The Minos Phi Ring Station

[adinfinitum]

I present to you the station Minos Phi, complete with that new station smell!

Composed of 31 different sections, and with a diameter of 22 and a half meters, this station is a testament to what Kerbalkind can achieve when they put aside their love of snacks and work together.

It has room for up to 52 kerbals to live comfortably, but if the need arises, it can hold up to 104 kerbals.

The station also has a drive section consisting of 6 atomic engines, which allow it to make orbital corrections as necessary.

Because of its ring shaped hull, the Minos Phi station is capable of creating artificial gravity for its little green inhabitants. The station is able to rotate at a rate of up to 11 rpm before structural instabilities begin to show themselves. This means that any gravity up to 1.5 Gs is able to be simulated, allowing the brave astronauts who live there to prepare for almost any mission without worry of atrophy.

Between work and university it took me about two weeks to finally finish this station. All the pieces are docked with two Clamp-o-tron docking ports to try and keep everything aligned, but even that isn't foolproof. Once it got down to the final pieces of the ring, it took a lot of wiggling and jiggling of the pieces of the station before all the docking ports would properly dock.

Danman Kerman, the pilot of the tug that was used to construct the station, had a close brush with death during construction. While switching through vessels in the 2.5km radius, I switched to the tug and the cockpit decided to spontaneously and violently remove itself from the rest of the tug. Poor Danman had to evacuate and EVA over to the station before he became kraken food.

Here's the album documenting the construction of the station from start to finish, with some IVA views of the construction thrown in.

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Let me know what you guys think!

Edit: Here are the .craft files if anybody still wants them.

When you are constructing the station, I recommend flying the launchers to rendezvous with the station, then dropping off the cargo. The rim beams and rim habitats all have a Sr. docking port on the piece that holds them on the launcher, so they can be attached to the station station then decoupled piece by piece without the rest floating away.

Ex: Here you can see the piece that held the rim beams attached to the station after they've all been decoupled.

Also, make sure that the SAS on the station is off during assembly, until all the pieces of the ring are attached, it likes to try and wobble itself apart.

The station core:

The first piece of the station to go up, it has room for 9 kerbals, solar panels, and lights to light up the station.

The fuel and RCS modules:

These two pieces go up next, they provide fuel and RCS for whatever tug you are using to construct the station. The RCS module will need a tug with a Sr. docking port on it.

The long beams:

This craft has the 3 main spokes of the station, after they attached the bicouplers are ejected leaving the docking ports open for the arm habitats. After these are attached, deactivate the SAS and ASAS modules on them. They are only on there so that the beams would end up being the proper length. If they are left on then they make the finished station unstable with SAS on.

The arm habitats:

These are the habitats that go on the ends of the long beams. I didn't want to make three separate flights for these, so the craft is rather ungainly. However, it is definitely capable of rendezvous with the station, it just takes a careful pilot.

The rim beams:

These small beams go on the sides of the arm habitats, and once all are attached the bicouplers can be ejected.

The L rim habitats and R rim habitats:

These are the habitats that attach to the rim beams. If you don't care whether the Hitchhiker modules are oriented up or down relative to the station then the R and L habitats can be used interchangeably. If you want all the Hitchhiker modules to be oriented up then the R habitats will go on one side of the arm habitats while the L habitats will go on the other side.

The M rim habitats:

The last pieces of the ring, these can be a pain to get all the docking ports to dock properly. Make sure you take care in aligning the rest of pieces of the station during assembly, and attaching these will be a lot easier. When I was putting them on my station, I had to realign a couple of the R and L habitats so the M habitats would fit right.

Finally, the drive section:

The very final piece of the station, this allows the station to perform orbit changes, and it 'should' have enough dV to get to the Mun and back, but I haven't made the trip myself yet. When using the engines, don't go anymore than half thrust or it will drift off course.

I think that's everything you need to know to build this station, so if anyone attempts to assemble it, I wish them the best of luck!

Edited September 30, 2013 by adinfinitum
added craft files

[Jamie Logan]

Awesome!!!!!!

[iDan122]

Craft files?

[adinfinitum]

I'll get the craft files up as soon as I'm able, I'm going out of town today and won't be near my computer for most of the day. For the most part construction isn't too hard, but it does leave just a little bit of debris in orbit. I usually try to keep my space clean, but with this I couldn't find a way to keep it debris free without making construction a nightmare.

[blurrr 2]

This is brilliant! Well done!

[adinfinitum]

Sorry it took awhile, but I just got around to adding the .craft files. If anyone still wants them I added them to the bottom of the original post, along with a few notes and construction tips.

[JUDUFU]

Very impressive! Did you construct it all as one piece in the VAB then separate the parts later?

[adinfinitum]

I didn't build this station in one piece in the VAB, but I did have to do some planning for it using the VAB. It's easy to plan out a station that's just a ring without any spokes or pieces in the middle. For that all you have to do is figure out how many pieces you want it to be then find out how many degrees away from 180 the docking ports need to be.

Since I wanted this station to have a center section and beams coming out to the rim, I had to figure out how long to make the beams with a little bit of trial and error. To do that I made a little model of what the station would be like in the VAB, and I could add and remove pieces from the long beams as needed until everything looked like it fit right.