mega space station

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

dear all,

last night, i watched star wars and while i was in the shower, i had an idea. is it possible for anyone to make a space station as big as minmus?? i really wonder... how long will it take?? to all space station builders, plz take this challenge seriously. thx 

[Gaarst]

KSP doesn't large large crafts. I don't know the exact limit (or if there is one) but a craft measuring a few hundred meters is likely to contain enough parts to crash the game.

A 60km wide station ? No.

[Kuansenhama]

Physics load range is 2.3KM from the 'center' of your craft. So you would go out of load distance not far from the center.

If load distance wasn't an issue then, using stock parts. (The longest MK3 Fuselages are 10m long.) Minmus has a radius of (uhh 20km I think)  So you'd need 4,000 (With 1.1 and a very beefy PC, 4k parts isn't completely out of the realm of possibility) but keep in mind you'd have to launch those 4,000 fuselages in one go (without docking ports in-between.). If you created a system that launched (say 100m sections) and discarded all the RCS and SAS once docked to save on part count, you could theoretically do it with 4,400 parts.

MK3 fuselages just to make a craft as long as Minimus is big, and it'd be a toothpick. If you wanted to make it 'as big' as minmus, you'd need to go bigger. You could make a cube out of the aforementioned 4,000 fuselage-long sections on each edge, resulting in a 48,000 part craft. (probably upwards of 50,000 parts if there's docking ports in there.) You see where this is going, the number of parts you need gets pretty quick.

But the station is still not technically as big as minmus, but, obviously the part count of this station gets large pretty quick. Keep in mind that normally, you could have dozens of craft 'Inside' this hypercube station and not even within loading distance of one another in the stock game.

If you got tweakscale or just created some absurdly big modded parts, then the task probably becomes a lot easier.

My question is what you intend to use your station for.

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

well... it really isnt much use right, its like trying to move half the mass of minmus. idk if thats possible, probably just build it for the sake of it.

2 hours ago, Kuansenhama said:

Physics load range is 2.3KM from the 'center' of your craft. So you would go out of load distance not far from the center.

If load distance wasn't an issue then, using stock parts. (The longest MK3 Fuselages are 10m long.) Minmus has a radius of (uhh 20km I think)  So you'd need 4,000 (With 1.1 and a very beefy PC, 4k parts isn't completely out of the realm of possibility) but keep in mind you'd have to launch those 4,000 fuselages in one go (without docking ports in-between.). If you created a system that launched (say 100m sections) and discarded all the RCS and SAS once docked to save on part count, you could theoretically do it with 4,400 parts.

MK3 fuselages just to make a craft as long as Minimus is big, and it'd be a toothpick. If you wanted to make it 'as big' as minmus, you'd need to go bigger. You could make a cube out of the aforementioned 4,000 fuselage-long sections on each edge, resulting in a 48,000 part craft. (probably upwards of 50,000 parts if there's docking ports in there.) You see where this is going, the number of parts you need gets pretty quick.

But the station is still not technically as big as minmus, but, obviously the part count of this station gets large pretty quick. Keep in mind that normally, you could have dozens of craft 'Inside' this hypercube station and not even within loading distance of one another in the stock game.

If you got tweakscale or just created some absurdly big modded parts, then the task probably becomes a lot easier.

My question is what you intend to use your station for.

not much use anyway

well i still wonder who can test it out with a really good computer. ever since my computer is crap.

2 hours ago, Gaarst said:

KSP doesn't large large crafts. I don't know the exact limit (or if there is one) but a craft measuring a few hundred meters is likely to contain enough parts to crash the game.

A 60km wide station ? No.

 

[Kuansenhama]

Found the screenie

This ship was 230 something meters long if I remember correctly, mst of the length came from 15M FTP tanks in sections of 3. Those solar panels at the end are the largest panels available from NFS, for a sense of scale. This thing was huge (though I think it had a rhino on the back end) it was pretty much immovable.

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

wow thats amazing!! 

9 hours ago, Kuansenhama said:

Found the screenie

This ship was 230 something meters long if I remember correctly, mst of the length came from 15M FTP tanks in sections of 3. Those solar panels at the end are the largest panels available from NFS, for a sense of scale. This thing was huge (though I think it had a rhino on the back end) it was pretty much immovable.

 

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=254499314908163&set=a.135599930131436.1073741827.100010442885021&type=3&theater

First rendezvous 

how do u upload a photo again??

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

btw i don't really know how to rendezvous

[Spartwo]

On 5/27/2016 at 3:10 AM, TheGuyNamedAlan said:

btw i don't really know how to rendezvous

You're going to want to get yourself into an orbit above or below the target. Then you set the destination as your target. Make a maneuver node(click a point on your orbit and select the option) Plot it by pulling either of the green circles to move your orbit to touch the target and then grab the node and move it along your orbit until the intersect(the two red or orange points) are as close to each other as possible. You may have to wait a few orbits for the right time. Follow the maneuver you've plotted and when you're the closest try to get your relative velocity as close as possible by either accelerating or decelerating depending on if the target is higher or lower than you respectively. After that thrust towards the target but make sure to slow down when you get close enough to use RCS.

I'd really recommend downloading mechjeb, seeing how it does it automatically, and doing the same.

http://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220221-mechjeb

Place everything inside the zip file into the folder named Gamedata inside the KSP folder.

 

Biggest I've gone with a station is an O'Neil cylinder 80m in diameter and 300m in length. Can't even look at it without hangar extender. So encompassing the whole of minmus at a diameter of over 120km seems too much but with the right mods and a beefy enough computer the 26km diameter Gilly could be handled

[mythic_fci]

Before we get too hopeful, I'd like to make it clear that the KSP physics radius limit is 4km. No matter how beefy your computer is, you won't be able to make a ship longer than that, period. Therefore, this challenge is impossible.

[Spartwo]

A number of mods extend this range and it is even exteneded within stock ksp in atmospheres

[Jhawk1099]

I cant make you a station the size of minmus but would a 10,000 ton station be enough @TheGuyNamedAlan?

 

Edited May 30, 2016 by Jhawk1099

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

thx guys
 

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

On 30/05/2016 at 2:01 PM, Jhawk1099 said:

I cant make you a station the size of minmus but would a 10,000 ton station be enough @TheGuyNamedAlan?

 

well, as big as you can

[Jhawk1099]

12 hours ago, TheGuyNamedAlan said:

well, as big as you can

*cracks knuckles*

[andreasblom]

While as big as a dwarf planet may be impossible it would be interesting to create a self sustained small city up there. It'd be a cheaty science farm though and making it would take a few in game years so that makes it fair I'd say

Edited May 31, 2016 by andreasblom

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

On 01/06/2016 at 5:52 AM, Jhawk1099 said:

*cracks knuckles*

lel

[Kamuchi]

From my way way way way back machine, I did try... https://imgur.com/a/HKBmo

Befor you even talk about the diameter of minmus, the core of the contraption must be HUGE and there starts the problem along with part count. Wobble.
You would have to build it as a skeleton, wide core with multiple docking ports (part number exploding) and even if you manage to get, lets say 1km length, the ends will still wobble.

IF there was an option to put space stations on rails so that they become fixed in space, you could build ontop of that and add the new parts to the railed station core then it MIGHT works, you would still lag to eeloo and back cause of the parts but they won`t have physics.

 

Untill a mod comes along that can do that, nope.

[andreasblom]

considering spacescumbag's recent videos

I think this is possible

[TheGuyNamedAlan]

On 17/06/2016 at 2:35 PM, andreasblom said:

considering spacescumbag's recent videos

I think this is possible

WOW BOI