Alatar's Rocketry adds additional options for rocket thrusters and rocket fuel processing. It also alters the nature of the Factorio solar system to better reflect realistic orbital mechanics.

If Bob's mods are installed, uses Bob's fluids and creates a recipe for liquid hypergolic propellant using hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide.

Updated Rocket Part Recipe

Crafting rocket parts and launching a rocket now requires liquid fuel and oxidizer as well as rocket engines. Fuel and oxidizer can now be crafted on planets and put in barrels.

New Thrusters

There are now three options for space platform thrusters:

Sea-level rocket engine are necessary to launch a rocket into orbit and can be used anywhere in the solar system.
Vacuum rocket engines are more efficient in space but cannot be used to launch a rocket into orbit.
Nuclear rocket engines are much more resource intensive to produce, but are the most efficient type of engines and run on water rather than fuel and oxidizer.

Updated Solar System and Orbital Mechanics

The solar system has been reworked to more accurately reflect the reality of orbital mechanics. Climbing out of or slowing down into gravity wells is fuel-intensive for platforms, but maneuvers between transfer nodes in open space is relatively cheap from an energy perspective. The distances in the solar system have been relabeled as delta-v values to better reflect what really takes energy when maneuvering in a vacuum.

The inner solar system is now largely empty of asteroids except for specific asteroid belts. The core gameplay challenge when first traveling between planets is launching enough fuel to get a platform to and from another planet. As the player's technology progresses, they can eventually manufacture fuel and other items in space in the late game.

Changelogs

v0.1.3
+Updated a few names of space locations and items to make sense regardless of mods installed
+Added check for Bob's mods and adjusted recipies to use Bob's fluids if available
+Added new recipe for hyperglolic propellant if Bob's is detected

Bugs & Feature Requests

Let me know if you are using this mod and have any comments, find any bugs, or want any features added (including support for other mods!)