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SPACE STATIONS! Post your pictures here


tsunam1

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Yeah, Kerbol stations aren't really a good idea since the speeds they'll be orbiting are too ridiculous for conventional rendezvous procedures. Inclination angles and distances are so drastic that you'll need to be incredibly precise with your manoeuvres to even get within the several hundred kilometres range. Think of it as trying to make an encounter with a specific point on Duna (i.e- land on it), while still being in interplanetary orbit. All in a single burn. Yeah...

The only viable location for a station orbiting a star, any star, is as far away from it's gravitational centre as possible. The further you get from any gravity well, the slower you'll be orbiting around it. If you absolutely want a solar station, try somewhere around Eeloo (or way, way after Jool in general), it's orbital velocity is about 3km/s which makes rendezvous much easier.

You can still have stations closer to the centre, only your rendezvous time and procedures will be much longer and you need to treat their encounters as ones with planets short windows with almost no wiggle room.

OMG thank you very much, I got a 30km encounter, but I just couldn't maneuver to rendez-vous it, and I did notice a lot of giggling in the maneuver nodes. I'll try to send a station around Eeloo and see what happens.

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OMG thank you very much, I got a 30km encounter, but I just couldn't maneuver to rendez-vous it, and I did notice a lot of giggling in the maneuver nodes. I'll try to send a station around Eeloo and see what happens.

30km?! Wow, that's pretty close given the distances...

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The trick for solar orbit rendezvouses is to read the navball. The relative velocity indicator, when you learn to "herd" it around, is all the information you need. Just put it centred on your target indicator when you are close-ish, and remember to work out when to start breaking if you have low T/W engines.

My first one, I had to start thrusting 4 and a half minutes before the encounter with my first asteroid to break half a km/s on ion engines. Managed to do it in less than half an hour or so gametime after coming from warp (kerbal alarm clock for that), and that's because I started the burn a bit too early and had to coast for a while at a "mere" 100m/s relative.

Rune. It is actually quite forgiving given the distances involved. But it also takes much longer if you screw it as much as your typical rendezvous, by percentage.

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Ok, with 0.24 not coming out tonight, I could try something I always wanted to test. Remember the old youtube series from HOCgaming about artificial gravity? That.

So I threw together the AGRO (Artificial Gravity Research Orbiter). I´m bad at acronyms.

dJFweYT.png

I remembered, that it´s important to put it into Keo-synchronous orbit. Not a big deal.

rNyR1nA.png

What I didn´t remember is, that Kerbals can´t stand up in the ring. Sadly they are just ragdolling. So back to the drawing board and add 2 little rovers. Return to space... ok, it works, but the camera is going nuts. That´s no fun! Well, back to the VAB again, I downloaded the kerbcam mod, put some on the rovers, and now:

I´ve got a go-cart track in Space :D

vOLm0G2.png

2TR0oCj.png

Mods used: Spaceplane+

A big THANK YOU to HOCgaming for the great idea

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May I present, the Kerbonational Space Station (so original):

It is a multipurpose station in a 0 degree LKO @ 100km. It's not done, but I figured it is worth sharing. Just got done launching the latest module. The craziest part? It was all easily launched in just 7 launches so far, And I probably could have condensed it into 5.

Current modules include (in order of launch)

Crew Habitat: For the crew to live in (3 hsc's, empty as of now, will send mission later, but I want to keep some empty bunks for kerbals returning from other vessels)

Big ass fuel tank 1: explanation not needed.

Solar Array 1: literally cannot run out of electricity if i tried, plus I have enough batteries for months of darkness plus two locked ones just in case..

Solar array 2: NEEDS MOAR POWAH!

Command and control cupola module (also marks the first kerbal to occupy the station)

Science module 1

(most recently) Big ass docking truss ​(Essentially a giant space parking lot for ships coming and going. A smarter me would probably attach an escape vehicle capable or returning to kerbin here eventually. This one was the largest payload I've launched for this station so far, but had no trouble getting it to the station (but it turns like the damned titanic, needed more rcs thrusters). All the modules are launched with a subassembly lifter which is the kerbodyne 4 engine thing with two of the big tanks on top and 8 big SRB's on it radially. That gets the payload into 70km orbit easily. The next stage is the modular orbital maneuvering vehicle. Essentially an orange fuel tank with a skipper, and a probe core on top. (added payload facing lights, for docking, learned through experience.) Can easily dock any payload to the station and deorbit the omv with almost a full tank of fuel left, meaning I could probably launch even larger payloads no problem.

The main concern I have now is lag; I have so many more plans, but I am already starting to notice stutters. I wanted to attach an asteroid to it, and a bunch of other modules.

Here she be:

wPh2Qdt.png

The payload was big, I told you: Everything you see above the level of the solar trusses was one payload.

MAYE9uo.png

Edited by shenanigans
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