Space Stations and CoM

[zeppelinmage]

While building my station, I ran into a question. Namely, would a large mass (say, multiple orange tanks of fuel) unbalance a station in orbit?

On either side of the refueling boom there are two packs of 5 jumbo orange tanks. All told, they'll hold 320t of fuel. The station itself is a whole 154t (dry). If I fill the tanks to capacity (they're currently empty), might it cause my station to become unbalanced? Also, if I fill the tanks non-symmetrically (say, fill the left before the right), might that cause issue? And finally, would the standard Clamp-o-Trons attaching them to the boom handle the mass?

I suspect there shouldn't be any problems, but I want to be sure before I load them up.

[DeMatt]

My opinion: no.

Center of Mass is only relevant when forces are acting on the object; the space station is station-ary (), therefore any changes in its center of mass are irrelevant.

Now, if you needed to move or rotate the station, then the fuel tanks' position would be a problem...

[700NitroXpress]

You'll be fine as long as you don't pilot the station while refueling it. After it's fueled, you might have issues trying to move it. As long as this is a stationary station that isn't going anywhere, there should be no problem. Everything looks symmetrical, when refueling it, try to refuel it symmetrically to avoid potential issues. The SAS systems may cause a Kraken issue otherwise.

[Taki117]

I suggest getting TAC fuel balancer to help with the symmetrical filling. You can dock your ship to the end of the boom to fuel your station, then using the fuel balancer set that tank to transfer out, thus filling all tanks on the station at the same time.

[Kasuha]

You don't need to worry about the station's balance as long as you're not going to apply thrust on it.

What might happen, though, is that if your station is wobbly (big weights at ends of long weak levers) it may have all sorts of problems with resonance not only when you're trying to turn it around, but also just from weak phantom forces caused by inaccuracies in physics simulation.

[Vanamonde]

As long as you don't move it, the layout of a station doesn't matter. This is an interplanetary ship docked to a station during construction.

It never so much as quivered.