Kethane Pack 0.9.2 - New cinematic trailer! - 1.0 compatibility update

[goldenpsp]

So what the license is? Can someone help me simplify?

umm the blog post breaks it down pretty simply. If you cannot understand that, you may need to be a bit more specific with your question.

[Fyrem]

Thank You Majiir!

[brienne]

About to leave for Duna/Ike.

Should I keep my Kethane Converter in orbit or should I put it in an lander and convert K on the planet?

[LameLefty]

About to leave for Duna/Ike.

Should I keep my Kethane Converter in orbit or should I put it in an lander and convert K on the planet?

Hauling raw Kethane up a steep gravity well isn't very efficient. If you do a search of the many hundreds of pages of this thread alone, you'll find links to detailed analyses. What you'll probably find in practice, however, is that there is plenty of Kethane on Ike and other low-g moons around the system. It's much easier in practice to use stations around them or landed refinery bases on those low-g bodies to convert your Kethane to usable fuels, without "eating up your profits" hauling the equipment up and down from a planetary surface.

[TMS]

About to leave for Duna/Ike.

Should I keep my Kethane Converter in orbit or should I put it in an lander and convert K on the planet?

The only solution to this quandary is to make your mining dropship so monumentally huge, that the added Delta-V requirement of hauling the converter becomes an irrelevance.

Basically, make a spacestation that lands.

[Galane]

About to leave for Duna/Ike.

Should I keep my Kethane Converter in orbit or should I put it in an lander and convert K on the planet?

The ideal lander for this can be sent down with lots of empty tanks, touching down on fumes. Then it must be able to load up heavy and bring up more than was burned landing.

I took three landers to Duna, one manned and two unmanned for Kethane, after testing there with Hyperedit. What I'd missed was how much fuel would be needed to rendezvous. The efficiency was terrible, netting only half a Rockomax 8 tank or less per trip. Refueling with Dixie Cups! Fortunately a lander with the capability of returning from Duna's surface without dropping pieces will have the ability to fly to Ike with a full fuel load. I sent both to Ike along with one of the Kethane scanning satellites and also was able to land my manned lander too.

If you build a manned lander with parachutes you can repack them each time to save some on landing fuel, but you won't be able to leave the lander parked on the surface unless you've brought along another lander just to recover the Kerbal.

Something that should help is Stock Drag Fix. (Not to be used with FAR, NEAR or any other atmospherics mod except RSS - without FAR, NEAR etc.) What that does as of its current release is just remove the mass of the fuel tanks' contents from the stock drag calculations. Logical, because what's *inside* a fuel tank should have no effect on the aerodynamic drag of the tank.

SDF makes rockets accelerate somewhat faster and use less fuel lifting off planets and moons with an atmosphere. It has no negative effects on MechJeb's Ascent Guidance and I've not noticed any major impact on Landing Guidance other than its initial Deorbit Burn seems to overshoot a bit, then it corrects and gets as close as it does without SDF. I need to get around to testing my old Duna landers with this to see how much improvement it makes on their ascent.

SDF helps quite a bit ascending from Eve. Without it, my Eve lander barely makes it to 100KM orbit with part of one T400 tank. With SDF I've gone to 118KM with the T400 full and about 2/3 of the T800 on behind that. No worries about running out of fuel doing rendezvous. (This is lifting a 2 man can, not just one Kerbal in a chair. 'Course it also uses lift bags to rise to ~24KM before lighting the engines.)

[SubM3ntor]

Download links are down.

Great mod thanks for updating it guys!

[brienne]

Thanks for your answers.

[CDK]

Thanks for your answers.

Thank you for the subscription!

[Tekener]

Not sure what I do wrong, but I installed Kethan 0.9 (the first time using Kethane at all), and I got all the new stuff researched.

Now I'm having a probe orbiting the Mun and the scanner is active (I see it moving and following the Mun).

From what I learned in the net I should see a hex view on the map screen representing unscanned, empty and Kethane slots.

However I do not have any hex patterns on any planet/moon on my map.

What am I doing wrong?

Where can I enable the hex map?

[Phazon8058]

KH4? Potassium Hydride only has one hydride ion not 4...

[BananaDealer]

KH4? Potassium Hydride only has one hydride ion not 4...

Mmmmm bananas....

(That's literally the only thing I think of when the word potassium comes up)

[juanml82]

Not sure what I do wrong, but I installed Kethan 0.9 (the first time using Kethane at all), and I got all the new stuff researched.

Now I'm having a probe orbiting the Mun and the scanner is active (I see it moving and following the Mun).

From what I learned in the net I should see a hex view on the map screen representing unscanned, empty and Kethane slots.

However I do not have any hex patterns on any planet/moon on my map.

What am I doing wrong?

Where can I enable the hex map?

You should have a kethane button, likely an option in the blizzy toolbar. Open it, and you'll get a small dialog box with a check box to enable the grid overlay.

[Kieri]

I am sorry if this has been asked and answered already but google said it hasn't and the topic is FIVE HUNDRED pages long. Should I install Kethane?

Details. My KSP is currently stock 0.24.2 I fly by hand I use the node system (Goddess learning that was helpful) I have successfully launched orbited intercepted the Mun, Gone into a stable Munar orbit. Intercepted and landed on Kerbin Intact unexploded and with all crew alive. I HAVE left kerbin SoI but never returned from one of these expeditions. I have NOT completed an orbital intercept, and really can not decide wether I should install this mod or not.

[goldenpsp]

I am sorry if this has been asked and answered already but google said it hasn't and the topic is FIVE HUNDRED

pages long. Should I install Kethane?

Details. My KSP is currently stock 0.24.2 I fly by hand I use the node system (Goddess learning that was helpful) I have successfully launched orbited intercepted the Mun, Gone into a stable Munar orbit. Intercepted and landed on Kerbin Intact unexploded and with all crew alive. I HAVE left kerbin SoI but never returned from one of these expeditions. I have NOT completed an orbital intercept, and really can not decide wether I should install this mod or not.

Yes,

I mean no.

Seriously though, nothing in your post is really relevant to whether you would want to install Kethane or not.

Do you want to play around with a resource gathering mod and the gameplay it adds? Then yes.

[Superfluous J]

I am sorry if this has been asked and answered already but google said it hasn't and the topic is FIVE HUNDRED pages long. Should I install Kethane?

Details. My KSP is currently stock 0.24.2 I fly by hand I use the node system (Goddess learning that was helpful) I have successfully launched orbited intercepted the Mun, Gone into a stable Munar orbit. Intercepted and landed on Kerbin Intact unexploded and with all crew alive. I HAVE left kerbin SoI but never returned from one of these expeditions. I have NOT completed an orbital intercept, and really can not decide wether I should install this mod or not.

Your question is not a technical one, and nobody can answer it but you. Your answer, though, is really in the first post.

Does all that Kethane offers sound fun? Then go for it. Does it not sound fun, or do you feel it would detract from some other part of the game? Then don't use it.

I personally installed Kethane at about the same place you are in the game, because I was not confident I could make a ship that got to Moho and could come back to rescue the guys I sent to Moho, which ran out of fuel the moment they got there.

By the time I had my Minmus Kethane operation up to the point where I could launch a ship from Kerbin to get there, refuel, and go to Moho to take a second Kethane operation... I was good enough at the game that I could have just sent a ship right from Kerbin to Moho.

(But I had a blast setting up that operation, don't get me wrong)

[Kieri]

@5thHorseman, Thanks. I think I will pop it in at least to play around with it. If I don't like it I can always delete it. Thanks for the help!

--Kieri

[sidestep]

why not something along the lines of a floating rig kind of thing that extends to the bottom or something

[0235]

ok. noob to kethane here, is there a mod out there to change the scanning? i don't like the HUGE lumps of kethane, i would rather have much more frequent, but much smaller pockets, maybe only 3 - 8 segments. anyone who knows how to tweak that, or if such a mod exists.

i have seen this image which inspired me to, ask to do the opposite

(large image clutter)

Edited September 25, 2014 by 0235

[Riph]

Normally I'd read the thread for ideas, but 505 pages makes it a bit opaque.

Recently installed Kethane, enjoying it, ready to plop down my first refinery on the Mun to make it into a refueling station for voyages beyond. During my design phase, I realized that I don't really have a solid procedure in mind for getting the newly minted fuel from the refinery on the ground to the hungry ships in orbit. Here are my ideas so far:

1) A go-between ship with a big fuel tank with a CLAW on the bottom which can land directly on top of the refinery for fuel transfers.

Pros: Simple, east to construct.

Cons: Landing on a tiny refinery will take some leet piloting skills, and will get frustrating if I have to do it over and over.

2) A go-between ship with a big fuel tank and wheels on the bottom, which can land anywhere near the refinery, drive up to it, and engage the CLAWs which would be installed on the sides of the refinery.

Pros: Super easy operation.

Cons: Engineering a tanker truck that drives on the Mun without the wheels falling off or flipping over has been a challenge. Also the wheels and structural material they require make for a heavier tanker, resulting in inefficient fuel trips.

Please post what has worked for you to help me brainstorm.

[dzikakulka]

@Riph

KAS. KAS is just.... perfect for that. Really, can we think of simplier solution for fuel transfer than to connect both ships with pipes?

If you want stock just attach sr docking port to one end of the tank, engine to another, few wheels on the side so it can drive "flipped on side" and few rcs blocks plus radial monoprop tanks. I'm not too much after visual appearance and it worked for me (biggest pain is in taking off from laying on wheels, you simply need some hill) though it was not really easy to handle.

[Galane]

My Mun rover designs for Kethane mining and conversion. https://www.flickr.com/photos/27748767@N08/10400034735/in/set-72157635319720861 The largest is built around a horizontal 16,000 unit tank.

Bigger is usually better when lifting fuel or Kethane from the surface. My Eve mission http://imgur.com/a/2C8Iw?gallery#66 contains a very large capacity fuel lander for Gilly. I transported it there in pieces, converting two of the fuel tanks from the ship into the lander. I made a rover for landing on Eve then used KAS to connect it to the manned lander to refuel, leaving the rover on the surface.

Now in R&D for a a mission to Moho, making small changes to the Gilly lander design, mostly more powerful engines and stronger landing legs.

To run the Kethane converters you only need a small tank for fuel, a small tank for mono and a small tank for Kethane, and TAC Fuel Balance or other pump mod to continuously transfer fuel and mono to the tanks you're refilling while you drill to keep the Kethane flowing. My Eve rover has no RCS but does have a pair of roundified mono tanks.

[Riph]

Stock solutions preferred where possible. Kethane is the only mod I've installed so far (other than a brief stint with Mechjeb, didn't like it). It looks like Galane's solution is to make the refinery itself leave the surface and orbit to meet the hungry ships. Have most people gone this route? It certainly simplifies distribution, though I'd be concerned about how much fuel is being wasted hauling all that extra equipment up and down.

[juanml82]

Stock solutions preferred where possible. Kethane is the only mod I've installed so far (other than a brief stint with Mechjeb, didn't like it). It looks like Galane's solution is to make the refinery itself leave the surface and orbit to meet the hungry ships. Have most people gone this route? It certainly simplifies distribution, though I'd be concerned about how much fuel is being wasted hauling all that extra equipment up and down.

Then you need to decide on a standardized height for docking ports and place them in both the miner/refinery and your tanker. The tanker will have to be a rover as well for two reasons:

First, and most obviously, you'll need to drive it to the miner

Second, using landing gear when standardizing docking port height can be tricky - there are tutorials on that, I think it requires a base mover - because the gear suspension will sink more or less depending on the vehicle weight.

It may be hard to see in this screenshot

Check the rover in the center and the base at the right. In all cases, the docking ports are at the same height than a black rover wheel held on a strut. While such a low height might be inconvenient for building, it makes rovers that are easier to drive around. That base in the right is made of three different modules sent apart and the MK1 cockpit is an ion powered rover. It was all docked on the ground. Needless to say, docking in the ground is harder than in space so, really, KAS is the best way to do it.

[Riph]

Then you need to decide on a standardized height for docking ports.

Why not just have Advanced Grabbing Units sticking out of the sides of the refinery? That way I can drive a rover tanker of any height up to it.