Kerbal Space Program: Heavily modded Career Colonization of Kerbol and beyond

Dragonking · May 24, 2023

Edited October 28, 2023 by Dragonking

kurgut · May 24, 2023

Glorious

Looking forward to see how it all began !

And for you other Kerbals out there, and without wanting to spoil you, I can guarantee that there is a high degree of awesomeness to come !

Cheers

Dragonking · May 25, 2023

Chapter 1: Beginnings
I started seriously playing this career a bit over 1 year ago, I had just returned to KSP after not playing for a few years, before I stopped playing I started the save but only got through the very first steps of a KSP career, so I continued from there.
I have no original pictures of this time period,so any pictures shown here are taken in the VAB recently, but they are the original crafts.
The start of the Career was rather generic, I started with the traditional Mk1 cockpit+Flea booster setup and continued from there building ever larger simple rockets to go to Orbit and the Mun. I did many small missions to the Mun and Minmus, many more than most players would I think as I am using USI life support, so the initial tech/spaceship size barrier to going interplanetary is far higher, but i was also able to gather more science per mission thanks to additional science experiments added by USI. After a while I started moving towards a standard design template of a nuclear rocket-powered simple spaceship that was able to support the life support needs of my kerbals for small voyages around the Kerbin system, and my launch vehicles moved increasingly towards reuseability, with a central LF powered recoverable core with some expendable SRBs on the sides for extra power.
Early Suborbital Rockets:

Spoiler

Early Orbital Rockets:

Spoiler

Early Mun Rockets:

Spoiler

Early Minmus Rockets:

Spoiler

Edited May 25, 2023 by Dragonking

Dragonking · May 26, 2023

Chapter 2: First interplanetary voyage
After doing these early launches and all the contracts I did on the way I had amassed enough science and funds to go on my first ever interplanetary voyage, while I had about 1000 hours at that point already from the years playing KSP before, but I had never actually done anything back then, I just designed random vehicles in sandbox that i would never actually use, so this was the first time I ever went interplanetary.
A Duna window had just come up, and since Duna is the traditional first interplanetary destination I decided to go there.
The original plan was to make a large space station and send it off to Duna, after realizing this plan was far too ambitious I scaled it down to a medium-small spacecraft equipped with a detatchable lander and 2 ScanSat satellites to map the surfaces of Duna and Ike. The launch vehicle used was a large fully recoverable SSTO Rocket, it looks like multiple boosters but is actually a single rocket connected to a central piece, a design style I will use a lot more in the future.

Craft design, with and without Launch Vehicle:

While the crafts` life support systems could keep the Kerbals alive for quite a while it was also equipped with cryopods to freeze the Kerbals so they would not consume any supplies for the duration of the freezing. The launch went flawlessly and the transfer to Duna also worked well thanks to help from TransferWindowPlanner, but after reloading the game I noticed the Kerbals I had frozen for the transit had gone entirely missing I had to revert to a quicksave before I froze them, after this happened I never really used the Cryofreeze mod again, as any Kerbals I used it on would go missing if I reloaded a quicksave or the game.
After arriving in the Duna system I landed on Duna with the lander and planted a flag, but when I returned up to the main ship I noticed the Lander has no RCS thrusters, meaning not only was this the first ever docking between two crafts I had ever done, but I had to do it without RCS. To somehow get the lander docked to the ship I sent Jeb out on EVA to push the craft onto the docking port, which worked.
Unlike what I will do in almost all other missions to come I simply timewarped to the next Duna -> Kerbin transfer window instead of doing lots of other missions in the meantime and went back to Kerbin, since I had no other missions active whichs life support I had to worry about.
Once the spaceship arrived back in the Kerbin system I used the lander (which was sacrificed in the process) to deorbit the capsule and bring down the science and crew.
I originally planned to keep the spaceship for future missions, but since i was short on funds i decided to launch up a deorbiter(an inflatable heatshield with some engines and parachutes) and deorbited the spaceship, recovering everything except the inflatable habitats which burned up on reentry.

Edited May 26, 2023 by Dragonking

Dragonking · June 3, 2023

Chapter 3: Launch to Jool
After the Duna mission had returned I was able to unlock a large amount of new tech, allowing the design of a new standard spaceship that would be used for almost all contracts in the Kerbin system, much larger and 100% reuseable, while the earlier versions had already featured a fully reuseable spaceship only the LFO core of the launch vehicle was reuseable, now the launch vehicle was a reuseable SSTO rocket.
Picture of the new Spaceship with launch vehicle (shown without fairing):

Spoiler

As I noticed a Jool transfer window was coming up very soon I decided to prepare a large Jool exploration mission featuring many component vessels, here is the list of everything:

Spoiler

The ship itself, together with the satellites(6 relays,of which 3 are meant to be deployed in an orbit below that of Laythe and the other 3 in an orbit above Pol,5 ScanSat scanners, one for each moon and a single Jool descent probe designed to enter Jools atmosphere and transmit as much data as possible before being crushed by it).The ship also features droptanks on the sides in this state, which are there to give it that little bit more dv that it needs to make it to Jool with its full payload.

The ship in Launch configuration(shown with fairing removed):

Laythe Passenger SSTO, this SSTO can carry a small amount of Kerbals to and from the Laythe base and has lots of science equipment to conduct experiments in various biomes of Laythe. Launched like this from Kerbin.:

Laythe Cargo SSTO, this one can ferry cargo to and from Laythe surface and can also fly around a little bit inside the Jool system using its nuclear engines.It can be loaded with either the Fertilizer container or the mission rover as cargo. Launched like this from Kerbin.:

Jool System Lander, shown in launch configuration(without fairing) together with the attatchable tank, mission rover, fertilizer tank and cargo moving OUV. The Lander itself can land on every Jool moon except Tylo and Laythe, and carry either the mission rover to send it out to scan surface features and do experiments, or the tank, which it can use to ship fuel from the Pol mining rover to the ship to refuel it. The fertilizer tank can be loaded into the Laythe Cargo SSTO to ship the fertilizer produced at Laythe Base to the ship and keep the life support system going. The OUV is used to switch out the different cargo configurations on the lander or cargo SSTO.:

Laythe Ship(with Submarine and deorbiting/docking/landing equipment), this small ship will be used to explore the oceans of Laythe. It can carry a small submarine which it can deploy using its crane, it also has a ramp allowing the mission rover to be driven onto it and carried to different places. Launch vehicle not shown, but the same as for the mission lander was used.:

Pol Mining Rover, this rover is used to produce the fuel required to refill the main ship so it can fly around the Jool system a lot and for its trip back to Kerbin. The fuel is carried up to the ship using the lander equipped with the fuel tank. Shown with launch vehicle, but without fairing.:

Laythe Base, this base will be dropped on Laythe and is able to house a couple of Kerbals, it also has mining equipment and an ISRU to refuel the SSTOs and a gypsum drill and agriculture support module, allowing it to produce fertilizer so it can run its greenhouses indefinitely, making it fully self sufficient in terms of supplies(it will eventually run out of habitation time though).Shown here with its launch vehicle and landing equipment which consists of deorbiting engines, reaction wheels, parachutes and wheels to move it to a good final position, landing equipment will be disassembled by kerbal after landing or dropped during descent.:

Ship together with everything else in the fully assembled configuration in which it will launch to Jool:

The cost for this mission was around 5.6mil funds(which is just the initial launch cost of the ship itself, once the launch vehicle was recovered the funds gained from that could be used to launch everything else). This was a lot for me back then so I had to spend around 1 week of playing just grinding out lots of contracts mostly with the standard spaceship shown at the start of this post.
After getting the funds all the seperate pieces of the mission were launched and docked together in orbit, then launched to Jool. The thrust delivered by the 9 LV-N "Nerv" engines of the ship was pathetic compared to the weight of the mission, forcing me to split the burn into 3 and wait around 2 hours total IRL on 4x timewarp to actually perform the ejection burn to Jool(I didnt have the persistent thrust mod back then). From this I also have some of the earliest actual screenshots of the missions:

Spoiler

Launch of the ship itself as the fairings were being deployed:

Fully assembled mission in orbit:

Ejection burn to Jool:

After the Jool mission was on its way to Jool I started doing other missions while it was on its way, actually playing multimission for the first time in the career, those will come in the next post though.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Dragonking

Dragonking · June 7, 2023

Chapter 4: The First Colony
After the launch of the Jool mission the space program was almost bankrupt, so I could only launch very small craft, I started back out again with my first longrange SSTO spaceplane, while I had used a couple of experimental SSTO spaceplanes before they were only able to make it to LKO. This one however was equipped with nuclear engines and could complete contracts on the Mun or Minmus.
Picture of the SSTO performing a burn near the Mun:

Spoiler

After a couple contracts with this SSTO and the standard spaceship shown at the start of Chapter 3 I had built up a good amount of funds again and was looking towards starting my first colony.
This initial colony part was just supposed to be able to keep the life support up for the Kerbals on it with no production except that of fertilizer to keep the greenhouses running that feed the Kerbals. The base was originally planned to be placed on the Mun,but this was changed last minute as I had gotten a contract to build a base on Minmus so I put it there instead,the dv difference between the two destinations was small enough that it could also make it there. This caused a problem as the base was solar powered, and Minmus rotates a lot slower than the Mun, so the batteries were no longer able to last through the night and the base would have regular power outages. This issue would be solved with later additions to the base.
The Launch was rather awkward as the base is extremely unaerodynamic and doesnt fit into any fairings,requring a very weird launch vehicle.
Pictures of the base and Launch:

Spoiler

Launch:

Seperation of the base from the launch vehicle in Orbit,its relatively lightweight for its size so the rather small nuclear transfer stage at the bottom(which is also recoverable)is capable of pushing it all the way to Minmus, the tank with the vector engines on it will land it on the surface:

After setting up the first base piece I noticed the issue with the solar panels and also wanted to give the base production capabilities for the two most important resources in MKS - Materialkits(MKT) and SpecializedParts(SPT) .They are used to construct craft on site using Extraplanetary Launchpads and are required to make Machinery, a resource that all MKS production parts require to run and consume slowly.
I started testing the new module and noticed that the production modules were operating at very low load,so it was going extremely slowly, after some tests I noticed that you need to have Kerbals with specific traits on the craft to be able to run them at full capacity,and the more Kerbals the faster it would go, and also the higher level the Kerbals are the faster it goes.
After finding this out I came up with a new type of mission that would become common in the future, a "leveling cruise". This mission type involves taking a passenger SSTO spaceplane with a lot of Kerbals on board and taking all those Kerbals on a trip through the Kerbin system, with landings on both the Mun and Minmus(with a flag planted every time, since planting a flag within 200m of a Kerbal gives that Kerbal a lot of XP(although only once and how much depends on the body)). The trip also involves stopping by at the Minmus Colony to refuel the SSTO, otherwise it would not have enough dv for the whole journey. When the SSTO eventually lands back at Kerbin all the Kerbals will have reached level 3,which is enough for them to be quite productive.
Pictures from the first ever leveling cruise to get enough high level Kerbals for the then soon to be built Minmus base production module:

Spoiler

SSTO accelerating after takeoff from KSC:

SSTO on descent to Minmus base:

SSTO landed next to Minmus base for refueling:

This mission not only trained Kerbonauts for the Minmus production module, but also for another upcoming mission,my first large space station, which will be in the next Chapter.

Dragonking · June 8, 2023

Chapter 5: Eve Station
While working on the colonization of Minmus I noticed that an Eve transfer window was coming up, so I decided to take it and send a mission to Eve.
The first plans involved using an unmanned SSTO spaceplane that is using Near Future Aeronautics` nuclear jet engines, which are able to run in atmospheres without oxygen like Eve`s and require only IntakeAtm to work, send it up from Kerbin, launch it to Eve by attatching a transfer module to it and then landing it there, where it would deploy a rover from its cargo bay which could explore the surface, and be transported long distances using the spaceplane. I had recently unlocked the technology for these engines and had experimented with several Kerbin SSTOs using them, so it seemed like a good idea to use them, but after a lot of testing I was unable to make the SSTO survive the brutal entry heating into Eve`s atmosphere, so I abandoned this plan.
Experimental Nuclear Jet engine SSTOs:

Spoiler

First one, small cargo, this was not the one planned to go to Eve but a derivative of it would be sent there later

Picture from the time of its passenger variant in flight, returning from orbit after completing a contract there:

Second SSTO, a modified version of this is what was planned to go to Eve:

All these SSTOs are using J-N500 'Project Eeloo' Multimode Nuclear Engines, they can either run only on IntakeAtm, allowing them to fly forever in atmosphere, or switch to LF where they would act as nuclear engines with medium-high thrust and low efficiency(by nuclear engine standards).The main downside is that they are rather weak in atmospheric mode compared to traditional jet engines.

Since I wasnt able to make the spaceplane design work I had to come up with a new plan, and I happened to get a very profitable contract for putting a station in Eve Orbit, so that was the plan I went with.
Space Station design:

Spoiler

The Station features is built around a central spine with a large habitation ring and has 3 arms on the sides, each one carries one 5m science lab, these will be able to produce very large amounts of science data and have provided many thousands of science points throughout the career.
The station carries other crafts on the ends of each arm, one arm has 2 ScanSat scanning satellites mounted on it which will map Eve and Gilly, the other has the science return module, which will be used to physically send the science data that cannot be transmitted without losses back to Kerbin and the last arm carries the Eve rover and its landing assembly, the only part of the mission that would actually reach the surface of Eve. The station also has ISRUs since these were required by the contract. At the bottom is the large Gilly lander, this lander can land crew on Gilly and can conduct experiments there, as well as mine ore and bring it to the Station for refining into fuel.
The Lander is also used to push the station to Eve once it is launched into LKO using its large nuclear engines, and generally to move it around, so the journey to Eve did not require bringing along any engines that would be useless later.

The station also had to be launched without fairings as it also is too large to fit into any, after launch it was sent on a very fast trajectory to Eve and entered into a high Eve orbit, where it would start conducting experiments and analyzing the data in its Laboratories. The two satellites were deployed before entering Eve SOI so they could go into the proper polar orbits for scanning and the rover was successfully landed on the surface of Eve, where it would go out to scan surface features and conduct other experiments.
Pictures from the mission:

Spoiler

Launch of the Station:

Ejection burn from Kerbin:

Station in its high Eve orbit:

Only picture I have of the rover part of the mission, the landing segment on the surface of Eve after deploying the rover, the rover itself is visible a tiny bit on the bottom right. Sadly with UI:

After the station was in orbit and all parts of the mission were deployed i focused back on the colonization of Minmus, which will continue in the next chapter.

Dragonking · June 9, 2023

Chapter 6: Minmus Expansion
Minmus base still needed expansion and now that the Eve station mission was completed I could focus back on that, and designed the new production module, which also features fuelcells so it can solve the power issues of the base by burning some of the fuel produced by its ISRU.
Minmus Production Module design & launch configuration(+Metal ore miner):

Spoiler

Design of the Production Module,it features storage for every relevant MKS resource and the ability to also mine most of the raw resources as the place where the base is located has almost every resource available. Has the full production chain for Materialkits, SpecializedParts and Machinery and also includes a couple of extra greenhouses, but the production is rather small so it cannot produce Materialkits and Specializedparts in large enough amounts to really build anything with them without having to wait 50 ingame years:

Launch configuration for the Production Module, it uses the same launch vehicle as the first part of the base and the same transfer & landing method:

Metal Ore miner, metal ore is the only major MKS resource that cant be mined at the location of the base so I set up a seperate automated miner that could send the resources to the base from far away through planetary logistics(this was launched seperately on another SSTO spaceplane):

After Landing the new module next to the first part of the base I needed to actually dock the two together, which turned out to be extremely difficult, the plan was to attatch them together using USI construction ports, docking ports that can be compressed after docking and disappear so the two docked parts would then be directly connected.
The ports were attatched to the new module and one of them would be attatched to the first module using KAS. To actually lift the first module up so the construction port could be attatched I used a crane that I had brought there in a previous launch with a cargo SSTO spaceplane(sadly I dont have any pictures of it and I cant even find the craft file anymore). I wanted to also use the crane to actually dock the two ports, but the crane wasnt strong enough, so I used another SSTO spaceplane that I had brought here to deliver a small rover that was used to reconfigure the drills on the metal ore miner because I forgot to actually configure them to mine metal ore to push the base pieces into position to do, and after many extremely frustrating hours of trying to get it to dock it finally did and the base was finally in one piece.
Docking of the base pieces using the SSTO:

Spoiler

After the Base pieces were finally together I could start up the production, not only did the production module produce resources for usage on the colony but it also mined valuable resources from minmus, most importantly RareMetals and ExoticMinerals, which are extremely valuable and can be sold for millions on Kerbin, but are very heavy.
I used the same model of SSTO that I used to push the parts together to make trips from Kerbin to minmus and back, delivering Materialkits and Specializedparts to Minmus for on-site construction using Extraplanetary launchpads and picked up RareMetals and ExoticMinerals from there to ship to Kerbin, while the very heavy cargo stretched the capabilities of the SSTO to its limits -it was barely able to make a safe landing with so much weight- each shipment was worth ~8 million funds.
With this new source of income I no longer had to rely on contracts for funding, I continued to do contracts as I had done before(I have been doing contracts all the time between these missions, for each of these major missions I post here there were ~10 unremarkable contract missions with the standard spaceship I showed in Chapter 3(which was launched by SSTO spaceplanes by then)) but was no longer reliant on them.
Once the production module was docked I also noticed that the greenhouses were not quite enough to keep the production of supplies up, so I needed to quickly expand the greenhouse capabilities so the Kerbals wouldn`t starve.
For this I designed a greenhouse tower, which I constructed on site using EPL with extra MKT&SPT reserves that had been shipped in from Kerbin.
Greenhouse tower design & construction:

Spoiler

Greenhouse Tower design,it features SSPX greenhouses, recycling modules to lower the supply demand, and a landing pad at the back. At first it would be docked using KAS pipes as I did not want to go through the painful process of ground docking again, but much later when I got better at ground docking i replaced that with a proper tunnel connection:

Construction of it,for some reason it spawned in the wrong orientation and inside the rest of the base, so I had to quickly pause the game and was forced to use cheats to get it out of there and properly placed on the ground(only picture I have). MKT&SPT shipment and the rover brought in the by the SSTO I used to push the base pieces into place is visible in the background:

Once the Greenhouse tower was in place the base was mostly self sufficient, it was able to produce its own machinery and supplies indefinitely,the only thing it still needed was more habitation, while the Kerbals could stay there for many years it was not unlimited yet.

Dragonking · June 10, 2023

Chapter 7: Minmus Trade Route
A Moho transfer window had come up, while I wanted to use it I wasnt too interested in Moho so I decided to only send a small mission
Moho mission design & the one picture I have of the actual mission happening:

Spoiler

The Moho Mission was rather simple, a nuclear transfer/lander stage carrying a rover and a scanning satellite on top of a simple reuseable SSTO rocket. The rover design is the same as the one used on Eve and the mission was completely unmanned:

Deceleration burn at Moho:

I did somewhat mess up the Moho mission, the transfer to Moho was a bit messy and so the Mission did not have enough fuel to actually land on Moho and ended up getting stuck in an elliptical polar Moho orbit, but I was able to send back some data from high and low Moho orbit so it was not completely useless. Later I would send a refueling Mission which allowed the rover to actually be landed on the surface, although the landing module was destroyed in the process.
As my ambitions for new missions grew not even the ~8mil funds each shipments of RareMetals and ExoticMinerals were enough to keep up the money demands without me having to fly the same mission way too many times which would just get annoying, so I decided to expand the logistics systems and establish a proper trade route.
For this I came up with a -in retrospective slightly overcomplicated- new system involving 3 different large new crafts that could be used to ship 40mil funds worth of resources at once:

Spoiler

The system is built around physically carrying containers of resources around which had to be seperately moved between vehicles and docked for transportation using an OUV(Orbital Utility Vehicle, small RCS tug that moves stuff that doesnt have its own RCS around and docks it to other things).
The first vehicle involved is a small Minmus lander, it can hover around on Minmus and pick up each of the 4 containers and stack them underneath itself, then ship them up into Minmus Orbit to be docked to the next vehicle. Shown here in its launch setup in a heavy cargo SSTO Spaceplane:

The second Vehicle is a large space freighter that is used to carry the containers from Minmus Orbit to LKO. It has its own drills and ISRU, so it can land on the surface of Minmus and refuel itself there:

And the last is a superheavy cargo SSTO Spaceplane(the largest ever at that time),it is capable of bringing MKT&SPT containers up into Orbit, then opening up its nose and unloading them from its cargo bay to then insert the 4 containers of Raremetals & ExoticMinerals, which it could then land at KSC(although again it is stretched to its limits in cargo capacity in that landing, ive had this SSTO bend in dangerously in the middle multiple times during landings as the weight and the shock of the landing was too much):

Once all the craft were launched and in position I could start doing this mission and bringing in the resources, although the mission was somewhat plagued by kraken attacks, so I had to reload quicksaves a lot, it worked well but it was extremely time intensive for me to actually do,requiring ~5 hours of playing time to actually finish one shipment, mostly due to having to seperately undock and dock each container at every step of the transport. I also did not move the MKT&SPT containers shipped up with the SSTO further to Minmus, but instead left them in LKO for a future construction project.
Pictures from the Mission:

Spoiler

Minmus lander & spacefreighter together, containers being transferred from the lander to the freighter:

MKT&SPT container stack after unloading from the SSTO:

One of the kraken attacks happening to the SSTO as I was trying to transfer containers between it and the freighter(here the freighter can also be seen holding the containers, and what is left of the SSTO with the nose open unloading the containers):

RareMetals & ExoticMinerals container stack being loaded into the SSTO, this picture is a bit newer but it shows the same mission type, no changes were made to it in that time:

With this infrastructure in place I now had a good new source of money and could focus back on colonization & science.

Dragonking · June 10, 2023

Chapter 8: Orbital Shipyard
After a couple of resource shipments between Kerbin and Minmus I had enough MKT&SPT in LKO to start building something i`d been planning for a while now: a large logistics hub&shipyard station in Kerbin orbit.
This is the design & the details about it:

Spoiler

The station is designed to serve multiple functions, most importantly of course construction of new spaceships, but it also has large reserves for many fuels so docked ships can refuel there, a large harbour section where these ships can be docked and that also has a lot of container slots and a lot of Far Future Tech production capabilities.
Front view:

Back view:

To construct the station I did another launch with the superheavy cargo SSTO, this time I sent a couple containers less though and instead put a workshop module at the end of the container stack, which can construct things using EPL. The Kerbals were very tightly packed in it and it could only keep up the life support for them for a short time since the module was temporary anyways. So the module was sent up, docked together with the other container stacks and the construction was started. It turned out that the life support was not enough to keep the Kerbals alive throughout the entire construction process, so I quickly sent up an SSTO Spaceplane with some extra life support capacity and docked it to the construction setup so it now had enough life support for the entire duration of the constructhion.
Station built in LKO(for now with temporary solar panels, they would be removed after the station has its first delivery of fuel to run its fusion reactors):

Now that the station was built it needed to actually get filled up with all sorts of resources, of course MKT&SPT for the shipbuilding, fertilizer and supplies for life support, ore and uraninite for the FFT production and fuel to be stored in the tanks so it can refuel docked ships.
For this I designed a new medium-large SSTO spaceplane that is easy to fly to do routine missions to the station and fill up its material storages, fuel would be shipped in much later through a different spaceplane. On the first version of it(which is the one shown in the pictures here) I forgot to actually install a docking port so I had to improvise and dock it using KAS pipes(for which I luckily had a few components in storage so I could attatch the parts to the two crafts and dock them together that way), later versions of the SSTO would have a 5m docking port on the bottom. After many flights with this SSTO I was finally able to fill up the storage and fully take the station online.
Cargo SSTO pictures:

Spoiler

On runway with Kerbal for scale:

Ascent from KSC:

Flying through the clouds towards KSC after returning from orbit:

Dragonking · June 11, 2023

Chapter 9: Eve Colony Ship
I spotted a large asteroid that would soon pass through the Kerbin system, so I decided to send up an asteroid pushing ship to intercept it, which worked and I put it into a high Kerbin orbit about half the height of that of the Mun, but then (so far) didn`t do anything with it, I just captured it thinking id eventually come up with something to use it for. The Asteroid Pusher was launched using the same SSTO rocket as the Jool exploration ship, which was easily affordable for me by then.
Asteroid pusher:

Spoiler

Now new Eve window had come up, and thanks to the Minmus trade route I had enough funds to launch something very big, so I decided to start my first interplanetary colonization effort.
This would be centered around a large colony ship that will sit in Eve orbit and send down resources and Kerbals to colonies on the surface.
Ship & support vehicles designs:

Spoiler

The ship itself, featuring storage for 1,28 million MKT and 108.000 SPT, lots of life support systems, space for 142 Kerbals(although only at most 1/3rd of that space would be filled, more than that would drain the life support too quickly) and the ability to build things with EPL. It is powered by 2 FX-3 Fusion Reactors and its engines are 7 5m Tweakscaled NV-GE 'Liberator' Atomic Rocket Motors delivering a total of 26.926,6 kN of thrust with a TWR of 0.38 and 7.783m/s of dv. It will also carry the two planes shown below to Eve.:

Eve construction plane, this plane is designed to fly around the surface of Eve constructing things with EPL. It is powered by Karbonite engines, Karbonite is a material that can be filtered out of atmospheres, and the concentration of it is so high in Eve`s atmosphere that the plane can fly indefinitely, Karbonite generators are also a great power source, so this plane and almost all other Eve surface equipment is also Karbonite powered. The plane is also somewhat of a mobile base, with greenhouses, the ability to mine gypsum and turn it into Fertilizer(which makes it fully supply-self-sufficient) and a lot of habitation space.Also stores a good amount of MKT&SPT for first construction and is able to access planetary logistics.:

Eve construction plane launch configuration in which it will be launched up to the colony ship, this also includes the droppable heatshields that will be used to survive entry into Eve`s atmosphere. The two boosters on the sides are reuseable and can be deorbited and landed back on Kerbin after the plane is in orbit and docked.:

Eve passenger SSTO, this one took a very long time to engineer. It is used to ship passengers between the colony ship in orbit and colonies on the surface. It uses 3 J-N500 'Project Eeloo' Multimode Nuclear Engines, which take the same role in an Eve SSTO as Rapiers do in a Kerbin one, and 4 OPT-E Warpjets S.U.R.G.E. which have about the same role as Whiplash engines for a Kerbin SSTO. Can carry 38 Kerbals maximum. It can also SSTO from Kerbin so it was launched to the colony ship that way.:

The colony ship launch was my largest at that point, costing ~56 million funds(with launch vehicle), but it successfully reached LKO, then the two planes were docked to it and the colony ship was sent on its way to Eve.
Launch pictures:

Spoiler

Launch of the colony ship itself, again on a reuseable SSTO rocket and without fairing since it doesnt fit into any:

Launch of the construction plane:

I sadly do not have any pictures of the launch of the passenger SSTO

I was able to take a rather fast transfer to Eve so I did not bother doing anything else in the meantime and just directly timewarped to the arrival after which I sent down the construction plane and started scouting for a suitable colony location, eventually I found a small island in a large lake. This island had a great terrain feature, a small indent in the terrain near the coast, so a base could be placed there and it would not slide away(pretty much everything that is on even a very tiny incline in KSP very slowly slides), this allows building a base near the coast without it sliding into the sea.
I then designed a starter colony and constructed it on site.
Pictures:

Spoiler

Eve construction plane shortly after landing on the surface:

Design of the starter colony, it has a good amount of life support, fuel production capabilities, a karbonite powerplant, planetary logistics access, a radiator tower, basic MKT, SPT & Machinery production, EPL construction capabilities and is expandable.:

Only picture I have of the colony early in construction, both of the mission planes are next to it and I also built another small plane on site that will be used to explore Eve and transport small amounts of Kerbals, for example if something on a remote automated base needs to be done it can be used to send an engineer there.:

Passenger SSTO taking off after dropping off Kerbals, the island in the background is the one the colony is one, it is outside render range though so not visible.:

Now that the starter colony was in place it needed to actually get raw materials from somewhere, most of the required MKS resources are not available at the base site so an automated mining building was built in a different biome which had all the missing resources, although the amounts some of them are available in are very low, so the base would struggle with these bottlenecks in production until more miners were built in other biomes. For the construction of this mining building more MKT&SPT needed to be brought in from orbit as the storage on the construction plane was depleted.
The resources were brought in using simple drop pods, at first I tried making a design for a Eve cargo SSTO spaceplane that only has to bring cargo down to the surface, not up to orbit but was unable to make it work due to how difficult Eve SSTO spaceplanes are, which is mostly due to the extreme entry heating.
Design of the mining building, I sadly dont have any screenshots of it from the time.:

Spoiler

The building has a lot of mining capacity, as well as some habitation space, but is not designed to house any Kerbals permanently. It can also process some materials by itself, but not nearly as well as manned bases. It is again Karbonite powered.:

Once the mining building was constructed I noticed that I had forgotten an essential thing, storage for machinery, without that it was unable to pull any from planetary logistics and I had to construct the plane shown in the screenshot of the base above to send an engineer over to repaint the redundant container(I added one container too much so it is nice and symetric, which was extremely lucky here), after then finding out you needed to have a quartermaster or pilot Kerbal to actually pull from planetary logistics I sent a pilot over as well to actually get the machinery, which then finally allowed it to work.Once it worked I had to wait a while for enough resources to actually be mined & processed to start sending things over, I timewarped ahead a lot to actually get it filled up, but after I´d done that for a while I noticed the Jool exploration ship was almost at its destination, so I had to interrupt Eve colonization for Jool exploration.

Dragonking · June 12, 2023

Chapter 10: Jool Arrival

The Jool exploration ship had finally arrived at Jool, now it needed to actually capture into Jool orbit, for this it would be performing a Tylo gravity assist. After this gravity assist the next destination was Pol, the ship desperately needed more fuel so placing down the Pol miner was the highest priority. Once the ship had arrived at Pol it first needed to rendezvous with another craft.
I forgot to mention it in the original post but shortly after launching the exploration ship I noticed I had made a fatal mistake, I thought you could connect two KAS connectors together to form a pipe since I had seen it done that way in old youtube KSP colonization videos, but apparently after some update this functionality was removed from KAS and you now needed to use dedicated resource transfer station parts for a pipe to connect to a connector that could connect two crafts together. I found this out while colonizing Minmus, realizing that none of the ground crafts on the Jool mission could be docked together -which would break the whole mission- I hastily sent a simple ion powered probe to chase after the Jool mission, this probe carried resource transfer stations and a couple of other things that might be useful which could be mounted onto the existing crafts of the Jool mission using an engineer Kerbal. The two crafts met in Pol orbit, and the components were transported over to the exporation ship by Kerbal.
Jool exploration ship & ion probe rendezvous:

Spoiler

The probe is a bit hard to make out,but it is in the center left of the picture:

After the components were transferred the Pol miner was landed on the surface and the fuel tank loaded into the lander, which would then make multiple trips between the miner on the surface and the ship in orbit to fill up the ships fuel tanks. Once the tanks were full again I immediately headed to the other side of the Jool system, Laythe, as I quickly wanted to drop off more crafts to remove weight and lag.
At Laythe the base and ship were landed on the surface, however the ship was plagued with bugs. First half of the ships landing equipment flew off during a random kraken attack that I barely managed to get under control by activating on-rails timewarp, at the time I didn`t notice the parts flying off, when I did notice I had already made too much progress and didn`t want to bother loading such an old quicksave, so I decided to attempt the landing without it. When I actually tried to undock and deorbit the ship I noticed the docking port was bugged and could no longer undock, I also couldn`t use a Kerbal to disassemble the parts, so I was forced to use the object thrower cheat to destroy the connecting parts. After all this trouble I managed to actually land the ship with half the landing equipment, but I never actually got to use it, I just drove it to the base planning to use it later, and then some time later when I came back the ship was just randomly gone, luckily there were no Kerbals on it but to this day I do not know what actually happened to it.
Laythe pictures:

Spoiler

Base in its final position with landing equipment removed, from the back and front:

Laythe ship landing:

Laythe ship on its way to the base:

Base at night with the ship parked next to it:

At each stop of the mission the satellites were also deployed, which were painful to use as I forgot to test them and they were ion powered, which did not work well so far out with the solar panels generating almost no electricity, which lead to some very painfully long burns as I still did not have persistent thrust.
After these first steps of the Jool mission I turned my attention back to Kerbin for a while, while the orbital shipyard was filled in life support it still needed more construction materials, the SSTO I used before just needed too many launches to bring them up so I modified the SSTO I normally use for the Minmus trade route into having SSPX containers, from which the resources could be directly transferred and did not need to be unloaded, and a docking port in the nose to dock to the station to instead fill up the rest of the MKT&SPT storage.
Pictures of the modified SSTO at orbital shipyard:

Spoiler

Dragonking · June 17, 2023

Chapter 11: Satellites & Mun Preparations
While I was taking a break from the Jool mission I launched a new set of scanning & relay satellites for Kerbin, Mun and Minmus and a space telescope, after these satellites were in place I decided to get a bit more ambitious with the satellites and send out satellites to all of the outer gas giants from OPM, these would be deployed using a standardized vessel propelled by a Far Future Tech Nuclear Pulse Engine. Each craft would carry a scanning satellite for every moon of the gas giant it was going to and a lot of relay satellites so a connection could be maintained with every future vessel in the system. I had learned a little from the mistakes of the Jool satellites, the new ones while still making the mistake of using solar had larger solar panels, only one argon engine instead of 7 ion engines that couldn´t be powered anyways and used more advanced scanning equipment.
Satellite deployer craft and launch configuration:

Spoiler

Satellite deployer craft, this one is for Sarnus:

Launch configuration on a very weirdly modified SSTO Spaceplane:

The first one of the satellite deployers was somewhat flawed, with only 1 tank of fission pellets for the engine giving it too little dv, and it is also the one sent out to the furthest planet, Neidon. It will eventually reach Neidon but it will take far too long(~24 years), by then a manned mission with a more advanced engine will long have been there, so this one will most likely get terminated, the other ones have more fuel and can reach Sarnus and Urlum in an acceptable timeframe.
After the satellites were sent out I started work on colonizing the Mun, which even though it is the closest body I had neglected so far.
The plan involved building a large space station in Mun orbit that could store resources and construct bulky colony parts in orbit that could then be sent down to the surface. This station also required a good fuel source, so I constructed two large almost identical fuel transporters that could take fuel from the surface of the Mun to orbit and then go back, one for LFO, the other one for LH2/Ox.
The Mun colony would have very little MKT&SPT production (just enough for machinery self sufficiency), its main purpose is not EPL construction(like on Minmus)but production of various advanced FFT fuels.
Fuel transport pictures:

Spoiler

Launch:

Reaching orbit:

Above the Mun:

Once the fuel transporters were ready I also had to actually construct the station, it is far too bulky and fragile to launch from Kerbin, so it would be built on site.
For this I needed a construction vehicle, so I designed one of the largest spacecraft I had made up to that point, the orbital constructor, which I will also use in the future for more orbital construction, it is even able to fly far out to other planets, with the maximum being Jool(anything further and its solar panels wont be able to keep it running anymore).
It was then launched in one piece using the largest rocket I`d made at that point, which was of course also SSTO and fully reuseable.
Orbital constructor design & launch:

Spoiler

Orbital constructor design, it has just enough life support for the Kerbals needed to do the constructing, is nuclear saltwater-powered, has a good amount of MKT&SPT storage and runs on solar, for which it also has a large battery array:

Launch:

Launch seen from the side for a proper size comparison with the VAB:

Reaching orbit:

Fairing deployed(I used confetti deploy because the fairing is a little close to a part of the rocket, and I wanted to make sure the fairing deployment didnt cause it to explode):

Once the orbital constructor was deployed and had reached Mun orbit I needed to ship in more MKT, while it had enough SPT the MKT was not quite enough for the large space station, for this I needed a new cargo SSTO spaceplane capable of reaching Mun orbit, this one would again set a size record and become the biggest SSTO spaceplane for a while.
New SSTO design and mission picture:

Spoiler

Design of the new SSTO, its main body is 10m diameter.

The engine section, this SSTO is the first one to use the NV-GX 'Emacipator' Atomic Rocket Motor, which is useless in most vehicles as it also requires enriched uranium in addition to the usual LF to run and the enriched uranium can only be drawn from its internal storage which cannot be refueled, meaning the engine has a hard limit on for how long you can use it, which makes it useless for any permanent spaceships. But for SSTO spaceplanes which would go to a place, then return to Kerbin they are perfect as the main downside doesn`t matter and you can just have the upsides of the engine which are high thrust and ISP while generating less heat than the Liberator(the nuclear engine I use in most other crafts).:

Only picture I have of the mission, the SSTO docking to the orbital constructor:

After the materialkits were delivered the construction had nothing else required, but would take a while so I first did some other missions.

Dragonking · June 21, 2023

Chapter 12: Duna Mission & Space Freighter
I focused back on the Jool mission now, doing landings on other bodies and sending down both SSTO Spaceplanes to Laythe:

Spoiler

Bop landing, I also landed on the other moons except Tylo, but I have no pictures of that:

Both SSTOs at Laythe Base:

After this I noticed a Duna window had come up, so I decided to send another mission there, this would be a medium-sized second exploration mission designed to gather more scientific data. It includes a temporary base that will be placed on the surface, a cargo shuttle with swappable cargo containers similar to what was used on the Jool mission, an OUV to move those cargo containers, an Ike lander and of course the ship itself, which is medium-sized and powered by a Liberator nuclear engine.
Pictures of the crafts & mission:

Spoiler

Duna Ship(with OUV and cargo container):

Duna Base, temporary base with two science labs to generate more science points, ISRU system to refuel the shuttle, some life support and a garage housing a small manned rover. Shown here with landing equipment, will all be removed after landing.:

Duna Shuttle, shown here with container attatched. It can carry both passengers and freight, and is VTOL capable:

Ike Lander:

Launch Configuration(yes it was launched with the base on top like that, I didn`t want to bother splitting it into pieces and causing myself a lot of extra work by having to assemble it, so I just put it on top, and it worked):

The only picture I have of the mission itself, the Ike lander landing on Ike with a great view of Duna:

Once launched the mission went off without any issues I can remember, the Duna shuttle turned out to be a bit bad at its job, being very hard to fly and very unstable in VTOL, and with a lot of CoM - CoT misalignment, but other than that it all worked well. The base was successfully landed on the surface, science was gathered by the rover and then multiplied using the laboratories on the base, the Ike lander proved to be very good at its job and was extremely easy to land and to dock back to the mothership, and so the ship stayed at Duna for a while gathering science while on the ground I sometimes used the rover to explore the surface of the planet.
In the meantime the Eve colonization effort had somewhat run out of construction materials, to get it up to where it could produce good amounts of MKT & SPT it needed more investment of those than what the colony ship had in storage. So I decided to send a new space freighter to provide more materials.
Space freighter design & mission:

Spoiler

Space freighter design, this freighter is my largest one at this point, capable of carrying 6.048.000 units of MKT and 420.000 units of SPT, its main engines are 7 JX-200 'Cascade' Axial Flow Z-Pinch Fusion Engines giving it a TWR of 0,19 at full cargo capacity and 30.909 m/s of dv. It is 124m long and its fully loaded weight is 10.375,570t. It is also the first ever ship I built that does not use conventional RCS but normal engines that are set up to act as RCS using the TCA mod. In this case the engines used are JR-20A 'Ouroboros' Toroidal Tokamak Fusion Engines. This setup is far more powerful than conventional RCS, allowing even this large space freighter to be docked relatively easily.:

Launch configuration, this again broke the record for my largest launch yet, although this one would hold that record for a lot longer than the previous launch that held it did. I sadly have no screenshots of the actual launch. The weird trusses on the side are necessary to keep everything stabile and prevent any wobbling during launch, it also doesn`t fit into any fairings so thats why it has no fairing.:

Space freighter braking while entering Eve orbit:

Space freighter and Eve colony ship docked together for materials transfer:

Dragonking · June 22, 2023

Chapter 13: Moho Mission & Colony Expansions
After waiting for a while Mun station was finally constructed and could start operating, it would be filled with materials using the same SSTO Spaceplane I used to refill the orbital constructor(sadly I have no pictures of that). It features many of the same things the orbital shipyard does, like storage for various fuels and cargo, EPL construction capabilities, docks and extensive life support systems, but lacks any kind of production capabilities.:

A Moho transfer window had come up so I sent an exploration mission there. I had recently found the Planetary Exploration Technologies (PET) mod, which is a great base mod so I made a small base using it that would be included in the Mission. This Moho base would be very similar to the Duna one, including a couple labs, ISRU capabilities, a rover and being designed to only be inhabited for a limited time. I did them make the mistake which I had avoided in the Duna base by strapping it on top of the launch, I split the base up into many different pieces that would each have to be landed and docked seperately to actually assemble the base.
Moho Mission designs:

Spoiler

The ship itself, including the OUV and a cargo container that can be loaded into the cargo lander. Main engine is an extremely efficient and moderately powerful X-42 'Niven' Nuclear Salt Water Rocket Engine. It features extra LH2Ox storage(which is the fuel used by all the landers and the OUV), a cargo bay for the base parts which was originally intended to be a lot shorter, but the base pieces wouldnt fit otherwise, which made the ship a bit too long and weird looking, a laboratory and some habitation and life support at the front. it is solar powered.:

Moho Base, features are already described above.:

Crew lander for bringing crew to and from the surface of Moho.:

Cargo lander for bringing cargo to and from the surface of Moho, mainly base pieces.:

The launch was made in one piece and was fit into a fairing, which made it the most noodle-like looking launch I ever did to this day, as not only was the Launch vehicle(a reuseable SSTO rocket) rather long, the ship is also very long and thin, and since they couldnt be mounted on the sides the two landers were stacked below the ship on top of the LV.
Launch Pictures:

Spoiler

Start of the launch:

Ascending:

Fairing deployed:

Mission fully assembled, with the landers docked to the sides of the ship, the cargo bay is also open so the arrangement of the base pieces can be seen:

During this time period the two existing colonies were also expanded with new modules to improve them:

Spoiler

Minmus base expansion, a lot of these expansions actually happened a bit earlier(as can be seen by it being so much at once), but I had no screenshots of those points in the colony`s expansion so I had to skip that and only pick it back up here. I got better at ground docking, mainly thanks to a new invention, the hovering building mover. This is a type of vehicle that uses the hovers from the Kerbal Foundries mod in combination with powerful RCS for full 2D movement freedom. This allows it to easily dock to a colony piece with its grappling arm and push it around with its vector engine. This vehicle type makes moving colony pieces around on the ground a lot easier and would become standard on all of my colonies, here it can be seen in the bottom center-left of the picture. With this new vehicle I was able to actually connect the greenhouse tower to the rest of the base with tunnels. A radiator tower(top center of the picture) was also added to the base as it was having heat issues. It also got a new power source in a FFT fusion reactor, providing a lot more electricity than the previous fuel cells(center center-right of the picture). The final piece added is the new habitation & production dome, which expands the production capacity of the base and adds more habitation, which was needed to keep the Kerbals from running out of habitation time as the base previously had very little habitation space for its size and population.

Eve colony expansion, this one just got a new additional refinery and logistics block. The base previously was not able to actually recieve the materials put into planetary logistics by the mining building due to missing a logistics module, the mining building also does not have enough refining capacity for all the materials it mines, so this part was designed to solve these issues.:

Dragonking · September 1, 2023

Chapter 14: Mun Construction

Now that the Moho transfer window had been used construction could actually start on the Mun base. This base was constructed in a different way than most, using mostly modules launched from Kerbin, then landed and positioned on the Mun on their own propulsion. After being landed in place each module would be connected using USI Kerbtrail FlexOTubes. Some base components that were too bulky to be launched were constructed in orbit on the Mun station. The first modules for the base would be among these, although they are not directly parts of the base but instead needed to support it: the large miners that would deliver raw materials to the base using USI planetary logistics. Two of these miners were constructed, which were then each sent down to the surface on their own thrust.
Miner design & deployment:

Spoiler

The miner design is modeled after real bucketwheel excavators, although sadly almost all of this is purely decorative. The actual drills are mounted on the bottom of the baseplate that the miner sits on. It can house a couple of kerbals for some time but is intended to operate without crew usually, with Kerbals only being brought in if something goes wrong. It is powered by a small fusion reactor, meaning it will occasionally need resupplies of fusion fuel but this is still better than nuclear where once the reactor`s core lifetime is over the miner becomes essentially useless as it cannot generate any more power.
Miner Landed on the surface of the Mun:

The two miners landed on the mun have different drill configurations to mine the different resources available in the biomes they are landed in, together with the drills on the base they supply the base with every required raw resource to produce what it needs.

The Mun base is not intended to be able to produce large amounts of materialkits & specializedparts to build things like spacecraft or base modules on site, base modules can easily be brought in from Mun station or Kerbin and Minmus is a far better place to construct spacecraft. Instead the purpose of the Mun base will be the production of advanced fuels introduced by FFT.
Mun base assembly:

Spoiler

All of the smaller modules of the base were built on a shared basic design(seen later), these modules were also launched on a common rocket, a 2-stage SSTO rocket. Sounds weird at first but the first stage goes all the way into LKO(from which it can later deorbit and land back at KSC), the second stage is a transfer stage that takes the payload to the surface of the Mun, from there the base modules used their builtin thrusters to hover to their final position.
Pictures of this rocket launching:

After three of these launches the basic modules of the base were in place. A small habitation&greenhouse tower, a ore mining&refining building and a fusion reactor to supply power to everything:

One of the second stages landed a bit away from the base. Once the base had Materialkit storage these would be scrapped for resources:

The first module sent down from Mun station, the Base`s spaceport. Includes resource storage for almost every resource the base needs, planetary logistics module and landing pads. I dont have any pictures of the descent, to do it it was equipped with some external tanks & engines that were scrapped later:

First large module of the base, the production building. It is capable of producing medium amounts of MKT & SPT and turning these into machinery, which is required to run almost all USI converters. Also contains a good amount of habitation space for the Kerbals. It was launched and deployed the same way as the smaller modules:

Production Dome at the base, agricultural module is also included here. This module can mine gypsum, turn it into fertilizer and then turn that into supplies, making the base supplies self-sufficient. It was also sent down with external tanks&engines from Mun station. There is also a small lander at the spaceport(It is actually the same model as the one i used for the Moho mission) which i used to complete a contract:

Now Mun station was out of fuel to fill up modules with so they can be sent down to the surface, so the fuel transporter was used to ship some fuel from the base up to the station:

The last part missing for full self sufficiency now was habitation, to provide this a large habitation tower including rotating habitats was launched from Kerbin:

After placing it down I noticed the base had some issues with heating, so I sent over a radiator tower using the standard method & rocket. After the radiator tower was placed the base was complete for now, being fully self sufficient in every way. Later on the actual production modules for the FFT fuels will be added:

During the base construction I also continued a couple other missions.
First the Jool expedition was sent back home to Kerbin:

Spoiler

After several trips of flying around the Jool system conducting various science experiments, placing ground science and completing contracts the mission of the Jool expedition was complete.
First Valentina and Bob were picked up from the Laythe base using the Laythe science SSTO, there were also a couple other Kerbals on the base but they still had many years of life support left so they could stay there until the planned proper colonization fleet for Jool arrived:

Then with all the Kerbals that would be going back to Kerbin on board the main ship made one last stop at Pol to refuel fully before being sent off on a trajectory to Kerbin:

A new SSTO was also constructed to deliver materialkits & specializedparts down to the surface of Eve without having to build a non-reuseable drop pod every time as I had done before:

Spoiler

This SSTO can deliver large amounts of materials down to the surface of Eve from the colony or cargo ship. It cannot bring anything up from Eve though, barely being able to make it up when empty. It uses dual-mode nuclear jets for infinite flight on the surface and to manuever once in orbit and a single large OPT S.C.O.O.P. engine for the high thrust needed to escape Eve`s gravity and make it up into orbit(this engine is not good for orbital manuevers though since it has spoolup/spooldown time):

Here is it landed next to the Eve colony with its first load of cargo:

And with a Kerbal next to the landing gear for scale:

Dragonking · September 6, 2023

Chapter 15: Eve Expansion
Thanks to the large amounts of construction materials that could now be brought in with the SSTO built in the previous chapter the Eve colony could be massively expanded. Some module designs from the Mun colony were reused like the production dome and agricultural module(which was somewhat modified for Eve and reduced in size). All this expansion caused the power demand to go over what the colony´s powerplant could supply, so a new powerplant in the form of a "Karbonite Tower" was added(inbetween the main colony part and the production dome). This tower draws in Karbonite from Eve`s atmosphere and converts it into large amounts of power.

*I don`t have any pictures of the colony from the time so this picture is from when I am publishing this chapter, but the only thing that has changed is that the crew SSTO(which was in orbit at the time)is there and that the module that can be seen a little behind the production dome was added

SSTO descending down into the atmosphere of Eve to deliver cargo:

During this time the Moho mission also arrived at Moho:

Spoiler

As soon as the Moho mission arrived the main base module was sent down to the surface and landed on a spot that had been previously picked out on scans from the earlier Moho mission. It was able to land on its own power, for all other modules the cargo lander was used. The modules were loaded into the cargo lander by the OUV, then it was sent down to the surface. Here is the only picture I have of it, sadly it is a bit dark:

Once the modules were on the surface they were docked to the main part using small flatbed rovers:

Then the cargo lander was sent back up:

This process, loading the cargo, flying down, landing precisely, docking the module, going back up, rendezvousing, docking and then doing the next module took me forever and was extremely tedious, so I decided to never assemble a base like that again. But after many flights the base was finally completed:

The crew was then sent down with the crewed lander(seen on the right) and stayed at the base for some time to conduct research.

The old mining station on Eve also could no longer supply the demand for raw materials, so new miners needed to be set up. Before actually doing that I wanted to get a better scan of Eve to find the absolute best mining spots. A scanning satellite had been brought in with the Eve Station mission, but that satellite was now outdated and better scans could be done so I wanted to send up a new satellite.
The colony ship did not have enough of the right fuel for a satellite to get into polar orbit, so the satellite was launched from the surface of Eve. To do this an atmospheric harvester building had to be constructed at the colony to get the right fuel for the satellite, this building can be seen in the base screenshot on the very right of the base.
As soon as that was finished the rocket could be constructed and launched, making this the first launch of a rocket from a body other than Kerbin.

Directly to the left of the rocket in the picture you can also see the Eve science plane, a VTOL that is designed to conduct science experiments in various biomes on Eve, discover anomalies and generally explore Eve which I also built during the base expansion.
In the bottom right of the picture there is also the large Eve building mover, a scaled up version of the building mover from Minmus that was used to get all the base pieces into position.

Dragonking · September 7, 2023

Chapter 16: Gilly Colonization
Some more money was needed and the Minmus trade route system had become a bit too tedious to use, so I came up with a new, far simpler method:

Spoiler

First a new space freighter was designed, a far simpler design than the earlier one, using better technology. This freighter was then constructed at the orbital shipyard over Kerbin, making it the first ship to actually be built by it. It uses nuclear salt water(NSW) engines instead of normal nuclear rockets, giving it far better efficiency, and also has far more carrying capacity. The main change is that instead of using containers that get transported around it just has its own storage space into which the material is loaded, and it can even land on Minmus to recieve the material directly from the base(Yes, landing next to a base using NSW engines is realistically probably a terrible idea and would result in all the Kerbals starting to glow in the dark, but I just ignored that).
New space freighter at the shipyard just after construction finished:

I am not too happy with how this one looks, its a big downgrade from its predecessor in looks, but I hope I can eventually come up with something better that works just as well.
Once the freighter was back from Minmus in LKO a compatible SSTO was needed, so to do that I simply modified the cargo SSTO I also used previously to have its own storage space and a docking port in front. With those modifications it was able to deliver materialkits up into orbit for the freighter to take to Minmus and bring the valuable resources back down to Kerbin.
Picture of the SSTO descending towards KSC full with materials(I sadly dont have any of it docking to the freighter):

The Ships in orbit of Eve were starting to run out of resources, while Eve was a great place to colonize for the Karborundum available on its surface shipping anything except the most valuable things up from it was not viable, so the colonization of Gilly was started:

Spoiler

Not only was the colonized Gilly supposed to supply resources to the ships in orbit of Eve but also act as a major shipyard in the future since launching off off it is extremely easy even for huge spacecraft thanks to its low gravity. The first module launched was actually a large construction gantry for future spacecraft that descended down on its own power(as all the other modules were due to deorbiting and landing on gilly being so fuel-cheap). This construction gantry is capable of quickly building spacecraft and then launching them from it, and also includes some production capacity and a large amount of habitation space for the Kerbals.
Gantry landed on the surface of Gilly(this is the flattest spot I was able to find):

Next came the fuel producer, a medium-sized thing that can land on the surface, start mining ore and turn it into various fuels which are then put into the planetary logistics system:

Once the fuel producer had started actually producing fuel the Eve Colony ship was landed on the surface of Gilly so it could draw fuel from planetary logistics to refill its tanks.

After the fuel producer came the mining stations, three of these were placed in various biomes on Gilly to mine all the different ores needed for production:

Once all this infrastructure was finally in place the main base for Gilly(for now) was placed, a huge 192,6m-tall spire with lots of habitation, production and agriculture capacity.
Spire design:

Spire standing on Gilly:

Only after placing it did I notice I forgot a crucial feature, liquid tanks. This was important since a liquid tank is also needed to store one of the intermediate products needed for MKT production(chemicals) and the construction gantry relies on this base for farming capacity to keep itself stocked with supplies. To do this it needs to transfer the mulch from its kerbals to the spire for it to be processed back into supplies together with fertilizer, and mulch can only be transferred through liquid tanks. To solve this issue a small tank addition drone was built in orbit and sent down to be attatched to the spire.
Design of the tank drone:

During the Gilly colonization process a new module for the Mun Base was also launched up:

Spoiler

With the new funds aquired through the improved trade route I could finally start actually building up the advanced fuel production on Mun base. This began with the Mun nuclear production facility, this turns raw uraninite into enriched uranium, which is needed to make most advanced fuels and also to fuel nuclear reactors.
It can then also turn the enriched uranium into Nuclear Saltwater, Fission Pellets or Fission Fragments, which are all advanced spacecraft fuels.
Mun nuclear production facility design:

Launch:

I don´t have any pictures of the building actually placed at the base, I do have one of the entire base after the addition of the next module, so you will see it in its position when that is posted.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Dragonking

Dragonking · September 7, 2023

Chapter 17: Mission Returns & Leveling Cruise
Two missions started/finished their returns to Kerbin around this time - with a third, the Jool exploration mission, not too far behind. First was the Moho mission, after the Kerbals had come back up to the ship and it had made a quick transfer to Kerbin it was docked to the orbital shipyard, with its crew being transferred to the habitation space on the station. I decided to scrap the ship, while it was still useable and could be filled back up with new cargo it was simply not worth it, the method of base assembly used on the Moho mission - which i would have to use again if I used this ship - is simply far too tedious when it could be done far easier. This made keeping the ship simply not worth it so it and its landers would slowly start to be scrapped.
Moho mission docked to the orbital shipyard:

The other returning mission was the second Duna mission, after some time researching on the surface, driving around with the rover(I sadly have no pictures of the time on the surface) and sending the lander over to Ike a couple of times all the Kerbals were sent back up, everything was docked and the ship was sent off to Kerbin:

I was starting to plan out a proper colonization plan for Duna now, but before Duna could be colonized more skilled Kerbals were needed to actually crew a Duna colony. After all the other missions I had started to run out of skilled 3-star Kerbals for my colonies and ships. So I needed to train up more Kerbals with leveling cruises (explained in chapter 4). To do this I designed a new SSTO with far higher crew capacity than the previous one so more Kerbals could be trained up at once.
Pictures of the SSTO & its first cruise:

Spoiler

Taking off from Kerbin:

Bottom of the craft:

Transfer burn to Minmus:

Landing next to Minmus base for crew levels and refueling:

Landed on the Mun:

Dragonking · September 9, 2023

Chapter 18: Interplanetary Fusion Spaceship & Heavy Mining
For the colonization of the Eve system further Kerbals were required to man all the new installations, as well as fusion fuel to power them all. Fusion reactors were used on most installations on Gilly since they were the only viable power source except extremely large solar arrays, nothing else available on Gilly can provide the necessary amounts of power reliably long term, nuclear reactors can also provide the necessary amounts but their cores break down after ~6 years and unless a complicated system to swap the reactors out is added to a vehicle that vehicle becomes useless once the reactor core breaks down. But all these fusion reactors needed a lot of fuel which had to be shipped in from Kerbin as it cannot be gathered in the Eve system. To finish both these tasks I designed a large new Interplanetary ship with a fusion engine with a large amount of excess fuel which can be used in the Eve system, its main cargo however are the many Kerbals on board. This spacecraft was also the one with the most advanced engine to so far, a K-80 'Hammertong' Inertial Confinement Fusion Engine with incredibly high efficiency at the cost of extremely low thrust.
Mission pictures&other details:

Spoiler

Launch of the interplanetary spaceship:

interplanetary spaceship in orbit:

As soon as the interplanetary spaceship had arrived at Eve(which barely took any time thanks to the very fast transfer window enabled by the advanced engine) the Kerbals it had transported needed to actually be brought to their specific destinations. For this purpose I built a small transfer spaceship that could bring them to another ship, in most cases the Eve colony ship from which they could be sent down to the surface with the passenger SSTO. I did not just dock the large spaceships themselves together as they lacked the correct docking & RCS equipment to dock to each other and docking large ships is very tedious in general.
Orbital transfer spaceship:

As new colony expansions were planned on Minmus and Eve the old mining equipment was no longer enough, so new heavy miners were designed and built for these locations.
Minmus had most required resources on the base spot, except one vital one: MetallicOre(MTO). In the past a small mining station had done the job of mining it and supplying the base with it, but it was no longer enough for the new planned base pieces. To fill this demand a large mining rover was designed and launched up from Kerbin.
Mission Pictures:

Spoiler

Mining rover in LKO with the SSTO launch vehicle that sent it up, which is currently encountering one of the many bugs I have to constantly deal with, the engines still being somehow linked and firing even though I am just throttling up those on the rover for the Minmus transfer:

Mining rover landing on Minmus at the mining site:

Next came the new mining equipment for Eve. The old mining building there has a major problem with resource concentrations, while the site it was built on has some amounts of every resource that needs to be brought to the base the abundance of some essential ones(MetallicOre and Minerals) is very low, which made it a huge bottleneck for production as not enough of these resources were coming in. So a new site was picked out and a mining vehicle designed to mine these resources there to supplement the mining building. This vehicle is a hover, using KF anti gravity hovers to float above the ground and Karbonite rocket engines to move around, allowing it to move rather quickly without having to be a full plane. This movement type allowed it to get from the Eve colony, where it was built, over the lake(hovers also keep you above water), and up to the mountain peak where it would mine.
Picture of the mining hover:

Dragonking · September 12, 2023

Chapter 19: Duna Colonization
*About 70% of this mission is a copy of Mark Thrimm`s Duna colonization from his amazing SSTO Space Program Youtube series, I have a tendency to want to do really good missions myself if I see them somewhere. Most of the credit for the designs of the colony ship, skycrane, passenger SSTO, cargo shuttle and the early modules of the base and mining/building rover that will be shown in future chapters goes to him, while I did build mine from scratch I copied his designs with only a few minor changes.*

With the advanced exploration of Duna done with the second Duna mission, a Duna transfer window coming up and lots of funds and trained Kerbals available I decided to send out a mission to colonize Duna. This would be done with a single large colony ship containing everything needed for colonization.
Colony ship design & launch:

Spoiler

The Duna colony ship is carrying 1.840.000 Materialkits, 128.000 Specializedparts for colony construction and 218.100 Machinery to run the colony production. It is propelled by 7 5m Tweakscaled NV-GE 'Liberator' Atomic Rocket Motors providing a TWR of 0.32 with 5.902m/s of dv when completely full. It is powered by a fusion reactor. A large amount of the Materialkits is also stored in detatchable containers that can be sent down to the surface with a skycrane(which is seen on the bottom left of the picture). It also carries a good amount of oxidizer to fuel shuttles and the skycrane and has a mediocre life support system for its size.

Launch configuration:

After launch the Duna colony ship made it to Duna with no issues and decelerated there:

During the transfer to Duna I noticed I forgot something:

Spoiler

I noticed I forgot the 2 passenger SSTOs that would be used to ship Kerbals up and down from the surface of Duna, so I had to send them up in a seperate launch and send them to Duna on their own. For this I strapped them to a quickly built non-reuseable rocket and launched it all off to Duna.
Launch configuration:

Decelerating at Duna, the central orange fuel tank had to be ditched before this because it burned out so now the SSTOs had to brake on their own thrust while detatched from each other:

Now that everything for the colonization was in place it could actually begin, the first module sent down was a medium sized combined habitation/production/mining building that would mine some basic resources that were not available at the main base site, produce basic resources and house the Kerbals needed to run that production.
Pictures of it:

Spoiler

Descending to the surface:

Fully deployed:

Edited September 12, 2023 by Dragonking

Dragonking · September 12, 2023

Chapter 20: Harbor Activity
After about 6 months IRL and 6 ingame years the Jool exploration mission has finally arrived back at Kerbin:

Spoiler

Decelerating at Kerbin:

This mission also gave the largest single amount of science points out of any mission I have ever done even now at the time of writing this, 53.621 science, which is not even counting the data sent back during the mission from experiments that can be transmitted without losses or laboratories. This data was transported to the surface with the Laythe passenger SSTO piloted by Jeb.

After arriving in LKO the ship was docked to the Orbital shipyard where it would be waiting for a while. A passenger SSTO was sent up from Kerbin to transport the remaining Kerbals down to the surface. Seen on the

After arriving in LKO the ship was docked to the Orbital shipyard where it would be waiting for a while. At around the same time the Duna mission also arrived back at Kerbin and was also docked to the station. Once both ships were docked a passenger SSTO was sent up to pick up the crew of the missions to finally return them to the surface of Kerbin.
Picture of the docked ships, very left is the passenger SSTO, middle is Jool mission and right is Duna mission. On the bottom right you can also see a small bit of the half-disassembled Moho mission:

In preparation for some very big upcoming construction at the shipyard more material needed to be sent up to it. The old cargo SSTO that previously did this simply could not carry up the required amounts without needing to do way too many flights, so a new, much larger cargo SSTO was designed for transports to the shipyard:

Spoiler

This new SSTO is 102,1m long with a wingspan of 65,5m and can carry ~2.300 tons of cargo into LKO.
New SSTO sitting at the runway ready for launch:

Flying on Kerbin on its way to orbit:

Docked at the shipyard:

Landed back at KSC:

I also designed one more passenger SSTO to transport some Kerbals to or from the station, I dont remember what Kerbals I actually transferred in what direction with this one though. I just have this screenshot of it docked at the station together with the other ships:

Dragonking · September 16, 2023

Chapter 21: Eve Heavy Industry & Plock Mission
Planning for large future projects the production capacity on Eve was expanded massively with 3 new pieces of heavy industry to produce more Materialkits and SpecializedParts than ever before.
First came a new Industrial production base capable of producing more MKT&SPT than all other bases of the KSP combined. This base was built seperately from the already existing base on a new area to be able to directly mine some required resources and to minimize lag.
Pictures of the base:

Spoiler

View from the front:

View from the back:

Then new mining devices were constructed to supply this production bases huge demand for the raw materials that it can not mine by itself. Those are mainly MetallicOre(MTO) and Substrate(SUB). These miners are entirely specialized for their resource and are placed on the spot of the planet with the highest concentration of it.
The first miner constructed was a giant bucketwheel excavator for MTO.
Pictures of it:

Spoiler

Side view with Kerbal for scale:

Top view:

Front view with the Eve construction plane that was used to build it:

The second miner was the substrate miner. It was originally designed to be towed out to sea then submerged there to mine the seafloor because the seafloor biome actually has the highest substrate concentration, but that was not necessary as the biome actually extends up to the surface on some points so the miner was just placed there.
I do not have any pictures of it from the time, but here is one of the design in SPH:

Spoiler

Substrate miner design in SPH:

A window to Plock (the furthest out planet in the stock+OPM system, Pluto analog) had come up. Knowing how long it would take any spaceship to get there I decided to send off a mission so it would have more time to get there than if I waited longer. This mission is an almost direct copy of TDChannel`s Pluto mission(really just simplified to 1 spaceship and launched in 1 launch), again the same thing with me copying a really good mission I saw somewhere, this will get back to more fully original missions later.
Craft design & launch:

Spoiler

This is the mission spacecraft itself. It has 2 stages, the ship itself and a booster stage that will be ditched after burning out. Both stages are propelled by tweakscaled NV-GE 'Liberator' Atomic Rocket Motors. 2 small bases are attatched at the front, one for each of the bodies in the Plock system(Plock itself and its moon Karen). It also features scanning and relay satellites as well as a passenger & science shuttle.

Launch configuration. The rocket was my attempt at a N1-like rocket but it ended up as one of the uglies rockets I ever built. At least it was able to get the Plock mission into orbit and both stages were recovered successfully. The camera angle is a bit weird because I can barely get the entire thing on screen at once even with hangar extender.

Only picture I have of the actual launch, the seperation of the fairing:

Once the Plock mission was in LKO it was sent off on its ~7-year journey to Plock.

Dragonking · September 16, 2023

Chapter 22: Jool Colonization Fleet
A Jool window had come up, and now that it was there I decided to take the opportunity and deploy my largest colonization effort yet. A fleet of 6 spacecraft were sent on a relatively fast transfer to Jool to finally colonize its moons and eventually the atmosphere of the gas giant itself.
These 6 spacecraft were:
1. Orbital Constructor
The orbital constructor that was originally launched up to build Mun station was now getting a new use as no large orbital construction projects in the Kerbin system were planned in the near future. It was sent to a medium-high orbit of Kerbin where it would then be getting a shipment of nuclear salt water fuel from a simple non-reuseable rocket and MKT&SPT cargo as well as new life support supplies from a cargo SSTO.
I do not have any pictures of the orbital constructor being sent off, but I have one of the rocket launch that sent up the new fuel for it:

Spoiler

Launch to send up fuel to the orbital constructor. The fuel transporter itself that will dock to the orbital constructor is in the fairing:

2. Huge Spacefreighter
The largest and heaviest of the ships of the colonization fleet is the huge spacefreighter. It was constructed in the orbital shipyard over Kerbin and can carry 29mil MKT and 2,6mil SPT. It has solar panels for passive power supply, but once it actually needs to do something like turn or use its engines(which are NSW engines, which also require a lot of electricity), especially out in the Jool system it activates its nuclear reactors for more power. It is fully automated and will fly to whatever moon the resources are currently needed on for colonization. Once it was constructed the huge amount of cargo actually needed to be shipped up from Kerbin to fill it. For the very heavy SPT a single giant rocket launch was used while the MKT was shipped up using the already existing cargo SSTO design. The cargo SSTO mission was repeated many times using the routine mission manager mod, having to normally fly this mission ~20 times would have simply been way too much effort.
Pictures of it and its filling:

Spoiler

Clearing the shipyard after construction:

SPT launch, during seperation of the side boosters(which were also recovered, just like the core stage):

SPT cargo pod docking to the spacefreighter:

3. Pol Colony Ship
Pol colony ship was designed to colonize Pol, a relatively simple colony ship that is almost entirely built out of USI parts. It is also the space program`s first Karborundum fueled large spacecraft, making it extremely expensive even though it was not nearly fully filled up with Karborundum.
Pictures of it(only in SPH & VAB, I have no pictures of its actual launch):

Spoiler

Colony ship itself:

Launch configuration:

4. Bop Colony Ship
Colonly ship for Bop. Despite being sent to probably the most boring moon in the Jool system it is the most advanced and second largest ship in the fleet. It is also the most expensive one at ~122mil funds(not counting the spacefreighter since it was constructed in orbit, its full price tag for launch from Kerbin would be ~330mil funds(excluding the huge launch vehicle that would be built for it, the launch vehicle for Bop colony ship also is not included in the price)). Remember when the 5mil for the Jool exploration mission was a lot? It can land on low-gravity moons and directly build base pieces there using EPL survey stakes. Once landed it can also mine ore and uraninite and process them into NSW fuel. It also has the ability to directly construct ships even in space and a large hangar.
Pictures of it:

Spoiler

Colony ship itself:

View from the back to show the landing & mining equipment:

Launch:

5. Laythe Construction Plane
This plane is designed to fly around Laythe and construct bases and other things there similar to the Eve construction plane. It can provide life support for a relatively large amount of Kerbals and can even mine gypsum and process it into fertilizer which it can then use to farm supplies, making it fully self sufficient. With these Kerbals it can relatively quickly construct all the things it needs to. It was launched in a space shuttle-like way and with a transfer stage half in its cargo bay to send it over to Laythe. Once on Laythe its electricity is be supplied by Karbonite, which is also relatively abundant in Laythe`s atmosphere, but during the transfer it used temporary solar panels to stay powered.
Pictures of it:

Spoiler

Start of the launch:

During ascent through Kerbin`s atmosphere:

6. Apollo SSTO
This SSTO was used to transfer the majority of Kerbals to the Jool system. It carried ~150 Kerbals to Laythe with a maximum capacity of 894, although with so many Kerbals its life support systems would not be able to keep them alive during the journey to Laythe (Life support would last for 2y 151d, although it would probably stop working before that since the supplies consumption rate of so many Kerbals probably exceeds the amount that the greenhouses can produce from fertilizer). It cannot make the journey all the way to Jool by itself, it needs to fuel up on Minmus before heading out. Electricity is provided by four nuclear reactors, the engines are a combination of OPT-E J-61 "Starwaster" Hybrid Ramjets which provide high atmospheric thrust, AE-1 B.R.O.A.D.S.W.O.R.D. Engines which are pretty much just larger R.A.P.I.E.R. Engines and NV-GE 'Liberator' Atomic Rocket Motors for medium thrust high efficiency burns in space.
Pictures of it:

Spoiler

Launch from KSC runway:

Entering orbit:

Burn to Minmus:

Landing at Minmus base to refuel:

During the deployment of the Jool colonization fleet two other missions were also conducted:
A construction gantry almost identical in design to that on Gilly was sent to Minmus, since its close to Kerbin it was just directly launched from there. This construction gantry will be used to construct spacecraft on the surface of Minmus that are too fragile/bulky to be sent up from Kerbin but also not big enough to be worth the effort of being constructed at the orbital shipyard.
Picture of it(I only have one, of its launch):

Spoiler

Launch from Kerbin:

While deploying the colony fleet I also noticed I underestimated the amount of trained Kerbals that would be needed, so another leveling cruise was done to train up more Kerbals to crew the colony fleet.
Pictures of it:

Spoiler

Some interestingly named Kerbals were on board the SSTO for this mission:

Launching from Minmus after fueling up:

Edited September 16, 2023 by Dragonking

Dragonking · September 17, 2023

Chapter 23: Sarnus Mission
The production dome on the Mun base had actually been producing far more MKT&SPT than I had expected, after running for some time it had piled up enough of the two to build a large base module on site, so I constructed a new module for it. It is an Antimatter production module, capable of producing relatively large amounts of antimatter.
Once it was built it needed to actually be pushed into place though, for that a vacuum version of the large pusher originally designed for Eve was sent over from Kerbin.
Right after construction I noticed that the antimatter prioduction module actually could not run on the base as it was, the base did not have enough cooling capacity for it, so modules with more of that would have to be sent over in the future.
Picture of it attatched to Mun base:

Spoiler

I also noticed a medium-sized asteroid was flying towards Kerbin and would soon collide with it. So I sent up a small vehicle with a heatshield and some parachutes to intercept the asteroid and safely land it on the surface of Kerbin. I still dont know what I am going to do with it, just like with all my other asteroids I just capture them thinking maybe I could use them for something eventually, but I still have not come up with a use for any of them.
Pictures of the mission:

Spoiler

Descending to the surface on the parachutes:

Landed:

A transfer window to Sarnus had come up, so I planned a mission to send there. It would be focused on exploration, with a particular focus on Tekto, the most interesting moon in the system. A high-thrust high-efficiency engine was needed for this mission to make it to the Sarnus system in a reasonable amount of time, so this ship would be my first one using the most advanced propulsion system in the modpack - antimatter. The ship is massively overengineered for the mission, able to have over 3 million m/s of dv when fully fueled, which would allow it to make interstellar journeys in reasonable time. With the production capacities at the time this was impossible though, producing enough antimatter to fully fuel it would take centuries(buying from Kerbin is not an option as launching with antimatter loaded requires science points, and buying enough antimatter to fuel it would cost more science than you can likely get from doing every single possible experiment in the Kerbol system). So the ship was launched up (together with its support craft, a lander for the airless moons, a SSTO spaceplane for Tekto and a Zeppelin to explore Tekto) then docked to the orbital shipyard which had been producing some antimatter, enough to fuel it up to have ~70.000m/s of dv. Once fueled up it was sent off to Sarnus.
Pictures of the mission:

Spoiler

Entering LKO:

Decoupling first stage(which, as usual, is a SSTO rocket that can land back at KSC and be recovered). Second stage is used for manuevering in orbit to reach the orbital shipyard and will not be recovered:

Docked to orbital shipyard:

Firing up the antimatter engine for the first time:

Burn to Sarnus:

I

Kerbal Space Program: Heavily modded Career Colonization of Kerbol and beyond

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation