Fuel transfer

[lowred]

I Just started playing KSP again. Is there a way to transfer fuel from ship to ship while on the ground. Thanks for any help.

[כְּפִיר]

Without using any mods you would need to connect them by having one of them have a Grapple on it, then drive into the other vehicle slowly like you would dock (while the grapple is armed and open). You could also use docking ports but it is much harder to dock vehicles on the ground, so grapples are better. Once you connect the vehicles, you can go to the fuel tab on the top right of the screen and then click the box for the type of fuel you want to transfer so that it shows all of the places where that fuel is (and stays open until you uncheck the box on the top right). Then you have options to transfer fuel in or out. If you dont see that option, then you need to upgrade one of the KSP center buildings.

[lowred]

I kind a thought of that but then I need to make mytanker mobile. Land with a tall tanker with wheels. There'''s got to be another way. It would be great to have a kerbal take a hose from ship to ship. Just saying.

[כְּפִיר]

Good point, lol. I think there is a mod or a few that would allow fuel transfers, I just dont use them myself so I forget what they are called. Maybe somebody can recommend a mod for you to install.

I made a big fuel truck out of a big Kerodyne S3 tank and a Grapple, and wheels of course lol. I am very surprised that it doesnt flip over. I keep it by the runway in case I need to come back and refuel a plane. If you need to be able to get to this tanker with a new vehicle (if you have the money), you can make a cheap plane that has 3 of the small drills, a small converter, and a medium cooling system that cools all of your vehicle parts all at once (if you have the technology for the drills). The Juno jet engines should be enough, but I like the Wheesley ones the best. Anyway, three small drills and a small converter can fill up the fuel in a small plane in a week of game time or so, so it should be able to fill your tanker in a week or two. If your tanker is on the Mun or Minmus or somewhere with less ore percentage, you might want to use big drills and a big converter to be more efficient and not take even longer.

[GunnyErmy]

You can lay your tanker on it's side if you want to put wheels on it, and use RCS or another engine system to land. Action keys to switch between engines. I've got a couple surface refining stations/tankers set up like that in my workshop, one for Vall and one for Minmus. They land wheels down and drive to a docking port on the refining station. I manually adjust the spring power on the front wheels to line up the docking port if need be (you could also use an action group for this), but they were carefully aligned in VAB so usually it's not necessary.

[XLjedi]

KAS/KIS is the mod combo that has the connector hoses. Just search for the Kerbal Attachment System and Kerbal Inventory System mods.

If you have the BG addon, you can also use robotics to create a crane fuel boom which is pretty cool.

[lowred]

Thanks guys. I'll look into the mod for the connector hose.

[poruatokin]

EVA transfer mod is better than KIS for this. With KIS, the two craft become docked during transfer and you can get some horrible glitchy physics that will destroy the lighter craft. I have just switched to EVA transfer for this reason.