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

[Serris]

is the link broken? i seem to get an ERR_CONNECTION_ABORTED when i click the link to nabaal.net.

[gravspeed]

i've been looking for an answer to this for a while now... which is lighter, kethane or processed fuel? in other words... which would be more efficient to lift off the surface of a planet/moon?

[PhilMcgroin]

Hey guys. Been playing KSP for a bit now, been exhausting a ton of things to do in vanilla before I started diving into mods. Getting to the point where fuel runs are getting annoying, so just started trying out this. I started trying to look for a ton of info in this thread, but ended up realising it was going to take too long to read over everything. Most of it makes sense, but I just have one question with scanning that a few different posts I noticed confused me about.

So, if I scan a planet with a ship, and generate the map, do I need to leave that ship in orbit? If I send it back to Kerbin, land it, then send a miner ship that does not have a scanner, will it see the scanned geodesic grid? Or does whatever ship generates it need to be there to keep the map there? I'm sure the answer is back in the pages somewhere, but its so much reading!

[mushroomman]

I would definitely love to see some kind of support for resources found in the atmosphere and oceans.

[wasmic]

Hey guys. Been playing KSP for a bit now, been exhausting a ton of things to do in vanilla before I started diving into mods. Getting to the point where fuel runs are getting annoying, so just started trying out this. I started trying to look for a ton of info in this thread, but ended up realising it was going to take too long to read over everything. Most of it makes sense, but I just have one question with scanning that a few different posts I noticed confused me about.

So, if I scan a planet with a ship, and generate the map, do I need to leave that ship in orbit? If I send it back to Kerbin, land it, then send a miner ship that does not have a scanner, will it see the scanned geodesic grid? Or does whatever ship generates it need to be there to keep the map there? I'm sure the answer is back in the pages somewhere, but its so much reading!

The grid is independent on sattelites. You are safe to remove them.

[Wjolcz]

Just a suggestion: Could you we have an option to transfer other fuels into kethane?

[CaptGentry]

Hey guys. I'm loving the mod. Can someone point me to some details on the engine? Does this thing work in space? I can't seem to get it to work up there. I think it needs ketair. Where do I get that? Does anyone have a picture of the normal engine-tank setup? My engines don't seem to want to stick on most things like the liquid engines do.

Anyway.. Thanks in advance.

[Stone Blue]

As Serris asked earlier, current download link seems to be down?

[SkyRender]

i've been looking for an answer to this for a while now... which is lighter, kethane or processed fuel? in other words... which would be more efficient to lift off the surface of a planet/moon?

Kethane technically is 5 times lighter than fuel. However, a full Kethane container will weigh exactly as much as the equivalent fuel it converts. In fact, it will weigh slightly more than the equivalent fuel it makes since some of the Kethane is lost in the conversion process.

The ideal drilling operation uses a token mining craft that only has enough fuel to get to the surface plus some change (and which has a heavy converter unit plus two of the smallest Kethane containers), and a separate fuel tug that does all of the fuel transfer from surface to orbit. Using KAS and docking ports cleverly, you can completely cut Kerbals out of the operation and have a fully "automated" two-stage Kethane-to-fuel mining operation.

[taniwha]

SkyRender: that was the ideal. While it still might be more efficient to convert on-site, convenience is now the ruling factor in the decision. For a station or base that is likely to serve a variety of craft, shipping and storing kethane is more effective because the station/base can store kethane and convert on demand, and the miner doesn't have to have tankage for resources it will never use (particularly xenon).

I think it was 0.5 that shifted the balance towards kethane shipping and storage being a reasonable option (for those that were less willing to just bite the bullet and eat the costs).

[SkyRender]

The thing is, you'll spend more fuel overall getting Kethane up into orbit for converting purposes than if you just build your station solely to accept huge quantities of fuel and bring up only fuel via a dedicated tanker. Even with Monopropellant and XenonGas added into the mix, you're still better off with a fuel tanker that can lug the lot of it. You have just as much 'fuel on demand' that way, if not slightly more since all of your fuel losses are up-front during the mining and initial transport stage.

[CtownGamer1980]

Figured i ask here for help. I am running KSP version .21.1.276 , I installed Kethane Pack 7.7. I Dose not seem to work.

I installed it into the game data folder and parts appear but they do not function at all on in the case of the large drill work even in the assembly building and have no way of being turned off. There is also no grid overlay or option to bring one up any were. Did i mess up somehow in the install or something else?

[Tanya Sapien]

5 times lighter

This colloquialism has always bugged me. When you say five times lighter, you're using a multiple to define a reduction without a referenced unit which is being multiplied. If the reference object was only 100 grams lighter than a base object weighing 10 kilograms, then your multiple of five means 500 grams lighter, so 95% of the original weight. Likewise, if the reference object was 1 kilogram lighter than the base object weighing 10 Kilograms, then five times that would be 5 Kilograms lighter, and 50% of the original weight. Taken literally, your colloquialism has too few variables to find a solution. We're scientists here, accurate data is mandatory.The method I'd recommend using if you have KAS is to have a mobile refinery and use shuttle craft to get into orbit. The refinery can get away with being a bit heavy because it only has to move when a deposit runs dry, so that's 1 period of losses due to gravity. The shuttle craft can just be fuel tanks with engines on them, so that would minimize the Delta-V needed to move fuel back and forth between the ground and orbit. As far as an orbital tanker goes, the solution to that is simple, have the tanker itself be the ascent stage. Instead of having tanks that jettison as it leaves Kerbal, keep them. That way when you're mining later you have somewhere to store all the fuel you refine.

Hey guys. I'm loving the mod. Can someone point me to some details on the engine? Does this thing work in space? I can't seem to get it to work up there. I think it needs ketair. Where do I get that? Does anyone have a picture of the normal engine-tank setup? My engines don't seem to want to stick on most things like the liquid engines do.Anyway.. Thanks in advance.

Unless I'm mistaken, those are air-breathing engines that while they do require intake air, they are capable of running in atmospheres that have no oxygen, like Duna for example. Hope that helps Edited September 3, 2013 by Aphox
Merged multipost

[SkyRender]

This is my own solution:

It's a full-fledged Kethane mission in a can, basically: scanner, drilling unit + KAS "mouse", fuel tanker, and the launch stage's final orange tank serves as an orbital fuel station base. It works wonderfully for the Mun or Minmus, and likely could make it out to Duna and Ike easily as well thanks to those efficient nuclear thrusters. The miner has enough dV to get to orbit from the Mun easily once a Kethane patch is emptied, where it can dock with the fuel station and refuel before going down to a new site (or just straight to a new site on Minmus; gotta love that low gravity!). The fuel tug can lug up truly absurd quantities of fuel to orbit per trip. It works out very well. Best of all, it doesn't need a single Kerbal to operate.

[Tanya Sapien]

I just got an idea which I have no idea if it's already been pitched;

Kethane + KAS + Kerbtown

What if the ability to lay kethane pipelines was added? You take a special kind of docking port and activate it with a Kerbal, that's point A. Then you get that Kerbal across the surface of the planet or moon by whatever means to the refinery/warehouse where he activates a second special docking port, that's point B. Once point A and point B are defined, a pipeline composed of tessellated world objects is erected between them. As a game balancing element it could even take time to erect and have a cost of X resources per kilometer to build it. A resolution to load-in distances would be as easy as giving the pipeline a buffer based on how long it is. A pipe of X length can hold Y units of resources. You switch between vehicles attached to the pipeline to dump into or pull out of it. Doing that, you could have four or five off-site drilling rigs which all connect to a central refinery and storage site. Assuming you've got the launchpads too, you now have KSC-3.

Perhaps I'm over-thinking this...I blame Minecraft.

[Majiir]

What if the ability to lay kethane pipelines was added?

This is a long-term planned feature. I haven't done any investigation into how it might be implemented.

[SkyRender]

This is a long-term planned feature. I haven't done any investigation into how it might be implemented.

A "cheaty" way to implement it would be to have the piping be ostensibly subterranean, and use a RemoteTech-esque solution of "if a landed craft within x meters has a Pipeline Feed part attached, the current craft can access that craft's Kethane reserves". TAC Life Support will drain resources from inactive ships (and more pertinently, the old Merlin Transfer Systems did so as well), so it's definitely possible to do vessel-to-vessel transfers with inactive vessels.

[taniwha]

SkyRender: I've shipped kethane from Minmus to LKO (miner ferried kethane from Minmus surface to a freighter in low Minmus orbit). While I didn't get to use the kethane (0.21 came out), I felt it worked out quite nicely.

• Surface to orbit: 4x FL-T400 were more than enough to get a medium spherical kethane tank full to my freighter (full) and back to the surface (empty).
  
• minmus to LKO: 3x small spherical LFO tanks were way more than sufficient to get 6x small spherical kethane tanks (full, 21300u) from minmus to LKO and back to minmus (empty). I think I used about 3/4 of the freighter's fuel (mostly in circularizing in LKO)
  

It would have taken exactly the same amount of fuel to get that much LFO from Minmus to LKO, but more to get shipping-worthy quantities of monoprop and xenon there (due to the extra tanks).

The gist of it all: there is no idea way now. Shipping kethane is worthwhile, but grand-tour style operations may be better of with minimal kethane storage and on-site conversion.

[SkyRender]

I guess I'm used to operating in an environment where liquid fuel and oxidizer are the only substances that really matter. It's been ages since any docking has required more than 10 units of RCS for me, and anything running on xenon gas is not going to be docking on any file I run. So for me, the minimalist miner plus fuel tug combo works out best. Your results may and quite possibly will vary.

[taniwha]

Yeah, under such conditions, shipping is pretty pointless. Kethane shipping and storage is especially important when using something like Extraplanetary Launchpads (overlapping deposits are rare), and even more-so OrbitalConstruction (I don't agree with it using Kethane to make a mainsail, but...).

[Hejnfelt]

Currently I have these mods:

DEMV-MK5-for-0.18

I finally found someone with the same symptoms as me. Whenever I select the ANT in the VAB I get continuous instances of nullreferenceexception in the debug console. Anyone have any good idea how to go about solving this?

[Donziboy2]

This works a treat on Minmus and it can takeoff from the Mun if I don't use the extra tank ontop. With only 2 engines its pretty efficient if not a little slow makes a good Interplanetary Tug. I use the small converter to save carry all that extra weight from the big one.

And here is my second Interplanetary Vessel I just completed, its using KSP Interstellar's AM reactor.

Once I have enough science I will upgrade it to the next level; 1/2 thrust x5 the ISP.

[Serris]

still getting the aborted connection when i try to download. since you don't allow mirrors, can you look into this asap?

[vardicd]

This works a treat on Minmus and it can takeoff from the Mun if I don't use the extra tank ontop. With only 2 engines its pretty efficient if not a little slow makes a good Interplanetary Tug. I use the small converter to save carry all that extra weight from the big one.

And here is my second Interplanetary Vessel I just completed, its using KSP Interstellar's AM reactor.

Once I have enough science I will upgrade it to the next level; 1/2 thrust x5 the ISP.

Once you have enough science you'll upgrade- what?

[TheCardinal]

Perhaps it has been mentioned/asked before in this thread. If so, sorry for asking it again.

The Kethane scanners detect Kethane, but they can also detect other materials (providing etc.). Would you be willing to adapt the Kethane scanners in such a way that they can detect the anomalies (easter eggs)? A cell could be colored red for instance in Kethane cellmap whenever the detector notices an anomalies. You could even add false positives if you consider it cheating.