My first refueling station

[thereaverofdarkness]

I'm rather proud of myself for this. I had been trying to get fuel up for some time, always failing to get medium tanks up to the station. But around the same time I learned how to dock, I also figured out a rocket design using lots of large rockomax tanks and mainsail engines that could bring a lot of fuel to orbit without flying apart. The real trick is just using enough struts.

So here's my station at current--I just docked and refueled my first SSTO also! (it BARELY made it to orbit)

All in all, a lot achieved for me this week!

[rottielover]

Congrats!!

[thereaverofdarkness]

Thanks!!

[regex]

Nice work! Have you ever ignited both of those engines?

[SkyRender]

Interesting design choice there! Certainly looks like it'd be "fun" to dock to. My own designs tend to be more mundane, though also arguably better-balanced.

I like me my symmetry, in as many directions as I can manage.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I just attached those things anywhere I could, just chance that they happened to balance out sorta. I found it so difficult to dock them at first that I really stopped caring where they went. Also I didn't think I'd ever manage to get those big tanks up there so I used medium docking ports. Oops!

I haven't fired up those engines while they were attached to the station, but they were used to maneuver those into place. One of them ran out of RCS on the way so I docked it using only a Rockomax Mainsail, a large SAS, and a small cockpit for turning. (lower left)

Interesting note: that one also has a decoupler and 48 sepratrons because I had planned on detatching it and driving the final tank the rest of the way with RCS. But I ran out of RCS before reaching orbit, discovered that the 48 sepratrons won't launch it more than about 30m/s (not enough to deorbit it), and I pulled into the docking port with the lower tank almost half full still.

So where do you guys think I should fly my space plane?