Salamander Exploration: simple and efficient space station to everywhere

[Warzouz]

Salamander Exploration Space Station

(pictures are clickable - except this one...)

The Salamander Exploration Space Station (SESS) is a versatile design and specification to create a long term base of operations for planetary exploration and quick contract resolution. It's designed to be efficient in collecting science.

The SESS is designed to fulfill various goals:

• Host kerbals and generate science
• Base of operations for one or multiple science landers
• Be able to quickly do contracts (get science from space, from ground, plant flag, collect and deliver ore up to 3000 and rescue Kerbals)
• Host return vehicles for Kerbals to get home
• Refuel landers, fuel return vehicles
• Get ore from planetary bodies.
• Be standard for most bodies
• Migrate to another body to do more exploration.

In few words: put a station there, explore from there, refuel it with its miner, research science, leave it there, and go back home with a return ship. Send new crew with next return ship.

SESS Package

Download package: Salamander Exploration Space Station (420KB)

This file contains:

• 4 prebuilt space stations (25 to 35 tons)
• 2 miners (40 tons)
• 3 landers (around 7 tons)
• 2 survey satellites (radially pluggable)
• 6 interplanetary stages to get to target.
• 8 fully built rockets to go anywhere (ships, not sub-assemblies).

Warning: I recommend you use "Kerbal Joints Reinforcement" mod from Ferram4. You can still launch in parts and assemble in space or try the noodle rodeo.

Moho station firing at LKO / Moho station in orbit (with Plume mod).
This one was too heavy: the lander was part of a separate mission, tugged by the return vehicle

Design

The SESS is a refueling station capable of creating its various fuels from ore which is mined by a dedicated drilling heavy lander. This miner is also the station engine block which is used for interplanetary flight. The whole station objective is to refuel science landers and return vehicles to harvest science and manage crew rotations. It can host various ships and probes if necessary.

The landers have a dV around 3000m/s; they can do multiple hops on most bodies and rescue Kerbals, even on retrograde orbits. Tylo, Laythe and Eve need dedicated landers: default ones can only land.

The Miner is also capable of landing on most bodies except Eve, Duna Tylo and Laythe which have specific refuelling strategies (check the table below). It can drill 3000 ore and has a 1300m/s range. One Miner trip can refill at least 43% of an orange tank (in addition to its own full refill)

The station also have 2 small 1600m/s survey probes to send on polar orbits before arriving on target.

Of course, the station has crew quarters (usually 10 kerbals including lander and return ship), research lab and ISRU to refine ore gathered by the Miner.

Every ship has emergency batteries: all integrated batteries (probes core, landing can) are locked to allow emergency action on the station in case of power shortage.

Dancing with Tylo / Even Highlands can have flat areas...

Usage

Prebuilt station has no oxidizer, nor RCS. All the station's fuel reserves are to be used during interplanetary flight, including fuel from docked ships. Important: the only fuel you don't want to use is the one needed to land the miner and get back to the station. Check next table.

Miner specifications: gives needed fuel for operation, dV range, and refuel efficiency.

Once in orbit around target body, land the miner first, get ore and come back to the station. Always refill the Miner first with only the needed fuel to go mining again. Then fill RCS, and LF+Ox. If ships are docked, use their fuel tank to balance gravity centre of your assembly, so you can even move the station if needed.

After refuelling a lander, you can explore the body at last using the science landers. Mining and exploring operations can be done at the same time.

I recommend sending 4 to 6 kerbals on the first mission. Then you can leave 2 and bring the others back to Kerbin. Send other return ships for crew rotations.

Miner landing on Eeloo / Miner landed on Bop on a 27° slope.

Variants

There are 2 main branches of SESS.

• Inward branch: solar powered, they are designed to target Moho to Duna bodies.
• Outward branch: RTG and fuel cells (for lander) powered, they are designed to target Dres to Eeloo bodies.

Stations, miners, probes, landers are designed into those 2 branches. Station design is simple: just add anything you want.

The station has 2 configurations:

• Small tank: half an orange tank. It can refuel landers 4 times at least and has 4 regular docking rings.
• Large tank: full orange tank. It can refuel landers 8 times at least and has 8 regular docking rings.

The 4 Salamander Exploration Space Station design and equipment.

Station mission arriving at Eeloo with return vehicle and lander / Eeloo station in orbit
(PS : this return vehicle was dreadful, it won't be part of the pack

Target bodies

Going to Eve, Kerbin's moons, or Duna doesn't require any interplanetary stage. For Eve and Duna, I recommend targeting Gilly and Ike first to do a mid-trip refuel there. Beware that TWR is very low (around 0.3) but encounters are easy for those bodies. If you're not easy with low TWR at LKO, you can deplete station fuel and add an interplanetary stage.

Other targets require an interplanetary transfer stage to help the station going there. Again, for Laythe, Vall and Tylo, I recommend targeting Pol first to do a mid-trip refuel there.

All dV of the next table take full account of plane change. You can surely get to the targeted body with much less fuel or efficient stage. Don't hesitate to replace it with a better design.

To go to LKO, I recommend using a Cygnus Recoverable SSTO Rockets, but any 3400 m/s will do. Warning: I recommend you use "Kerbal Joints Reinforcement" mod from Ferram4. You can still launch in parts and assemble in space or try the noodle rodeo.

Smaller stations have lesser range; they tend to need a bigger interplanetary stage. Previous table shows it's possible to depart with 3000 ore in the Miner. This removes interplanetary stage for many targets, but the TWR is reduced again and departure to tight transfer windows can be hard. I recommend not to.

SESS configurations and interplanetary transfer stages.

Specifics

• An Eve stations is required to be on a 2000km in Gilly's plane. That way you can refuel it from Gilly
• A Duna station can be set on any orbit but need to be refueled from Ike
• Tylo and Laythe stations haven't been tested but need to be refuelled from Pol.

Jool station passing by Tylo / Station orbiting Vall
Balancing fuel from docked ship allow to move the station without torque offset.

Landers

All lander are fitted with:

• Power production, antenna and probe core to do science and recover kerbals.
• Full science equipment (one material bay, 2 mystery goo, single or multiple for smaller ones, surface ore scanner)
• Large landing base to reduce flipping.
• Lights (dock and land)

Vacuum Inward Lander: a 6.7T lander capable of visiting regular vacuum bodies (except Tylo). Its 3100m/s of dV will allow it to do multiple hops before returning to the station. This lander is capable of landing on Tylo but won't be able to get back.

Vacuum Outward lander: same but with fuel cells.

Aero lander: a 7.3T lander capable of landing on Duna. Deploy chutes around 650m/s. You can do hops, if you are near biome borders. You can land on Laythe and Eve but you won't be able to reach orbit again.

Vaccum lander on Dres / Aero lander on Duna
Vacuum lander safely landed on Eve (PS.: no airbrakes, no drogue, no chutes… only Ker-balls:D)

Additional design info

The energy section is at the top of the station, far from docking rings for a reason. If you use solar panels, those are very fragile, you don't want to mess a docking procedure around solar panels. As docking rings are on the other side of the station, your panels are safe.

The RTG version has a central docking ring. It's possible to attach ships at launch. This means you can do a single mission for the space station on this configuration. That's not recommended though as the resulting ship may wobble a lot during Kerbin ascent. It can be assembled in LKO, though. This additional dock is handy when an uneven station has to be moved to another location. Just use this ring to even ships, in combination with fuel balancing.

Actions groups

1. Toggle solar panels (station and miner) and Fuel cells (lander)
2. Toggle ladders
3. Activate engines (miner, lander)
4. Shutdown engines (miner, lander)
5. Toggle chutes (Duna lander)
6. Toggle drill (miner)
7. Start drilling (miner)
8. (unused)
9. (unused)
10. Toggle coms dish (cosmetic)

Ports naming: A is on the side of the crew and lab door. AB is between port A and B.

Recommended docking operations

• Put the station on the "Normal" orientation. It's easier to find docking rings.
• Favour opposite docking ring, if you want to move the station.
• Shut-down main engines before docking
• Toggle off lights before docking
• If any, retract miner's solar panels to avoid destroying them: they are very close to other docking rings.
• If any, shutdown lander's fuel-cells before docking.

Lander on Gilly coming from high orbit Eve station
One lander can rescue another one without sending a ship from Kerbin

Feedback appreciated.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Warzouz
Full rewrite - simplifcation

[Warzouz]

I'm simplifying the concept around 4 pre-built space stations.

Space station :

- Small Inward : powered by Gigantors and half orange tank (4 regular docking rings) + Solar Miner

- Large Inward : powered by Gigantors and full orange tank (8 regular docking rings) + Solar Miner

- Small Outward : powered by RTG and half orange tank (4 regular docking rings) + RTG Miner

- Large Outward : powered by RTG and full orange tank (8 regular docking rings) + RTG Miner

The space stations are done but I'm still working on the miner. I'm making it asymmetrical to save mass, which is not that ieasy in KSP.

Edited September 20, 2015 by Warzouz

[Matuchkin]

This is, by far, the best and most well planned space station I have ever seen on the forums.

[Warzouz]

This is, by far, the best and most well planned space station I have ever seen on the forums.

Thx a lot ! It is designed to be efficient for exploration.

BTW, I've run some tests on refueling.

- Any Duna station can be refuelled by sending its miner to Ike

- A 2000km Eve station on Gilly plane can be refueled by sending it's miner to Gilly

- It's not possible to do the same for stations around Laythe or Tylo which would go to Pol. Any Miner would have to be refuelef by a Pol station. Even then, it would better to manage tanker and not miners. I'll deal with Tylo and Laythe strategy later.

[Warzouz]

OK, I've reworked the design on the Salamander Space Stations

Now I've 4 space stations

Depending on where you want to go, you have to keep fuel to land the miner

The 4 stations comes into 8 configurations (Moho / Eve to Duna / Dres, Jool's moons / Eelloo x Large or small tank)

I'll get into details tomorrow.

[Warzouz]

First post total rewrite

DL file here

"Kerbal Joint Reinforcement" mod recommended

[Gilph]

Really thorough and amazing...thanks for posting.

I have also been working fairly similar. Will try and post as soon as I set up imgur and dropbox accounts.

I have always been different in that I greatly prefer having a miner lander and a ISRU on an orbiting station. It is way too hard in this version to have a land base that uses rovers. I will eventually try and learn that with KAS/KIS, but I am doing OK without it. I also have less kerbal capacity than most others...I don't have that many kerbals that need room.

My Ike/Minmus lander only has 2700 ore capacity, but it flies really well on Mechjeb autopilot. My fuel stations have 5 orange tanks and look a little lopsided without the miner, but it also flies really well as long as the tanks are balanced. I'll use a fuel ferry to move 2.5 orange tank worth of fuel from the depot to an orbiting destination (minus the back and forth consumption). This way, the huge lag of two large ships next to each other is eliminated nicely.

Thanks again.

[Warzouz]

Thx, I starpped reasonnable fuel tanks (ONE orange or one half orange) because the science landes don't use much fuel. And the Miner is capable of refueling from 43 to 80% of an orange tank, so the station can be filled quite easily.

Half an orange tank can refill the lander 4 times at least. This is more than enough to get multiple biomes.

- Mun : 2 ot 3 hops with 3000m/s

- Min : 4 hops

- Ike/Dres : 2 or 3

- Moho : 2 hops

- Pol : 4 hops

So inly a very small amount of fuel is needed for exploration. The miner is only usfull to reduce the station weight and provide a engine block.

En beta 0.9, I used to send fuel tank apart.

Edited September 20, 2015 by Warzouz

[Warzouz]

You might notice that all Small space stations are heavier then large one (except those that can manage to go to their target without interplanetary stage).

I'm wondering if small station make sens. True that you don't need a large station to explore Eeloo or Dres, but they're more efficient anyway...

[drhay53]

You are my hero.

I'm most of the way through the tech tree on my first time playing the game, and I find that I prefer flying other people's crafts at the moment while I learn the ins and outs of the game. There's nothing worse for a beginner than spending 3 hours designing and building a rocket, only to have it fail, and then spend another few hours trying to figure out how to fix it so you can do that single contract somewhere.

Hoping to get the tech to use your cygnus rockets soon. Just wanted to say thanks, and keep up the great work.

[Bubbadevlin]

"There's nothing worse for a beginner than spending 3 hours designing and building a rocket, only to have it fail, and then spend another few hours trying to figure out how to fix it so you can do that single contract somewhere." Wow.. No offence but for me the design phase is the MOST fun part about the game, the endless testing does get dull, but then again it is very fun

[drhay53]

"There's nothing worse for a beginner than spending 3 hours designing and building a rocket, only to have it fail, and then spend another few hours trying to figure out how to fix it so you can do that single contract somewhere." Wow.. No offence but for me the design phase is the MOST fun part about the game, the endless testing does get dull, but then again it is very fun

Part of the problem is that my game crashes about every 5th revert or quicksave re-load, so I'm forced to restart the game alot if I'm testing.

But honestly, right now, I like doing missions, not spending forever getting the rocket to work. Typically what I do is spend an hour or two designing the payload, and then use some else's lifter subassembly to get it into orbit. So I do spend quite alot of time designing crafts, I just hate the part about designing a lifter for it. Although as I continue to learn, it gets easier.

To each their own. For me, this kind of craft set is pure gold. I expect that in the future, I will get good enough to design my whole fleet from scratch. For now, however, I prefer to outsource the lifter aspect of my crafts.

[Warzouz]

As the never-ending-topic-about-space-planes shows, we all play KSP as we like to.

Personnally, I like to tweak ships until they're efficient for what they were designed to. I was not sure that anyone would use those space stations, because I wouldn't have. But maybe the charts, the concept could be inspiring for others.

But It seems I was wrong and if you prefer to explore body than design ships to go there, It's definitely a way to go.

[drhay53]

As the never-ending-topic-about-space-planes shows, we all play KSP as we like to.

Personnally, I like to tweak ships until they're efficient for what they were designed to. I was not sure that anyone would use those space stations, because I wouldn't have. But maybe the charts, the concept could be inspiring for others.

But It seems I was wrong and if you prefer to explore body than design ships to go there, It's definitely a way to go.

I do expect that I'll significantly revise your stations to meet my needs (I am using USI-Life support and StationScience mods, so your station concepts will be addons of existing stations). Currently in my career save I am missing some tech that is still keeping your station subassemblies from showing up in my list. I am most interested in your stations for the design concepts and the landers. Eventually I expect I will be shipping Ore and such using the USI-Kolonization system Logistics hub; however, these stations will be great for that first mission to a new place that I've never been, to ease the transition.

I find that, as I'm still on my first playthrough of career mode, designing a new, difficult mission from scratch is so time-consuming, that I want to avoid it and just do easy missions. I'm trying to make the learning curve a little easier by utilizing packaged crafts like this.

Anyway, thanks again. I expect I'll get alot of use out of your stations and your recoverable lifters.

[CloudlessEchoes]

I have a couple station missions, I might try this out! Also like your Cygnus lifters, although I can't use them in my career yet.

Edit: just opened it up and looked at some of the ships. Wow! Love the attention to detail! I can't use these yet either, need some science unlocks first...

Edited September 26, 2015 by CloudlessEchoes

[Warzouz]

Ah, I designed in my career game. They evolved with science unlock until I was satisfied about them. Ad big probes and big docking rings are end game there is no real way to do it at lower tech.

[Warzouz]

After rereading the OP, I figured the station fuel state may not be too clear:

Take off, interplanetary stage

The station, the miner and already docked ships don't have any oxidizer or RCS. Only the Miner has a little bit of RCS. Liquid Fuel is fully fuelled. All craft files are in this state.

Self propelled interplanetary

The station miner uses all the liquid fuel to get to targeted body orbit.

At destination

Station should be empty of fuel, Miner should be partially empty. The miner has only the needed fuel to land, mine and come back to the station.

Partially refuelled

Miner should be fully refuelled for another trip, the RCS and liquid + oxidizer tank reserves for landers and return vehicles

Fully refuelled

All tanks are full, even ore tanks can be partially full. The station don't have to be THAT full.

Recommended skeleton crew : one scientist and one engineer should be onboard at all time for maximum efficiency.

[Warzouz]

Due to aero changed in 1.0.5, all LKO stages aren't stable and flips. I'll redo so tweaking...

[Warzouz]

The increased flipping is due to a bug on fairings which creates body lifting phantom forces far in front of the rocket.

Further more, I noticed the station doesn't have enough batteries for researching during night. Maybe the research energy needs have been increased, I don't know, I never had this issue before, even on older space station which worked the same (4 solar + 1*4k battery)

[swjr-swis]

[quote name='Warzouz']Further more, I noticed the station doesn't have enough batteries for researching during night. Maybe the research energy needs have been increased, I don't know, I never had this issue before, even on older space station which worked the same (4 solar + 1*4k battery)[/QUOTE]

Radiation panels (the non-deployable ones) use electricity all the time now, even when not cooling. Maybe that explains it?

[Warzouz]

I did some calculations to refuelling from Pol when your station is around Tylo or Laythe

A single trip from orbit to land on Pol would cost :

• Tylo : 1250 m/s (from 80km)
• Laythe : 1520 m/s (from 70 km)
• Miner has a 1300m/s range of operation (with nearly no safety margin).

For Tylo, I recommend setting the station on a 100 to 200 km orbit to increase safety margin. The miner can the got to Pol, refuel come back and dock with sufficient safety margin.

For Laythe, I recommend a higher orbit (at least 500km, probably 1000km). If you manage some aerobreaking, you can have a lower orbit, but the miner is not designed to do that, further more, firing LVN in atmo while your ship has already heating issues may not be the smartest idea...

 

I'm waiting for 1.1 to revamp the SESS concept. I'll try to increase the range of the Miner. But the ship is already quite optimized. Here are some possible optimizations

• Removing 1 drill : I already tried that. Balancing the ship is very hard. KSP has no real tool for thrust balancing
• Getting the ISRU on board. The ship will grow much bigger (ore is denser than other propellant).
• Increase fuel reserves : that will reduce the fuel return on a full loop and reduce TWR. That maybe hard to operate at Moho or Vall
• Remove one LVN : again, that may lead that I can't take-off from Moho any more when loaded.
• Create a dedicated Miner for Pol refueling (all Jool's Moon except Vall) with only 2 LVN. The station wouldn't be universal any more as it's designed to be.
• Design a specific vehicle from Tylo and Laythe station to transfer FUEL only and use a secondary refining station around Pol.

I'm eager to look at the 1.1 and tweak the SESS concept.