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I had built a class of nuclear powered interplanetary vessels with a lab, a lander and ~9'000deltaV. Then I spent most of my waking time for over a month working out a re-usable launch system with KoS that refuels the ships with liquid fuel with no control input from me whatsoever. It even switches between stages automatically. With the addition of Tantares and recycled parts. I made this ship powered by nuclear light bulbs that has 18'000m/s deltaV to open up the outer planets to me: Returning from a 10 year expedition to Sarnus I was able to gain experience with using the Oberth effect on close solar fly-byes to get everywhere quickly. I got from Sarnus to Kerbin in less than 2 years although it was kinda risky to get so close. After having discovered the advantages of electric propulsion I'm planning to upgrade all the ships with a nuclear electric drive for more deltaV in interplanetary flights. Meanwhile I've worked on a bigger and more efficient launch system for refuelling the ships. In the following picture is a fully re-usable rocket with an N1 first stage, a nuclear-afterburner second stage and an electric RCS third stage that docks with the ships to refuel them. 1st stage returns to KSC automatically just like the one you saw before. The second and third stage de-orbit themselves automatically as well. I guess I've got too much time on my hands.
