Horizons - The construction of a space station

[Freshmeat]

Coming of my Eve Elcano and upgrading to 1.4.3, my original sights where set on a clean career start in the Galilean system. It seemed that I had done most of the things around Kerbol I wanted to. However, I had been following the developments in Wild Blue Industries closely. It seemed that @Angel-125 had come up with a fully working robotic arm that would not come apart like Infernal Robotics might do, and on testing the performance was far superior to the cranes from Konstruction that I had experimented with earlier. Advanced testing was successful and quite intriguing. The robotic arm have a fixed magnet of considerable strength in one end that enables it to carry heavy loads, but also extremely prone to phantom forces if it pushes upon a fixed part. Also, having the magnet active upon load is quite the konfetti-maker, making judicious use of multiple quicksaves a necessity. I am quite certain that Kraken drives would be very possible, but I prefer thingss to react as if physics is a law, not a suggestion.

In light of these developments, I took a long, loving look at Gael, and decided that the grind to get to a station from a fresh start was more than I could stomach at the moment. Back to Kerbin and the exploits of Asgaard Aeronautics with their heavy purse and fleet of able craft. Mind, most of these where now inoperative due to some shifting of mods (most notably KAS -> KAS 1.0), but the Grey Goose SSTO was at the ready. So the plan is simple: Assemble a station of as many modules as I care, each flown up in the MK3 cargo hold of the Grey Goose and assembled using Konstruction weldable ports, and some light work with KIS. I will lean somewhat on the ISS for inspiration, but in no way feel particularly bound to make a replica.

The initial mission is below:

Lessons learned:

1. The EVA rails on various space station parts are not necessarily well thought out, especially if on a part that is assembled in a different way than it was designed to. The modules of CxAerospace station parts are an old standby of mine due to their stunning looks, but the handrails are not designed to cope with and added module above.
2. Konstruction ports are far more finicky than I remember. The instructions are quite buried in the USI wiki and does not mention the slight bug that once docked, two ports will not allow themselves to be redocked. Further, the Compress (Rotate) function is so violent that it led to RUD, not matter how precise the original arrangement of docking was. Stick to angle snap.
3. The Station Arm from MOLE does not play well with KIS, due to its moving parts KIS cannot properly tell whether a Kerbal is in range or not. This means I am going to use the Potted Arm method for rearranging station arms. Hopefully this will be a very occasional affair.
4. Always release the arm magnet and let the ports glide to their position. Goes double for rearranging arms.

Next up will be a mission to add a long piece of truss to the station, as well as an arm unit. Once that is in place, a solar cell segment, making everything ready for a crewed module.

Edited June 2, 2018 by Freshmeat

[Freshmeat]

Unfortunately, the screen captures from the weekends missions were garbled, so I have to tell the story in words:

Saturday, I mounted a long piece of truss and a station arm on Horizon. The whole mission came along in a single flight without any reverts, and everything behaved very nice.

Sunday I mounted a DSEV solar cell (forgot its name, the one build into a hex truss) unit on my station using two arms. The DSEV unit has rotating solar cells that rotate even before the solar cells extend, and when I lift the unit out of the cargo bay of the Grey Goose I need to turn it upside down to reach the station. And above solar cells actually have collision boxes, so I smashed the panels when I turned the unit around, as the solar cells would reorient and collide with the arm. I ended up having to grab it by the end, lift and rotate, and grab it with the arm mounted on the station so I could move it onto the Konstruction port. As the operation took some wiggling, I drifted into the shadow of Kerbin and had no illumination at the docking site. However, the station arm has a built in light, so I could twist the arm of Grey Goose to serve as a light, giving just enough to see by.

Above part of the operation took more than three hours, mostly due to unforeseen problems: SAS was necessary to restore the station if the payload came to close to something and induced phantom forces, but introduced wobbling in the entire structure. It had not occurred to me that the solar unit would rotate before extension, and that the solar panel where physical, given their rotations.

After that I had to get a second station arm for Horizon out of the cargo bay, as two arms enable me to moved the arms around on the space station onto the junior docking ports that are scattered all over the modules. The problem is that those arms are pretty unwieldy, and in order to have room for it I had it tucked in the bottom of the cargo bay, beneath the docking port of the Grey Goose. It turned out pretty impossible to get it out with the arm, and more than once I had the wife giving me a startled look from me venting my frustration. So Chrisrine Kerman, flight engineer of the mission, donned her EVA suit and flew into the cargo bay, pushing the arm forward until the arm of Grey Goose could grab it without it colliding with anything. Chrisrine returns, I manage to rotate the arm in the wrong direction, and everything turns to confetti. Reload. Next trip the undocking of the arm makes it float out by itself, and I grab it without having to bother with the EVA, finally mounting it. During the operation I notice a nice thing about @Snarks Indicator Lights: When two docking ports have caught magnetically, they start to blink rapidly. Thus I can tell when to let go of the arm, which attaches to the station and leaving me to go home.

All in all, a hectic weekend, but I am pretty satisfied with the results. Now to find out what exactly what went wrong with OBS.