My first time building a ship in orbit. (5 pics) Updated!

[WhiteRaven22]

Last weekend I finally learned how to rendezvous and dock in orbit and took some landers to Mun and Minmus (thread). During this past work week, I'd been getting some more ambitious ideas in my head about building a modular type of ship in orbit. Today I put the central-most unit in orbit, then painstakingly docked one of the outer units with it. This is my first time building a craft in orbit and it is also my first time docking items with multiple connection points. I'm still shaking and sweating a little. Jebediah is piloting the main craft and Bill is shuttling up the modules.

Bill departs, headed back to Kerbin. Only three more to go...

It occurred to me that the clamp-o-tron on the top of the outer units where Bill's return craft undocks (there will be four of them when I'm done) as well as the shielded clamp-o-tron (originally intended for a rescue vehicle to get the Kerbals out and deorbit the entire craft if needed) could also be used to attach other goodies to the craft, like landers or probes, making the craft more versatile than I had planned.

UPDATE:

Finally finished!

I decided to name it Piecemeal, in honor of it's manner of construction. It is in a nearly circular orbit 202-204km above Kerbin. All the attached tanks still have about 75%-90% fuel left in them, but I'm still probably going to send up a refuelling vessel to top off the orange tanks and replenish the monoprop. Once that's done I'll have to design some modules to go on top of those tanks (lander, probe, a small seperate explorational craft, etc...). Then I just have to figure out the most important part:

Where to?

Edited December 8, 2013 by WhiteRaven22
Finished the ship.

[MC.STEEL]

nice work,unfortunately i do not have that sort of patience to dock modules with 2-3 or more points

[Bluntie]

That looks awesome! And congrats on first successful docking, not too long ago for me either - and yes, it's bloody terrifying. I love it. Your craft here is all kinds of cool. Might have to...hrm..."borrow" that idea myself at some point.

[WhiteRaven22]

I'm at three of the four outer tank-modules now, and it's getting easier the more I do it. Having both ships pointing due north (relative to Kerbin) helps as well because then the orbit just causes them to roll, not tilt, so that's one less dimension to worry about. The fact that all the parts are similar to each other is nice because I don't have to redesign the launch vehicle. I'm going to go do the last one now.

Edited December 7, 2013 by WhiteRaven22
Added information.

[Javster]

That's pretty cool! To Duna!

[ixolate industries]

Due to your choice of engine your range may be limited a bit because mainsails despite their power also are the least efficient.

[WhiteRaven22]

Due to your choice of engine your range may be limited a bit because mainsails despite their power also are the least efficient.

That's alright. It was originally planned to be more of an exercise in modular/reuseable ship construction. And I can always manually deactivate a few engines to help preserve fuel. The other good thing about this design is it's very refuelable (as I just proved about 15 minutes ago by topping off the liquid tanks and the monoprop in orbit). If this ship is in orbit around a distant celestial body with questionable reserves of fuel for the return voyage, I could always build a second one (or something like it) and use it as a disposable refueling vessel to rendezvous with the first one.

That, and as always, use very carefully planned orbital manuevers and transfer orbits and make good use of "window of opportunity" situations.

Also, I'm already designing an upgraded version of this in my head that involves 10 tanks and 5 engines (basically a double-length version of the one I have now) giving me a little better range.

Edited December 8, 2013 by WhiteRaven22