Thoughts on a Mun-Station?

[Starwhip]

So this is Spirion Station Mark Two, a refueling station for SSTO's and a general orbital repair hub/ship building site. Notice the large RCS Tug docked near the bottom. It allows me to do this:

This is the same station converted into a "train" of parts, capable of a Mun transfer. Now, I don't exactly like the idea of a Mun station. So what do you think? Should I put it back into train form or leave it in Kerbin orbit?

EDIT:

Are there any benefits of a Mun orbital station that a Kerbin station does not have? I mean, it could refuel Mun vessels, yes, but what other purposes are there?

Edited March 22, 2014 by Starwhip

[Temstar]

Are there any benefits of a Mun orbital station that a Kerbin station does not have? I mean, it could refuel Mun vessels, yes, but what other purposes are there?

Mun stations are excellent places for mobile labs or propellant depot. Instead of having to do an Apollo style mission for each landing site, you could design a re-usable Mun lander purely for shuttling between LMO and the surface. A tiny spacecraft purely designed to return samples from LMO and the station becomes the centre of activity for these two crafts and any incoming tanker rockets.

Here's my setup at the moment. The little Mark 1 capsule with it's tiny SM is the sample return craft. The big lander carries all the experimental kit and does trips down to the surface. And in the event that I send a Kerbal out on a one way MMU powered trip to a biome away from the landing site the one man lander underneath detaches to go down and get him back.

[KSK]

Yes - a Munar orbital station looks cool. That's all you need Put one in Minmus orbit too! Doesn't serve much practical purpose but again - it looks cool!

[Sirrobert]

Mun stations are excellent places for mobile labs or propellant depot. Instead of having to do an Apollo style mission for each landing site, you could design a re-usable Mun lander purely for shuttling between LMO and the surface. A tiny spacecraft purely designed to return samples from LMO and the station becomes the centre of activity for these two crafts and any incoming tanker rockets.

http://i58.tinypic.com/k30vhw.jpg

Here's my setup at the moment. The little Mark 1 capsule with it's tiny SM is the sample return craft. The big lander carries all the experimental kit and does trips down to the surface. And in the event that I send a Kerbal out on a one way MMU powered trip to a biome away from the landing site the one man lander underneath detaches to go down and get him back.

I'm going to steal that thing for inspiration

[Grover]

The most efficient way to get all the science from planets with different biomes is to set up an orbital station capable of resetting your experiments and storing data if necessary, which refuels a small manned lander that shuttles between the surface and the station, visiting every biome and eventually returning a small craft with all the data recorded back to kerbin, so that you only perform the trans-munar injection once.

I did this for the mun once i had unlocked the mobike lab and it very nearly finished my tech tree for me

[Starwhip]

I see. So let's sum this up:

1. Mun stations are central hubs for biome science. Landers may fly down to retrieve science, get the science, and fly back up. The science is then transferred to a return ship which goes back to Kerbin.

2. Mun stations look exceedingly cool. (Perhaps on the order of bow ties )

Aaand that's pretty much it so far.

I'm thinking of a setup like this: Leave the Spirion Station II in orbit around Kerbin as an SSTO re-fueler. Create a reliable SSTO that can make it to the station and back to Kerbin. Then, create a ship that can travel between Spirion Station II and Mun. There will be a secondary station there, with a lander that can go to the Mun's surface and return to the station. And then it gets more complicated, like so...

1. Lander leaves station and lands on Mun.

2. Lander gets SCIENCE and returns to station.

3. "Mun Ferry" (vessel that travels between Mun and Spirion Station II) leaves Mun orbit and returns to the Kerbin station.

4. Kerbal transfers SCIENCE to the SSTO docked at Spirion.

5. SSTO returns to Kerbin. Recovered and SCIENCE!!!

6. SSTO launches to Spirion Station II.

7. Transfer vessel and SSTO are refueled.

8. Transfer vessel goes to Mun station.

9. Rinse and repeat...

EDIT:

I know this is rather insane, but I'm bored of launching Saturn-V replicas to get to Mun and back. This is more fun and complicated. And, it's modular: I could add more landers and transfer vessels. FOR MORE SCIENCE!!!

Edited March 22, 2014 by Starwhip

[Temstar]

Your SSTO bit is unnecessarily complicated. The sample return craft from the Mun can be built to a very small size, meaning you only need a small launch vehicle:

This guy goes to the Mun on its own, dock with my Mun station, load up all the SCIENCE, dumps it's small amount of remaining fuel INTO the station and then returns to Kerbin for splashdown on pure RCS power. Using small ships like this cuts out all that mucking about with LKO station and SSTO and is probably cheaper than running a SSTO too.

[Starwhip]

You seem to have missed the point. I like to be unnecessarily complicated, same as Whackjob likes to be unnecessarily large in ship size. But I'm not sure that the rocket would be cheaper than the SSTO in the long run. It might be easier to fly, but again, I like to be complicated.