Space station design and general questions

[Rickpadwick1891]

Hi Everyone,

I have only been playing Ksp for a few months now and have had some success with the career mode (however I have always struggled to get beyond Kerbin orbit). 

I have recently installed Mechjeb on my game and am using it to help me get into a stable orbit with a space station before building more complex ships for future exploration. 

I have had a bit of success getting some of my station modules into orbit and docked together with more simple designs.

I just wanted to make a post with the new station version that I intend to place in a 100 km orbit to act as a refuelling station before launching more of the components towards the Mun and other planets to make a refuelling station in orbit of each world.  If anyone has any suggestions for improvement or recommendations for building and launching, please post them here. 

I still have a refuelling tug (for Rcs and main fuel tanks), module construction tug and the main docking module to the right end of the picture to design. I need to integrate Rcs fuel tanks, thrusters and comm antennas to integrate into the modules before separating the modules into the launch sections which are as follows :

1) Command module

2) Lab

3) Power modules (x2)

4) Escape module 

5) Rcs fuel modules including gantry (docking section for refuelling ships)

6) Orange main rocket fuel tank with gantrys (docking section for refuelling ships)

7) Docking/ship construction module

8) Refuelling tug (as tanks will be launched empty and for refuelling as needed)

9) Module construction tugs (used to attach other modules and to take components for ships to the construction dock)

10) Lander - to be used exploring planets and moons.

11) Base components for moon bases etc

I am just wondering what propulsion systems other members recommend for using on long distance exploration vessels.

I also want to install an IXS enterprise mod with the warp drive. Can anyone recommend one that I can us with the steam game?  

One last question: how do you transfer fuel into storage tanks from the ships that I am using to deliver my modules to orbit?  

Thanks,

Rick

P.S. Below is my station design before the remaining tasks are done.

 

[W. Kerman]

Ions if you have a few free hours, or nukes if you have a free hour.

[Riisos]

When you dock you should be able to to transfer fuel across the ports, although there is a new option in advanced mode that allows you to disable crossfeed (although you generally use this if for instance you have a ship docked and you want to move the station using only the station fuel and not the fuel in the docked craft).

To transfer fuel you bring up the RMB context menu on the two tanks you want to transfer fuel between, and simply click the markers next to the fuel type you want to transfer. Use alt(or whatever your mod key is)+RMB to bring up two menus at the same time, then select in/out on the corresponding tanks.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Riisos
Extra Info

[Deddly]

Sounds like you're doing great so far
Moved to Gameplay Questions

[CSE]

Sounds like the planning is going well.

For the station construction, be careful about joining two heavy sections with a light or narrow neck between them; this can be poor at resisting bending oscillations when craft dock or just from KSP physics generally. Maybe you could swap positions of the orange tank and the central girder with its panels?

Good luck!

[Signo]

In my experience that kind of design is going to be wobbly - you should try to have the heavier parts toward the CoM to enhance stability and prefer Sr. ports instead of standard ones to join the sections of the station.

Think about discarding the multi point connectors - they are heavy and you can engineer something lighter and sturdier with girders. 

Think about your station's attitude when it will be in space - if the cupola is going to face prograde your solars will be fully exposed just for a fraction of your orbit time.

 

 

[Magzimum]

13 hours ago, Rickpadwick1891 said:

I am just wondering what propulsion systems other members recommend for using on long distance exploration vessels.

Make sure to install the KER mod, which will give you the amount of dV you can get from a ship. Then add engines and fuel until you have enough.

A ship to go interplanetary is essentially a giant fuel tank with engines, and "oh yes, there at the top I spot a lander too if I look carefully". What you have there is a station, and I wouldn't use it to visit any other planets or moons (... anymore - I tried similar things only a few months ago).

To go travel the planets and moons, I recommend to change 3 things:

1. Make the joints more rigid. Minimize the sideways mounted structures. If you must, make those lightweight, close to the center, and connect them with the senior docking port. In your current design, these will flop around and make acceleration awkward and inefficient.
2. Put a LOT more fuel on the ship. Like at least 5 more orange tanks just to get to Duna... probably even more. I would recommend to use NERVs and only liquid fuel, although you do need more patience with those.
3. Make sure that all sideways attached compartments have the same mass. That hitchhiker compartment does not seem to have the same mass as the pod (Mk1-2 with poodle engine). If you turn on an engine on this vessel, it will not go straight... and that is generally considered to be a bad thing. 

 

[Rickpadwick1891]

34 minutes ago, Magzimum said:

Make sure to install the KER mod, which will give you the amount of dV you can get from a ship. Then add engines and fuel until you have enough.

A ship to go interplanetary is essentially a giant fuel tank with engines, and "oh yes, there at the top I spot a lander too if I look carefully". What you have there is a station, and I wouldn't use it to visit any other planets or moons (... anymore - I tried similar things only a few months ago).

To go travel the planets and moons, I recommend to change 3 things:

1. Make the joints more rigid. Minimize the sideways mounted structures. If you must, make those lightweight, close to the center, and connect them with the senior docking port. In your current design, these will flop around and make acceleration awkward and inefficient.
2. Put a LOT more fuel on the ship. Like at least 5 more orange tanks just to get to Duna... probably even more. I would recommend to use NERVs and only liquid fuel, although you do need more patience with those.
3. Make sure that all sideways attached compartments have the same mass. That hitchhiker compartment does not seem to have the same mass as the pod (Mk1-2 with poodle engine). If you turn on an engine on this vessel, it will not go straight... and that is generally considered to be a bad thing. 

 

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the posts, I will make some changes to the design tonight.

This space station is not designed to leave Kerbin, what I was planning is to launch this thing into orbit and then use it as a fuelling platform for other ships.

I was thinking of building stations at other planets to give the ships a chance to get back, lol.

I will see how I get on tonight :-)

All the best,

Rick

[Plusck]

My 2 cents...

It kinda depends how "realistic" you want to be. Clearly on a real space station, you'd want huge fuel tanks and engines far from living quarters, living quarters near to labs, solar panels and radiators as far out as possible while not too close to docking ports, and 6-way connectors allowing for easy expansion and travel between modules, etc.

However, if you ever want to move the thing comfortably in KSP, you want all the mass at the centre with strong joints, and lighter stuff at the edges. The easiest way to do this is to put fuel tanks in the middle and simply surface-attach docking ports there, rather than using the 6-way connectors. If you put solar panels down by the engines, you can dock ships to the centre section without too much difficulty and still rotate the whole thing if you need to.

[Corona688]

I prefer to have vertically oriented stations which you can dock to on the north and south ends.  Docking becomes a whole lot more predictable, just get the target the appropriate north/south end of the navball and the rest is easy.  I use the north end for crew and the south end for equipment.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Corona688

[Aegolius13]

I seem to buck the trend around here and launch one-piece, prefab space stations for most of my needs.  My standard design is basically a big spindle with docking ports on the end, and more ports and solar panels along the sides.  Top half is mostly 2.5m for a science lab and service bay with the little stuff,  bottom half is Mk 3 for fuel and crew cabins. Cupola on top to look cool. Two Thuds take care of maneuver needs.  It costs under 300k to launch mostly fueled, if I remember right.  And not floppy at all.

Lots of people seem to enjoy assembling their stations in orbit, like the ISS.  But personally, I find that way too putzy.  Plus I hate floppiness when I rotate or move a station.

[Corona688]

I think it's more to do with mods...  Without mods, there's very little point in launching anything much bigger than a science pod, a fuel tank, 2 docking ports and a pair of gigantors.  If you see a station with 19 gigantors on it it's almost certainly using mods, what else would they do with all that power?

Edited September 15, 2016 by Corona688

[Rickpadwick1891]

Corona688,

When you say mods how do you mean ?

I have mechjeb installed but thats it.

All the best,

Rick

[Corona688]

Just that mods can give you more uses for a bigger space station (kerbal engineering, repair and move parts) or make you need more things to keep it going (life support).  Otherwise, why build large?

Edited September 15, 2016 by Corona688

[Baybrawler]

I recommend adding more fuel. Like a lot more. Like quadruple or more. The worst is refueling a ship there just to empty it all and after every trip by another craft you have to launch and dock another refueled to the station to refuel the station. It happens. This also means making a large launch vehicle, I recommend making it able to launch around 2 orange tanks worth of fuel, but if thats too hard perhaps 1 and a half or so. Adding in more crew compartments is also nice so you can store some spare kerbals up there.

[Clipperride]

One other point - I like to put my stations in a higher orbit.  There are limits to how fast you can speed up time depending on how far you are from the body you are orbiting (forgive me but I can't remember the boundaries off the top of my head)

When docking with a station it can be sometimes take a few orbits before it and the docking vessels make their closest approach.  It can save a fair bit of time if you can speed up the passage of time a little more.

 

Edited September 18, 2016 by Clipperride

[Rickpadwick1891]

Thanks everyone,

 

I'm getting there with the design of the modules for the station, just need to get the gameplay mods sorted out that I need. 

Can anyone post the links to the most recommended mods for the game?  

I already have Mechjeb installed.

I will need to get the mods installed on the steam version.

Also is the interstellar mod worth installing?  I would love to get my hands on the IXS class with warp drive. 

Cheers,

Rick

[Norcalplanner]

On 9/17/2016 at 6:31 AM, Clipperride said:

One other point - I like to put my stations in a higher orbit.  There are limits to how fast you can speed up time depending on how far you are from the body you are orbiting (forgive me but I can't remember the boundaries off the top of my head)

When docking with a station it can be sometimes take a few orbits before it and the docking vessels make their closest approach.  It can save a fair bit of time if you can speed up the passage of time a little more.

 

Placing the station over 120 km altitude allows for 100x timewarp, while a station over 240 km altitude allows 1000x timewarp.  As a result, my stations tend to go into 125km (for LKO, Mun and Minmus trips) or 250 km (interplanetary) orbits.  300km is also the "gate orbit" altitude for travelling to Jool.  A ship fully fueled departing from that altitude will use less delta V to get to Jool than a ship starting at any other altitude.  

[nascarlaser1]

2 hours ago, Rickpadwick1891 said:

Thanks everyone,

 

I'm getting there with the design of the modules for the station, just need to get the gameplay mods sorted out that I need. 

Can anyone post the links to the most recommended mods for the game?  

I already have Mechjeb installed.

I will need to get the mods installed on the steam version.

Also is the interstellar mod worth installing?  I would love to get my hands on the IXS class with warp drive. 

Cheers,

Rick

KAS and KIS are very fun (or so I hear, haven't tried them yet till 1.2 comes out. They make eva more fun, and make on planet bases much easier, useful if you want to later build a space station and base on minimus or mun.

[Norcalplanner]

2 hours ago, Rickpadwick1891 said:

Thanks everyone,

 

I'm getting there with the design of the modules for the station, just need to get the gameplay mods sorted out that I need. 

Can anyone post the links to the most recommended mods for the game?  

I already have Mechjeb installed.

I will need to get the mods installed on the steam version.

Also is the interstellar mod worth installing?  I would love to get my hands on the IXS class with warp drive. 

Cheers,

Rick

Interstellar is its own thing, which is very different from stock KSP.  I wouldn't recommend it as a starter.

For more station options, I'd recommend Station Science by ethernet and Stockalike Station Parts by Nertea.  Both provide a lot more parts for stations, and some station science parts are properly massive (like a 20 ton Cyclotron) that makes it more of a challenge.  Near Future Electrical, Near Future Solar, and Near Future Construction (also by Nertea) also are great mods with large trusses, solar arrays, and other station goodness.

 

[Clipperride]

Thanks for adding the figures @Norcalplanner. Having your Space Station above 120km makes rendezvous much quicker whilst your getting the hang of when in its orbit is best to launch new modules.

[Rickpadwick1891]

Hi Everyone,

Will add those station mods and kerbal engineer mods into my game tonight.

I have so far managed to get a core module, MPL, crew housing and escape module into a 200 km orbit with my standard liquid fuel launcher which doesn't use asparagus (sp) staging (will post the build of the launcher later).

Would like to try and build a launcher capable of launching components into a 300 km orbit, so will try that tonight and see how I get on :-)

Will post my results.

Thanks for all the posts,

Rick

Edited September 19, 2016 by Rickpadwick1891