Giant Ring Station aka An Exercise in Absurdity

[MockKnizzle]

Hello, friends. I recently saw Rune's beautiful Von Braun Station and began to wonder... Just how big could one make a ring station?

Well, it turns out that using 72 of the the MK3 crew cabins attached end to end, my station ended up being 90 meters in diameter with room for a small village of 1,152 kerbals at max capacity. Its mass of 500 tons and large diameter was slightly much for a single launch vehicle, so I decided to use six. At once.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Aside from a few minor (read: enormous) explosions on loading and some subassembly strut problems resulting in a slight off-axis booster event (visible in the screenshots), the launch went remarkably well.

Although perhaps not truly Whackjobian in scale, I feel that this project at least captures a little of the spirit

[zekes]

are those - SRBs! oh my. How does it stay together, if it's centered - where's the joints in the ring? and no struts!

[MockKnizzle]

The root part is the MK3 crew cabin that's connected to the spoke pointing out the hangar door. The ring is built from cabins node-attached end-to-end (with a 5-degree rotation) until they wrap all the way back to the root part, and then strutted to close the loop. The spokes are surface-attached to the ring, and the hub is node-attached (with a 90-degree rotation and offset to center it) to one spoke and strutted to the other two. So there are struts, I was just very careful to make them as invisible as possible

[zekes]

The root part is the MK3 crew cabin that's connected to the spoke pointing out the hangar door. The ring is built from cabins node-attached end-to-end (with a 5-degree rotation) until they wrap all the way back to the root part, and then strutted to close the loop. The spokes are surface-attached to the ring, and the hub is node-attached (with a 90-degree rotation and offset to center it) to one spoke and strutted to the other two. So there are struts, I was just very careful to make them as invisible as possible

Ah ok, that makes sense. Nice job, i kind of want to put my shuttle up next to it to see how big it is.

[Little Katie]

Whoa it's like a giant peace sign in the sky. I can almost hear The Blue Danube playing in the background.

[zekes]

Whoa it's like a giant peace sign in the sky. I can almost hear The Blue Danube playing in the background.

I was thinking Mercedes-Benz - but that's just me.

[ShadowZone]

I was thinking Mercedes-Benz - but that's just me.

haha me too!

The peace sign would need another single spoke.

Anyway: impressive work, looks really smoothly crafted!

[Rune]

Hello, friends. I recently saw Rune's beautiful Von Braun Station and began to wonder... Just how big could one make a ring station?

Well, it turns out that using 72 of the the MK3 crew cabins attached end to end, my station ended up being 90 meters in diameter with room for a small village of 1,152 kerbals at max capacity. Its mass of 500 tons and large diameter was slightly much for a single launch vehicle, so I decided to use six. At once.

http://imgur.com/a/ckCCA

Aside from a few minor (read: enormous) explosions on loading and some subassembly strut problems resulting in a slight off-axis booster event (visible in the screenshots), the launch went remarkably well.

Although perhaps not truly Whackjobian in scale, I feel that this project at least captures a little of the spirit

Well, I'm happy I got your juices flowing! It looks good, and the part count, from what I can see in the screenies, is not that bad. BTW, you had to use some part between each crew cabin to get the 5º offset, right? You haven't discovered a way of making the rotation gizmo work in smaller than 15º, but still fixed increments? I say that because then it could be half the parts for the ring (and I'd try my hand at something similar!). I especially like the fact that your radius is realistic for artificial gravity!

Also, and on a slightly related note, I was visited by the kraken yesterday. He got a look at my biggest build yet, the L3 station, and decided he was not too pleased with what he saw:

Fortunately, since assembly was still ongoing, no kerbals were present to be crushed by the primal forces of "part clipping gone wrong because of a version change", but still, the financial loss was more than considerable: I think more than √2.500.000 went up in smoke there. Still, onwards and upwards, this gives me the opportunity to do a mark II, hopefully more stable and light in parts, not to mention it launches in two flights, not 6:

But now that I see this, I suddenly feel an urge to see if I can make a bigger radius work...

Rune. Right now I'm paying for the Jool armada, so it will be some time before I find the investors to pay for this!

Edited February 11, 2015 by Rune

[Yukon0009]

That is beauty.

[MockKnizzle]

Well, I'm happy I got your juices flowing! It looks good, and the part count, from what I can see in the screenies, is not that bad. BTW, you had to use some part between each crew cabin to get the 5º offset, right? You haven't discovered a way of making the rotation gizmo work in smaller than 15º, but still fixed increments? I say that because then it could be half the parts for the ring (and I'd try my hand at something similar!). I especially like the fact that your radius is realistic for artificial gravity!

The full station only has about 100 parts once all the lifting hardware falls off And nope, the ring is literally just the cabins and two struts to close the loop, for a total of 74 parts. All you have to do is hold shift while you rotate the gizmo to enable fine adjustments, which turns the 15º snap into 5º. I'm pretty sure it's a leftover mechanic from when we had to rotate things with WASDQE, but now that everyone has acclimated to just using the gizmos with the mouse it's been somewhat forgotten. I'm fairly certain that there's no possible way I could cut part count and keep a similar radius without substituting longer fuel tanks in place of the crew cabins, which would result in a less-smooth ring. The hub and spokes are just 5 parts apiece,with 6 struts to hold them together plus the probe core and battery.

That's a pretty impressive kraken attack, the debris field reminds me of something out of Dead Space. At least there weren't any unlucky souls onboard to be infected and turned into necro-kerbals

[Rune]

The full station only has about 100 parts once all the lifting hardware falls off And nope, the ring is literally just the cabins and two struts to close the loop, for a total of 74 parts. All you have to do is hold shift while you rotate the gizmo to enable fine adjustments, which turns the 15º snap into 5º. I'm pretty sure it's a leftover mechanic from when we had to rotate things with WASDQE, but now that everyone has acclimated to just using the gizmos with the mouse it's been somewhat forgotten. I'm fairly certain that there's no possible way I could cut part count and keep a similar radius without substituting longer fuel tanks in place of the crew cabins, which would result in a less-smooth ring. The hub and spokes are just 5 parts apiece,with 6 struts to hold them together plus the probe core and battery.

That's a pretty impressive kraken attack, the debris field reminds me of something out of Dead Space. At least there weren't any unlucky souls onboard to be infected and turned into necro-kerbals

Thanks SO much for that tip. I hadn't noticed it at all! I had resorted to placing them the old fashioned way (in the part placement mode with SHIFT+WASD) to get small increments instead of using the rotation gizmo. This means it's much more useful!

Rune. Ok, big rings, here we go...

Edited February 11, 2015 by Rune

[problemecium]

Ahh yes, my beloved strategy of "one lift rocket doesn't cut it, so tape 2 (or more) together" xD

If only there were a way to build this stuff in orbit...

[Sampa]

That's a pretty impressive kraken attack, the debris field reminds me of something out of Dead Space. At least there weren't any unlucky souls onboard to be infected and turned into necro-kerbals

I was thinking Star Trek Online after a massive invasion occurred on a space colony

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, my, with regards to that station in the OP, yeah...I think I'll stick to my modular space stations...a lot easier to manage launch-wise

[StormKat]

At least your ring made it to orbit. It's beautiful, MockKnizzle.

Why does everyone always use the crew cabin for the ring? I'd rather store fuel than Kerbals.

Edited February 12, 2015 by StormKat

[1greywind]

You can add a ring or two - and I urge you to setup lighting system, so rings will be highlighted in night!

This is my 2 segments, 3 rings station at night for example: