Where are people placing their space stations and why?

[gc1ceo]

I currently have an on-going sandbox game but I'm still working up the courage to get interplanetary, however with launch windows I still have alot of waiting time and wanted to continue projects around Kerbin.

I currently have my two oldest space stations which are Skylab and Salyut I clones in a 75k orbit of Kerbin, my newest and largest station at approximately 100k, my older large station recently moved from 100k to about 200k, a small modular station around the Mun at 14k, and a tiny munchkin of a station around Minmun around 14k or so.

Any suggestions for other locations to have a station that may make some sense?

[Commander Jebidiah]

either 180km or 240km for me.

180 for lots of catchup room for othe craft and anywhere above 160km doesn't render kerbins water so less lag.

240 for 1000x time warp.

[Mitchz95]

I usually put them in equatorial orbit, roughly 150-200km up to prevent water lag.

[cantab]

My old one was in MKO, about 250 km over Kerbin. But frankly it wasn't useful for much beyond itself. I tried to use it as an "assembly point" for complex multi-ship missions, but the extra part count from the station itself worsened lag.

[G'th]

I'm constructing mine in my standard parking orbit (125km). I plan on changing its inclination, but as I'm still practicing rendezvous, I'm holding off.

[Mister Kerman]

I'll put a lab/lander with a fuel ship around planets and planetoids I plan to study. Lately I've been working on a proper lifter for a pretty heavy lander and rendezvous ship combo. I'm going to resort to copying someone else's design if I don't get my lifter figured out soon.

[Thomas988]

My space station around Kerbin, the VLKO, is around 75-80 km-ish. when I say this thing orbits low, I mean it! I don't really use it, though.

My Mun space station is about 28 km up, and it is currently under construction. I plan to have it be a large vessel where spacecraft can dock, refuel and/or land on the Mun.

[gc1ceo]

Ok, around 240-250k seems like a good candidate. I might be completely getting rid of my station that's at 200k since it was my first large modular station and I could have designed it so much better. Anybody have any luck with sync or semi-orbit stations or is it the consensus that it's not worth the time and effort?

[alacrity]

One in standard kerbin Equitorial orbit at around 120 km, a science station at a 45 degree inclination orbiting at about 150 km, and a geosync one man station mainly used as a relay for RT2.

All other stations at other celetials are in near equatorial at optimum altitude for landings.

Going to add a station at Jool to integrate Karbonite refueling miner platform there. Orbit will depend on karbonite concentrations in the atmosphere, and near space.

Alacrity

[cantab]

A station in KSO? Probably not worth it for anything besides its own sake. KSO is actually quite hard to reach, taking according to some delta-V maps more than it does to escape Kerbin altogether. (The same goes for geostationary orbit around Earth, for that matter).

[SkyRender]

267,200m. That places the station in a perfect octave-synchronous orbit, is low enough to the surface as to require little extra dV to reach, and allows for up to 1000x time warp.

[r4pt0r]

100k equatorial. its a nice round even number.

also, what causes water lag, ive never experienced it?

[SkyRender]

also, what causes water lag, ive never experienced it?

Water lag is caused by the game rendering the water on Kerbin (or Eve, or Laythe). The extra processing power required is pretty noteworthy, especially on high-quality settings, and it can really put a damper on performance as a result. If you have a high-end machine, are using an NVIDIA graphics card, or have graphics settings at a more modest level, you'll probably never notice water lag.

[TDOB]

I've got the beginning of a small station around Duna at 55K up, only a few thousand KM above the beginning of the atmosphere. I might get around to launching some planes from it or something.

[Xacktar]

10k above Minmus...

FEEL THE DANGER!

Orbital rendezvous never felt this risky before.

[OrbitusII]

Usually (and consistently) between 120 and 130km equatorial around Kerbin. Easy to get to, easy to maintain, gives cool screenshots. Rendezvousing is kept nice and short by launching with perfect timing, which I'm getting quite good at.

I recently watched this video and now I want to reinstall RSS and build some space stations there, but man is it a tough thing to do.

[Wanderfound]

If they're stations designed to be visited (refuelling depots and orbital labs) I usually place them equatorial and as low as possible (so, 70,000m over Kerbin and just over 8,000m at the Mun). If they're survey satellites designed to take science readings over an assortment of biomes, I use a polar orbit instead.

The low altitude Mun station (lab/lander/fuel tank) is getting a lot of use; the attached lander can pop down to the surface and back while expending very little fuel. I just wait until I'm almost over the landing site I want, decouple and burn retro for a descent with very little thrust wasted fighting gravity. I usually get the horizontal velocity zeroed at about 1,000m above the surface and then give it a quick vertical burst in the last couple of hundred metres.

You do need to be a bit careful not to clip the crater lips on the way down, though.

[gc1ceo]

Is 8k above the Mun still a stable orbit?

[Wanderfound]

Is 8k above the Mun still a stable orbit?

No atmosphere; 1m above the surface is a stable orbit. The only reason to raise it to 8,000m is that you're at risk of running into the side of a mountain if you don't.

[problemecium]

I have one around Kerbin at 125km for managing the various modules and crew shuttles I send up and down (so for example I can dock shuttles there and then use a more efficient orbital ferry to get Kerbals other places);

one around Mun at 25km for farming Science;

and one around Minmus at 20km, also for farming Science.

All are placed just above the minimum altitudes for 100x timewarp (except maybe the Minmus one, I may have gone for 1000x with that one).

[neamerjell]

No atmosphere; 1m above the surface is a stable orbit. The only reason to raise it to 8,000m is that you're at risk of running into the side of a mountain if you don't.

Running into the side of a mountain while in "orbit" just sounds like a bad day... LOL!

The only problem I see with extremely low orbits around planets and moons with no atmospheres is speed. The station would be moving so fast, it would make it extremely difficult to rendezvous with. Someone said earlier in this thread that higher orbits give you more time to catch up to the target, which also means "more elbow room" for errors. One false move with a station in extremely low orbit and both you and it become a debris field.

Scott Manley probably does it in his sleep though...

[Wanderfound]

Running into the side of a mountain while in "orbit" just sounds like a bad day... LOL!

The only problem I see with extremely low orbits around planets and moons with no atmospheres is speed. The station would be moving so fast, it would make it extremely difficult to rendezvous with. Someone said earlier in this thread that higher orbits give you more time to catch up to the target, which also means "more elbow room" for errors. One false move with a station in extremely low orbit and both you and it become a debris field.

Scott Manley probably does it in his sleep though...

I don't have any trouble with it; although a low circular orbit has a higher speed relative to the ground, it's actually a lower orbital velocity than a high orbit.

The only real issue with very low orbits is that there's no room "underneath", so you always need to raise your orbit above the station and let it catch up to you, instead of dropping into a lower orbit and chasing it down. That isn't much of a problem over the Mun, because the orbital period is so short that the station will catch up fairly quickly even if it starts just ahead of you.

I typically launch my lander into a 8x8km orbit, match inclinations and then set a prograde manoeuvre that puts me within a couple hundred metres of the station the first time the lander comes back to the site of the prograde burn.

[merendel]

I normaly setup a refueling platform at around 100km over kerbin. This gives room underneeth should I need to catch up to the station but also is not too bad if I need to go up to let it catch me if my launch is a bit off time. I do most of my orbital construction near this station. Modules get launched up to either the station if they have the fuel budget or up to a 80/80 orbit and I send a tug down for it. I like the 100 orbit as many of my interplanetery launches tend to be a tad anemic on the TWR when I send them out and its high enough to let me single burn without hiting atmosphere.

Mun and minmus normaly get a small science outpost with a lab a fuel module and sometimes a couple of return pods. A single lander will go down to collect science and return to the station for proccessing. The return pods are little more than a pod with a probe, chute, fuel tank and small engien, just enough to get back to kerbin. They get sent back if I dont want to wait to recieve the science, just load it up and ship it home.

Jool will also often get a combo station/mothership with spare fuel canisters to aid in work out in that SOI.

Most other planets dont get dedicated stations with any regularity, I only do so if I want to RP colonizing that planet. At most they might get a "Station" thats really just the spent transfer stage of whatever mission I sent out there. I normaly overenginer the first mission to have spare fuel just in case I need it later

[Tw1]

My Kerbal space station is about 435 km up, to make rendezvousing easier, and also on an inclined about 24° so it's possible to launch directly into the correct plane from KSC2.

[geb]

In my old savefile for 0.22 I put a space station around every single body in the game. I'm quite proud of the Eve fuel depot and the Moho shipyard:

In my current save I have a science station around Laythe with an addon unit for refuelling shuttle planes.

Edited August 9, 2014 by geb