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

[Dragonking]

Chapter 24: Gilly Station & Eve Karborundum Mining
Now I was mostly focusing on getting the infrastructure in place to mine & transport Karborundum from Eve. With the recently built heavy industrial infrastructure the production capacity was there to produce enough resources to construct everything. First was a mining building to actually mine the Karborundum, which was placed at the spot on Eve with the highest concentration I could find.
Pictures of the mining building.

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From the front. In the back you can see the Eve construction plane which was used to build it and the science plane which was used to scout out the construction site:

From the back, with the lake in front of it visible:

The next part required for Eve Karborundum shipping was a terminal station in Eve orbit where the Karborundum would first be brought before then being picked up by large interplanetary freighters to ship it to wherever it is needed. This was combined with another mission, a station for Gilly, which was then also combined with a very lucrative contract.
For some reason I had gotten an extremely good contract that actually gave amounts of money comparable to what Minmus mining gives, a tourism contract to keep a couple of tourists on the Gilly construction gantry for a couple of days that gave a total of ~36million funds. The tourists were brought along on the Gilly station in a small spaceship attatched to it.
Before the station could be launched though some more Kerbals would be needed though, so another leveling cruise was done, which went exactly like all the others.
The Gilly station was then launched from Kerbin with a lot of MKT&SPT(there was not much left of those in Eve orbit and shipping in from the surface of Eve simply is not viable) and some Kerbals.
Gilly station mission:

Spoiler

Launch from Kerbin:

Burn to Eve(really the station is actually just a regular spaceship, it is just meant to stay in one place after completing its journey). You  can also see the small spaceship containing the tourists on the left of the station:

Docking to space freighter:

Building Eve terminal station with the materials in the station and the freighter:

Releasing Eve terminal station:

After first meeting up with the freighter in high Eve orbit to build the terminal station the Gilly station moved over to Gilly and the tourists were sent down to the surface.
The terminal station can not only store Karborundum but also almost all other USI resources, although not nearly as much of them.
Terminal station with just its RCS cradle(this was built right after and sent over, it was meant to be built with the station but I forgot it at first. You will see what it is used for in 2 chapters):

Edited September 25, 2023 by Dragonking

[Dragonking]

Chapter 25: Jool Colony Fleet Arrivals
The first ships of the Jool colony fleet were now arriving at their destinations. For now I just decelerated them and put them into waiting positions, I would actually start using them for colonization after the Eve Karborundum infrastructure was in place. These are the arrivals of all the ships of the fleet and where they were placed, in the order in which they arrived:
1. Orbital Constructor
Placed into orbit of Pol.
Pictures:

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Correction burn after arriving in Jool system:

Deceleration burn to get into Pol orbit:

2. Bop Colony Ship
Placed into orbit of Bop.
Pictures:

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Correction burn after arriving in Jool system:

In Bop orbit:

3. Pol Colony Ship
Placed into orbit of Pol:
Picture:

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Deceleration burn to get into Pol orbit:

4. Apollo SSTO
Landed on Laythe near the first base brought there with the Jool exploration mission. It is landed more than 5km out from that first base though so their 2.5km render range never intersects to prevent both from being loaded in at once, which prevents lag.
Pictures:

Spoiler

In Laythe orbit:

Entering Laythe`s atmosphere:

Flying on Laythe to reach its landing site:

Landed:

5. Laythe Construction Plane
Landed right next to the first Laythe base.
Picture:

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6. Huge Spacefreighter
Placed into Jool orbit.
Picture:

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[Dragonking]

Chapter 26: Explodium Dragon
The first video in the thread, showing the in my opinion most impressive mission of the entire career so far. I had planned this since very early on in the career, it was always one of the big things I wanted to set up, a large system to deliver Karborundum from Eve into Eve orbit, from where it could be taken to anywhere else. This rocket can carry 1300t of Karborundum at once into Eve orbit and be fully restacked later to do it again. For anyone wondering about the name, it comes from the real-life Sea Dragon rocket concept. The rockets visual design is loosely based off off the Sea Dragon, and since it is launching from the seas of Eve, which are made out of Explodium (no idea why its called that, its not explosive at all) I named the rocket Explodium Dragon.
Link to the Video:

The video format will not take over from the regular KSP forum post format that ive been using so far, I will only be using it for some very special missions, it is just too much work to do this for everything.

[Dragonking]

Chapter 27: Tekto Exploration & Mun Construction
The Sarnus mission had now arrived at the Sarnus system. Its first destination was its outermost moon, Tekto, which is Sarnus` Laythe in a way, being the most interesting moon in the system and having an atmosphere. But while Laythe is very Kerbin-like Tekto is more like a green version of Eve. It has a very thick atmosphere, but unlike Eve it also has relatively low gravity, making launching from it or entering the atmosphere very easy compared to Eve. Exploring this moon was one of the main objectives of the Sarnus mission. To do this a zeppelin that could explore it was brought along for the mission, which itself was also carrying a small plane to quickly explore an area.
As soon as the mission arrived in low Tekto orbit the Zeppelin was deployed and sent down to the surface, where exploration was started.
Tekto exploration pictures:

Spoiler

Sarnus mission in Tekto orbit:

Zeppelin deployed:

Entering the atmosphere, this was really easy and I even used the main engines to speed it up since the descent was so slow:

Hovering in the air on Tekto:

Planting the first flag:

First flight of the exploration plane:

Exploration plane attatched back at the zeppelin. To dock it a system of KAS winches is used, each winch attatches to a part of the aircraft, they then pull it up until the claw on the zeppelin can grab it:

Right after this another mission I had not mentioned so far was complete, the Jool tourist mission. Some time ago I had a contract to send a couple of tourists around the Jool system, so I sent out a small mission to do this. The mission was sent out at around the same time as the Jool colony fleet and was very easy since I used an advanced engine and tourists do not need life support(the craft was also piloted remotely so no crew was needed). A landing on Bop was the final part of the mission, after that it was sent back to Kerbin and landed with parachutes.
Final landing of the tourist mission on Bop, with most of the other bodies of the Jool system in the background:


I also wanted to expand my infrastructure on the Mun. He3 can be mined on the surface of the Mun, and it is the more valuable one of the 2 fusion fuels. So a mining installation for He3 could allow me to make even more money and get half the fuel for my fusion reactors without having to buy it on Kerbin. So to build a mining installation for He3, and many other buildings in the future, I designed a Mun constructor. A spaceship that could travel around the Mun with suborbital hops and build things using EPL where it is. For this it also needed to have a relatively large crew to allow fast construction, and then the life support for them all. It could refuel and be loaded with construction materials by pulling it from planetary logistics when landed. The Mun constructor was launched on one of my standard SSTO rockets into LKO, from where it used its own engines to make it to the Mun and land there.
Mission pictures:

Spoiler

Launch:

Ascending into Kerbin orbit:

Landed on the Mun:

Once the constructor had arrived at the place with the highest He3 concentration on the mun construction was started and the relatively small He3 mining installation was built. This small miner cannot mine too much He3 and will probably eventually be replaced by a larger one, but it works for now as a start.
Picture of the He3 miner:

While the miner does have some living space for Kerbals there will not be any permanently on it, this is just for when a Kerbal needs to come over to fix some issue with the miner. The He3 is mined using a rotating miner that sweeps the ground for He3(yes I know this doesnt make too much sense as a stationary thing since the He3 in that spot would probably be mined relatively quickly, but I didn´t have any good ideas for how to do a rover to mine it so I made this).

[Dragonking]

Chapter 28: Duna Logistics
During all these other missions I had neglected Duna colonization. The colony had grown a bit, but not too much(I don´t have any pictures of it from this time, youll see all of it in one batch soon). Ike colonization was also another major goal I was building up to. The plan is to make Ike into a major producer for advanced fuels, especially antimatter. To do this I needed a few new crafts, and there was not enough MKT&SPT left near Duna to build large crafts, so they had to be shipped in from Kerbin. One would be a cargo shuttle that could transport various materials from Duna to Ike or the other way around. Production of MKT&SPT is not planned on Ike, so occasionally machinery (which requires MKT&SPT to be built and most USI converters slowly consume it) will need to be shipped in. This will be the main purpose of this shuttle. The next craft is the Ike constructor, which does the same thing as the one for the Mun in the last chapter, it is just a different design and was sent to Ike.
Pictures of the Duna - Ike transport shuttle (These are from sandbox mode testing of the design, there are no pictures of it actually in career from this time since they had not arrived on Duna yet, a Kerbin - Duna transfer takes surprisingly long):

Spoiler

Flying on Duna:


Landing on Ike:

Landed on Duna:

The two crafts were launched on the same SSTO rocket as the Mun constructor strapped together. Once they were in LKO they could use their very efficient nuclear saltwater engines to make the transfer to Duna
Launch:


Once the Duna logistics crafts were on their way I did something I have been wanting to do for a while now: refit the engine on the Jool exploration ship. The Jool exploration ship had orignally been equipped with a cluster of 9 stock nuclear engines, which gave it horrendous TWR.  I wanted to keep using this ship, so I gave it a new engine. Its new engine would be a much more powerful and also more efficient Liberator Atomic Motor. To equip the new engine I sent out a Kerbal to disassemble the old engine cluster, then used the orbital shipyard(to which the Jool exploration ship was docked) to build the new engine. It had a stack of USI Konstruction ports on it, which could be compressed to remove the docking port parts and directly connect the docked things. Since the position of attatched thing shifts closer to directly connect to where the docking port it docked to once was a stack of multiple of these ports could be used to clip parts in flight(there is a tiny bit of clipping going on with the girders the solar panels attatch to and the fuel tanks). So the new engine(which was equipped with a probe core and some RCS) was flown over to where it was going to be attatched and a single docking port was removed from the end of the stack and placed onto the Jool exploration ship so the new engine could be docked to it. Once it was then docked the ports could be compressed and the engine was perfectly attatched and ready to be used.
Mission pictures:

Spoiler

SSPL-10 being used to send up more materials to the orbital shipyard to build the new engine(there was pretty much nothing left after building the huge spacefreighter):

Preparing to dock the engine:

Engine docked:

Ports compressed, refit completed:

Jool exploration ship using the new engine for the first time:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 29: Sarnus Exploration
After deploying the Tekto zeppelin the Sarnus mission ship went on to explore the rest of the Sarnus system starting with its largest and most challenging moon, Slate.
For Slate the Lander will require both of its stages, meaning the first stage will be discarded and the lander will fly around with just the second stage from now on, which is not really a problem since that second stage is still good enough for any of the other remaining Sarnus moons. 
Slate exploration mission:

Spoiler

Lander performing its deorbit burn next to the Sarnus ship after it had arrived in low Slate orbit:

Rest of the deorbit burn with the main ship in the background:

Landed on the surface:

Taking back off after collecting all possible science data:

Stage seperation:

Docking back to the main ship:

After Slate was finished the mission moved on to Eeloo, where the lander was used again and collected all the science data. I also found a surface feature, but the lander does not have a scanning arm so i couldn`t actually scan it.
Picture of the lander on Eeloo:


The final two moons of Sarnus are both very small with extremely low gravity, so I decided to not bother with the Lander (which of course has to be docked back to the main ship after every use, and doesn`t quite have all the possible science experiments) and just landed the main ship on both of them.
Landings on both moons:

Spoiler

Coming in to land on Ovok:

Landed on Ovok:

Landed on Hale(very dark so not much is visible, but the ship is there and it is landed on Hale):

Now that all the Moons of Sarnus were explored the ship returned to Tekto, where the crew of the zeppelin were picked up using the mission`s SSTO spaceplane. The zeppelin will remain landed on the surface until Tekto is properly colonized and a new crew can move in. With the exploration now done and all the crew on board the Sarnus mission was sent back to Kerbin:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 30: Pol Colonization Beginnings
In preparation for Laythe colonization the huge spacefreighter was moved from its orbit around Jool to low Laythe orbit.
Picture:

Spoiler

The first thing built around Pol was a medium-sized transport ship which is used to transport Kerbals and small amounts of fuel around the Jool system. After being built it was used to move Kerbals around between the two ships of the colony fleet in orbit of Pol (orbital constructor and Pol colony ship).
Pictures of it:

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Performing a burn near Pol:

Docked to Pol colony ship:

Once this ship was built the real colonization began. I did not have a real idea as to how to do a Pol base itself (haven`t come up with a unique visual style that fits Pol yet so its not just the same stuff all over again, I still have no idea at the time of writing this) so I started with a thing that I do have an idea how to do, a huge construction gantry that will build large spaceships for the Jool system (once a base on Pol is actually established to make the resources needed for construction) similar to the one on Gilly. This shipyard was built in orbit by the orbital constructor with some engines to land on Pol, which is not particularly challenging to do thanks to Pol`s low gravity.
Pictures of the Pol construction gantry:

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Jool system transporter approaching it to bring its crew to it, with orbital constructor in the background:

Docked to it:

Landed on the surface of Pol(I don`t have any pictures of the landing):

Zoomed out so you can see the scale better, bit hard to see since its parts are so thin but you can make out the shadow pretty well:

Looking up into the sky with Jool and the other moons:

I also built one of my old medium spaceships that I used to launch from Kerbin and use for various missions all over the Kerbin system early on in the career for the Jool system. This one was used to bring some sort of specialist Kerbal (can`t remember what exactly) down to the construction gantry.
Picture of it:

The Kerbal flying around the construction gantry to prepare the radiator tower that is seen on the right of the image. I had originally forgotten to include radiators on the design so it was unable to run, meaning I had to quickly build and send down a radiator tower to fix this issue.
Picture of it:

A fuel tanker was also built, mainly to ship the fuel produced on Pol (from the old mining rover or the construction gantry, it also has fuel production) up to orbit to refuel the ships there, but it also has enough dv to go to some of the other Jool moons.
Fuel tanker landing next to Pol construction gantry:

Fuel tanker ascending next to Pol construction gantry, here you can also see the fully deployed radiator tower:

Edited October 13, 2023 by Dragonking

[Dragonking]

Chapter 31: Laythe Colonization Part 1
To colonize Laythe more resources were needed than those in the Laythe construction plane, and some orbital support. To do this I moved the orbital constructor from Pol over to Laythe after the gantry and ships there were built, and planned to use it to make a cargo SSTO that can ship resources down from the huge spacefreighter to the colony. But there was no LF on either of the ships in Laythe orbit since they both run on NSW, so I had to send up the old Laythe cargo SSTO from the first Jool mission to dock to the orbital constructor with some LF. The small amount of LF it could bring was just enough to deorbit the new cargo SSTO so it could then glide to the base and dock to it to be fully refueled.
Pictures of this:

Spoiler

Old cargo SSTO ascending from Laythe:

New cargo SSTO, LSSPL-01(Laythe SSTO Spaceplane 01) just completed by the orbital constructor and released, with the old cargo SSTO in the background docked to the orbital constructor:

LSSPL-01 is mainly a seaplane, as plane launches/landings on most of Laythe(including the area near the base) are quite difficult due to Laythe`s quite mountainous terrain and worse flight efficiency (0.6 atm to 0.8g compared to Kerbin´s 1atm to 1g). This allows it to land in the water next to the base, then use its intakeAtm fueled and quite powerful RCS to manuever and drive out of the water. Its engines are 7 OPT "Starwaster" engines for atmospheric flight, which are high-power engines with low efficiency for jets that work even at very high altitudes and 2 nuclear aerospikes for space. It can store X Materialkits or SpecializedParts (the exact distribution of what resources are stored can vary, the cargo is reconfigurable). Its first delivery went perfectly, it was able to deliver a full cargo hold of MKT&SPT to the Laythe colony to expand it.
Pictures of LSSPL-01 in action:

Spoiler

Deorbiting:

Approaching the colony:

Landed in the water next to the colony:

On land next to the Laythe construction plane and colony:

Ascending back up into orbit to pick up more resources:

The materials brought from the huge spacefreighter by LSSPL-01 were first used to start setting up some mining equipment to feed raw materials to the Laythe colony. These miners are more general ones that were placed in areas where multiple resources are available in good concentrations, but rarely where they are at their highest concentrations, and can mine multiple materials at once. Later on in Laythe colonization they will be replaced with many huge, specialized miners placed in the absolute best locations. All the miners were constructed by the Laythe construction plane(LCP), which flew to the area picked out and built them there. During this I also noticed the many problems with the LCP. It is very slow, has a bad TWR which makes takeoff and climbing in altitude very difficult and a has a rather limited range.
Picture of one of the miners, with the LCP in the background:


With the miners now ready the colony now grew rapidly, and very quickly it no longer had enough Kerbals to man it. So now some of the Kerbals from the Apollo SSTO needed to be brought over to the colony. The question was then how exactly would this be done? A rover would take ages and have a difficult time climbing the mountain ,a plane is a bit too much and bringing the Apollo itself would be very difficult due to how unwieldy it is and the immense lag it and the colony together would cause. So I decided to make a small helicopter that could land on the Apollo SSTO, pick up the Kerbals and bring them to the base.
Pictures of the Helicopter:

Spoiler

Landing on Apollo SSTO to pick up Kerbals (it lands directly on it and grabs on with a small claw, I didn`t want to bother with something that could connect to the SSTO from ground level):

Flying back to the colony:

After all this work the colony had grown a lot. The drill at the back of the original building had been removed and a USI Flex-o-tube was attatched there instead to attatch new base parts to. This is the state of the base after this chapter of construction, already self sufficient in supplies, with lots of hab time available and with some basic MKT, SPT and machinery production capabilities, but a lot more(and bigger) parts are to come for it!:
https://i.imgur.com/jrA7yqY.png

Chapter 31: Laythe Colonization Part 1
To colonize Laythe more resources were needed than those in the Laythe construction plane, and some orbital support. To do this I moved the orbital constructor from Pol over to Laythe after the gantry and ships there were built, and planned to use it to make a cargo SSTO that can ship resources down from the huge spacefreighter to the colony. But there was no LF on either of the ships in Laythe orbit since they both run on NSW, so I had to send up the old Laythe cargo SSTO from the first Jool mission to dock to the orbital constructor with some LF. The small amount of LF it could bring was just enough to deorbit the new cargo SSTO so it could then glide to the base and dock to it to be fully refueled.
Pictures of this:

Spoiler

Old cargo SSTO ascending from Laythe:

New cargo SSTO, LSSPL-01(Laythe SSTO Spaceplane 01) just completed by the orbital constructor and released, with the old cargo SSTO in the background docked to the orbital constructor:

LSSPL-01 is mainly a seaplane, as plane launches/landings on most of Laythe(including the area near the base) are quite difficult due to Laythe`s quite mountainous terrain and worse flight efficiency (0.6 atm to 0.8g compared to Kerbin´s 1atm to 1g). This allows it to land in the water next to the base, then use its intakeAtm fueled and quite powerful RCS to manuever and drive out of the water. Its engines are 7 OPT "Starwaster" engines for atmospheric flight, which are high-power engines with low efficiency for jets that work even at very high altitudes and 2 nuclear aerospikes for space. It can store X Materialkits or SpecializedParts (the exact distribution of what resources are stored can vary, the cargo is reconfigurable). Its first delivery went perfectly, it was able to deliver a full cargo hold of MKT&SPT to the Laythe colony to expand it.
Pictures of LSSPL-01 in action:

Spoiler

Deorbiting:

Approaching the colony:

Landed in the water next to the colony:

On land next to the Laythe construction plane and colony:

Ascending back up into orbit to pick up more resources:

The materials brought from the huge spacefreighter by LSSPL-01 were first used to start setting up some mining equipment to feed raw materials to the Laythe colony. These miners are more general ones that were placed in areas where multiple resources are available in good concentrations, but rarely where they are at their highest concentrations, and can mine multiple materials at once. Later on in Laythe colonization they will be replaced with many huge, specialized miners placed in the absolute best locations. All the miners were constructed by the Laythe construction plane(LCP), which flew to the area picked out and built them there. During this I also noticed the many problems with the LCP. It is very slow, has a bad TWR which makes takeoff and climbing in altitude very difficult and a has a rather limited range.
Picture of one of the miners, with the LCP in the background:


With the miners now ready the colony now grew rapidly, and very quickly it no longer had enough Kerbals to man it. So now some of the Kerbals from the Apollo SSTO needed to be brought over to the colony. The question was then how exactly would this be done? A rover would take ages and have a difficult time climbing the mountain ,a plane is a bit too much and bringing the Apollo itself would be very difficult due to how unwieldy it is and the immense lag it and the colony together would cause. So I decided to make a small helicopter that could land on the Apollo SSTO, pick up the Kerbals and bring them to the base.
Pictures of the Helicopter:

Spoiler

Landing on Apollo SSTO to pick up Kerbals (it lands directly on it and grabs on with a small claw, I didn`t want to bother with something that could connect to the SSTO from ground level):

Flying back to the colony:

After all this work the colony had grown a lot. The drill at the back of the original building had been removed and a USI Flex-o-tube was attatched there instead to attatch new base parts to. This is the state of the base after this chapter of construction, already self sufficient in supplies, with lots of hab time available and with some basic MKT, SPT and machinery production capabilities, but a lot more(and bigger) parts are to come for it!:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 32: Laythe Colonization Part 2
The next part planned for the Laythe city was a large production module. This module was very expensive though with a cost over a million Materialkits, and LSSPL-01 can only carry ~200k per flight. The amount of materials were there in orbit on the huge spacefreighter with its reserves of 24 million MKT, they just needed to be brought down and LSSPL-01 was just too much effort to use, all these flights take quite a while to actually do and are quite tedious after a while. To fix this I designed a new, bigger SSTO, LSSPL-02.
LSSPL-02 can carry over a million MKT in one flight. It uses my standard combination of OPT "Starwaster" and NF Aeronautics B.R.O.A.D.S.W.O.R.D. engines for main propulsion, but also has 2 vector engines at the bottom to allow it to lift off out of the water. It was built in the same way as LSSPL-01.
Pictures of LSSPL-02:

Spoiler

(Some of these pictures are of more recent flights of LSSPL-02, I don´t have many of its first flight)
Descending down to the city from orbit:

Taking off from the water:

Flying back up into orbit:


Landed next to the city:

With the materials brought in by LSSPL-02 the new production module could finally be completed (the text decals sometimes bug out like this, it fixes itself next time until it breaks again, no idea what is going on there):


The next major project was an orbital station for Laythe very similar to the orbital shipyard over Kerbin. It will serve as a traffic hub, a place to store fuels and cargo and an orbital shipyard. A large portion of the cargo from the huge spacefreighter will also be loaded into it so the freighter can move on to other Jool moons, and the orbital constructor is also freed up since the station can take over construction from it. The station was built by docking the orbital constructor to the huge spacefreighter and having it build the station with the materials from the freighter.
Pictures of the Laythe station:

Spoiler

Station from the front:

Station from the back:

The last part of the Laythe city for now was a large ore mining & refining complex. To push it into place a new building mover specifically for Laythe was also designed and built, previously I had been using the old Minmus design, but I needed something more powerful and better adapted to Laythe.
Pictures of the ore mining building and Laythe building mover:

Spoiler

Laythe ore mining & refining complex:

Laythe building mover:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 33: Duna Colonization
In this chapter I´ll be summarizing all the Duna colonization since the base was started by the Duna colony ship all in one chapter even though it was spread out along a much longer amount of time since I do not have any pictures of any of the stages of colonization inbetween that, this is the oldest picture I have of the colony and it is rather new.


Descriptions of the colony modules:
1. Main Module
The first part of the base to be built. It houses command parts, basic life support, KAS connectors and storage, the planetary logistics module and communication equipment.

2. Storage Module
Contains storage for almost all relevant resource types that is linked to planetary logistics

3. Agricultural Module
Large farming module that provides supplies for all the Kerbals. Can also mine gypsum and process it into fertilizer for full supplies self-sufficiency.

4. Gas Module
Filters usable gases out of Duna`s atmosphere and has the tanks to store them, as well as scanning equipment to detect gases.

5. Refining Module
Refines raw materials from the Miners which can then be processed into components by...

6. Medium Production Module
Processes refined (& some raw) resources into components like Materialkits, Specializedparts or Machinery. Can also recycle recyclables for increased efficiency.

7. Auxilary Mining Module
Temporary mining module for some resources that the other miner does not mine. Will eventually be replaced by a proper dome with mining equipment.

8. Large Production Module
Also produces MKT, SPT and MCH but much faster than the medium one.

9. Fusion Reactor Module
Added after I found out that the power drain of the Large Production Module was just too much for the existing powerplant. Has 4 fusion reactors, so it should be a futureproof power solution for the base.

10. Ore Mining Module
Mines ore and converts it into fuel

Descriptions of the vehicles:
Construction Rover
First vehicle landed on Duna, can mine & refine ore, transport cargo, push around buildings and has the ability to construct things with EPL. It was used to build the first colony modules.

Duna Passenger Shuttle
Transports passengers between the colony and colony ship. Also VTOL capable(theres a VTOL engine at the bottom), it would not be able to land safely in Duna`s thin atmosphere on just its wings

Liquid Shuttle
Shuttle used to transport various liquids between the colony and colony ship. There is another one for solid cargo which looks the same except that is has cargo storage except the tank in the middle, but it is currently in orbit.

Building Mover
Almost the same design as the original on Minmus, used to push base pieces into place.

Duna-Ike Shuttle
The newest craft here, the shuttle that was sent over in chapter 28. So far it has only been used to ship materials down from the colony ship to the surface.

(Not in picture) Duna Tunnel Mover
Small specialized rover that can grab the base tunnels that connect almost all the modules from above and move them into position to expand the base.

[Dragonking]

Chapter 34: Nuclear Transport & Jool Scooping
Laythe station is fusion powered, but I do not have any fusion fuel available near Laythe so the station has been unable to get power so far. To now fix this I needed to get some fusion fuel over, but the only fusion fuel in the system was that on the Pol colony ship, which is only really meant to run it. So I decided to actually harvest some since it can be scooped out of the atmosphere of Jool, one of the few places where you can actually get fusion fuel. To do this I needed a Jool scooping vehicle. Eventually I came up with a design that worked, but as you will see later it had a lot of starting issues.
This Jool scooper uses  NSW as fuel for its engine to have a good enough combination of ISP and thrust to get back into orbit from Jool once completing its mission. There is also not enough NSW around Laythe to fuel it up, so I needed to get some more. Luckily I already had a NSW production facility in the Jool system, the built-in refining equipment of the Bop colony ship. So I landed Bop colony ship on Bop`s surface and started producing NSW with it.
Bop colony ship landing:


I landed on a rather steep slope, but luckily the ship´s reaction wheels were able to keep it standing upright.
Once the NSW was produced it just needed to get shipped to Laythe, where the Jool scooper was already built and waiting for its fuel. To do this I made a small dedicated NSW freighter that can ship large amounts of NSW to pretty much anywhere except interstellar destinations, but will mostly be used inside the Jool system. The freighter was built directly on the Bop colony ship, which lead to a weird launch as its EPL construction docks are on its sides, so the freighter was dropped down the side and had to quickly reorient itself to burn up and not crash into Bop(which was relatively easy thanks to Bop`s low gravity). Once it was stabilized it flew over to Laythe and docked to the Jool scooper.
Picture of this part of the mission:

Spoiler

Stabilizing just after being undocked from the Bop colony ship:


Flying into Bop orbit:

Docked to the Jool scooper:

As soon as the Jool scooper was fueled it actually needed to do its job: scooping Jool for fusion fuel.
This is very difficult due to Jool`s thick atmosphere and the distribution of fusion fuel in it. Fusion reactors in KSP need two fuels: LqdDeuterium and LqdHe3, but can also just run on LqdDeuterium, although at lower efficiency and power. LqdDeuterium is relatively easy to get from Jool, it is available relatively high up in Jool`s atmosphere, but LqdHe3 is the main challenge, it is only available at below 75km in Jool`s atmosphere, which is very deep into it(the total atmosphere height is about 200km). At this depth you lose all orbital speed from atmospheric drag(when you are just scooping LqdDeuterium and don`t need to go in as deep you can point straight ahead and just shoot through the atmosphere without losing all that much speed, making it relatively easy to regain orbit afterwards) meaning you have to use your engine to fully get out of the atmosphere again, which is difficult even with the very efficient NSW engine. I also tried using a propeller setup to make it easier, but that was too unstable, weak and prone to kraken attacks (BG propellers really dont work well at large scale).
What made this first run even more difficult is that the Jool scooper is also fusion powered, and as I did not have any fusion fuel available until scooping it with the Jool scooper I only had the electric charge that was stored in the battery bank of the scooper available, which made this mission very difficult as the NSW engine also uses quite a lot of EC to run, so I had a very limited dv budget despite having full NSW tanks and could barely use its very powerful reaction wheel to stabilize the flight. Due to the limited dv I also could not lower my orbit to just above Jool´s atmosphere and then go into it, I had to bring just my periapsis down from Laythe`s orbit into Jool`s atmosphere, meaning I had to deal with far higher speeds in Jool`s atmosphere. Because of this I could not get He3 on the first scooping and instead had to get just Deuterium, which was luckily already enough to get the Jool scooper working fully and to get some fuel to Laythe station. Eventually I will be doing more scooping runs where I will also be getting some He3 so the fusion reactors can run at higher power.
Jool scooping pictures:

Spoiler

Performing a small adjustment burn to enter Jool`s atmosphere correctly:

Just above the atmosphere:

Flying through Jool`s atmosphere (It flipped over while flying through due to it being somewhat back-heavy and not having the reaction wheel to stabilize it):

Just after leaving the atmosphere:

After the Jool scooper got the first bits of Deuterium it flew back over to Laythe and docked to Laythe station to get it filled up with some fuel so it could start operating.
Jool scooper docked to Laythe station:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 35: Laythe City Expansion
Now that the station was fully operational I could focus back on building up the city on the surface. To do this I needed even more materials though, so LSSPL-02 did another supply flight to bring them down.
LSSPL-02 supply flight pictures:

Spoiler

Docking to Laythe station to pick up materials:

Landed next to the city(it touched down in the water then drove over to this point):

Being connected by KAS pipe. Here you can see a new building that was built inbetween the last shot and this one, the docking module. I sadly do not have a full screenshot of it, but it is a structure that extends out and has some KAS pipes at its ends, this was done so planes can go on the terrain behind the city and dock there. Previously they had to be landed in the water in front of it, which caused a lot of issues with the KAS pipes snapping because the plane would just slowly drift away until the pipes snapped.
Picture:

With the new materials I built a new SSTO, a fuel transporter. The NSW freighter needed monopropellant for its RCS, which I did not have available anywhere in orbit, but Laythe city with its new ore mining & refining module could easily produce some so I made a dedicated fuel transport SSTO, LSSPL-03, which uses USI tanks that can be swapped to contain most different liquid fuels. Unlike the previous LSSPLs LSSPL-03 was built on the ground by Laythe city since now Laythe city has the capacity to build things of its size and it is also much easier to do fuel wise since the city already produces a lot of fuel. Once LSSPL-03 was fueled up it was launched off to orbit where it would rendezvous with the NSW freighter and finally give it the monoprop it needed to dock to Laythe station and deliver NSW to it.
Pictures of LSSPL-03:

Spoiler

Just after being built, here you can also see a full view of the city´s docking module:

Starting the engines for takeoff. Unlike almost all other Laythe SSTOs it is not a seaplane, so it has to take off from the ground, which is quite difficult.
Picture:

Taking off:

Dodging the mountain right behind the stretch of land I had been using as a runway:

Flying up into orbit:


Docking to the NSW freighter:

NSW freighter docking to Laythe station with the monoprop brought up by LSSPL-03:

I wanted to explore some of the anomalies on the surface of Laythe. For this I designed a fighter jet to allow me to quickly fly around Laythe and explore it. The design I came up with looks something like a combination of an F-15 and a J-20 and works remarkably well. It is extremely manueverable and can reach very high speeds at ~1400m/s (really just capped by heat as far as I have found out, it could probably go even faster but at that speed the heating becomes too much and it would just burn up). The only big downside of it is that it has somewhat limited range, although I plan on eventually making a fleet of aircraft carriers that I will be spreading around Laythe which will allow me to always refuel to fly further with it and all the other aircraft I will be building. This fighter is lots of fun to fly and I flew around a lot with it.
Pictures of the Laythe exploration fighter:

Spoiler

Just after being built:

Starting up the engines:

First flight:

As you might have noticed in some previous pictures I bought Eve with volumetric clouds, and it really is worth it. Absolutely amazing to fly around in this environment:


Hitting maximum speed, for some reason the reentry effects make this nice hexagonal cone:

Landing at the first anomaly, a green Monolith:

Flying over Laythe city:

Under LSSPL-02`s wing, just to show the scale of LSSPL-02. The fighter`s fuselage parts are normal 1.25m scale:

Second anomaly discovered, whale bones on Laythe with a random plant next to them?!:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 36: Bop Colonization
I wanted to start the colonization of some of the other Jool moons now that I had already done so much on Laythe, so I went for Bop as my next place to colonize. First I did a small suborbital hop with the Bop colony ship to move it to a flatter location than the slope it was landed on previously and then started by building the central colony piece with planetary logistics, some basic habitation and command equipment. To attatch more modules to that starter module I needed a building mover so I could push them into place(when you build a part with EPL its orientation is pretty much random and the exact location is very hard to predict), but this building mover needed LFO for its engines, which I did not have on Bop. So I used the LFO tanker I had previously built on Pol to pick up some LFO there from the Pol construction gantry and ship it over to Bop.
Pictures of the LFO delivery:

Spoiler

Taking off next to Pol construction gantry:

Rotating to start the burn to get into Pol orbit:

Starting burn for Pol orbit:

Going up into Pol orbit:

Coming in to land next to Bop colony ship:

Landed next to the Bop colony ship:

With the LFO now here I was able to quickly construct and connect the new modules, they were all relatively cheap to build so I was able to build them with the materials carried by the Bop colony ship:

1. Central Colony Piece
Starter module, has command equipment, basic habitation and a planetary logistics module.

Spoiler

2. Nuclear Storage & Production Module
Processes uraninite into enriched uranium and can store that enriched uranium.

Spoiler

3. Agriculture Module
Farming module to convert mulch & fertilizer into supplies.

Spoiler

4. Nuclear Smelter Module
Has 2 large tweakscaled Nuclear smelters that can produce NSW or some other advanced fuels.

Spoiler

5. Power Module
Uses 2 HX power modules to provide power to the entire base.

Spoiler

6. Fertilizer Production Module
Mines gypsum and converts it into fertilizer to run the agriculture module.

Spoiler

7. Docking Module
Provides an area with KAS pipes to connect various vehicles to the colony.

Spoiler

8. Cargo Storage Module
Has USI Kontainers for every relevant solid USI resource to store them and share them with planetary logistics. In this picture you can also see the base`s EPL survey module building on the very left which will allow the base to build things by itself even once the colony ship is gone.

Spoiler

This is what the full colony (so far) looks like:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 37: Laythe Skyscrapers
With all the new additions to Laythe city it now housed a lot more Kerbals that have been brought in from the Apollo SSTO, so now its life support systems were reaching their limits. To solve this I added 2 skyscrapers to the city, a large habitation one and a medium-sized greenhouse one. The habitation skyscraper will for the first time push the habitation timers of all Kerbals on the city above 50 years, above which it turns into infinite, making the city fully self-sufficient in habitation. The greenhouse tower just adds more food production to keep up with the increased demand from all the Kerbals.
Habitation skyscraper construction:

Spoiler

Just after being built:

Being pushed into place by the Laythe building mover:

In position and attatched to the rest of the city:

Kerbal near it to show the scale:

Overview of the city with it:

I sadly do not have any pictures of the construction of the greenhouse tower, but it went pretty much exactly the same as with the habitation one.

Overview of the city with both skyscrapers:


At night:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 38: Dres Station & Neidon Mission
I had gotten a contract to build a station around Dres, and since I wanted to do something with Dres anyways so it isn`t completely neglected I accepted the contract and got to making a small research outpost station to put around Dres. It has life support to keep its small crew alive for ~20 years(I am not planning on having to care about this station much), an infinite RTG power supply, a small lander to get some crew to the surface and a rover that would be sent down to do some experiments on the surface.
Dres station design & deployment:

Spoiler

Design of the station:

SSTO spaceplane that will deliver it into orbit starting up its engines:

Ascending up into orbit:

In orbit, releasing the station. It has two tanks with nuclear engines attatched to it as a transfer stage that will get it to Dres:

SSTO spaceplane coming back down to land at KSC after successfully putting the station into orbit:

After the SSTO spaceplane had returned I sent Dres station off to Dres (I have no pictures of that sadly).

The Sarnus mission had also now made its way back from Sarnus to Kerbin, and performed its deceleration burn to get into Kerbin orbit:

Spoiler

Start of the deceleration burn:

Final part of the deceleration burn:

After getting it into a good low Kerbin orbit I didn`t do anything more with the Sarnus mission yet and still need to go up there to bring the crew and science data back down to Kerbin.

A Neidon window had also come up, so I wanted to get ahead with the exploring and send out a mission to explore the system and deploy satellites to it.
Before I could actually do this I needed some more funding, so I made another shipment of resources from Minmus to Kerbin.
With those new funds I was able to build a medium-sized exploration ship and a rocket to get it up into space. This exploration ship is not as advanced or large as the Sarnus one, mostly because Neidon is just not as interesting or large of a system as Sarnus. It carries a small SSTO spaceplane that will be used to land on the moons of Neidon and a temporary base that will be deployed on Thatmo.
Neidon mission launch & burn to Neidon:

Spoiler

Launching from KSC, the fairing looks oversized for the rocket but the mission ship inside it is very spindly so it is not very heavy:

Ascending up into orbit:


Fairing deployed to release the Neidon mission craft:

Deorbiting the SSTO rocket to land it back at KSC:

Bringing the Neidon mission craft into high Kerbin orbit in preparation for the burn to Neidon, it is a long burn and it has rather low TWR so it needs to have a high orbit to have enough time to fully execute the burn:

Starting the burn to Neidon in high Kerbin orbit:

Near the end of the burn to Neidon:

With the Neidon mission on its way, this concludes the last "backlog" chapter of this series!
All the chapters until now were just the things I had already done in my career and I was just now writing down afterwards. From now on new chapters will come out as soon as I have done enough new things in the career to fill a whole chapter with. Originally I had assumed writing this all down would take just a few weeks, but now it has been about half a year since I started this project. I do not have as much time for KSP as I used to have so they will not come as quickly, but I will keep playing in the career and going further, hopefully interstellar soon!

[Dragonking]

Chapter 39: Laythe Airport & Heavy Mining Preparations
The crew of the Sarnus mission was still on the ship in Kerbin orbit, together with all the science data gathered from the mission that could not be transmitted without loss.
To collect the crew and science I sent up one of my standard passenger SSTO designs:

Spoiler

SSTO Docked to the Sarnus mission ship:

Undocking from the ship:

Science gain once recovered, this is not including the science sent over earlier with direct transmission or science labs:

With the newly gained almost 32000 science I researched a couple new tech nodes, although that did nearly nothing as those tech nodes just included upgrades for KSPIE parts that I had already started modifying. I am working on making a custom version of KSPIE that mostly uses FFT`s systems and is more balanced, so these upgrades just did nothing, currently my entire KSPIE is just a unuseable work in progress mess.

The next big project would be heavy industry on Laythe.

For this some very large miners would be needed to supply the factories with raw materials, just the three large atlas factories in Laythe city were consuming far more than the starter miners could provide. The first step towards building these new miners was a new construction plane. The old one that had been sent over from Kerbin with the colony fleet was plagued with issues, mainly very low TWR which made it nearly impossible to climb in altitude and generally hard to keep in the air. Another big issue was also range, it could not fly very far with its fuel capacity.
This new construction plane would keep most of the features of the old one, but fix these issues, and also look way better than its predecessor:
New construction plane at Laythe city right after being built:


The first thing it built was not a miner though but an airport.
Landing cargo SSTOs and other planes at Laythe city directly had started to take a lot of effort as the city was growing and the lag around it was getting worse. So I designed an airport, which would be placed away from the city, far out of loading range. Planes can land at this airport, unload their cargo and get refueled there without much lag, the cargo would then go to the city or whereever else it was needed with planetary logistics, the fuel would also come to the airport by planetary logistics.
Pictures of the airport:

Spoiler

Just after construction:

Being pushed into place by the Laythe construction plane:

Final position, with Laythe construction plane connected to it:

Once the airport was in place everything was ready to start shipping in lots of MKT & SPT from orbit to build the new mining equipment, so the first delivery was made using LSSPL-02, which also now looks way better in flight thanks to a mod I made, NF Aeronautics Waterfall, which as the name says adds waterfall effects to NF Aeronautics engines:

Spoiler

Docking to Laythe station to pick up MKT:

Deorbiting:

Coming down:

Landed at Laythe airport:

The next shipment was going to be SPT, which would be done using the older LSSPL-01. But when I rendezvoued it with Laythe station I noticed a problem, it had no oxidizer left. This is not an issue for normal burns as it uses nuclear engines for those but it needs oxidizer for its RCS, so it could not actually dock to the station. The plan to fix this was to use KAS cables to connect instead and then transfer some oxidizer from the station to LSSPL-01 as well as the SPT, but then I noticed another problem, I had actually forgotten to put crew on the station.
To get crew there I started building some more infrastructure that would be useful later as well, a support rover for the Apollo SSTO which would be able to refuel it and connect it to things at ground level, the Apollo was simply so high up on its landing gear that it needed this support rover to be able to connect to normal-sized planes or almost anything else.
Support rover pictures:

Spoiler

Support rover right after construction:

Support rover docking to the Apollo:

The second part was a new medium-sized passenger SSTO, almost the exact same design as the one I used earlier to get the crew of the Sarnus mission back to Kerbin.
Once it was finished I flew it over to the Apollo, picked up some Kerbals and flew them up to Laythe station.
Pictures of the new SSTO and its first mission:

Spoiler

Right after construction:

Taking off:

Docked to the Apollo SSTO:

Taking off to go to orbit:

Ascending to orbit:

Rendezvouing with Laythe station:

Docked to Laythe station:

Once the Kerbals had arrived at the station I noticed another problem though. I had wanted to bring over mechanics and technicans to the station, mechanics can do EVA construction and add the KAS connector that I had brought along with the passenger SSTO to the station, while technicians can operate the nuclear processors on board the station. Engineers were not available as there were none left on the Apollo. To select which Kerbals I wanted to bring up I used the USI life support menu, it shows a letter after every Kerbal`s name to show what that Kerbal´s job is, for example (E) for engineer. I did not use the IVA view on the bottom right as I had disabled it and IVA in general most of the time to avoid the added lag it causes. When I actually tried to use one of the mechanics to add that KAS connector I noticed that was not a mechanic, but a miner. All those "mechanics" I had brought were actually miners, they just both had the (M) next to their name, and miners are very much useless on a space station.

Tired of the constant problems I just decided to use LSSPL-02 instead, I even used it to get a proper engineer and some more fertilizer up from the surface to the station. I then picked up some SPT and MKT with it and sent it back down to the surface.
Pictures of this LSSPL-02 flight:

Spoiler

Departing from Laythe airport:

Takeoff (assisted by vector engines due to short runway):

Ascending to orbit(some of the engines are off due to a bug with fuel flow, for some reason it breaks to some engines after some time, luckily it can still get to orbit):

Docked to Laythe station:

With this new shipment of MKT & SPT everything is was now finally in place to start building the new miners.

[Dragonking]

Chapter 40: First Laythe Miner & Sarnus Colonization Preparations

Continuing the project of expanding Laythe industry I set up the first of the huge Miners that will be supplying raw materials to Laythe City and other future industrial centers for processing into MKT & SPT. 2 Miners of this type will be built on land, the concentrations for the other required resources are the highest in ocean biomes, so specialized underwater miners will be required, which will also need a ship to carry them out to sea and drop them off.
First Miner Pictures:

Spoiler

Overview:

Kerbal for Scale:

Each of these miners however costs well over a million MKT, and the underwater miners are not any better (and the ship needed to launch them is another 4 million), which is more than even the huge reserves in orbit at Laythe Station could provide, so even though pretty much all of these designs are finished and ready to build I will have to wait for the existing small Industry on Laythe to produce enough to supply the resources. I noticed that a transfer window for Sarnus was coming up, so I had to pause the Laythe mining efforts to use this.
I had been wanting to send a large colony fleet to the Sarnus system for a while now, as this system will be the key to interstellar exploration, with the moon of Hale being perfect for a shipyard large enough to build Interstellar vessels, so I did not want to wait any longer.  This will be my most ambitious Project yet, with even more and larger ships than the Jool colony fleet.
It will Include a huge main colony ship that has many of the same features as one of the large logistics stations like the Orbital Dockyard over Kerbin or Laythe Station, being a central logistics hub, able to construct other ships, store lots of various fuels and resources, etc. This one however will also be mobile and carry the majority of the colonists to the system, and carry a cargo and a passenger shuttle capable of landing on and returning from every body in the system except Slate.
The next crafts will be a medium-sized science station around Slate, a construction Zeppelin for the colonization of Tekto, a seperate colony ship for Ovok that will also be able to land on Ovok and directly construct colonies there and a specialized construction vessel to build the huge shipyard on Hale.
The main focus of the colonization project will be Hale though, for which I have a special "instant colonization" planned, so instead of slowly building everything on-site with EPL the main equipment will be directly brought in from Kerbin. This will include a huge main base in the form of a 500m-tall spire with dozens of MKS 20m Atlas factories and two giant miners to supply it with raw materials.
Once this equipment is landed on Hale it can instantly start producing lots of MKT&SPT to be used by the shipyard construction vessel to build the shipyard.
Before I could actually start sending out any of this colonization equipment I needed precise ore distribution maps of Hale to know how to configure the miners. I first thought this would not be a problem since I could just use some of the satellites that were already in system from the Sarnus satellite deployment mission. Once I tried to get one of them in orbit around Hale though I noticed a problem: the minimum altitude required on all the scanning equipment the Satellites had was actually higher than Hale´s SOI, meaning the satellites could not be used to scan Hale.
To fix this I quickly needed to quickly send new satellites with specialized equipment that can scan from lower altitudes, but this posed a new problem: to get these satellites to Sarnus before the transfer window closed I would need a spacecraft capable of accelerating to huge velocities and then slowing down once at Sarnus.
For this task I designed a 2-stage(technically 3, but with that the first stage is just some SRBs) nuclear saltwater(NSW) rocket. This rocket carries just 2 Satellites (1 for Hale, 1 for Ovok(which has a similar SOI problem)), but is incredibly expensive for this at over 9 million funds. It uses 8 SRBs to clear the thickest parts of the atmosphere, then igniting its first NSW engine to get to orbit and perform the burn for Sarnus. During this burn it accelerated at over 1g for ~1 day to reach a final speed of 400000m/s, allowing it to reach Sarnus in just a few weeks, where it would then slow down using the second stage and enter Hale orbit.
Pictures of the satellite deployment mission:

Spoiler

Launch:

SRB seperation & main engine ignition:

Entering orbit:

Fairing deployment:

Burning for Sarnus:

Final speed reached!:

Stage seperation shortly before reaching Sarnus:

Approaching Hale:

Satellite deployment in Hale orbit:

With the Satellites I now had a good idea of the ore distribution on Hale and the preparations for the colony fleet could proceed. During this time I also did a few more cargo runs of ExoticMinerals and RareMetals from Minmus to Kerbin to fund the whole fleet, which will also be my most expensive project yet.
Dres Station also finally arrived at Dres, where it started collecting & processing science data and sent down its small autonomous rover to explore the surface:

Spoiler

Dres Station in Dres orbit:

Rover descending down to the surface:

Skycrane flying away after successfully landing the rover:

I am sorry it took so long to get this next chapter out, I have been busy with a lot of other things, have run into a lot of extremely bad bugs which prevented me from playing, and have spent a lot of time just designing crafts for future missions. The next chapters should come out a bit faster now since most of the designs for the Sarnus fleet are nearly complete and I have (mostly) fixed the bugs.

[Pipcard]

Glad to see you posting again. Large-scale colonization with MKS is very inspiring and I hope to do it in my playthrough someday, but I have a few questions.

- What are your PC specs? All of these huge vessels and bases must be taxing on your performance. (I have an i5-11600K processor and RTX 3060 Ti graphics card)

- You said "Before I could actually start sending out any of this colonization equipment I needed precise ore distribution maps of Hale to know how to configure the miners." How do you calculate how much a drill will mine, especially when all of the MKS drills all say that they have a maximum output of "1.00/second"?

Edited March 15, 2024 by Pipcard

[Dragonking]

On 3/14/2024 at 11:38 PM, Pipcard said:

Glad to see you posting again. Large-scale colonization with MKS is very inspiring and I hope to do it in my playthrough someday, but I have a few questions.

- What are your PC specs? All of these huge vessels and bases must be taxing on your performance. (I have an i5-11600K processor and RTX 3060 Ti graphics card)

- You said "Before I could actually start sending out any of this colonization equipment I needed precise ore distribution maps of Hale to know how to configure the miners." How do you calculate how much a drill will mine, especially when all of the MKS drills all say that they have a maximum output of "1.00/second"?

Thank you! Sorry for the late response, heres the answers:
-PC Specs:
  Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
  Graphics Card: GTX 1660
  RAM: 64GB
From what I know RAM is really important for KSP so you should really have something comparable. And the lag is pretty horrible for most of my stuff anyways. Laythe City is the worst in lag, it gets nearly unplayable at times. Generally stuff in orbit is fine, but large bases on the ground really start to have problems.
-Miners:
For figuring out how good the miners are the only thing that actually works is testing them, just go into a sandbox save, cheat them over and check how much they produce, there is no other way. I also dont really calculate the miner output, I just build a big miner with lots of output and hope its enough to meet the resource demand of the production. I only really needed the ore distribution info to know  which biomes have the highest concentration of each resource. With that I can make a miner for each biome that then mines all the resources that are most abundant there.

Edited March 19, 2024 by Dragonking

[Pipcard]

16 hours ago, Dragonking said:

Thank you! Sorry for the late response, heres the answers:
-PC Specs:
  Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
  Graphics Card: GTX 1660
  RAM: 64GB
  From what I know RAM is really important for KSP you should really have something comparable. And the lag is pretty horrible for most of my stuff anyways. Laythe City is the
  worst in lag, it gets nearly unplayable at times. Generally stuff in orbit is fine, but large bases on the ground really start to have problems.
-Miners:
  For figuring out how good the miners are the only thing that actually works is testing them, just go into a sandbox save, cheat them over and check how much they produce, 
  there is no other way. I also dont really calculate the miner output, I just build a big miner with lots of output and hope its enough to meet the resource demand of the
  production. I only really needed the ore distribution info to know  which biomes have the highest concentration of each resource. With that I can make a miner for each biome
  that then mines all the resources that are most abundant there.

Thanks, I currently have 32 GB of RAM, I might upgrade when it is necessary.

I also use KRASH to simulate my miners from the VAB (with all simulation costs turned off)

Edited March 19, 2024 by Pipcard

[Dragonking]

Chapter 41: Sarnus Colonists & Money

The first launch of the Sarnus Colony Fleet was ready: Slate Science Station.
This stations main purpose is to fulfill a contract, but it will also serve as a research hub for the Sarnus system, where data will be brought to, analyzed and transmitted back to Kerbin. It is the first to be sent out since its the cheapest with one of the lowest crew requirements, and does not use advanced propulsion(only regular nuclear thermal), meaning it will have to take the slowest trajectory.
Pictures of the Launch:

Spoiler

Launch!:

In LKO:

First Burn:

After second burn, close pass by the Mun for a gravity assist:

To do the next launches for Sarnus colonization more money and more crew were needed. For crew I decided to hire ~300 new Kerbonauts, in a relatively mixed combination of different specializations, then send them out in 2 of my "leveling cruises" using 2 SSPL-15s at once to get all of them up to level 3. For the money I sent out another routine collection mission with a SSPL-9D to pick up the remaining cargo on the SFR-06 space freighter and bring it down to Kerbin to sell. This would not be enough to fund the entire colony fleet though, and I also want to replace SFR-06 anyways since I am just not happy with how it looks, and how difficult it is to land precisely, so It will do one final cargo run to Minmus once emptied, then have a deorbiting kit attatched to it and landed on Kerbin, with a full cargo hold of valuable materials.
SSPL-9D cargo mission pictures:

Spoiler

Accelerating in Kerbin`s atmosphere:

Rendezvous with SFR-06:

Coming in for landing at KSC:

The two SSPL-15 leveling cruises for the crew:

Spoiler

Launch of the first SSPL-15:

Launch of the second SSPL-15:

First SSPL-15 landing on Minmus and taking back off again:

Second SSPL-15 landing on Minmus and taking back off again:

First SSPL-15 landing on the Mun and taking back off again:

Second SSPL-15 landing on the Mun and taking back off again:

First SSPL-15 landing back on Kerbin:

Second SSPL-15 landing back on Kerbin(I somewhat screwed up the landing trajectory and burned all the fuel too fast on this one and came down somewhere in a mountainous area, which made the landing pretty hard):

SFR-06 final cargo run & deorbiting:

Spoiler

Entering Minmus orbit:

Landing at Minmus colony to pick up cargo:

Burning for Kerbin:

Launching parachute kit for deorbiting:





Opening the Fairings:

Landing Booster:



Parachute kit rendezvousing with SFR-06:

Launching Inflatable heat shield for SFR-06:





Inflatable heat shield rendezvousing with SFR-06:

Deorbiting SFR-06(with everything attatched):



Landing in the ocean:

With these various missions complete I now have around 300 Kerbonauts ready to crew the Sarnus fleet, and just under a billion funds to fund the whole mission.
During this time the tourists that wanted to visit Gilly launchpad have returned from their trip, and have safely been landed on Kerbin:

Spoiler

Entering Kerbin´s Atmosphere:



Landing:

[Dragonking]

Chapter 42: More Sarnus Launches & Financial Disaster

The next Launch in line for the Sarnus colony fleet was the Construction Zeppelin for Tekto.
This vehicle will fly around Tekto and construct colonies and other infrastructure there, and will also carry a good amount of colonists with it.
Here I also used a new launcher concept for the first time: A reuseable rocket that launches normally, and then lands like a plane afterwards to be recovered.
Launch Mission:

Spoiler

After successfully deploying the Zeppelin itself I deorbited the launcher to land it back on Kerbin, but this is where the problems came in.
As I was flying it down from Orbit I lost control and it flipped over backwards. Somehow it was still somewhat controllable and I was able to fly it backwards, but I still only managed to barely pull off a crash landing in the water near KSC, losing a lot of parts, including the expensive engines.

After landing the launcher I then set the Zeppelin itself on course for Sarnus using its NSWR transfer stage.

As I started launching these missions I realized that the roughly 1bil funds I had amassed at the start of this project would not be enough to fund every launch required.
Especially the Hale miners turned out to be far more expensive than expected, with each launch costing ~800mil funds, of which about 500mil is in the recoverable launcher, actually more expensive than the far larger Hale main base spire at 500mil. I sadly had to change the plan for the shipyard from a space elevator design to a large mobile station which will orbit Hale, but can use its maneuvering thrusters to land on top of the main base spire and pick up resources there for construction in orbit. This shipyard will cost another ~700mil funds. The other launches have relatively negligible fund costs compared to that at around 10-100mil funds.

To fix this I needed to ship in more valuable resources from Minmus, but as I had just decomissioned my main freighter on the Minmus - Kerbin rule I quickly needed a new one. To achieve this I launched a new Freighter capable of transporting around 1bil funds worth of resources per run, landing horizontally on Minmus, and is equipped with powerful RCS for precision manuevering during landing, solving the main issue of the old freighter that precision landings were quite difficult and it could not easily manuever around afterwards. The freighter itself also was not too expensive, costing around 60mil funds.

To launch it I simply strapped two of my old reuseable 20m SSTO rockets to the bottom of it, and then attatched 2 SRBs to those to have just enough dv to get it to Orbit.
Launch Pictures:

Spoiler

I immediately got to work flying the first mission to Minmus and successfully landed it next to Minmus colony.

Once I started picking up the resources I noticed a major problem though, the huge demand for funds had finally exhausted the capacities of the small drills on the colony.
The resources stocked in the planetary logistics system were only enough to fill the freighter up around halfway before finally running out. As I was not really able to do anything about that immediately though I simply picked up what I could and launched back up to fly to Kerbin orbit.

After sending the freighter on its course I decided to do the first of the major launches for the Sarnus fleet, one of the two Hale miners.
The launch vehicle is designed as a 2-stage partially recoverable rocket, with the first stage being capable of SSTO and being recoverable, while the second would be a nuclear transfer stage to get the miner to Hale, and would then probably be scrapped there. 

Mission:

Spoiler

Launch was a bit problematic as the launchpad exploded as I fired up the main engines, but luckily nothing on the rocket itself was damaged and repairing the launchpad is not too expensive

Launch proceeded normally from there

The second stage with the miner was deployed and sent on course for Sarnus successfully, but as I tried to deorbit the booster and land it back on Kerbin I started having trouble. During the reentry I was forced to expend all the remaining fuel to decelerate to not completely burn up, but still lost one of the engines to heating. Once I was approaching the surface I was barely able to activate the parachutes, but they were not enough to slow the booster down enough even though I had attatched over 100 of the best parachutes I could find. The booster splashed down hard in the water near KSC, destroying most of the parts.

While the booster was luckily unmanned so no Kerbals were killed in the crash, its loss had turned the already difficult financial situation into a complete disaster. I only had around 120mil funds left, and still had launches costing around 2bil funds combined left to do before the Sarnus transfer window ran out.

For now though I needed to get on with the Launches, so I continued with one of the cheaper ones, Ovok colony ship. A medium sized colony ship capable of easily landing on Ovok on its own power using VTOL engines, carrying around 80 colonists and 1.9mil MKT+the appropriate amount of SPT to go with it. The ship will be used to construct the infrastructure on Ovok to make it into a huge antimatter production hub to fuel up the interstellar vehicles that will be built at Hale shipyard.

To launch it I continued the pattern from Tekto Zeppelin of using entirely new launch methods, this time an air launch system. Together with this craft the total cost got to about 45mil funds, 10mil of which was recovered afterwards with the air launch plane.

Mission pictures:

Spoiler

With Ovok colony ship in orbit I then sent it on course for Sarnus:

Shortly afterwards the new freighter also arrived back in LKO from its first Minmus freight run:

Spoiler

The new freighter has proved to have some problems, mainly in power, as the electricity supplied by its 3 solar panels is just about not enough to keep all of its LH2 tanks cooled, meaning it slowly leaks fuel to boiloff. It will require the addition of some extra power systems soon to fix this flaw.

[JnXYG]

Hi, that colony image of Chapter 37 is just fascinating! Those domes, launcher pad and skyscrapers, are they from the same mod? And btw can you share your modlists and version you on? I can't wait to try a run of this.

[Dragonking]

20 hours ago, JnXYG said:

Hi, that colony image of Chapter 37 is just fascinating! Those domes, launcher pad and skyscrapers, are they from the same mod? And btw can you share your modlists and version you on? I can't wait to try a run of this.

Thank you! The colony is made of a lot of different mods, the most important ones are Station parts expansion redux, MKS(and all the other USI Mods), OPT, procedural parts(with some custom skins added), and a special version of procedural wings that has "wings" with a transparent glass texture which I used for the glass parts of the large skyscraper. Theres also quite a few tweakscaled stock/restock parts in this.
I am on the latest version of KSP, and my modlist is well over 100 mods at this point, so I cant really list them normally, but heres some screenshots of my GameData:

Spoiler

[Dragonking]

Chapter 43: Final Sarnus Launches - for now

The resources that had been brought into LKO by the new spacefreighter now needed to be picked up and landed on the surface of Kerbin. Usually Id do this with the old SSPL-9B SSTO, but I decided to finally replace it with a new one, SSPL-21. It follows pretty much the same general design, but is larger(and with that also has more cargo capacity), lower partcount, and handles way better, being a lot more stabile in flight and having enough wing area to comfortably fly even with heavy payload, which was always a big problem with SSPL-9.
Cargo run pictures:

Spoiler

The funds from that mission weren`t enough to actually do any more launches though, so I needed even more money, and that FAST.
To get that money I decided to bring some of the Karborundum from Eve to Kerbin. While I had brought some into orbit a long time ago with the Explodium Dragon I had not gotten around to actually shipping it to Kerbin yet. That also meant I had none of the Infrastructure needed for that transport though, so I would have to improvise a solution.
Luckily Eve was in a good position of its orbit, quite close to Kerbin, but getting there and back in time for the Sarnus window would still require a lot of dv and decent TWR, which left nuclear saltwater engines as the only real option(antimatter would also work but I dont have enough of it). My first idea for this was to use a SSTO Spaceplane, but due to the weight of Karborundum and nuclear saltwater I was unable to even get any of the designs into the air. So instead I used a relatively small cargo spacecraft with a heatshield and some parachutes to land it on Kerbin, which would be launched into LKO using one of my standard SSTO rocket designs.
Mission Pictures:

Spoiler

The mission was a complete success, bringing in 920mil funds, enough to do the last critical launches. It was also fast enough, with the transfer to Eve taking around 3 days, and the transfer back to kerbin just under 8.

With this money I could finally launch the second Hale Miner, this time using an upgraded version of the launch vehicle which will hopefully be able to land back on Kerbin without crashing:

Spoiler

This booster was actually landed properly with no parts lost, allowing me to finally launch the biggest craft of the entire colonization fleet:
Hale Production Spire
This ~500m tall tower will be placed on the surface of Hale, where it will take the resources mined by the two miners from the planetary logistics system and process them into MKT and SPT with its large amount of MKS 20m Atlas factories. This will be the largest production base I have ever built in KSP so far, likely single-handedly more than doubling the space program`s total production capacity. This huge production capacity will allow the construction of interstellar spaceships and the antimatter production infrastructure to fuel them.
The total launch stack is 835,4m tall and consists of the Spire itself, a small fin setup attatched to the bottom of it to keep it stabile during ascent, an orbital tug on top of it which will act as a transfer stage and skycrane to get it to Sarnus and land it on Hale(which will after that be detatched to be its own spacecraft and tow all kinds of cargo around), and a SSTO rocket on top of it all to pull it into LKO.

After getting the production spire into orbit and sending it off to Sarnus I now needed to deorbit the booster and land it back at KSC. When I went over to it to do that I noticed I had also forgotten the booster from the Karborundum cargo mission in LKO, so I deorbited both of them back-to-back:

Spoiler

Karborundum cargo mission Booster:

Production Spire Booster:

The next launch was a general colony ship, which will carry most of the colonists for the whole colonization effort and also a lot of MKT&SPT. It also features a lot of the things found on my large spaceports(for example Kerbin orbital shipyard or Laythe station), like lots of storage for all kinds of fuels and a large docking area. This colony ship will fly around the Sarnus system acting as a mobile spaceport and bringing extra colonists and/or materials to the various colonies being built up using its two SSTO spaceplanes(one for cargo, one for crew), which are able to land on any of Sarnus´ moons using their VTOL engines/wings.
Launch pictures:

Spoiler

Booster landing:

Burn to Sarnus(actually done in 3 seperate burns due to low TWR):

Originally another craft was planned for the colony fleet, a large shipyard which would be placed in Hale orbit, but also be somewhat mobile and able to dock with the production spire(Hale´s gravity is negligible so it is more a docking than a landing)to pick up construction materials. This shipyard would then be used to construct all kinds of spaceships, including huge interstellar ones. I only have 111mil funds left though and it costs over 900mil, and I have no resources around anymore that can easily be picked up and sold on Kerbin for huge profit to get those missing ~800mil funds in time though. This launch is not essential to the rest of the colonization effort though(and it would take a long time anyways before everything else is ready to make interstellar spaceships), so I will simply leave it out for now, use the time to improve my trade routes to get more funds, and launch it in the next transfer window.