Best way to refuel a station on Kerblin orbit?

[SpaceChief]

Hello fellow Kerbals! I've started using mods to spice up the game and I've quickly come to a question I've been unable to answer myself...

What is the quickest way I can refuel my station in orbit around Kerblin? I've been successful in getting small amounts of fuel and parts off the ground and to the station (parts as in a space dock that allows me to launch from space being I have sufficient resources) but have been unable to do much more. My best was about 5% of my fuel capacity and even less for parts in one launch. It seems like it wouldn't be worth the time to try and keep the station refueled.

I've heard from somewhere that using a space plane rather than a rocket can be more useful but I haven't been able to figure it out albeit I haven't spent much time on the subject...

Also I've installed Kethane and was wondering if it would suit me better to just mine from Mun and ship it to the station after its been refined on base?

Thank you everyone!

(Sorry if I've double posted somehow, I posted one similar to this earlier but was unable to find it in the Threads... )

[Karretch]

While I'm no expert and actually quite new to playing, I've seen people play and one person used asparagussed orange tanks. I can't recall his end payload, but it didn't take long to fill it up. If you can't figure it out, all I can say is his quote "add more stupid." Essentially, don't try for super efficiency.

[EtherDragon]

The trick to bringing up any quantity of fuel is to treat that quantity of fuel as locked cargo - don't ever use it. If your lower stages aren't up to the task of delivering the cargo without using the fuel in the cargo, then re-design the lower stage(s) to be more capable.

[Greenspan]

Space plane will technically be more efficent, but a lot harder to build and since fuel doesn't cost anything it's usually best to go with just building a big launcher. Watch one of the Youtube tutorials on Asparagus staging that will give you the best bang for your buck in getting large payloads to orbit. My standard refuel launcher gets 5 Orange to orbit, I'm sure there are others who have done better.

How good are you at rendezvous and docking? Something to keep in mind when launching large payloads of fuel, they can be a pain to dock.

[regex]

I usually send up a fuel slug (most of the time a single orange tank with maybe some RCS) attached to a robotic tug that I can deorbit later. The drone + orange tank + various other things doesn't come to more than about 50~60 tons, including maneuvering fuel, which is perfectly doable on stock Kerbin (and even using RSS). For most LKO operations you really only need about 500~600m/s for rendezvous and later deorbit, so plan your robotic tug accordingly.

[Soda Popinski]

If you can get a kethane refinery up to the Mun or Minmus, that would be the cheapest way to do it in the long run. In that case, it's best to aerobrake back down to Low Kerbal Orbit, so you don't waste as much fuel, as you would with a standard Hohmann transfer.

I use this method, along with bringing up fuel from Kerbin in my Duna mission: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65256-Duna-Explorer-slightly-overkill

[Pecan]

The key to good rocket efficiency is how you build in stages. If you are trying to build a rocket that goes from ground to docked without jettisoning fuel tanks and/or engines you'll almost certainly never get much payload ratio (how much payload is lifted per tonne of fuel/engines for launch). With proper parallel or even stack (classic) staging you should be able to get at least 10% however. 'Asparagus' (only known by that name in KSP, not the real world) staging is the ultimate in fuel efficiency but expensive in engines and leads to pig-ugly designs (wide pancakes) sometimes. Using asparagus it is quite normal to get 15% and possible to get 20% payload ratio.

Temstar's explanation of how and why he built his Zenith rocket family is one of the best places to start in designing your own rockets, once you understand the basics of staging and using fuel lines. Just downloading his .craft files and looking at how they're built may well give you a better understanding of those basics.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Pecan

[Villageidiot]

Since you are using Kethane I would recommend that route. Build a lander with the 8k kethane storage tank, a heavy refinery, and two nuclear engines. Drop it down to minmus mine kethane to fuel the boat, then liftoff and go back to kerbin. Going to Minmus is almost the same DV as it is to get to Mun. You want the refinery WITH the boat so you can fuel it up after you land so you aren't lifting off and using your payload to refuel your boat.

The craft is typically a rather TALL behemoth but it is efficient and with that 8K tank you can get a good amt of fuel off the surface.

VI

[RSwordsman]

SSTO spaceplane. It might not bring a lot of resources per flight, but including the imaginary costs of disposable stages, it's by far the best in terms of materials per Kerbal dollar.

[leax256]

This is the best way to do it.

Just need to use some control parts to make it easier to control or just use it as a station core.

Stuff like this will be nerfed a bit once money comes around.

[Geschosskopf]

What is the quickest way I can refuel my station in orbit around Kerblin? I've been successful in getting small amounts of fuel and parts off the ground and to the station (parts as in a space dock that allows me to launch from space being I have sufficient resources) but have been unable to do much more. My best was about 5% of my fuel capacity and even less for parts in one launch. It seems like it wouldn't be worth the time to try and keep the station refueled.

I've heard from somewhere that using a space plane rather than a rocket can be more useful but I haven't been able to figure it out albeit I haven't spent much time on the subject...

Also I've installed Kethane and was wondering if it would suit me better to just mine from Mun and ship it to the station after its been refined on base?

The quickest way to refuel anything anyplace within the Kerbin system is to send up a rocket tanker from the ground on Kerbin because:

1. Spaceplanes can't carry anywhere near the payload anywhere near as easily as rockets, and;
   
2. Kethane only becomes useful at other planets; it's a total waste of time, energy, and money between Kerbin-Mun-Minmus.
   

So, the answer to your question boils down simply to how to get a full orange tank from the ground on KSC to your station in LKO. Actually, you need to move a bit more than that because the tank needs to rendezvous and dock with the station. Thus, you need a probe core and power on the tank to control it, a small engine to do the rendezvous burns, RCS thrusters and fuel to do the docking, and SAS unit to keep this all stable, and of course a docking port.

This is not really much of a challenge. Here's an example of how I do this, with some extra docking ports, lights, and a big load of RCS fuel thrown in:

This is actually a bit of overkill for getting a full orange tank to LKO; it can actually take it pretty much anywhere in the Kerbin system. It's 4x double stacks of orange tanks on Skippers with asparagus staging. The core is the payload orange tank on top and the 2-high gray tank EDIT: (and a pancake) underneath, on a Mainsail.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Geschosskopf

[lammatt]

hm...

proper way - fly a ship to it and alt click?

fastest way - open quicksave and edit

[Jouni]

The quickest way to refuel anything anyplace within the Kerbin system is to send up a rocket tanker from the ground on Kerbin because:

1. Spaceplanes can't carry anywhere near the payload anywhere near as easily as rockets, and;
   
2. Kethane only becomes useful at other planets; it's a total waste of time, energy, and money between Kerbin-Mun-Minmus.
   

I actually started mining for kethane at Minmus, because launching the fuel from Kerbin was so slow and tedious. Launching the tanker, waiting for a transfer window, making the rendezvous, docking, and getting rid of orbital debris takes a lot of real time, especially if you have to repeat it four times to fully refuel an interplanetary ship. It can easily be faster to move the ship to orbit Minmus and do the refueling there.

[Merinsan]

As many people have pointed out already, you just need to build bigger rockets, and treat the fuel as cargo, rather than fuel.

I previously had a design that got 3 orange tanks worth of fuel into LKO. 1 Orange tank was the fuel for interplanetary transfers (plus whatever else was needed from the cargo!)

I've refined my design to be 1 tank for interplanetary destinations, with a spare (empty) tank for space stations, since I started using Kethane.

The biggest load I have ever achieved was 5 tanks, although the engineering starts getting hard with that. I've heard of people putting 10 orange tanks into orbit, routinely. I'm sure Whackjob could put about 20 up.

Launching 1 orange tank is not difficult engineering wise, just plenty of fuel with mainsails to boost it up there. To get 1 orange tank into orbit, you'll likely need 6 or 7 more orange tanks of fuel.