Space Station of the Year Challenge

[mangekyou-sama]

With 2013 coming to an end, it would be a great idea to see the community's best made space stations in a bid to be called the Space Station of the Year 2013!

Here are the rules:

1. There's no exact weight limit as space stations are often just limited by your creativity. But we'll go for 50 tons as minimum weight.
   
2. Space stations are often composed of individual "cores". Again, there's no limit on how many cores your space station will have. However, there will be a minimum of 7 cores.
   
3. Absolutely NO Hyperedit. You can only assemble your space station by the traditional ground-to-orbit (Mechjeb assisted assembly is permitted) route OR if you have KAS and want to put additional parts on EVA.
   
4. For submission, of course we need screenshots of the actual space station in its completed state, its assembly, the launch vehicles and if possible, plans (hand sketched or otherwise) if you've made any prior to its construction.
   
5. You also need to discuss your space station in detail, its technical specifications, its features, etc. Convince us that it's the best.
   
6. If we have enough entries, I will make a poll for the community to vote for the best space station. If you win, fame (or notoriety) shall be yours!
   

Things to consider:

• Habitation - is your space station conducive for long periods of habitation? Does your space station come with a resident psychiatrist to deal with prolonged periods of social isolation?
  
• Supplies - yes we all heard that Kerbals can go hibernate and cannot starve to death. But given the case that they DO starve, how do you keep them fed?
  
• Safety - accidents do happen in space. Collisions with debris can happen and in space, no one can hear you scream. How do your kerbals escape from a depressurized space station and make it back to Kerbin in one piece? Evacuation pods and contingency plans are definitely key.
  
• Maneuverabilty - because space stations are often cumbersome and are a real pain to maneuver
  
• Usability - how useful is it? Space stations are basically the bus-stops for your other craft. It should be equipment for research purposes and more importantly, fuel depots for refuelling other ships.
  

AND WITH THOSE THINGS IN MIND, LET THE CHALLENGE BEGIN!

Edited December 13, 2013 by mangekyou-sama

[Sirine]

Another voting challenge.

[700NitroXpress]

Minimum of 7 cores?... Well my precious computer processor, I love you, but this is going to hurt... Here's the first core of my Helios V in orbit of Kerbin.

More details coming soon, additional cores are made and are on the way up.

I'll just edit this one post to add more details later.

Here's the main core station launch vehicle.

Helios V deployed in orbit.

[zorque]

Finally finished my space station. It has room for 20 kerbals or so, depending on what's attached.

Completely modular, so everything can be replaced when an better package is designed.

Descriptions in the album. It's 153 tons at a ~103KM orbit.

Cores: Main hub, fuel hub, shuttle, escape pod, tug hub, light packs, science pod (plus room for 3 future expansions).

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited December 17, 2013 by zorque
forgot weight.

[alacrity]

My entry.... the Spindle Mk 3, primary design mandate was massive fuel reserves and docking ports far from each other.

Alacrity

[I_Killed_Jeb]

Another voting challenge.

Didn't you just put on a not-so-well-received voting challenge of your own?

[KvickFlygarn87]

I'm going to make a station this afternoon in KMP with some random guys. What should you use as supplies?

Also, bonus points for making it in low sun orbit, i.e. below Moho? Because that place is glorious.

EDIT: Scratch that, gonna have a hard time making successful escape pods there, haha. Or maybe not, I can drop them down to my sun base.

Edited December 17, 2013 by KvickFlygarn87

[Commissar]

damn. I need to start putting modules on. does it count if the 1st stage from the lift is still attached via decoupler, over a docking port?

[Tex_NL]

Over the year I've build many stations, some of them truly massive. But before I start spamming this thread with stations I need to ask two things:

- Is this limited to just 0.22 or are other versions also allowed?

- How about the Orbital Construction mod? One of my best was build with Orbital Construction. It took a multitude of launches to get all the raw materials into orbit but was build as a single piece.

[SkyRender]

Filling the "lean'n'mean" category for today is my Duna grand expedition's station, Mothership. The station actually is highly modular, and one key component (the crew bus) is currently down on Duna proper. Also included: habitation (topmost section), docking array (middle), long-term fuel storage (bottom), life support (left), emergency crew bus (middle-back), skycrane (middle-front), and refueling tug (left). Currently 2 of the 6 crew on the Duna grand expedition are in Mothership, while the other 4 are down at the ground base, Sandcastle.

Habitation - Technically the main station has room for up to 9 Kerbals, but no more than 4 are ever on the station at once due to safety concerns (Sandcastle has to be maintained), and only 6 Kerbals are on the mission anyway. The cupola module gives a nice little hideaway for any Kerbals who want some "alone time", though admittedly the emergency crew bus could do the same.

Safety - Besides the crew bus (down on the surface at the moment), there's also the emergency crew bus, which can be loaded with a modular life support canister and send up to 4 of the Kerbals on the mission back to Kerbin. Then too, the main crew bus can carry the full crew and sufficient life support to get them all safely back to Kerbin as well. Being around Duna, there's not really any debris collision risk, so that's good. Although thanks to the form factor and maneuverability of the station, it's quite possible to twist out of the way of incoming dangers (including Jeb piloting one of the crew buses).

Maneuverability - Has it in spades. On top of the Kethane-refined fuel in the tanks, it's extremely easy to rotate thanks to the large number of probe cores across all of the various modules. Every component of the station on the docking arms can maneuver itself as well, meaning the station can break up into 5 or 6 different vessels at will and re-merge later if the need arises.

Usability - Pretty much aces this test. Most of the station components are specifically designed for utility, allowing for refueling, transferring to other places in the Duna system, or carrying loads to and from the surface of Duna or Ike.

And here's the orbital/mass/time data all nicely compressed into one shot, just to show that it's genuine.

EDIT: Here's the launch vehicles for the mission. Unfortunately the launches themselves were done ages ago, and while I did record them in video form, extracting key frames to show them would be a huge pain. Some day I'll finish my compilation of the mission and upload a video of it...

Anyway, the vessels! Here's the station's core. It was launched first.

Here's the crew bus and emergency crew bus. It was sent up second.

This is the utility vehicle (science rover, Kerbal rover, 6 satellites). Not much of it is still on the station, but the base of it is one of the two refueling tugs for the Kethane operation.

Here's Sandcastle and the skycrane, as well as a second fuel module that the Ike fuel station uses.

The life support ship. This is kind of important! The module on top there was affixed to the crew bus so that the crew could make it out to Duna alive.

The Kethane mining operation in full. Includes: scanner, KAS-driven "mouse" for fuel transfer, minimalist miner (upside-down here), fuel ferry, and the base of the Ike fuel station. Whew, that is one loaded ship!

If you didn't guess, my goal in this expedition was to get up as functional a base and station as I could around Duna, run a full cycle of said mission until the next launch window back to Kerbin came up, and then bring the crew home.

Edited December 19, 2013 by SkyRender

[mangekyou-sama]

Over the year I've build many stations, some of them truly massive. But before I start spamming this thread with stations I need to ask two things:

- Is this limited to just 0.22 or are other versions also allowed?

- How about the Orbital Construction mod? One of my best was build with Orbital Construction. It took a multitude of launches to get all the raw materials into orbit but was build as a single piece.

Builds from 0.21.1 onwards may count.

I don't know how that mod works but as long as the cores or parts are launched from Kerbin, it's fine

[JebDynamics]

Habitation: 2 Hab Modules and a science lab for 10 long duration.

Supplies: The converted fuel tanks of the solar arrays are large, strong and only one part.

Safety: A docked crew transfer vehicle serves as an escape pod.

Manueverability: The station core holds all of the rcs and reaction wheels used to orient the station. Control is centralized which seems to help stability and the ability to recover from wobbles.

Usability: The station is a orbital laboratory intended to process samples for return to the surface. The station is intended to be continuously manned and serve as a foothold in space for kerbal-kind and provide unique research environment, developing the technology to expand our frontiers.

All of the components are launched atop identical first stages.

The second stage is designed for pin-point landings. 120 LFO is enough to de-orbit and suicide burn.

A freighter outfitted as a tanker, also carrying a berthing adapter bound for the station, but first a visit to the propellent depot.

I got lots of ideas from this NASA proposal.

Plenty of single solar panels to ward off probe death. I was forgetting to extend panels and time-warping, causing the battery to drain and loss of control, ruining the mission.

Thanks for looking.

Edited December 21, 2013 by JebDynamics