Use for space station or interplanetary ship?

[Dave Kerbin]

It may not be the most efficient way of doing it, but I like docking stuff and I sent up this 'kit' into a 150km orbit where it was assembled into a structure composed of 3 orange tanks connected to a center tank. All have regular docking ports on the sides (all 4 tanks are identical) and senior docking ports on the ends. There is a temporary station keeping core on one end (the one with the solar panels) and a set of assembly drones randomly parked on 4 of the docking ports.

Do you think this would be structurally sound enough to use as the basis for an interplanetary ship (I'd send up nuclear engines, solar panels, crew modules and some kind of detachable lander), or is it only of use as a stationary fuel depot / space station? I don't intend to ever use it in an atmosphere, going up it needed structs to prevent those senior docking port joints from buckling under the strain of the main sail engines.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Dave Kerbin

[lumpman2]

I think that considering how many docking ports there are, it could probably stay together and still carry tons of fuel to wherever, you just need a bunch of nukes. The senior ports will work fine even under a lot of stress, so you could go pretty far with that.

[NGTOne]

It actually looks like a decent base for an interplanetary ship. Like lumpman2 said, you could stick some engines on the back, a cargo up front (or the other way around, if you really like), and send it off to wherever you want to go. With that much fuel, you could probably make it to Jool with a decent payload and some nuclear engines.

[lumpman2]

you could probably make it to Jool

Given that you have enough time, I wouldn't be at all surprised to make it to Eeloo with that much fuel. I'm mentioning time here because we all know how painfully slow nukes can be.