Making Munbase, one module at a time

[JayKay]

Though I have been concerned with interplanetary exploits of late, I have taken some time to continue work on my Moonbase. Yeah, I know, everyone has a moon base. I wanted mine to be modular, so I came up with a way of being able to dock hab module together on the surface. Here's my base so far:

You've no doubt noticed that thing on its end. It's a module transporter, Mark I version. It has had a hard life. It's amazing how easy it is to flip things over on the Mun. It was wrecked even before it was flipped in a bizarre refuel experiment gone wrong. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos, but it was very strange. I had used KAS hoses to connect two ships in an attempt to refuel one of them. I had a lot of trouble getting a connector to place on one, but once it had connected, I concentrated on trying to get fuel to flow between them. I happened to move my point of view to where the rover was, and I saw it was cartwheeling in extreme show motion over the surface of the Mun. The winches were mounted on the end of the lift platforms on some small girders and they were slowly being bent into pretzels while the winches twisted on the ends of the hoses. I was eventually able to disconnect the thing before anything worse happened, but the damage had been done. I built another transporter and sent it to the Mun. When this one accidentally flipped on its end, it was just left that way until I could find a way to remove it.

Beside it is my crane, made with Infernal Robotics and KAS parts. I did try to right the transporter with the crane, but it's too heavy. The crane has its own problems. The next one I send will have a full fuel tank mounted on one side of the turntable as a counterweight. You would think at 1/6 gravity, weight wouldn't be a big concern, but the crane is also that much lighter, so it likes to tip over. This operation is so Kerbal.

Perhaps some other time I'll relate what befell the first transporter to be delivered (which is now in several pieces beside a crater about 4 km north of the base) or the first exploration rover which is dead in the water several kilometers to the east. Let's just say that things have been going better lately.

Anyway, here's a little album showing how I built my base. Maybe someone will benefit from my experience:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

The question throughout the exercise has always been: what are we going to use it for? I'm tempted to get the Kethane mod so that planetary bases would have a purpose. Perhaps resources will be added to the game sometime and then our bases of operation will have more of a function.

JK

Edited November 26, 2013 by JayKay

[Mazlem]

Sure everybody has a Mun base, but it's fun!

[zekes]

that is soooo cool! I haven't made a mun base yet since 18.0, I've been working on Orbital Fuel Stations... but here's an Idea. Assemble a rocket on the mun, then launch it!

[Geschosskopf]

That's a very cool way of connecting modules. Thanks for the ideas

[Rhyunix]

This is one of the most interesting and awesome ways of making a mun base I've ever seen, well done!

[Monkeh]

Beautiful!

[DMagic]

I really like this way of docking things together. It's a great use of Infernal Robotics parts and a big improvement on the regular way of using rovers to cart things around. It also looks like something that would scale up nicely.

Edit: I would give you more rep, but apparently it's too soon.

[JayKay]

I really like this way of docking things together. It's a great use of Infernal Robotics parts and a big improvement on the regular way of using rovers to cart things around. It also looks like something that would scale up nicely.

Thanks. My way of thinking of this was that putting wheels under everything would be pretty unrealistic and a big weight penalty, so a real space program would not go that route. It was a matter of finding something fairly efficient and logical, and a transporter to move the modules seemed like the way to go. I have mixed feelings about adding a lot of mods to the game, but in terms of Infernal Robotics, those parts are something I think is really missing in stock parts, so I don't feel too bad about using that add-on.

By the way, that docking port on the transporter has a bit of a story behind it. I wanted to be able to raise the legs on single modules without needing to add power and control to each of them. At first I thought I would just add a port on an arm similar to the one on the pictured transporter. I moved under a module and then docked with it; I then had control of its legs, and thought, no problem, I just have to raise them. Unfortunately, the module proceeded to drop through the deck of the transporter like it wasn't there--it just was hanging on a terribly over-stressed docking arm which was bending at a 45 degree angle. When you dock with something, you can no longer collide with it, so the transporter became physically invisible to the module. So much for that idea.

So plan B was to make a portable control unit sandwiched between two docking ports. Using it turned out to be disastrous, because in the moment when the transporter, the portable unit and the base modules are connected, some bizarre bugs are exposed. I found my moonbase catapulting itself off the surface of the Mun, whipping the hapless transporter around by the aforementioned docking arm. I figured it didn't like control modules mounted in different planes connected to the same object, and tried to bend them all into the same plane. Fortunately, I did a quicksave before doing the docking, or it would have been start-over for the base.

Anyway, it turned out that the transporter could pick up the whole ship easily, so I just used the ship's control of the legs to raise them before it took off again. It's pretty much a routine task now. I'm thinking about stacking some of the modules 2 high to make things more interesting, and that's what the crane is mainly for. It just needs some redesign to make it less tippy, and there will be some 2-storey modules in my base. Some kind of communication gear on top of the tower would be a good addition, too, I think.

Work continues...

JK