Kethane, KAS, and silly rockets.

[Valley]

First, having found kethane near my Mun base I wanted to test out how to mine it, convert it, and carry it. My first few versions were fail, but I did learn many things.

One, I don't want a lot of kethane tanks on the miner as it is just turning it into rocket fuel anyway. So this second version had a lot less tanks on it.

Second, I need a LOT of power. So lots of solar panels.

Also, it could barely lift off the ground and by the time it landed at the Mun Base, which was not that far away, much of the fuel had been burned away. NOW, that is not a problem. This is testing out ideas. My Mun base was placed on the surface before the Kethane mod was downloaded into my game. So, when I go to Minmus I will select a spot for the base there, after scanning the surface, in which kethane is present. So the miners will land and just stay there as ships come and remove the fuel from them.

For the Mun base I developed another Rover using the KAS mod. Along with the T-Rovers (Transport) and C-Rover (Connector) I now have a F-Rover (Fuel).

I used it to drain fuel from probes and ships that would not be lifting off again. I ended up with the 99% full tank of usable fuel that normally would just sit there and be unreachable.

The KAS is not that easy to use - parts have a habit of phasing into the surface of the Mun and exploding - but I am learning and will help with future operations on Minmus.

Of course, I am still exploring way to get fuel into space and to the Moons. Looks cool. But looking cool is not good enough.

FAIL.

And the massive Life Support Ship for the tiny Hitchhiker unit looks a tad silly but, once again, it and other designs have helped me learn how much oxygen is needed, how much power, so on and so forth. It can even be linked to the Rover to help clean their CO2 scrubbers and top off their air tanks.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Valley
grammer

[BostLabs]

Impressive, very impressive.

I like you sig also.

[Valley]

Impressive, very impressive.

I like you sig also.

Thanks. I just wish I was a good pilot. I have to use MechJeb 2 and getting it to do what I want sometimes means watching it every second, turning stuff off and on, and just designing ships around its merits and flaws. So I have to design for what I want and what I know can be done. Sometimes those don't go together. If we ever have a multi-player game system I'm going to be a engineer!