New Part: Greenhouse

[Berserker66]

Basic Idea: When sunlight, power and fertilizer is present, generates kethane slowly. Fertilizer is transported via Tanks and cannot be produced, so that this is not a cheat part.

The point is, this would allow shipping of "Kethane" in a lightweight format from Kerbin. Mostly this would be useful for Stations, but also for airships and boats, if required mods are present.

The Greenhouse itself should be a large and heavy part.

The idea could be further expanded with Water and drilling of a Water resource.

Edit: and it should need crew to operate.

[LaylBongers]

Seems easy enough to add on the programming side, if someone has a model I could add it and do a pull request.

[Majiir]

It's nice for immersion, but I'm not sure how to make it gameplay-worthy. If it's not a cheaty mechanism, the inputs need the same mass as what's output (or very close to it) but would have a much lower energy content. Since there's currently no mechanism producing waste mass, I'm not sure where this would have value. I suppose you could collect water and, um, mow some grass in order to collect biomass, but now we're talking about adding a substantial resource infrastructure.

So, interesting idea, and it's one Dani-Sang even made a model for. (This was showed on the first Kethane dev stream.) But I wouldn't too much effort into modeling or coding this part because it's not at all obvious how it can be useful as part of the pack.

[LaylBongers]

Water In->Kethane Out would be an interesting mechanic though, since it would mean Kethane generation bases on some planets would be viable and on other planets just do nothing. Especially on Kerbal itself if you want to have a Kethane reserve on the ground to fuel your ship up with before launch. As an alternative it might be an idea to add a trace quantity refinery and soil drill which just goes Soil In->Kethane Out on Kethane-rich bodies. This would also add the need for launching scanning probes to different bodies to detect how overall rich they are next to just the position of Kethane spots on the body.

[Sheliya]

This is if you see Biomass as a production type, yet....Biomass, aka lets say some kind of plants, are usually a converter. Converting sun energy into chemical energy, and ripping the C out of CO2 (among other stuff). Thus, what about this idea: The greenhouse would be a not this heavy part, max 5 tons (with aprox 10 tons biomass, but later...Before the initial set up it is only some soil, seeds and windows...). And: It would not produce kethane, instead it acts as a converter to liquid fuel and oxygen only, though at a considerably better conversion rate than other converters. The conversion to oxygen would require sunlight only, liquid fuel energy. To produce biomass (which acts as a catalyst here, the more you have the faster the process) you also need of course some type of "building material". In reality thats simplyfied CO2. In reality, Venus (Eve) and Mars (Duna) both have it. In KSP, i dare say that ~could~ be: K-intake air, just what the engine already uses. Fully set up a greenhouse would have a mass of 15 tons, this and the k-intake air would be severly limiting its use. Kethane is more or less the fertilizer then, and some chemical base for the liquid fuel in some way. But it also makes it a nice option for your fuel refill on Eve, Duna and Laythe (and possibly Jool, with airships). A simplified approach- still with more immersion. And you could still expand the system with water and such later. The soil system for example could be an update, an optional different input instead of Kethane, making bases on planets with an athmosphere even more valuable. Because thats where you convert the soil, maybe even into Kethane.