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Hitchhiker Pods


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I'm still a beginner at KSP but I'm gradually learning and gaining experience. Obviously I have milestone goals like most people and one of these is to eventually put space stations in orbit. Now I consider myself reasonably organised and have already planned out several of my milestones and my first space station is no exception. I'm being sensible with the plans for my first station and I'm going for something small that's inspired by the Skylab.

My question therefore is this: I want to use the Hitchhiker Pod for the main 'living/work' area and was wondering if one would be enough to make it close to the size of Skylab or would two be better?

Thanks in advance

Edited by petrichorAM
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1 Hitchhiker is about 3 times the height of a Kerbal (based on eyeballing Kerbals hanging outside on ladders). So if you want to make a station with the same relative proportions as Skylab to humans, you can go from there. Of course, Kerbals are only about 1/2 as tall as people so the whole thing will be scaled down, too.

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Depends what else you put on it. Remember that Hitchhikers are not a command module and can't be used to steer from!

Also, the entire GAME is scaled down (Kerbin has about 1/10th the radius of Earth, for example), so yeah.

I can provide some helpful skylab related facts though:

The main 'workshop' area was built inside an unused S-IVB stage. Von Braun wanted to use an S-II and send it up as a 'Wet Workshop' (used as a fuel tank on the way up, then turned into a station once in orbit), but there weren't, at the time, supposed to be any Saturn Vs available after the moon missions were done (there ended up actually being three, because of cancelled missions), so they had to use the S-IVB instead, because it could be sent up on a Saturn I (Luckily, it was also the Third stage of the Saturn V as well as the Second stage of the Saturn I. The newly freed Saturn Vs meant they could send it up without using it as a fuel tank on the way.)

The dimensions of an S-IVB according to the wiki are 17.8m long, 6.6m diameter (The 'large' Size 2 parts only have a diameter that's nominally 2.5m, so there's necessarily going to be some scaling).

Oh, and another funfact to throw in for ya. The big, prominent telescope they attached to it was built on a heavily modified Lunar Module!

Edit: Ooo, found a good picture:

Skylab_illustration.jpg

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Thanks guys, was leaning towards a two pod station and your advice has helped cement my decision! Another quick question, I've noticed a 'crawl tubes' mod for stations mentioned on the forum a few times but can't find it on the SpacePort - does anyone know where I can get it?

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I don't know about "crawl tubes" but if you are talking being able to transfer crew from docked vessels without EVA then you want crew manifest which can be found here: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/18-1-kerbal-crew-manifest/

Edit-2 pods is a good choice. I have been trying to do 3 in one launch on my station and for whatever reason they are failing. First it was my lifter not being able to lift them, reduced weight by getting rid of nuke engines, now its just flat out unweildy trying to dock them with all the rcs ports on the aft of the ship.

Edited by annallia
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Mine is composed of a Mk2 Lander can and a Hitchhiker:

KyLab1_zpsc2e75387.png

I haven't yet docked the Apollo-style CSM to it - I'll be launching that mission momentarily. Had to eat dinner and watch The Right Stuff first. :cool:

For me, the biggest problem is scale - if you want to use a realistic stock Apollo CSM, that's going to be the same diameter as the workshop. Alternately, you could use a larger diameter fuel tank from something like NovaPunch for the workshop.

If I were to do it over, I might rearrange the modules differently - but this was the setup that allowed me to balance he RCS thrusters best.

If you didn't want to have that much RCS fuel on the station, you could go with 2 Hitchhiker cans instead of the way I did it. There is a small RCS tank at the base of the telescope anyhow. As for control, that's an OKTO-2 that the Communotron dish is mounted to, so you'd be able to control the craft from there (but it's in a bad place for torque). You could always use an RGU between the Hitchhiker cans or on one end.

Edited by HeadHunter67
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I've noticed a 'crawl tubes' mod for stations mentioned on the forum a few times but can't find it on the SpacePort - does anyone know where I can get it?

According to this post: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24533-Show-off-your-awesome-KSP-pictures!?p=555636&highlight=crawl+tubes#post555636 ,

The crawl tubes are a structural part of the KOSMOS pack:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/kosmos-tks-spacecraft/

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Mine is composed of a Mk2 Lander can and a Hitchhiker:

-snip-

I haven't yet docked the Apollo-style CSM to it - I'll be launching that mission momentarily. Had to eat dinner and watch The Right Stuff first. :cool:

For me, the biggest problem is scale - if you want to use a realistic stock Apollo CSM, that's going to be the same diameter as the workshop. Alternately, you could use a larger diameter fuel tank from something like NovaPunch for the workshop.

If I were to do it over, I might rearrange the modules differently - but this was the setup that allowed me to balance he RCS thrusters best.

If you didn't want to have that much RCS fuel on the station, you could go with 2 Hitchhiker cans instead of the way I did it. There is a small RCS tank at the base of the telescope anyhow. As for control, that's an OKTO-2 that the Communotron dish is mounted to, so you'd be able to control the craft from there (but it's in a bad place for torque). You could always use an RGU between the Hitchhiker cans or on one end.

Sorry to bump this thread, just want to know how did you get that into orbit without it being unstable, did you send it up in separate parts?

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Nope, hitchhikers aren't command pods. you must have a probe core somewhere on your ship.

Actually, following the inclusion of an IVA for the Hitchhiker in 0.21, you can in fact use a Hitchhiker as a point of reference for controlling a vessel by IVAing to one of the crew members inside. Much like how IVAing to a crew member inside a manned command pod switches control reference to that pod, the same thing happens with the Hitchhiker.

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Oh, and another funfact to throw in for ya. The big, prominent telescope they attached to it was built on a heavily modified Lunar Module!

Actually, no. It was a complete new build that really had nothing in common with the LEM other than being vaguely octagonal.

NASA did originally propose modifying a LEM descent stage into a telescope mount, and the flying the whole LEM + and Apollo CSM as a stand alone mission. Somewhere along the way, the guys working Skylab picked up on the idea and incorporated it into Skylab... but it was eventually dropped in favor of a new design as the basic design of the LEM limited access to the telescopes. One of the more clever bits of Sjylab's design is that those 'scopes were mounted on a cylinder inside the octagonal main frame - so instead of having to spacewalk all over the place to retrieve/exchange film, they just built one hatch in the side of the main structure and rotated the inner mount to bring the base of each 'scope to the astronaut in turn.

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