New Kerbonaut here :-)

[skylinkdave]

Hello everyone! I just bought KSP at Steam over the weekend, and I've been playing it for two days. In my first day, I successfully put a craft into orbit around Kerbin, and on my second day, I put a craft in orbit around Mun (but did not land), and successfully returned it to Kerbin. In the process, I have built, flown, and crashed more craft than I can count. I have a pretty good feel for the construction process and the orbital mechanics, and the interface (I have no problems with the navball).

I have decided that I now have two main goals: build a permanent space station around Kerbin; and build a permanent station on Mun. So, my question is, where do I start? One thing I can't seem to find anywhere is how to build the modules to make them self-sustaining. Yes, I've seen the tutorials, but most of them skip over the details of module construction. Are there any sites or tutorials that can explain this? I'm looking more for the why and the what, and not just the how.

[FenrirWolf]

What do you mean by self sustaining? Kerbals currently don't have life support so you can leave them in a module as long as you like. If you mean things like resources, you want solar panels and batteries to keep your stuff from running out of power.

When it comes to fuel, you would need to fly new shipments and dock them to your station. Being able to refuel other ships in orbit with your station is quite handy too!

[skylinkdave]

Yeah, sorry, I guess by "self-sustaining" I meant "can run on it's own power indefinitely." And can they be made to do interesting stuff? Like an outpost or science lab to keep the Kerbals entertained/occupied.

[Xacktar]

To keep the power on you'll need some solar panels, or the radioactive isotope reactor part and some batteries to hold charge. AS far as using the stations for anything, you can put science pods and transmitters on them but they currently don't server to be better than just a regular landing craft. There are plans for a science lab to be added into the game soonish to make bases and stations more useful.

[skylinkdave]

Apparently it's a lot harder to land on the Mun than it is to simply orbit it; I must've failed 5-6 times in my attempts at putting a lander on the surface. It didn't help that in one attempt I accidentally jettisoned my rover on descent

(Edit) Oh yeah, I plan to land some Kerbals on the Mun and leave them there

Edited November 20, 2013 by skylinkdave