Kerbin Orbital Refueling Station (WIP)

[CmdJarvis]

This is an orbital fueling station that I've been working on. There are 14 fully fueled Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tanks, 14 fully fueled Rockomax X200-8 fuel tanks, and 14 large RCS tanks. There are also some generators and batteries of course. After the base connector was added the frame rate is starting to drop a bit so I'm not sure if I will be able to take it to completion (by adding a solar array and some more tanks, etc). I think it is looking pretty good right now though regardless. As can be seen, each jumbo fuel tank required a separate mission to get it to the station.

Full Res can be seen here: http://imgur.com/a/Qi82Y

[Oddbin]

Now that is a fuel station. And given the way you built it you could continue on with another stack of tanks again. Well that is if you want to melt your PC. But once Kerbal is optimised and Unity fully uses multiple cores, that could well be a possibility.

Kudos on the very nice design!

[Captain Sierra]

Now that is a fuel station. And given the way you built it you could continue on with another stack of tanks again. Well that is if you want to melt your PC. But once Kerbal is optimised and Unity fully uses multiple cores, that could well be a possibility.

Kudos on the very nice design!

Yes, but don't expect that soon. Next release might use Unity 4.2 which = 64 bit (YAY!) but megastations are a ways off as they first have to actually figure out how to multi-thread physics, which isn't easy.

Back to teh station. Wow. I imagine the end cap multi-docking was hard as crap to pull off.

EDIT: What is the part count?

[Oddbin]

Also how many launches/how long did it take?

[CmdJarvis]

Yeah, the idea was to expand it further with more tanks (maybe twice as many as I currently have) and add a solar module at the end. I'll have to wait on that, however, to see if optimizations make it feasible.

The multi-docking actually wasn't that bad. So long as you get everything lined up the rest is just rotation. Once you get near enough it just pulls itself together and the multiple ports actually help to line themselves up.

Other than the fuel tanks the only other modules are the docking module at the top and the "cap" connector module at the bottom, each of which was taken up in a single flight each. In total, there were 17 flights to assemble the station. I don't recall the exact amount of time but I probably spent around 6-7 hours over several days. I wasn't being very careful setting up some of my orbits and twice my fuel tank tug ran out of power so I had to divert later missions to jump start the stranded tugs. The current station has 514 parts.

[CmdJarvis]

Edit: Double post

Edited September 16, 2013 by CmdJarvis

[Jivaii]

Aw, no DL?

[CmdJarvis]

I'm new here. What does DL stand for?

[KvickFlygarn87]

Download. It's pretty universal on the internet.

[Jivaii]

Yup. No .craft files? (I mostly want that end cap =D)

[Maxthrust]

Wow, what a tease!

[CmdJarvis]

Of course, I'm apparently an idiot.

For those who are interested, I have attached the craft files used to build the station.

The docking module

The module connector (the cap)

The fuel tank tug

[Maxthrust]

Awesome!! Thank you!

[Lohan2008]

Woot ! I already have a nuke tractor design, I can re-task it for Duna.

5 - 6 launches for assembly.

Grooaaan ...

Edited September 24, 2013 by Lohan2008

[Turd]

I like it! Its big, cool looking, and just realistic enough.

I'm sorry but I must steal more than a little from this design now...

Edited September 24, 2013 by Turd