can run the Sabatier process there and refuel any methalox engine within the Kerbin system (so you can always refuel there), even if realistically, there shouldn’t be any there. Also, since you need twice as much hydrates than water to do stuff (as well as extra electric power, since you need to first get the water out of the hydrates before making fuel), it’s not efficient to ship hydrates around with rockets – you’re flying around twice the mass you’d fly if you’ve turned it into fuel or if you’re using water. But, then again, water isn’t that common. Spodumene Spodumene is a mineral already included in CRP with the chemical formula LiAlSi2O6. So we have a bit of lithium to extract from there – but only a bit, there is a reason why salt brines are used on Earth to extract lithium after all. If flying hydrates around isn’t efficient, hauling spodumene is absolutely not efficient at all. You’re far better off refining it in situ because the vast majority of it will be lost. You could actually get quite a bit of oxidizer from it, but I feel that can be confusing (why are you looking for oxidizer if you intend to fly magnetodynamic thrusters?) and for gameplay reasons, I made the spodumene -> lithium conversion rather fast. If I added oxidizer, it would produce it really, really fast. But if I were to balance it with ore->LFO, lithium would take ages to extract. Carbon dioxide (and the Sabatier process) CO2 is here only to help produce methane, and is the only production chain which requires two raw resources. I didn’t yet see many mods with methalox rocketry – only an extra for NFLV, but I may be missing some mods. I also have a mind of checking how to use B9 part switch to make methalox versions of some stock engines. Nertea’s Cryo Tanks mod has support for methalox tanks as well as an ore -> methalox patch. I’m not touching those patches, so it’s still active if you’re looking for a simpler way to produce methalox. But if you’re looking for a more realistic way, you can use this mod. You’ll also notice that water and CO2 are both inputs and outputs of the Sabatier process. After digging a bit, I’ve used this https://marspedia.org/File:Propellant_production.png as a template – only that a lot faster because 420kg of methane per day wouldn’t cut it for gameplay purposes. A small byproduct of both water and CO2 still results, so I found it simpler and more interesting to add them as outputs rather than subtract them as inputs. As with hydrogen production, the Sabatier process can be done with either water or hydrates, and it takes twice as much of hydrates than water. Also keep in mind the resulting proportions don’t exactly match those used for engines. As for CO2, for simplicity reasons I’m not distinguishing between solid, liquid and gaseous CO2. Instead I’m using CRP’s carbondioxide definition which, based on it’s very low density, I guess it was meant to represent gaseous CO2. Adding the different states would require several conversions and three different storage tanks, all for a raw resource for a very niche fuel type, and that goes against keeping this mod kind of simple and easy to use and understand. As a result, you’ll see CO2 uses large amounts of in-game units. The drills report a large electric consumption to extract it because I’ve pumped up the efficiency rating of CO2 extraction to extract a large amount of units in a reasonable time, but don’t worry – the electric consumption is actually normal. As for its presence: CO2 melting point is 216.6 °K (-56.6 °C / -69.8° F) so it has no business being solid closer to the Sun than Kerbin. Or in Kerbin. I added a patch to add it to the stock system while removing it from Eve, Gilly and Moho. I did add it to Kerbin shores so the mining rigs can be tested at the Launchpad. And yes, in selected biomes at the Mun and Minmus, even if it shouldn’t be there, to keep with the philosophy of not preventing any stock mechanics. Essentially, you should at least be able to refuel methalox ships with the Kerbin system. Yeah, it shouldn’t be possible. If you want that part of realism, don’t do it, I guess. As for mod planet packs, some add it in its gaseous form, but it may be lacking in its solid forms. Your mileage may vary. (New in 0.4) Uranium enrichment for nuclear reactors CRP added uraninite ages ago, but creating nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors is, AFAIK, only covered in MKS. It’s also a bit OP since not only nuclear reactors are themselves OP, but because we’re talking about running a nuclear facility capable of making weapons grade uranium in another planet. So the stock 2.5 meters converter can now enrich uranium, but it requires a whopping 3000 EC. This mod also patches the NFE and KPBS centrifuges so they can also do it, but at a more reasonable electrical consumption. A word of warning: uraninite is dense. By weight alone, the stock holding tanks could hold hundreds of tons, I've limited the amount imagining the tank's structural resistance, but you can still mine and store a lot in very little volume. How does this all come together (and mod integration) (you probably want to read this) So, how do you get this stuff off the ground (or the atmosphere if you happen to have you nearby) and into something that goes boom – hopefully upwards and sideways? Storage As far as storage is concerned, the ore tanks will now hold water, hydrates, spodumene and CO2 as well as ore. For simplicity reasons, we can abstract parts of the CO2 extraction process and assume it’s frozen solid as part of the atmospheric extraction process. Atmospheric harvesting Gaseous resources from the atmosphere can be harvested with the stock precooler and the mk1 fuselage air intakes. The mining rig air speed matters in the efficiency by which the gasses are captured… and chances are your rig isn’t zooming around at match 2 – that’s a limitation which can’t be removed, to my knowledge, with module manager patches. So the percentage of the particular gas in the atmosphere matters a lot. You’ll see you’re barely sucking CO2 at the Launchpad. Now go and try the same at Duna ;-) Also, it takes more power to harvest CO2 than other gasses because it’s being stored in solid form. Or at least in holding tanks which seem to be designed to hold solids, so it’s being frozen and that takes more power. The surface scanner will also scan for atmospheric CO2 and, if NF Propulsion isn’t present, for xenon as well. The reason it doesn’t scan for xenon if you have NFP is that NFP already includes an atmospheric sensor that scans for both xenon and argon. Surface mining The drills now come with the option to harvest water, hydrates, spodumene and carbon dioxide. Not much more that needs to be said about it. Resource conversion All done in the stock converters. And the Kerbal Planetary System converter. And the Mining Expansion converters. In short, the stock system is to use drills to harvest ore, store it in holding tanks and use the ISRU converters to, well, convert it. All these processes require quite a bit of electricity and generate heat. This mod uses the same parts and system and just adds a few more toggles and more places to look for more raw materials. Mod integration Scansat Scansat already covers water, spodumene and hydrates by default. CO2 has been integrated into the planetary overlays and maps, so you can use Scansat to plan your mining, refining and colonization efforts. Kerbal Planetary Base Systems The converter, regular drill (not the dirt drill) and the ore holding tanks are all patched to extract, store and process the new resource chains Feline Utility Rover The converter has been integrated too Stockalike Mining Extension It’s fully integrated. As with KPBS, you can use the drills, converters and holding tanks to mine, store and process hydrates, water, co2 and spodumene. Stockalike Station Parts Redux Water is already available for the SSPR storage parts by default. The existing hydrates template in SSPR is set to be activated if either MKS or TAC LS aren’t already triggering it. Spodumene and CO2 options are added. Remember, though, some resources are better processed in situ, since conversion rates aren’t necessarily 1:1 Near Future Construction Water, Spodumene, Hydrates and CO2 templates have been added to the trusses capable of holding ore MKS Very little actually. If Umbra Space Industries is present, the logistic module will be added to the ore holding tanks, which should allow them to participate in the USI logistics system. If both USI and NFP are present, the module is also added to NFP lithium tanks (though I’d remove it if @Nertea objects, as it’s his mod, same with the SSPR integration). MKS already handles hydrates and water by default, so hydrolox production shouldn’t be a problem: raw resources can be remotely mined and transported with the logistics system to a larger inhabited base for processing. Remote mining and processing of spodumene and CO2/methalox is, as of initial release, slow. Full integration would require adding spodumene and CO2 to the automated drills as well as adding the conversion recipes to the automated processing units as well as, perhaps, adding them to the MKS tanks. Nothing of this is, as of yet, implanted, so crewless production of methane and lithium will be slow Planet Packs No integration (yet). Spodumene, water and hydrates have a global definition in CRP, so unless the mod author has removed them, they will be there. Gaseous CO2 may or may not be available, that depends on the planet pack author. Solid CO2 will be there in smaller amounts (at least as of initial release) since I’ve added a global definition – which also means it will be around in hot planets where it shouldn’t be, so I’m open to suggestions about removing it. I am considering adding a surface CO2 config for RSS, but I don’t know if the RO/RSS crowd would be interested. Added a resource configuration for Real Solar System, which increases surface water in bodies with abundant known surface ice and a bit of surface carbon dioxide where it’s known to be. Off-planet manufacturing mods Not integrated either. While part of the reason I made these patches is because of “one resource to rule them all”, which is what happens with Global Construction without MKS, I’d be messing with those mods resource chains rather than adding new chains for existing mod fuels. So I’m not doing it. And yes, that means nothing stops you from extracting ore to use with GC to both build ships and use it as fuel, and also that EPL still requires metal ore for building and ore for the smelter. Making an additional resource chain for GC material kits would interfere with the more complex MKS resource chain, and I’m not messing with other people’s mods. As for EPL, while both hydrates and spodumene contain aluminum, which could reasonably be abstracted into “stuff spaceships can be made of”, adding metal ore as a byproduct of their isru chains would mean messing with EPL’s gameplay. And on top, EPL’s metal ore and its smelting process is based in an iron ore (hematite IIRC), not aluminum. So while I considered it as a way to add more flexibility to the base locations, I’m not touching it. Dependencies Module Manager, of course, since this is a collection of patches Community Resource Pack, for the resources B9 Part Switch, for the tanks I haven’t included them in the download, as Less Simple ISRU, being a collection of patches, can work with KSP 1.8 or 1.9, but B9 Part Switch require different downloads for either versions. So if you don’t have them already, download them. Pictures Because of course Solar panels courtesy of Suicidal Insanity’s MK2 Expansion, drills from Mining Expansion (also by Suidical Insanity) and Nertea’s NFP methalox engines. Also, I didn’t pack enough panels and the lander doesn’t really have enough dV to get back to space, so don’t copy that design. That’s the Sabatier process running at Duna, processing hydrates. And yes, the 1.25m convert-O-Tron is, well, the 1.25m convert-O-Tron: The crew isn’t happy. Now Minmus, showing Kerbal Planetary Base System integration, and radiators by Nertea’s Heat Control. Also the Sabatier process, this time with water Scansat integration (and hyperedit to cheat the probe into orbit). Yes, dry ice (solid CO2) shouldn’t be there, but I’m don’t want to cut Minmus refueling bases. More Scansat, mining and processing with Mining Expansion’s largest parts. Lithium processing for NFP largest engines. Val is happy. The surface scanner and high temperature electrolysis to produce liquid hydrogen and oxidizer. Tanks by cryotanks. Of course, I’m open to suggestions (except for CO2 Nuclear Thermal engines, Rational Resources already has those) as well as any correction to balance and the resource’s proportions (I do think I got them right, but I may be mistaken in something) Changelog 0.40: Added Uranium Enrichment, fixed Cryotanks 1.6.1 causing a conflict with this mod. Updated version file 0.30: Various fixes by @AccidentalDisassembly. Ore tanks now hold a stock-like amount of resources (as in, five times less). Updated version file for 1.10 0.20: Added Near Future Construction integration, RSS integration and updated readme file 0.10: initial release Download links Spacedock https://spacedock.info/mod/2378/Less%20Simple%20ISRU Curse https://www.curseforge.com/kerbal/ksp-mods/less-simple-isru License: GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3GPLv3 Enjoy
  8. I started making this online tool that can help players design mining bases. It adds up the total resources consumed, produced and stored, as well as a few other metrics about heat generation, and other things of consideration when building a mining base. This is beta, and still in progress, but the general idea can be seen here: ISRU Heat & Power Calculator Light-mode theme messes with the background, here is a workaround in the meanwhile: Use the green menu, go to Delta-v or CommNet planner, Click the Sun Icon right next to the menu. That switches to dark-theme. Use the green menu to go back to pocket calculators (this ISRU calculator) Fixed - Phew...glad I called it beta I need to confirm a lot of details about the calculations on how the engineer bonus level, ore concentration, and multiple resource processes affect the final outcome for how much heat was generated. Does anyone have some definitive details on this? I will need to verify this tool's results against in-game tests, but the forum posts have gotten me this far at least Anyway, have fun and see if it works well enough for you. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!
  9. Presenting, the Sparrow RSV! The Sparrow Rescue and Support Vehicle is a dropship built to provide support to a growing colonial operation, with the ability to refuel or rescue stranded crews. Engines: 2x Terrier, 1x Poodle Power: 2x RTG, 2x SPL-1x6, 2x Fuel Cell Array Docking: 1x mini claw, 1x standard port (doreward, aligned with foreward engine thrust), 1x sr. port (ventral, aligned with VTOL thrust, can be swapped out for other sizes) Range: about 3 KM/S Payload: 2x small drill, 1x small ISRU, 1x large cargo container (full of various things that might be useful) DLCs/Mods: None, RCS Build Aid was used during contruction Crew: 2 Parts: 80 Mass: 38t AGs: 1 -> toggle foreward engine 2 -> toggle VTOL engines 3 -> toggle extendables (solars, comms, thermals) 9 -> control point vertical 0 -> control point horizontal Abort -> deploy chutes RCS -> toggles wheel steering, locked by default Sparrow comes with a large shuttle-type lifter. Just fly a standard gravity turn with the first stage, which should get you nearly all the way there. Stage again once out of the atmosphere to fire the Poodle. When nearly in orbit, ditch the booster by staging again. Once clear, shut off the VTOL engines with AG 2 and finish circularization. The booster might be recoverable, but it won't be easy. Download yours today! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fuFabgR526RpYIXuhwM1KDfncIcOt4p0/view?usp=sharing
  10. A proposal for what hopes to be a relatively simple system for resource sharing between planets and moons at a given star. Derived from my Shipyard Logistics idea and aimed at interplanetary by request. It is practically a complete mini-game, possibly bringing EVE Online to KSP. Miners The beginning of this system is deployable, upgradable, single-part mining infrastructure. Land it, splash it, park it in the optimal altitude for an exosphere resource and turn it on. Per the names and values given by the resource scanner module, the player can choose which resources to harvest, and invest upgrade points to raise the output multiplier of a desired resource. Resources harvested are not immediately available to be pumped into other vessels. They are first converted to “resource credits” (MKS users know) so they do not have mass as to encourage the tank mass/joint strength kraken, and they are all collected by the depot. Purchase upgrade points by spending funds and a construction mod resource. When points are used, the miner part will increase in height and width to reflect increased mining capacity. Power and heat systems are not relevant at all. These are assumed to be perfectly settled before the miner is packaged, and all components are assumed to be standardized and perfectly lego-able for ease of upgrading in-flight. Features and upgrades Part can produce each resource found via resource scanner module but requires Equipment Points invested into that resource. Each point represents a harvester slot and raises the resource multiplier by 1. (Multiplier starts at 0). Part can be upgraded to have more total points invested in it (effectively: raising the drill slot limit). Equipment Points would be produced by a depot and can only be taken from the controlling depot. The part may increase in size when upgraded. ID info Each miner vessel identifies itself, its host body, situation, resource production rates, and it appears in a list under its controlling depot, and in the category of Production. Depots Next comes an upgradable single-part transport hub infrastructure. This is by default much larger than the miner as it represents the parent vessel for all abstracted resource freights and a branch office of a bank. A landed depot encapsulates all landed miners on a given body and an orbital depot encapsulates all miners orbiting a given body (excluding any moons). The depot has the capacity to produce upgradable abstracted shuttles for resource transfers, and by extension, has resource converter capacity and tankage for converter outputs. Every depot (per situation: Orbiting or Landed) has shared access to a single cache of all resources produced by all miners in the same situation. Player vessels that require resources can dock with these and withdraw from or deposit to the cache. The depot ideally should never experience a dynamic mass situation. The UI for this exchange will resemble any fuel pump mod, showing transfer speed options, allowing to exchange any combination of resources, and respecting locked tanks and crossfeed. Features and upgrades Provides infinite tankage for resources collected by miners under its control. Resources are not physically stored but stored as massless credits. They are converted between these forms as needed when a real, player-built ship docks to it or is at least within 100m of it. Provides ISRU within the resource credit system such as to produce Equipment Points or construction mod resources. Provides a system for the holding, application and upgrade of virtual shuttles for resource deliveries. Part can be upgraded to hold any number of shuttles. Note that if shuttles arrive and the depot has no available bays for them, the shuttles will wait in a coorbital situation and their payload will be inaccessible. Part can be upgraded to have greater throughput rate for a given ISRU chain and to hold more Equipment Points to give to miners under its control. The part may increase in size when upgraded. ID info Each depot vessel identifies itself, its host body, its situation, resources held, resource conversion chains and if they are active, shuttle bay count, and each shuttle bay with the relevant info of a shuttle, if occupied, and the depot appears in the categories of Production and Storage. Shuttles These imaginary vessels come in a few types, will cost some amount of construction resource and propellant resource to build, and must be produced on demand. Logistics (surface-to-orbit and interplanetary) will not properly work until they exist. Shuttles have launch and delivery cycles depending on the sum of: Construction time (unless it already exists. This can be affected by Production factor – how fast the depot can perform construction); Ascent time if surface-to-orbit “SO” (depending on ascent dV and TWR, if ascent dV can be easily computed, and depends on the engine type); Transfer time if interplanetary “IP” (depends on automated transfer window planner functions and the engine type). SO shuttles can be made to loop and will automatically launch repeatedly, either infinitely or a requested number of times with a countdown of the total time and an optional alarm at the end. If an IP shuttle needs to go from a moon of planet A to a moon of planet B, only consider the transfer time between the parent planets and not planet-to-moon. Engine profiles Profiles allow for the shuttles to benefit from progression and to be optimized and dedicated to specific use cases. If it isn’t too much trouble to implement, the system should be able to produce and simulate a virtual ship with the desired payload mass, propellant type and mass, engine type and size, resultant TWR and dV, then compare this dV with the dV required for an interplanetary transfer, and finally offer a slider control for how much dV to spend to optionally expedite a transfer (this slider defaulted to the lowest setting which equals just enough of a burn to get a transfer done), and get the transit time and its changes dependent on the dV fraction to be used. If it is too much trouble to implement, the system should only need to be able to get transfer windows and transfer times, then provide profiles (which unlock with respect to certain tech nodes) which require a baseline amount of propellant per unit mass of payload and provide the option to expedite transfers by increasing the propellant required per unit mass of payload. SO shuttles have these example profiles: Name: Fuel mix; Vac Isp; Is atmo-capable?; Engine Mass; Engine TWR Chemical: LFO; 340s; Yes; 4.2t; 30 Nuclear I: LF; 800s; No; 3t; 1 Nuclear II: LF; 970s; Yes; 3t; 10 IP shuttles have these example profiles: Name: Fuel mix; Vac Isp; Engine Mass; Engine TWR Nuclear I: LF; 800s; 3t; 1 Nuclear II: LF; 970s; 3t; 10 Fusion A: FusionPellets; 1,020,000s; ?t; ? Fusion B: D+He3; 35,372s; ?t; ? BCAM: H2 + AM; ???s; ?t; ? Features and upgrades Shuttle has tweakable payload mass limit, propellant mass limit, engine type (during construction) and resources can be added or subtracted by text input/search and slider control or number input. Shuttle dV expenditure can be tweaked between Baseline and High/Max Energy to save dV or save transfer time. Shuttle can be destroyed to recover some fraction of construction resources and recover all propellant resources to build a different shuttle or convert to physical resources. ID info Each shuttle identifies itself by name, the source depot (if moving), destination depot (if moving), if it’s looping (STO only), current depot (if idle/parked), time launched, transfer time elapsed, transfer time remaining, payload resources, and appears in the categories of Storage and Transport. Conclusion Miners. These are large, upgradable, single-part vessels placed where desired on the surface of a celestial body, under the sea thereof, or in the peak altitude of an exospheric resource. Resource production is decided by the results of a surface scanner module and the investment of “upgrade points” into enabling choice resources and raising their multipliers. Resources do not physically occur here and cannot be accessed. Depots. These are larger, upgradable, single-part vessels placed on a body’s surface or in orbit, and they possess the cache for the resources produced by all miners in the same situation as itself. Resources collected here are in the form of massless credits, and can be exchanged between credit form and massive form to be used by resource converters as usual. They are also the hubs and assemblers of virtual shipping vessels which carry resources surface-to-orbit, the opposite, and even interplanetary. Shuttles. These upgradable, imaginary vessels embody resource transfers and can be created on demand, scheduled, looped and tracked. Most of the challenge of implementing this logistics system is in the interplanetary shuttles as dV expenditure, transfer times, their many associated factors need to be properly rigged and calculated. Spreadsheet-gaming interface. The player needs to be able to, at a glance, see what all the miners at a given body and in a given situation are producing; their controlling depot; that depot’s cache and activities, shuttle capacity; shuttle activities/statuses/schedules and more.
  11. Introduction During a talk on Discord concerning bases and stations, someone stated that they avoided landed bases like the plague (due to the known problems with those) so I happened to have a runaway thought process. These things came to mind quickly, and are arranged in this order: Abstracting away the landed mining base and reducing its part count from 200+ to as close as possible to... just 1. Empowering the orbiting station which is supported by the landed base, without significantly adding to part count. Automating and abstracting the freight vessel between station and landed base. Elaboration [1] The Abstracted Miner, Fully Integrated "AMFI" is a part with a very simple shape and is cluster-able to increase harvesting rate. It has slots for drills but the player doesn't physically attach them. When the player equips a virtual drill and chooses its resource, they're actually changing the multiplier for how much of that resource is detected by the resource scanner module. Once landed and active, the one harvester module will produce that much more resource and will produce all of the desired resources at once, saving the player from suffering lag from many ISRU modules running at once. The AMFI has slots for resource conversion too. Just like with the virtual drills a multiplier is being raised (like in other games, dedicating skill points) to the player's choice of any installed resource converter chains. This provides choices such as between faster LFO production or, say, faster MetalOre --> Metal for Extraplanetary Launchpads. There's a cost to equipping and balancing the drills and converters, of course. Each of these has an EC demand and maybe, a heat contribution, and these add up. Power and heat can be handwaved entirely away as well, needing only to limit the player from going overboard on equipment. Since this is supposed to be set-and-forget, it shouldn't require the player to ever have to reenter physics range of it once it's landed and activated. However, if the player chooses to use the AMFI as the core of a regular landed base's operations, then the player could connect it to other landed vessels and pump resources out of it normally. There's an additional and rather small controller part (1 master, many slaves kind of system) or if you have several AMFI parts in the vessel, one can be toggled as the master. This master takes note of the final tally of harvester and converter multipliers across all parts. All resource inputs are added/stacked/bundled together. All resource outputs are added/stacked/bundled together. This leads to absolutely only 2 ISRU modules running within the vessel: a tweaked multi-drill; a tweaked multi-converter. The vessel then becomes an item in a table and can be read and run in the background. [2] Empowering of the station is facilitated by a large part that is a specialized dock and receives an imaginary vessel, an Abstracted Resource Delivery Ship "ARDS" from an AMFI vessel (so the player needs a dock for each AMFI vessel). When paired it receives the AMFI's data for the ARDS payload and cycle time. Technically, the dock can simply be attached to another landed vessel, rather than an orbiting station, and this would easily enable planetary logistics via suborbital hopping freighters. [3] The ARDS is a tweakable virtual freight, just like the AMFI is a tweakable virtual mining base, and the ARDS is also represented by a large and heavy part that is attached to an AMFI vessel. ARDS has just one option to it and that is payload mass vs tolerated sea level gravity. If the player chooses more payload mass then naturally the gravity value goes down, the less it can lift from a more massive world. Worlds with atmosphere not allowed, or some penalty will be applied which scales non-linearly with atmosphere pressure. The ARDS cycle, and therefore, when the orbital station receives a lump sum of resources, are dependent on how long it takes to produce the payload mass. It is assumed that the ARDS's propellant is also produced by extra drills and converters. Multiple ARDS parts could be attached with benefit to an AMFI vessel. This would have the effect of allowing more payload mass in the same ARDS cycle and won't require an extra dock to be added to the station. Conclusion In summary, the idea here is for a mod that provides parts and functionality for: Very low part-count mining bases with slots and capacity allocation for AIO harvesters and AIO converters; Orbiting stations that expand themselves and produce more vessels (when all the action is meant to be there) to become more attractive and more rewarding with a significant savings on increase of part count; A form of planetary logsitics and virtual transport ships delivering generous payload masses from one or more of these bases to a target station. What this plan does not intend to provide are: Full and centralized planetary logistics like in USI MKS/WOLF; Orbital logistics (station to station transfers); Interplanetary logistics; Crew transfers... Mods that contain features reflected in this mod idea: Wild Blue Tools: "OmniConverters:" a resource converter with slots and easy scaling, and every part that is this can detect and receive any converter chain as provided in a new config. No need to MM patch it into every part. Wild Blue Tools or Pathfinder: "Prospector:" a resource harvester that produces all resources at once, in accordance to what the resource scanner shows. Kerbalism: enables a slot system for resource harvesters and resource converters as does Wild Blue Tools. Wild Blue Tools/Snacks: allows for lump sums of one or more resources to be added to a vessel after a set cycle rather than adding them per second like normal. Kerbalism's greenhouse module also has this. USI WOLF (comes with MKS): Planetary logistics and on-demand virtual ships for resource delivery to and from any two major vessels. Davon supply mod or Kerbal Space Transport System: allows for launches from KSC to an LKO station (or anywhere in Kerbin SOI, depends on the mod) to be recorded and then used for automated, abstracted delivery missions afterward.
  12. Brief Deep Sky (a sci-fantasy, far future agency... mine) would like to test the muscle of any agency capable of producing interstellar class ships. The challenge: To gather at least 2 super-heavy asteroids in orbit of either the homeworld or whatever celestial body that your space program doesn't mind performing full industrial exploitation of. The asteroids are presumed to be rich with 1 or more rare resources that won't easily, or at all, be found in the surfaces of most planets. This challenge is of the sort "something for you to do and use for progression" and is not "a comparison of ships built with the same parts/performance" so you will find generous limits on part mods. In fact... this should simply be impossible to do without part mods. If you wish, you may emulate this as a contract in a career game with the following specs (as a baseline anyway. Tune them as you see fit): +1 million investment +/- 5 times the invest amount if you succeed or fail +/- 30 if you succeed or fail Mission Reporting Provide at least these details of the vessel(s) you use: Ship dry mass, wet mass, propellants, launch cost. Mission start time, elapsed time, per asteroid, and total mission time. If you use one ship for all asteroids, then idle time between pursuing asteroids counts. Less time is better. Mass of each asteroid at the time of capture; Mass after you used out whatever necessary resource(s) to fuel your ship and parked the asteroid. Screenshots or video highly recommened but not required. (Honesty is key.) Mission Unique Bonus Participation (Anyone can get this) Big Daddy ISRU Program (A): Use the Ore to produce propellants other than <any stock resource> or LqdHydrogen. Big Daddy ISRU Program (B): Use resources other than Ore to produce your propellants. (You must keep all the Ore. The rest of your space program will find use for it.) Champion (Only one can get this) We run on efficiency!: Use the least average asteroid resource out of all the space programs. (Does not count if you rely heavily on gravity assists. We want those asteroids within the next decade at most, not next century.) No order is too tall: Bring the most asteroids. Rules You must be using a planet pack that makes asteroids wider and heavier. Known packs allowed: Galaxies Unbound JNSQ Whirligig World RSS HyperEdit, VesselMover and other obvious cheat tools not allowed, obviously. No restriction on part mods (except for propulsion systems). Propulsion system mods allowed: KSPI-E OPT Continued (for its Dark Drive) Far Future Technologies (especially with "Calvin's patch" or equivalent, that buffs their Isp's so that they're properly interstellar grade) Karbonite Plus (for Karborundum) MEV Heavy Industries Interstellar Technologies Propulsion mods and techniques disallowed: Wormholes, Jump gates or (other) FTL tech Anything resembling EM Drive, GN Drive, or other self-fueling/infinitely fueled engine Anything that causes engines to be infinitely fueled (I know of mods that contain "fuel cells" and "generators" that produce fuel, Ore or EelectricCharge for practically no cost) Any obviously extremely imbalanced or "sandbox fun" propulsion mod Goals / Points +1 for basic finish +3 if you bring a 3rd asteroid +2 for each asteroid (after 3) that you bring +1 if the target body has > 1g +1 if the target body has > 2g +5 if you use one ship and don't do parallel missions Un-scaled Asteroids If you would like to attempt this challenge without the asteroid sizing then the requirements are as follows: You must bring home 3 E-sized asteroids. Goal changes: +3 if you bring home 5 asteroids +1 for each asteroid (after 5) that you bring
  13. Download on Curseforge or Github or SpaceDock. Also available on CKAN. KGEx Brings you: ISRU Thanks But No Tanks (QBTT) Module Manager config patch to allow mining and converting Ore without storage tanks by adding a small amount of Ore storage to all ISRUs. Available on CKAN as ISRUThanksButNoTanks. Supports ISRUs in Stockalike Mining Extension by @SuicidalInsanity. CKAN: StockalikeMiningExtension Adopted by @zer0Kerbal, originally by @QuickBASIC Cabin notes: WIP - work in progress Am open to adding more features, great project for someone! I have not personally tested the patches Have a request? Glad to have them, kindly submit through GitHub. Discussions: See Discussions or KSP Forums for discussions and news on this mod Installation Directions: Use CKAN Changelog Summary See ChangeLog for full details of mod changes Known Issues See Known Issues for full details of feature requests, and known issues Dependencies Kerbal Space Program may work on other versions (YMMV) Module Manager Recommends Kerbal Change Log Stockalike Mining Extension Suggests SimpleConstructon! (SCON!) SimpleLogistics! (SLOG!) Not So SimpleConstructon! (NSSC) Keridian Dynamics Vessel Assembly (KDVA) The Gold Standard! (GOLD) Stork Delivery System (SDS) Komplexity (KPLX) KaboOom! (BOOM) another way to not go to space today Solar Science (SOLS) Stock Inline Lights (SIL) Mini Sample Return Capsule (MSRC) Pteron (MSRV) Solar Science (SOLS) Jack-O-Lantern (JACK) MoarKerbals(MOAR) On Demand Fuel Cells (ODFC) Field Training Facility (FTF) Field Training Lab (FTL) Docking Port Descriptions(DPD) PicoPort Shielded (PPS) Transparent Command Pods) (TCP) More Hitchhikers) (MHH) Biomatic (BIO) B9 Stock Switches (B9S Oh Scrap!: ScrapYard: DaMichel's AeroRadial (DAR) DaMichel's CargoBays (DCB) DaMichel's Fuselage (DMF) DaMichel's Spherical Tanks (DST) Simple Cargo Solutions (SCS) KerGuise Experimental Engineering (KGEx) Kerbal Changelog Community Resource Pack Supports Kerbal Change Log Stockalike Mining Extension Conflicts none known Replaces none Tags addon, resources *red box below is a link to forum post on how to get support* Credits Legal Mumbo Jumbo (License) Current Forum: Thread Source: GitHub License: Original Thread: none Download Source: GitHub License: Be Kind: Lithobrake, not jakebrake! Keep your Module Manager up to date v1.0.0.0 original: 11 Aug 2018 0K updated: 06 Sep 2021 zed'K
  14. Melantu Atmospheric Harvesting v1.0 Tired of lugging around heavy mining equipment for your Interplanetary ISRU? Looking for a compact ISRU for your Single-Stage-To-Laythe Planes? Have no fear, for now you can create fuel from the air around you! Melantu Atmospheric Harvesting (MAH) is a small mod to complement the Stock ISRU with atmospheric harvesting and converting. Specifically, it is designed to turn Carbon Dioxide in the atmospheres of Duna, Eve, and Laythe (and Kerbin, though I'm not sure why you would need it) into Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer. This mod is inspired by Mars Direct (its chemistry), The Martian (its power requirements), and the MOXIE experiment on the Mars 2020 rover (its form factor). It is a repurposed Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer, that can turn a small liquid hydrogen supply into a large amount of Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer using less power than the PB-NUK RTG. Sounds too good to be true? Well it takes a really long time, and only works in atmospheres. It Takes about 33 hours to fill up an FL-T100, 88.5 Kerbin Days to fill up a Rockomax 16, and 354 Kerbin Days to fill up a Big Orange Tank. In addition to the Basic LFO, there are more specialized ISRU Modes including Methalox, Water, and Oxygen, designed to play well with mods like Life Support and Rational Resources. (note: at this point, RealFuels is not supported) Dependencies This mod would not be possible without other mods doing the Heavy Lifting. Specifically this Mod Requires Community Resource Pack by Roverdude (included in Download) ModuleManager by sarbian and Ialdabaoth (included in Download) Recommended Mod CryoTanks by Nertea (separate download) (the best way to get Liquid Hydrogen Tanks, required for the sample craft) Future Plans 1.1: Proper Agency implementation, Contracts to bring back samples of CO2 1.2: Larger/Faster/More Expensive Parts with integrated tanks (aka I have to learn how to model and texture) 1.?.?: RealFuels support (I look at those cfg files and my brain just breaks) Licensing My cfg files are licensed under the MIT License Bundled Mods are licensed under their own licenses Download Primary: SpaceDock Secondary: GitHub A look at the included sample craft, a Duna Ascent Vehicle, as well as the basic MOXIE stats The Sample DAV on Duna at night, slowly processing CO2 and LH2 into LFO More images of the Sample DAV and an Example Mission: https://imgur.com/a/ff7WDuG
  15. I am trying to dock vessels on the surface (any body), the purpose is to transfer fuel from ISRU mining/refining equipment to spacecraft. Rather than trying to make all my vessels have docking ports at exactly the same height and orientation, I'm trying to use the robotic parts to facilitate docking port alignment. The problem is that there is a bug when docking rovers on the surface using robotic parts. The bug usually results in the total destruction of one or both vessels. The bug was reported on the tracker here: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/23177 There have been a few threads discussing the issue, here's one of them: I am still struggling with this bug, and have not found a satisfactory way to dock vehicles on the surface. Using the 'Klaw' instead of docking ports doesn't help, the same ship destruction occurs. I am looking for suggestions to successfully dock vessels on the surface, I'm hoping someone has found a way to mitigate the surface docking bug. I realize there are several mods which would make surface refueling possible. I do not use mods, so that suggestion would not be helpful to me- although other players may find those suggestions helpful. Any suggestions for docking surface vessels (rovers, or rover to large ship) would be appreciated.
  16. Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered at the big questions of life? Is there anyone else out there in the cosmos? Are we doomed to die as a single-planet species? Does Jool have too many moons? Wait... what? That's right! JEXA, the Joolian EXploration Association, is working to solve these big issues so you don't need to! When they're not torturing acronyms, JEXA is diligently toiling away to bring Pol's delicious crust and-or mantle to your doorstep! As the smallest and loneliest moon of Jool Pol has few friends willing to come to its defense, thus making it the perfect victim location for industry-scale strip mining respectful utilization of its available resources. This playthrough takes place in a modded 1.10.1 career mode save with about 40 hours plalytime and 9 years of elapsed in-game. I've already done missions to every planet, two comets, and fully unlocked the tech tree as a result; I find that sort of thing to be generic and so will not focus on those activities in this mission report. Primary mods are Nertea's legendary Near Future suite and Stockalike Station Parts Expansion Redux, not to mention Strategia and the various Contract Pack expansions which are integral to a meaningful career playthrough. The Polony "Sand Castle", a nuclear-lithium Pol miner designed to harvest 40 kg/s of ore and loft 160 tons of payload to the refinery "Ion Fairy" a temporary Jool mothership assembled from 4 different modules, deploying a smaller exploration frigate for a tourist contract "Ion Godspeed", the second of two Nuclear Ion ferries, visits intermediate-period comet Gilong-1 after dropping off two advanced probes at Jool Program Objectives: Establish a refinery in Pol orbit to produce general fuels like LF/O, monoprop, and lithium Construct advanced Pol surface bases to produce exotic fuels like argon, xenon, and enriched uranium Build reusable surface-orbit freighters to ship highly refined products from Pol's surface Construct a fleet of nuclear lithium MPD tugs to freight cargo and passengers from Kerbin to Pol and back using fast transfer orbits (<1 year each way) Fund activites through Tourism Plus contracts to take tourists on flybys and landings of Jool's moons and ISRU extraction contracts to ship ore from Pol Support these initiatives using existing infrastructure like the nuclear-ion Fast Crew Ferries and Argon Giant superheavy nuclear propulsion bus Redirect intermediate-period H-class comet Gilong-1 around Kerbin using infrastructure staged and supported from Jool
  17. Melantu Atmospheric Harvesting v1.0 Tired of lugging around heavy mining equipment for your Interplanetary ISRU? Looking for a compact ISRU for your Single-Stage-To-Laythe Planes? Have no fear, for now you can create fuel from the air around you! Melantu Atmospheric Harvesting (MAH) is a small mod to complement the Stock ISRU with atmospheric harvesting and converting. Specifically, it is designed to turn Carbon Dioxide in the atmospheres of Duna, Eve, and Laythe (and Kerbin, though I'm not sure why you would need it) into Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer. This mod is inspired by Mars Direct (its chemistry), The Martian (its power requirements), and the MOXIE experiment on the Mars 2020 rover (its form factor). It is a repurposed Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer, that can turn a small liquid hydrogen supply into a large amount of Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer using less power than the PB-NUK RTG. Sounds too good to be true? Well it takes a really long time, and only works in atmospheres. It Takes about 33 hours to fill up an FL-T100, 88.5 Kerbin Days to fill up a Rockomax 16, and 354 Kerbin Days to fill up a Big Orange Tank. In addition to the Basic LFO, there are more specialized ISRU Modes including Methalox, Water, and Oxygen, designed to play well with mods like Life Support and Rational Resources. (note: at this point, RealFuels is not supported) Dependencies This mod would not be possible without other mods doing the Heavy Lifting. Specifically this Mod Requires Community Resource Pack by Roverdude (included in Download) ModuleManager by sarbian and Ialdabaoth (included in Download) Recommended Mod CryoTanks by Nertea (separate download) (the best way to get Liquid Hydrogen Tanks, required for the sample craft) Future Plans 1.1: Proper Agency implementation, Contracts to bring back samples of CO2 1.2: Larger/Faster/More Expensive Parts with integrated tanks (aka I have to learn how to model and texture) 1.?.?: RealFuels support (I look at those cfg files and my brain just breaks) Licensing My cfg files are licensed under the MIT License Bundled Mods are licensed under their own licenses Download: GitHub A look at the included sample craft, a Duna Ascent Vehicle, as well as the basic MOXIE stats The Sample DAV on Duna at night, slowly processing CO2 and LH2 into LFO More images of the Sample DAV and an Example Mission: https://imgur.com/a/ff7WDuG
  18. I was looking around for how generic ore could be turned into generic liquid fuel an oxidizer, and I think I found a candidate. Perhaps the ore that you mine is actually methane clathrate (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate) trapped in the dirt, but I’m not sure how the methane is extracted. Or (and I like this better), the ore is a carbonate mineral from which CO2 and hydrogen are liberated through heat, and then converted into methane by the Sabatier reaction, and the resulting water is electrolyzed to make liquid oxygen. The issue is, how is this process reflected in the input to output ratio of ore to LF/O? Is it accurate or wildly off?
  19. You are descending to your outpost with running ISRU, and it rapidly builds core heat from nowhere (catch-up when going off-rails) and goes boom? "No ground contact" appears and disappears randomly, because surface detection of the game is challenged? Landed your 500-ton refinery on a "dead spot" of Pol? Oh, no. Your engineer went to the outhouse for a minute, and your ISRU production rate lowered in twenty times. ISRU TWEAKS Heavily inspired by @Markelius https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/138756-112-no-overheating/ , distributed under the same license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Is made to stop that weird behaviour of stock mechanics by Module Manager magic. Even with mods. This is fairly simple. Patches can be used separately. Module manager is a dependency and you can get it here https://github.com/sarbian/ModuleManager, but looks like you have it already. No_overheat patch will look for any parts with modules, producing malicious CoreHeat. You will need no radiators for converters, processors and harvesters affected, they will not need to warm up and to blow up. RTGs are covered. Radiators will still be needed to operate NERVA-alike engines and in hot environments. No_engineers will remove stock 5% cap on effeciency of converters and harvesters, they will run on their nominal effeciency, harvesters will run depending on resource abundance. Your things will work like it`s 4-star engineer onboard, everytime, even on probes. Drill_collider makes drill collider 25 kerbal meters long, this is a dirty "fix" to fight bugged surface detection. But you still have to point it to the ground and to be landed. Mod support: Wild Blue Industries-any: Just works. For all parts, hopefully. Please tell me, if not. USI - any: no_engineers respects and preserves fancy USI effeciency and traits system, so you need specialist kerbals or you need automatic drills and automatic modules. Heat and colliders are patched as usual. Any custom parts with stock or USI/WBI modules are patched automatically, so stockalike mining extension, KPBS, MRS, Contares, rovers, etc are compatible. KSPIE: parts with stock modules are covered, parts with WasteHeat use WasteHeat pseudo-resource, no need to fix, you still need radiators. Extraplanetary Launchpads uses its own heat implementation for smeltery, own drill modules and unmanned production part, nothing to do here. 3rd party parts with stock modules are supported. You will need engineers to build stuff. OSE Workshop: Converters are covered, unmanned workshop is already present. Ground Construction: Converters are covered, you will need engineers to build stuff. Kerbalism: does not simulate heat, nothing to do here Near Future Electrical uses its own module for reactor, you still need radiators. SIMPLEX Resources, CRP, planet packs, new ISRU recipes, etc: compatible. Only drills, converters or generators(e.g. RTG) are affected, only heat and engineer requirement is disabled. Support: I will want to look at your save folder, namely craft files, and your KSP.log from the root folder, if something goes wrong. Special thanks to Markelius, Roverdude and SQUAD. DOWNLOAD LINK https://spacedock.info/mod/2469/ISRU Tweaks
  20. Hello fellow Kerbalnauts! Have you ever started a drill or ISRU, only to be frustrated when it either takes forever to max it's efficiency, overheats, or needs a massive amount of NearFuture radiators or solar panels to dissapate the heat, which aren't always reliable? Wish the stock drills and ISRUs worked the same way Karbonite did before 1.0? Then you need... No Overheating Download on Spacedock [works with 1.1.2, probably 1.0+ too] This mod is just a simple couple of Module Manager patches, which completely remove the core heat system on Drills and ISRUs. Just start them up and let them do their thing. It also removes the core heat system on RTGs, I wasn't sure if they actually had any effect but I removed them just to be sure. It also works with Kerbal Planetary Base Systems, Modular Rocket Systems, and Near Future Electrical, but does not require them. It does however, REQUIRE Module Manager. You can get it here. That's all, and happy mining! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  21. Hello once again! Today I bring you, My latest attempt at an interplanetary VTOL SSTO. When launched fully fueled, it can reach LKO with ~2,200 m/s of delta-V remaining. From there, it can be flown non-stop to Laythe and back, using ISRU to refuel on Laythe's surface. The design is oxidizer-free, and the fuel tank layout preserves the C.O.M. position regardless of fuel levels. The engine layout includes two forward-fixed Nervas, four R.A.P.I.E.R. engines (two forward-fixed and two pivotable), and two pivotable Panther engines. When flying in VTOL mode, it's easiest to set the throttle to allow for a TWR<1 while the Panthers are running dry, and a TWR>1 while running wet. This will allow some fine throttle control by switching the afterburners on and off during landing. When flying to orbit: 1) Once off the ground (via either VTOL or STOL to save some fuel), set the pivotable engines forward (AG1) with the Panther afterburners off (AG2). 2) Activate the fixed R.A.P.I.E.R. engines (AG4). 3) Cruise up to ~10 km before turning on the Nervas (AG5). While this is normally a tad too low to be using Nervas, the ISP should already be 700+ and we'll need as much thrust as we can manage. 4) Once all jet engines flame out, shut them down (AG3 + AG4) and continue to push to orbit on the Nervas. The TWR will be fairly low once you're running on the Nervas alone, so pitch up slightly to keep your time to AP around a minute. Eventually, when your orbital velocity reaches ~2,300 m/s you'll be safe to cruise to AP and circularize. Action Groups: AG1: Toggle VTOL engine pivots AG2: Toggle Panther afterburners AG3: Toggle VTOL engines AG4: Toggle fixed R.A.P.I.E.R.engines AG5: Toggle Nervas Gallery: I really hope y'all liked it, and if you want to try your hand at flying it, you can download the craft here: https://kerbalx.com/Jamie_Logan/Fenghuang-H-77 Also, check out my last build!
  22. We really need bigger ISRUs than 2.5m. 3.75m would be great, and 5m would be perfect. Three reasons: 1. Waiting for years to refuel is not fun. I like to find good ore (14% or higher), convert it fast, and get going preferably in a couple days. The 2.5m ISRU isn't cutting it. 2. HUGE ships are awesome. But in order to refuel them in a decent amount of time, it takes many ISRUs. Many ISRUs means lots of parts. Lots of parts means lots of lag. Lag is not good. 3. Real fuel refineries are massive. They aren't little tiny 1-meter thingies. A 5m fuel refinery could weigh 34 tons, require 240 electricity/sec, take 4 ore/sec, produce 8 LFO/sec, and look awesome.
  23. I've often wondered what a lunar habitat might be like if it started growing itself with in situ harvested resources. Lunar soil and rock appears to consist mostly of metal oxides and silicates. So, probably one of the very first things a colony with aspirations of becoming self supporting can do, is start excavating additional habitable volume for itself, and constructing bricks and furniture items out of carved stone. In 16% gravity, they would not be particularly bothersome to handle. In terms of processed/man made materials, smelting the regolith to separate the metals from oxygen (which is also useful..) is centuries old tech. However, the moon appears to have very little in the way of lighter elements such as carbon, hydrogen or nitrogen, these only being found in ice deposits in permanently shaded craters. On such a base then, everything possible would be constructed of stone, metal , glass or porcelain, these being relatively cheap due to the materials being locally available. On the other hand, plastics, wood, and textiles, the cheapest available materials on Earth, would be luxury items on the moon, having to be imported at great expense. So your bed frame would be stone or metal. The mattress would be sprung, and the pillows stuffed with wire wool rather than foam or feathers. Only the outermost cover would be textile. Perhaps only wealthy colonists would use sheets or duvets. Your living room might be quite spacious, carved into a cliff face, with quite generous glass windows looking out over the moonscape. Again, if you're wealthy, you'll have an armchair with a textile outer cover.. otherwise make do with stone or metal. A kiln probably isn't difficult, so expect to have plenty of porcelain dining ware. The real big ticket luxury item is however your entertainment system. A PC can do the job of games console, tv, radio, and workstation, and the bulkiest , heaviest components like the case and heatsinks, cooling fans, could be made locally. PCBs are medium tech and can be refurbished on site with surprisingly modest equipment in case of most failures, but actual manufacture of the PCBs is harder, and the integrated circuits they contain would have to come from earth. Fortunately they are tiny and light. It is still likely that new motherboards/graphics cards would ship from Earth. PCs have an advantage in being modular, but perhaps small form factor (Mini ITX ?) would save shipping cost. All of this pales by comparison with whatever you've got to use for the display however. There seems no way around this - large LCD panels are hard to manufacture yet are also heavy, fragile and bulky. Your monitor or TV is probably worth more than the rest of your apartment put together !
  24. After much trial and error, I've finally managed to make my second ever functional SSTO, and the first SSTO I've ever created with a useful payload other then it's pilot! It's built to enter orbit, land on Minmus, spend about 2 and half months processing ore, then lift off to interplanetary space with 6,000 delta V to spare! Kerbal X Download Page Notes/Trivia: The crafts' front-most two fuel tanks are intentionally under-fueled! This was done to help achieve liftoff on the run way; when full, the craft was too unstable for me to fly properly X3 You might want to take this into account if you decide to refuel and take off on Kerbin. Alternatively, you can try to fly it fully fueled if you think your up to the task; I doubt I'm the best at flying :Y There's only one pilot seat and no probe control (making flying with an engineer not very ideal), and the ISRU module and drills are the smaller variants. Refueling takes awhile, even with stock speed up set to max! It does hit 4,000 delta V around halfway through refueling, so you can lift off partially empty if you know where you want to go, or need more TWR. Lift off from Minmus can be kind of tricky, as the craft doesn't have the reaction wheel strength to pitch up at full fuel, and the craft likes to curve after a while and slam one of it's wings into the ice! Simply retracting and rextending the landing gear quickly can help you ascend if you don't have a convenient ramp to use. Feel free to add your thoughts and/or suggest improvements, this is my first serious SSTO, and I'd love to keep building upon what I've learned while constructing it!
  25. This is my first craft thread, so advice would be welcome if I am in conflict with any conventions. LKO stats have been adjusted for 1.8 aero changes (improved performance for this craft). Big Plane to Anywhere (figuratively) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875714661 (Nice try, Bill, but I don't think this is what they meant by "long range ISRU craft"...) Well, it's been a long time coming. I'm mainly a rocket guy, but when I do find myself in the Spaceplane Hangar I very easily get obsessed with fiddling with my designs, more so than with the rockets. Anyway, I think I've finally gotten this to the point where I no longer have to be ashamed to put it in view of the public. Let me know if I'm wrong! If I'm being honest, the series of planes that this is a culmination of probably began life as the concept, "like my first spaceplane, only bigger". But eventually an actual mission materialized: to carry a scientific exploration team to Laythe and (almost) anywhere else with a complete science package and ISRU that wouldn't take months to refuel with. One development I'm a bit proud of was the realization that I could attach radiator panels to the reaction wheel that was adjacent to both of the drills and the refiner, elegantly taking care of all my core heat xfer needs. This development allowed me to finally have a truly streamlined airplane, since I had formerly had medium TCSes attached to the exterior. Two panels and two small TCSes have less than the mass of one of the two medium TCSes, let alone the aerodynamic improvement! The small TCSes (middle of picture) are for actual part cooling, and aren't necessary, but having at least a little active cooling capability is handy from time to time, e.g. cooling off during a multi-orbit aerocapture. (The panels are terrible at non-ISRU cooling in general, and the ones on this vessel in particular are nearly useless at it.) The construction of this spaceplane does not use offsets at all, nor any part clipping aside from the wings tilting into the nacelles. This was a design choice. Table of Contents: Statistics: immediately below the table of contents Atmospheric flight characteristcs: Balance; Lift; Takeoff; Ascent; Reentry; Landing: approach, normal, water, parachute Vacuum flight characteristics: Takeoff; Landing Miscellaneous: Docking; Adjusting balance; Water landing; Water movement; Design choices Edit history Postscript (action groups) Statistics: —Parts: 100 —Mass: 111.35 tons (57.15 dry) —Cost: 401.29 kilocredits —Vacuum Delta-V: 4.6k to 4.7k depending on if you have oxidizer or nothing but liquid fuel. (counting ore tank, since you can refine it into fuel) —Engines: 4xRAPIER, 4xNERV (0.25 TWR on NERVs if the LF/Ox tanks are empty) —Landing gear: 2xLY-60 in rear; LY-60 and LY-35 in front. (35 for better taxiing and runway takeoff; 60 for rougher terrain and lower takeoff speed) —Mining: 2x large drills, large converter, 2x smallest ore tank, M4435 Narrow Band scanner, Surface scanner (Surface scanner can refine M4435's results) —Science: all experiments; 4 places to put science in addition to the lab (Cockpit, probe core, 2x storage unit) —Communications/Control: Communotron 88-88 (normal direct antenna); RA-2 + RC-001S (with one pilot, can control a probe that lacks direct CommNet connection) —Docking: 1.25m only; no RCS. See Miscellaneous for tips. —Airbrakes?: Yes, 4. Retract before landing. —Parachutes?: Yes, 6 plus 2 drogues; positioned to be moderately rear-heavy, but this is adjustable via fuel movement. Enables safe landing in any terrain or water. —RTGs?: Yes, 8; can permanently run lab and SAS at full strength —Fuel cells?: Yes, 3; can permanently run drills and refiner at full capacity —RCS?: Sort of; 6x Vernors under the nose to assist takeoff/landing in airless environments —How much delta-V is left after making LKO?: Even a pilot worse than me should reliably get to LKO with 24-2500m/s remaining before the +203 from refining the ore tanks. My best so far is 2667 (2870) and I seriously doubt this cannot be bested by an actually talented pilot. Test flight landed on Minmus with 1213 dV remaining. Also goes direct to Mun. —Amphibious?: Yes: can land in water on parachutes or aeronautically, and can take off from water (but only below 25% fuel). See Miscellaneous for details. Atmospheric flight characteristics: —Balance: The center of mass is almost exactly on top of the center of lift both full and empty, in the back half of the rear cargo bay. (About 16.3m from the front of the 26.8m craft, or about 61% of the way to the back.) If you want the CoM to move forward after takeoff, you can lock the tank behind the cockpit (this LF should not be needed to make orbit). This also can help counteract the already mild tendency to nose up at high speed (see below). See Miscellaneous for a tip about rebalancing the craft. —Lift: Tendency to nose up or down while SAS is off is not violent at any speed; very slight down at low speed (<200), a bit up at high speed (300-1000), and very slight up up during final speedrun. —Takeoff: Fully loaded, it can be lifted off the runway at 83m/s (lower on rough terrain due to upslopes) on main wheel (100 for smaller wheel). Consider using the small wheel on runways or flats to gain more speed before liftoff (due to lower angle of attack while on the ground). Left to its own devices it lifts off at the end of the runway at about 99m/s (112 for smaller wheel). —Ascent: After the 1.8 update, it no longer has to stop ascending to break the transonic speed hump. My flight plan, which may or may not be optimal, is: Set at 5° above horizon; it will gradually dip a bit to 2-3° but recover by itself. After going supersonic it will tend to slowly climb in attitude; stay at 5-7° until about 15km altitude, then begin dropping to 2-3° in order to extend final speed run in the 18-22km altitude range. (If you're feeling lazy, you can just let SAS do its thing all the way to 1000 m/s or so.) Activate NERVs when RAPIER thrust falls below 200kN. By the time thrust falls below 60kN you should be around 1500m/s +/-50; switch to rocket mode when jet+NERV acceleration is unacceptably low and aim for the top of the prograde circle (or a little higher or lower, to taste). When oxidizer runs out, drop to prograde lock; the NERVs should be able to maintain or increase your time to apoapsis. —Reentry: It's recommended that fuel be moved foward to the tank behind the cockpit for reentry for extra stability. For example, in testing, given a 100kmX15km LKO reentry orbit and only 500 units of fuel remaining, a neutrally balanced craft struggled to maintain a 40-45° pitch without using airbrakes, while a craft that moved that same small amount of fuel forward had no trouble. It should be noted that the balanced craft had no trouble with a 30-35° reentry profile. 1000 units of fuel (~10%) balanced forward is enough for a radial out pitch to stabilize forward instead of flipping out. Use caution if returning from other celestial bodies; it's not recommended to dig deep into the atmosphere on the first pass without decelerating first. —Landing approach: If airbrakes were used, retract prior to landing as the bottom ones may be destroyed otherwise. Perfect balance and generous control surfaces make it relatively maneuverable for a Mk3 spaceplane. Since it takes off near empty at 53-60 m/s (on big/small front wheels) the stall speed on low fuel should be similarly low unless I'm mistaken. —Landing normally: Try not to touch down at more than 5m/s vertical speed. The fairly wide rear footprint means it should be pretty stable and modest testing has borne this out. —Landing in water: This plane is capable of a safe aeronautic landing in water, which was successfully tested at 25% fuel, but parachutes are recommended for landing in water or very rough terrain. —Landing on parachutes: Even heavily loaded with fuel, this vessel can land safely on its complement of parachutes, but use of engines to help soften the landing is encouraged. The Abort action group opens doors for the parachutes and triggers them. Vacuum flight characteristics: —Takeoff: Fully loaded and on a flat surface, the Vernors are not quite strong enough to lift the nose for vertical takeoff in Munlike gravity. Instead, get forward motion and it should be able to lift off shortly with the help of the thrust attitude, especially if the vehicle runs off the top of a hill. Use of RAPIERs is recommended unless terrain is very flat. —Landing in vacuum: dV can best be conserved by a "reverse takeoff" posture, where final approach retains some horizontal motion while vertical motion is very low, but this is not easy. It is probably more practical to descend on the engines rocket-style, and then transition to horizontal when near/on the ground (fall on the wheels). This has been tested on the Mun. Be careful to keep the plane level (don't let it roll on its side or you may lose a wing). The Vernors can slow the fall of the front end, but this should not be necessary in Munlike gravity. Miscellaneous: —Recommended docking procedure with this vessel is as follows: 1. Rendezvous; 2. Make a close approach (50 meters dock-to-dock* or less), then cancel relative motion; 3. Align to the desired docking port, and accelerate a little for final approach. This technique has been highly successful on larger versions of this vessel docking with still larger vessels. *(Bear in mind that when approaching tail-first the engines are almost 27m closer to the target than the docking port, and flipping tail-to-nose will bring the docking port of this craft when normally balanced 32 or 33 meters closer to the target due to where the vessel's pivot point is. A dock-to-dock separation of 50m would mean a real distance facing away of 23m and 17m after flipping). —When altering the balance of the craft (e.g. to put the CoM more ahead of the CoL), keep in mind that adding fuel to the rear and front LF tanks in a 2:1 ratio will be approximately neutrally balanced, i.e. will keep or return the ship to close to its starting balance. —Water landing (via parachute) was tested on Kerbin at 75% fuel. If your splashdown attitude is close to vertical, your docking port may be at risk of destruction as you rotate down, but this can be prevented by using the Vernors to slow your fall. (Presumably similar precautions should be taken if landing on Tylo.) —The top speed in water is 38.7 m/s when full. The top speed on low fuel is uncertain because during testing the plane unintentionally took off. In subsequent testing, the vessel was able to intentionally lift off when top speed in water was about 70 m/s, when fuel fell to between 20 and 25%. (Highest speeds were obtained when fuel was moved forward and SAS set to prograde.) —Why the precoolers? Although the shock cones more than meet the needs of normal flight, I like the idea of having strong static airflow for those, ahem, "off prograde" situations. They are also handsome. —Why the everything? This design was not arrived at minimalistically; I'm sure there is a lot you could cut, starting with the rear parachutes and airbrakes. But I wanted a feature-rich craft, and those are features, and it is Minmus capable, so there. Having said that, I do still welcome criticism if you think anything is too blatantly unnecessary. —Why no offset? I just didn't want to use offset; a little bit to neaten up the often messy intersections of aerodynamic parts is okay but I often see it used in a way I think of as exploitative. So in a way the only minimalistic thing about this design is the offset and part clipping, which was a design choice. —After the 1.8 atmospheric changes, this plane can actually fly on a 3R+3N configuration, but taking away two nacelles worth of LF completely negates the benefit. It's slightly less dV, significantly less TWR, and a more annoying ascent path; why bother? Well, I could probably just yank one jet off the regular design (keeping 4 NERVs) and limp to orbit, but the dV gain (112 I think) is, while noticeable, quite modest and I would be nervous about sending it to Laythe untested with that much less atmospheric performance. So, how do you like the plane? How do you like the post? Comments and questions welcome. Edit history: 1.1—9/28/19: Added vacuum landing notes. Added "Miscellaneous" section. Made major changes to vehicle (reduced RAPIERs from 6 to 4, replacing two Mk3 side pods with four Mk1 side pods). Edited text accordingly. 9/29/19: Added Minmus picture. Edits to vacuum landing notes and other things. 9/30/19: Swapped location of RAPIERs and NERVs (reducing tailstrike risk); minor text edits. 1.2—10/4/19: Minor adjustment to front wing AOI and location; small but critical adjustment to rear wheels to eliminate drift on takeoff. Added location of CoM to "Balance". Added "Takeoff"; edits to "Ascent" and "Landing Characteristics".) Finally changed top picture to reflect new version of craft. 1.3—10/5/19: Added "Communications"; added more detail to CoM location, "Lift", and "Takeoff"; added RA-2 to vehicle and replaced bottom pair of shock cones with NCS tanks. (Reduced cost by 3300, increased wet mass by 0.91, dry mass by 0.11, part count by 3) 1.4—10/10/19: Updated "Landing in vacuum" to reflect finally testing Mun capability; added "Takeoff in vacuum". Removed 1 fuel cell (3 remain) in the belief that this was enough for even maximum ore concentrations, subject to review; please let me know if this is found to be wrong. 10/11/19: Added water landing/movement/takeoff details. 10/13/19: Added postscript. 10/15/19: Added table of contents. Reorganized flight/landing characteristics. Added detail to docking. Updated photos (10/5 changes), minor text changes. 10/16/19: Added "Reentry", minor edit to "Ascent". 10/22/19: Altered commentary on small TCSes. 10/23/19: Removed Z-4K battery after finding a way to mount the drills on the reaction wheel and still fit them through the cargo doors. Added small ore tank for symmetry in new location. (Cost reduced by 4.2k, mass increased by 0.675t wet but reduced by 0.075 dry. Battery capacity reduced from 5710 to 1710.) Updated cargo hold picture. 10/26/19: updated "Ascent" to reflect 1.8 aerodynamic changes. Redid Minmus test—new photo. Postscript: the action groups: 1: RAPIER toggle (on/off) 2: NERV toggle (on/off) 3: RAPIER mode swap & air intake toggle (open/shut) 4: All cargo bay doors toggle (open/shut) & small thermal control system* toggle (deploy/retract) 5: --- (nothing) 6: Drill toggle (deploy/retract) 7: Surface harvester toggle (on/off) 8: Fuel cell toggle (on/off) 9: Obtain all possible science, including crew report 0: AIRBRAKES toggle (deploy/retract) Lights: default (all lights turn on or off) Landing gear: default (all landing gear extends or retracts—note that this is NOT a toggle) Brakes: default Abort: The top cargo doors open and all parachutes deploy. It's possible that some parachutes won't deploy if the doors aren't already open; just press the button again. *(Note: the interior thermal panels are always on by default)
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