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Download from SpaceDock or Github Tired of throwing away your rocket every time you launch? Look no further! This collection of parts will help you build reusable rockets, SpaceX-style. @EmbersArc created this wonderful mod but due to busy times had a hard time maintaining this mod. I am honored to continue this legacy in its current state and making sure to keep this mod we all know and love up-to-date! Includes: Falcon 9 Landing Legs in three different sizes. New Glenn Landing Legs in two different sizes. ITS Landing Legs in two different sizes. New Shepard Landing Legs in two different sizes. Grid Fins for control and additional drag on descent. Deployable Wings to fly back stages. SuperDraco Engines to land your capsules and provide in-flight abort capability Fuel Tank with ladder extension Heat Shield with integrated shroud, decoupler and deployable landing gear Docking Port compatible with stock docking ports Recommended mods: Flight Manager for Reusable Stages Trajectories Compatible with: TweakScale RealPlume Ferram Aerospace Research Installation: Move the "KerbalReusabilityExpansion" folder to KerbalSpaceProgram/GameData/ and you're good to go. With CKAN CLI: ckan.exe install SpaceXLegs License: MIT License How to: Build a reusable first stage Special thanks to: @EmbersArc for making this wonderful mod! Without it I think we would still be in an age were reusability on rockets doesn't exists! @nli2work for making the legs work initially for 1.1. The setup has since been redone but it would have been much harder without that help. @DerpyFirework for contributing the "DeployableAeroSurfaces" plug-in for the grid fins. It is in the public domain and the source code can be found here. Changelog: Good luck landing stages!

ProbiTronics (PT) ProbiTronics is all about specialized probes and parts that help with reusability of rocket stages. For Kerbal Space Program. This add-on adds eighteen (18) probe and reusability focused parts to the KSP game. By zer0Kerbal, originally by @tdubic adopted with express permission and brought to you by KerbSimpleCo Part Catalog SP-1 - reusable sample probe for bringing samples back to Kerbin. LA-1m and LA-2m - Leg Adapter give you ability to use stock legs on longer engines. RB-721 - more than just a rover body Service Modules Mk0 0.625m Command Pod Mk I MkI 1.25m MkII 2.5m Command pod MK1-3 MkIII 3.75m thermometer sensor barameter sensor Probe Reusability Stack 0.3125m, 0.625m 1.25m, 2.5m, 3.75m probe, decoupler and parachute compartment in one With these parts you can make your rocket much more reusable Ball Probe small probe for taking data from planets atmosphere Science: Barometer sensor Advanced Atmospheric Research (AAR): custom science experiment Put ball probe parachute on top, and heat shield on bottom G-probe probe Science: measuring gravitational and magnetic fields Magnetic Field Scanner (MFS) Includes communication antenna (Jeb insisted) SAS Xenon Gas tank Automatic Transport Vehicle (ATV)) is used for transporting resources and supplies (like: food, oxygen, fuel and other stuff) to space Don't forget to attach some engine, thrusters, and solar panels. See More Discussions and news on this mod: See Discussions or KSP Forums Changelog Summary for more details of changes : See ChangeLog Known Issues for more details of feature requests and known issues : See Known Issues GitHub Pages : See Pages Help Wanted Localization Installation Directions 1 Use CurseForge/OverWolf App (currently does not install dependencies) or Dependencies Kerbal Space Program 2 Supports Either 3 Module Manager Module Manager /L On Demand Fuel Cells (ODFC) 3 GPO (Goo Pumps & Oils') Speed Pump (GPO) red box below is a link to forum post on how to get support Be Kind: Lithobrake, not jakebrake! Keep your Module Manager up to date Credits and Special Thanks @tdubic for creating this glorious parts addon! see Attribution.md for more comprehensive list Legal Mumbo Jumbo (License provenance) How to support this and other great mods by zer0Kerbal Footnotes this isn't a mod. ;P ↩ may work on other versions (YMMV) ↩ Be Kind: Lithobrake, not jakebrake! Keep your Module Manager up to date! ↩ ↩2

Having destroyed the engines on my landable launch-stages in Career one too many times because there is no landing leg in the game large enough to land a Mainsail (or in my case, a cluster of Mainsails) without either heavy part-clipping of the engines or putting the legs on the ends of wings (which is draggy, structurally-weak, and makes it harder to maintain aerodynamic stability during an engines-first re-entry), and had even more launch stages tip over after landing, I am BEGGING for some larger stock landing-legs. Nothing too fancy. Just BIG. Maybe a 400 kg mass leg part? (this should put it in the right size/strength-range for landing heavy launch stages with Mainsail clusters, or crewed round-trip missions on Eve...) To avoid this being a problem again in the future, as players move towards ever-heavier designs, I suggest 3 new sizes of legs: - a 400 kg landing leg part, for landing Mainsail stages - a 200 kg part, more for when you just need a wider base: such as landing tall stacks with small Reliant/Skiff engine clusters on the bottom. - An 800 kg part, for truly insane designs: like heavy Eve landers. Additionally, if there were more aerodynamic-looking versions of some of these legs (like the ones in Kerbal Reusability Expansion) that would be amazing! I'll take any/all of those, as long as there is a leg in the 400 kg size range. But the 3 options I listed above really would make things easier (and more realistic: the stock legs are far too small for the forces they can repeatedly withstand) and less frustrating for players... And once again, for those who feel the need to make such comments: "LOL, just add mods!" is NOT an acceptable answer. Having been playing this game for 6+ years, I have seen countless mods come and go: but Stock parts stick around, are available on Console, and are official content- giving more players the chance to use these parts and become familiar with them. KSP has given me great diversion, frustration, and (sometimes) joy over the years- but it could be so much more. Expanding the range of stock parts available is a move in this direction: and I, like many players, would even be willing to pay for another expansion with a sufficiently-large selection of such new Stock parts... (although honestly, given where player base opinion is right now on DLC, how basic this functionality is of having larger legs, and how many people have been fiscally harmed by Covid-19: now is probably NOT the time for this to be another DLC: it would be better to add this "free" and sell other new parts/features later...)

ATTENTION! It has become very obvious that the KSP has been wasting time, money, and the occasional life on great feats of ingenuity, engineering, and ridiculousness. This post is a opportunity for those guilty of perpetrating these things to give to the Kerbal race. Anything and everything the population can use at large is appreciated. Mods are just fine so long as they don't make things ridiculously easy. Make the kerbal race's lives better to prove that you really need more funding for things like a Munar snack bar, or that Eve aircraft carrier. Craft files are appreciated (heck, I'll take some rescue VTOLS) and images are kinda necessary. Go ham.

ESA can get a low cost, reusable version of the Ariane 6 just by adding a second Vulcain to the Ariane 5. Moveover, without needing the solid side boosters, this can be used to finally give Europe an independent manned spaceflight capability. Multi-Vulcain Ariane 6. https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2018/02/multi-vulcain-ariane-6.html Bob Clark

I understand one of the common (and legitimate in my experience) criticisms of Career mode is that it's grindy - completing random contracts to put useless satellites into useless orbits, or extract 10,000 units of ore from Eve to deliver to Gilly, or build a base with 5,000 units of liquid fuel on Moho... in order to earn enough money to fund missions you actually want to do. I find this is primarily a problem towards the late game, where A. The solar system really opens up and enters "sandbox" mode. Early on your sources of funding (Make orbit, plant a flag on the moon, etc) often coincide with your personal missions, but later on you often want to do things completely different from the contracts offer. B. Your crew roster is large (especially gets out of hand when trying to build permanent colonies and bases) and hiring new crew is prohibitively expensive. C. Rockets and hardware for more ambitious missions become exponentially larger and astronomically expensive. Especially when using things like life support mods that force you to bring much more mass along for long duration missions. The first problem can be at least partially addressed with the various contract packs and mods like Strategia. The second can partially be offset by rescuing Kerbals from contracts. The last can be partially managed by developing reusable launchers. I personally have been tinkering with SpaceY in my latest career, however I am so far unconvinced that this SpaceX style RTLS reusability is particularly viable given the mass fractions of KSP rocketry. For reference, in real life Elon Musk has stated that a Falcon 9 first stage pricetag ranges in the tens of millions of $$$ (I don't remember the exact number but we'll say ca. $50mn), whilst the propellant for the entire stage only runs you about $200k. Thus, notwithstanding the inevitable expenses of recovery and refurbishment, you are recovering nearly all your losses by bringing the first stage back. Now, upfront I admit I'm a pretty terrible rocket designer, but in my career I developed a SpaceY booster capable of sending a 3-Kerbal capsule into LKO (basically an orbital shuttle). It consisted of a RTLS SpaceY 3.75m first stage, and an expendable stock 2.5m second stage. The cost of the first stage alone ended up coming out roughly 70,000 for the hardware, and 25,000 for fuel. And here's the rub: For 25,000 credits, it turns out I could easily have built a barebones 2.5m expendable first stage instead - two orange tanks and a mainsail - capable of imparting more delta-V to the payload. So with that, I solicit the brilliant KSP community for thoughts. Am I just a terrible designer? Is SpaceY not actually balanced with career practicality in mind? Or are there advantages to RTLS reusability that only begin to manifest at larger scales (5m)?

So, As I'm bolting on 3 or 4x orange fuel tanks each with a $13K Mainsail I'm thinking how much of a waste they are as scrap metal after impacting with Kerbin from a 25K foot fall, not to mention all the unburned hydrazine. What are my options for reusing them? I can't just bolt a parachute to them, there's no way to trigger them is there?

Mostly profit. Thinking about the SES-9 mission and the idea of having a propellant depot in space with a tug to pull satellites into their desired orbit. Having an active propellant depot in orbit would be fantastic in terms of generally expanding our access to space, but unless it would be profitable, no one would ever do it. So...under what circumstances would an immediate-term (e.g., within the next five years) propellant depot and space tug system be profitable? Let's assume that the project would be undertaken by an independent private company rather than NASA. Let's assume it's not SpaceX or another current launch provider. Your primary customers would be comsat companies who choose to pay you some stated fee to tow their satellites into a desired orbit, though you could also potentially give the ISS boosts. You need at least one space tug -- probably several, to maximize your profit and to lower launch costs. Each tug needs solar panels, ion engines, a grappling or towing mechanism, and the ability to refuel in space (either by mating to disposable propellant capsules or by transferring propellant to an onboard tank. You'll probably want to buy two Falcon Heavy launches to start -- one for as many space tugs as you can fit, and one for your initial propellant depot. You'd then re-launch a Falcon Heavy each time you needed to top-up your propellant depot. Would anyone actually buy your services? How many comsat companies would say, "Hmm, instead of giving my satellite an engine and fuel tanks to push it into the desired orbit, I'll just pay these folks, and so I can make my satellite a little bigger and give it more capacity"? And would you be able to have low enough prices to actually save them money?