How much fuel your station hold?

[omelaw]

Mine(in construction) have two orange tank (one is part of hub, other one as fuel deliverer), but how much It needs? I think four orange tank may be enough. bigger ship means bigger parts count and it would make too much lag if there is a large station physic range. and such big ship can refuel directly from thing like orange tank lifter.

 

 

Edited February 4, 2016 by omelaw

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Depends on what you want to refuel with it. Two full orange tanks would probably be enough for most ships going interplanetary, but you can add more if you want.

[Hannu2]

After ISRU my stations have had only small fuel capacity. I have mining ship on surface. It have drill, refinery, crew cabins and life supplies. Then I have a large tanker with (typically) second largest 3.75 m tank for fuel only for interplanetary nuclear ships and other for fuel and oxidizer for landers and local ships. Tanker is normally docked to station and its tanks is used as a storage. When some resource is empty, 2 kerbal crew land tanker near refinery, fill tanks and fly back. I use KAS to connect ships.

[Evanitis]

It depends entirely of what you are refuelling to launch from there. But if you lack the supercomputer to not ever worry about part-count, I'll assume that you aren't planning to start interplanetary missions with huge payloads. For a few kerbals and some science equipment, maybe a lab I think even that two orange tanks should suffice. If you wanna' bring a few rovers too, hitch-hiker pods and whatnot, four tanks would still be overkill.

Hint: don't expand the base until you need to. If you assemble something on orbit that you can't fill instantly, bring up an extra tank. After you loaded the interplanetary craft with it, you can still attach the empty or half-empty piece to the base.

Though I generally don't use stations for that purpose. It's good to collect junk like remaining stages that still have some LF/O in them. Nothing is wasted, everything can be reused (and empty cans deorbited for economy). But if you get to the point when you want to refill the station you might as well just aim the target rocket with it.

[Warzouz]

I like space stations.

But designing a space station depends mostly on what you want to do with them.

Before ISRU, I built a station for a Jool 5 style mission. It was quite huge and was assmbled around Laythe with 13 flights, including 6 orange tanks. With that fuels, I would be able to land on each Jool moon more than 4 times, including the trip Laythe-other moon. The typical lander was 15 tons, even for Tylo. When the mission was over, I returned the 11 kerbal crew with the return vehicle, I had 3 full orange tank left. I didn't do the next crew rotation as 1.0 was arriving.

Now I designed a space station wit only ONE orange tank (even half one). It's sufficient to refuel the 3000m/s science lander 4 times. The miner is able to refuel the at least 43% of a orange tank with only one refuel trip on the ground.

But what ever, set the specs of you mission FIRST.

• Where do you want to go and land ?
• How many times ?
• Do your station have to be reusable for next missions or is it a one shot station ?
• Can you get ore from nearby bodies ***
• Which landing vehicle will you use (especially its fuel mass)
• Which return vehicle will you use (especially its fuel mass)

*** this part is quite delicate to specify because it has to be efficient too : you don't want to mine ore 3 times to refuel one ship...

Answering all those question will define how much fuel capacity you need on your station.

Note about Kerbin LKO stations : I never found them useful as it's so easy to launch fuel from KSC. The only usage I find for them is

• Being able to quickly do science fro space (but any satellite will do)
• Refuel SSTO space plane to allow the to got to high orbit to rescue (I used it twice...)
• Temporary station for return ship without atmospheric capacity (probably not fuel efficient...)

 

[JoeNapalm]

 

How much fuel does it need?

I don't understand the question.

 

I hope it's enough!

-Jn-

[UnusualAttitude]

1765 metric tonnes.

Edited February 9, 2016 by UnusualAttitude

[Nich]

 I recently had four contracts station above Kerbal  station above minimus base on minimus and station around the Mun. I did all four in one lanch at Lko it had three of the largest tanks full of fuel

[Tfin]

My first (new career) station contract is for a 5-kerbal station with 2000 units of LF. I feel the need to add proportional oxidizer to that, since I don't (yet) have pure-LF engines capable of reaching space. I have to go to the moon first just to unlock the stuff I need to do this.

[Edax]

My combie Refueling Space Station/ Ore Harvester has:

MonoPropellant 840

Ore 6900

LF  12030

Oxidizer 1870

Most of the fuel is stored via "ore" and processed into the needed fuel after the fill up.  I've got 2 of them in the moment, one currently in orbit around Kerbin and the other around Minmus.  Once they run dry, they just head on to the Minmus flats and refill the tanks.

 

[RizzoTheRat]

As others said it depends what missions you're launching from there, but crucially what engines are you going to use for those missions?  The nuke is the most fuel efficient engine in the game, and it runs on liquid fuel without oxidiser, so personally I'll be putting a lot more loquid fuel storage than LFO storage on.  Unfortunately the only liquid fuel tanks in the game at the moment are rather small, so you either need to group them together and end us with something that looks like this, or use Tweakscale to enlarge them to a more sensible 2.5m.

[Nich]

Last I checked the biggest ore tanks are more efficient at storing LF then any LF tank (i think it is 8.75:1).  I believe it is the same for LFO and Mono.  And it is a 1:1 per mass too it doesn't get any lighter after refining it.

[FancyMouse]

12 minutes ago, Nich said:

Last I checked the biggest ore tanks are more efficient at storing LF then any LF tank (i think it is 8.75:1).  I believe it is the same for LFO and Mono.  And it is a 1:1 per mass too it doesn't get any lighter after refining it.

Nope both are wrong at some point. LFO tank are 9:1 full/dry while large ore tank is 17:2 - I don't know, though, if there was a change of ore tank mass ratio in earlier version like 1.0.2 or so. Also, conversion to mono isn't 1:1, either - this one is from the beginning when ore is introduced.

Edited February 10, 2016 by FancyMouse

[Nich]

Thanks for the correction but it looks like your counting tank mass in the ratio.  

I get ore is 15:2 (7.5:1) 

mk1 I get 8:1.  

MK3 is roughly 7:1

MK2 slightly better at roughly 7:1.  

An orange tank drained of ox is 3.6:1

Big S wing is 4:1 or if you subtract lifting capability at .1:1 is free tankage

[moogoob]

The largest I've spaced in one launch is 160 tons. I'm sure I could launch bigger, but strangely I think smaller rockets are more fun to fly.

Usually if I do a mass fuel launch it's a single size-3 biggest black-and-white tank with various docking ports, a probe core and solar cells. I've never needed more in one launch than that, though - mostly they're there to reload transports on their way to and from Kerbin's moons.

When they're empty I just dock a rocket to them and deorbit.

[1greywind]

In one career I had refueling station on Duna with 12 orange tanks:

[FancyMouse]

7 hours ago, Nich said:

Thanks for the correction but it looks like your counting tank mass in the ratio.  

Yup I was saying "I believe it is the same for LFO" part is wrong. And if I really want to be picky, LF part is also wrong because of mk0 fuselage, but that I tend to believe stock setting is wrong, so I didn't mention that.

[michal.don]

Just a little

But you definitely don't need as much - I built it just so I don't ever have to deal with fuel shortage in LKO again.

Michal.don

[Jetski]

How much fuel does my station hold?  

 

 

 

All of it. 

[samjohnson]

when the atmosphere was more forgiving of absurd designs, i launched a 50,000 fuel bank in one go, at like 0.2 FPS! Was useful for an entire program it had so much fuel.

[Thanny]

129,600 LF

158,400 Ox

24,000 Mono

168,000 Xenon

If I were to start over, I'd go for a lot of LF-only tanks, as I draw way more of that than LF+O, due to nukes.

 

[Rune]

Don't build a station that can hold X fuel.  Build a station to which you can dock and unlimited amount of fuel tanks of a standard size, and then you will be able to tailor the fuel load to your needs. Also, note how storing fuel as ore is cheaper if you launch it from kerbin, more compact by far (x2 density), and it allows you to choose the LF/O/Monoprop fraction as you use it, wasting nothing and only needing a refill when everything runs out:

 

Rune. Modular design FTW!

[Warzouz]

15 hours ago, samjohnson said:

when the atmosphere was more forgiving of absurd designs, i launched a 50,000 fuel bank in one go, at like 0.2 FPS! Was useful for an entire program it had so much fuel.

50000 fuel is about 250tons, if i'm not mistaken. That a heavy payload, but not that much. It may even be easier now. Ultra heavy payload have much less drag in regard to their mass and dV to LKO is much less since 1.0 and 1.0.4.

This rocket lift 600 tons stock (even without KJR) and is a recoverable SSTO stage.