It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I kept thinking that I’d like to revisit the lightyear project, but the tedium of building massive multi-stage rockets with no purpose beyond “going as fast as possible” had worn me down. There was nowhere to visit, nothing to see… just endless days of watching a number increase. Also there was the minor matter of all my trips to the edge of known space being complete failures.

And then Kerbal Space Program 1.0 was released. We’re out of beta! We’re releasing on time! So I’m glad I got burned – think of all the things we learned, for the Kerbals who are still alive. So now it’s time to return to space.

So what made the difference? Resources. Prior to 1.0, asteroids were fun to visit, but didn’t do much. Now that they can be mined… it’s like someone left a bunch of huge fuel tanks just floating around the Kerbolar system.

Of course, I was going to go for a class E (huge). And I wasn’t merely going to set up a refinery and turn it into a gas station, no. My plan is to take the whole thing with me. Oh yes.

As an aside, hollowed-out asteroids have long been proposed as space habitats or even interstellar generation ships. They can contain a decent amount of water, which you can crack into hydrogen for your fusion engine and oxygen for breathing. Using a giant rock saves you from having to bring up a lot of mass for radiation shielding etc.

Sadly, Kerbal Space Program doesn’t have fusion engines, or this challenge would have been done a long time ago. On the upside, we don’t have to worry about drastically changing the asteroid to support life. Kerbals are happy to sit in capsules for eons without even getting up to go to the bathroom.

Anyway, to start off we’re going to need a basic sort of ship with a drill, ore processor, nuclear engine, and enough electrical generating capacity to run it all. A bunch of reaction wheels and thrusters can’t hurt as well – consider the inertia involved in swinging around a thousand-tonne asteroid so that the engine is facing the right way.

I tracked an E class ‘roid as it swung around Kerbin, and through a careful series of maneuvers, caught up with it.

I started up the refinery to make sure everything was working right. Note how close I shaved this approach – I was running on monopropellant by the end. Thankfully the ship can make more of that too! So everything seems to be running smoothly. But Jeb and Bill look like they could use some company, don’t you think?

In her quick little shuttle (which I called a TIE fighter due to it having dual ion engines, despite it clearly looking more like a Y-wing), Valentina has no trouble catching up to the big lump of rock.

Ever the showboater, she deftly swings around the asteroid to peek in Jeb’s window.

Finally, she brings it down for a landing, and settles in for a long trip.

As you can imagine, the acceleration on this beast is simply abysmal. However, if you’re at all used to ion engines, you won’t feel too disappointed by the ~0.02 m/s^2 that it’s currently pulling. The fuel will last for… I don’t even know how long. And then of course Val can detach and fire up her ion ship for a couple more km/s. She’ll hopefully be the first to cross the lightyear barrier, with Jeb and Bill not far behind.

So now all we have to do is wait! I’m sure nothing can go wrong this time —

Oh come on. Well at least it’s still going —

(Jokes on you, evil gods of fate. I quicksaved! Often! You can’t take the skies from me!)