Build the Biggest Space Station

[RedDwarfIV]

And Gaby punches Physics and Common Sense in the face once again.

Awesome.

[RedDwarfIV]

I do have an entry, though it is clearly nowhere approaching the largest here. It didn\'t use Instant Orbit though.

The largest thing I have ever put into orbit.

Nose-on view of the StarHab.

Side-on view

The StarHab carries approximately 45 people under moderately nice conditions. Its habitation modules are arranged as collumns of three under tri-couplers arranged in a triangle around the engineering section. The fuel tanks and their adaptors have been converted into wet workshop habitation areas. Power is provided by a nuclear reactor built from a NERVA engine, which is mounted underneath the engineering section. Emergency power is provided by three converted communications satellites. The engineering section is comprised of three SCIENCE modules. There is a crew of three, though the station is fully automated. The command pod can be jettisoned to reveal a docking port for rescue vessels in case of extreme failure.

[kevinlacht]

Not as weighty as the conclave, but I launched it without using unbalanced parts or instaorbit. And it\'s dimensions are technically larger than the conclave, also. Also, I launched it into solar orbit, not planetary orbit.

Dimensions: 59m x 52m x 52m, in a stable solar orbit.

It\'s not technically a standard space station. Like all my projects, it has a story. Without further ado, behold the PARALLAX 9000!

It is a radio/optical telescope science vessel. The long arms give the sensor array better accuracy, and allow it to perform high-accuracy rangefinding via parallax. It has 5 telescope sub-arrays--one on each of the four radial arms and one in the central spire--each equipped with one Probodobodyne telescope and 4 radio receivers. It is actually designed to escape the solar system, so that it can do it\'s telescoping from outside the heliopause, way out in interstellar space with no solar wind or radiation to interfere. The hope is to try and detect extrasolar planets.

Here\'s the launch vehicle. 490,000 units of fuel, weighing in at 2000 tons (just the fuel tanks). At peak burn, it produces 60,000 units of thrust. It uses 7 of my 7x sunday-punch prometheus fuel tanks, and 49 of my 7x-vanilla-equivalent-LFE\'s (thus, being equivalent to 343 vanilla LFE\'s).

Once I escape Kerbin, I dump the outer LFE\'s and tanks, leaving just the central one (which I fired some time after launch, so that it would last longer). This is the 'space station' that will be making a half-revolution around Kerbol before rocketing off into interstellar space. Dimensions: 59m x 52m x 52m.

After that there is another liquid stage consisting of one sunday punch tank and one 7x-vanilla engine.

Then I drop that and ignite a nerva engine burning LH2. This is the final stage. The interstellar craft is smaller than the kerbol-orbiter, and is only 42m x 52m x 52m (so this part is smaller than the conclave). When I stopped burning, I still had half a large LH2 tank left.

Let\'s take a tour:

The crew quarters. Two bunk tubes and a common area. Serves a crew of 8.

The central subarray. One optical telescope and four radio dishes. This one can be used for either transmitting or receiving, to allow the ship to call home.

The end of one of the radial arms. Four solar arrays, two radiator arrays, one optical telescope, and four radio receivers.

The lab section is at the base of the central spire. Here is where the scientists work to gather, interpret, and analyze the data that comes in from the scopes.

Yeah, it\'s pretty big.

Way out in the black.

Huge!

Nice job!

[Spartoz]

Here is my little space station

She was sent without any test before, it\'s just that the name ...

[Bandit202]

Hey guys,

You all seem to be pretty switched on for space station construction.

My question is: How do you defeat the ridiculous 'wobble-ing' when you have multiple ships/parts docked to another in orbit?

My particulars: Stock 0.19, no mods, mechjeb, etc.

Any advice?

[rryy]

On an almost one year old Challenge?

You can just make a new thread in the How To section, even though it has been asked before; they were all destroyed.

All I can say to help you is don't turn on ASAS when docked.

[jebowlin72]

Its a real pity that my GPU is a Dorito, I could prolly get real big spacestations into space, if I didnt have an abbacus for a processor.