Post your space station MEGATHREAD

[Vanamonde]

One upside of the forum blowing up is that my oldest screenshots are shiney and new again.

[Tazer]

A bit more on the realistic side of things. Not huge, but gets the job done. Luckily, Jeb hasn't destroyed it yet. Though I think he might be eating all the food.

Edited April 23, 2013 by Tazer

[Noticeably FAT]

Infinity Station. currently orbiting Kerbin. More or less done for now, but it does have room for expansion.

[TooManyErrors]

The Orbital Observatory and Science Station (OOSS) is still under construction, but it is now habitable.

Hub piece

Communications Module

Observatory Module

The entire station as of now. Jebediah seems to like it so far, Bob isn't sure, and Bill is probably sleeping in one of the crew modules. The rocket that carried them to space will now serve as a life boat.

The 45° orbit that it is on.

[ThatBum]

My latest work, a Kethane refining operation, Fat Man.

The Kethane miner, Little boy, is in design.

[LaydeeDem]

My little station so far:

The finished product in the VAB:

[Brotoro]

I 've built space stations to be pretty before, with all sorts of solar panels and escape pods and whatnot. But my working station is shown below. I just need:

1) A place to refuel

2) A place to transfer or temporarily hold kerbals

3) A place to temporarily store some vehicle hardware on orbit.

The station itself consists of the tank farm of Big Orange Tanks and RCS fuel tanks. There are two kerbal containers. The docking ports are mounted far out to give me plenty of clearance when docking. The station originally had no lights (to save on part count), but when 0.19 came out I added the small lighting rig that is on the end of the far Big Orange Tank (so that at least half of the station is lit up and docking can be done at night if I'm in a hurry). Still connected to the lighting rig is the Mini Tug that moves things around using RCS power. The docking port on the middle left has Clamp-o-tron Junior ports (which I don't intend to use too much anymore) and port adapters that can be grabbed by the Mini Tug or other ships so that their full-size docking ports could be used to dock to Juniors if needed. Three RTGs supply the station's power needs (which are very minimal).

There are two ships docked there that aren't part of the station proper. On top is the 7-kerbal Crew Carrier SSTO that transfers crew up and down from Kerbin. On the right is a standard Nuclear Tug that currently has a crew module attached to the front (and is used to transfer kerbels six at a time to the Mün or Minmus where they can transfer to landers or such). Reusable Refueler ships would typically dock at the underside port to resupply the station.

Edited April 23, 2013 by Brotoro

[ThatBum]

Got some more.

Here's an artsy image of Fat Man and Little Boy, the dynamic Kethane mining duo, together on the dark side of the Mun. It's a quiet night up there in low Munar orbit, and the crew is playing cards in the lit cockpit. The microgravity is making keeping chips stay put difficult.

Here is Kerbimov I, one I've put in another non-station specific thread, but I felt I should put it here. It was made in ten launches, excluding the spaceplane, Dodo III, which is just visiting.

Edited April 24, 2013 by ThatBum

[Echostatic]

Unity Station, the small craft just finished attaching the last (rather large) piece.

[Naiba]

Almost installed Kethane mod for it, but I think I can hold out to 0.20.

[ShroomOfDoom]

MIR with Progress docked

[Tawyn]

Learned how to dock a few days ago, so I've put this station together for practice.

[Swifty]

My lag fest spaceport with fly space tug attached

[RoboRay]

Here is Kerbimov I

That's a very functional design, actually. I presume you keep the long axis aligned to Normal, dock all your consumables at the far end, visiting craft dock to the end with hab and control modules, and the solar panels are able to always track the sun. Nice.

I've always favored a shorter but wider design that puts the solar panels out on a lateral truss so they are away from docking craft...

or

...but I think I'll try something more like yours next time. Variety is good.

Edited April 24, 2013 by RoboRay

[Levelord]

My Duna Station

Laythe Station

LKO Ring Station

[Tw1]

These are my current stations, mostly built ages ago.

They were inspired by the ISS

Kerbin Space Station one:

In kerbosynchronous orbit, it suffers from a lot of lag.

It's simpler to have a Kerbal leave on eva, move to a different orbit and have a ship rendezvous with them there than to dock with the station.

KSS2

In a semi-kerbosynchronous orbit.

And the more high tech KSS3

My first ever station was lost after an accident made it ignore gravity.

I think they were doing warp experiments. (In reality, it was the hack gravity cheat.)

Now known as The Hermitage, it is the third furthest artificial object from the sun.

Oh, and also this:

It's the Space Opera House!

Edited April 24, 2013 by Tw1

[cxg2827]

Are the robotic arms helpful at all for stations? do you use them to move modules around or to do the initial docking?

[Van Disaster]

I use them as fuel lines, mostly, or grabbing the odd ship that doesn't have a docking port. If I ever get around to constructing something huge at a station ( it'll have to be when we get a multiprocessor game core though ) I suspect they'll be handy for moving things into position, but docked components clip so you can't really hold two things and put them together.

[ComradeGoat]

I don't build big stations. I have a couple of orange tanks with a load of docking ports that I use as disposable fuel depots and staging posts, and I will quite often make impromptu stations around various celestial bodies out of the bits and pieces I've sent there. Reminds me, must rescue the ancient lander from my first successful Duna mission and incorporate it into my Duna station.

[Guest]

My "uprated" Skylab.

[Tristavius]

My Second station I finished assembling over Kerbin yesterday. My first was a bit of a failure as I struggled to dock fuel pods on single docking ports. This one was easy to assemble. I order from left to right...

Fuel pods (which can be individually detached and hauled away if required)

More fuel pods

Monoprop Pods (again, each can be detached and hauled away by ships)

Main 3-port docking arms

Command & Control and single docking ports

Solar array and micro docking ports

Note I still have a heavy tug attached to each end.

The problem with this is I intended to fly it to Minmus, but it's proven unbelievably hard to move... not just the raw power needed but it also taken some several minutes to rotate it and thrusting pushes it off course, though it should in theory be balanced. Going to try a much larger tug tonight with a stack of SAS and mainsails, if not I may be faced with re-splitting it into several parts each of which can easily be moved.

[ComradeGoat]

Unless you use something cunning, such as tricoupled docking (which is *hard*), flying large structures assembled in orbit doesn't work at all well, IMO. I pretty much work on the basis of shipping the bits where needed, and building them where they're going to stay.

[Wait- Was That Important?]

Unless you use something cunning, such as tricoupled docking (which is *hard*), flying large structures assembled in orbit doesn't work at all well, IMO. I pretty much work on the basis of shipping the bits where needed, and building them where they're going to stay.

Tricoupled docking isn't really that hard. Just dock, aligning like normal, and get roughly aligned- chances are only one will attach, but that's fine.

With liberal usage of short bursts of timewarp to kill movement, get the ships close as possible, back straight away, and then boost back- you'll dock up all three without issue.

[RoboRay]

Tantalus Station:

A fuel depot with a capacity of 15000l of liquid fuel and 18,500l of oxidizer on the fringes of Kerbin's gravitational influence, beyond the orbit of Minmus. Last stop for outbound flights that need additional fuel for their missions.

Edited April 26, 2013 by RoboRay

[ComradeGoat]

Tantalus Station:

Last stop for outbound flights that need additional fuel for their missions.

Isn't it better to do that from LKO, to maximise the Oberth Effect?