The Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge [closed to new entries]

[Glaran K'erman]

First off, here's the link to the album of the station: http://imgur.com/a/ZtJrX?

Second of all, here is the stats (for the advanced tech division!)

5 ports, 2 antennae, all science stuffs, solar/fission power

Orbital mass: 98.7 tons

Kerbals: 35 total, 29 comfy seats

Excessive launch mass: 587 tons

Science lab

No life support mods

1 Manned lander

1 Unmanned miner

Orbiting: Sarnus from OPM! (Let's do 5.5x multiplier?)

Advanced tech division (Near future - argon propulsion)

So, after 3 launches and several alternate dimensions of it getting vaporized, I finally got going to Sarnus. After staying up until 10:30 pm, a solid 2 hours, waiting for the orbit to reach all the way out there, I waited another 9 kerbal years to get to the damn planet! But finally, after a 1 hour deceleration, me and all 35 kerbals arrived at Sarnus, ready to science the life out of it!

Or to watch it burn in the Sanrnian atmosphere after some time!

Very nice station! Just a few quick questions, which planet mod are you using and could you, just to humor me, post a picture in the VAB. Also, I assume 'Excessive Mass' refers to the mass on the pad minus the mass on orbit? And as far as scoring goes I am going to be busy until Monday unfortunately but I will try to get around to it earlier if I can. Thanks for the entry, looks cool!

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

Very nice station! Just a few quick questions' date=' which planet mod are you using and could you, just to humor me, post a picture in the VAB. Also, I assume 'Excessive Mass' refers to the mass on the pad minus the mass on orbit? And as far as scoring goes I am going to be busy until Monday unfortunately but I will try to get around to it earlier if I can. Thanks for the entry, looks cool![/quote']

1.) Yes, excess mass is mass on the pad minus mass in orbit.

2.) I'll get the VAB images soon - http://imgur.com/a/o8JLm

3.) Sarnus is part of the Outer Planets Mod (OPM): http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/104280-0-90-Outer-Planet-Mods-Expands-the-Kerbol-system-with-new-planets-based-on-Saturn

Edited October 17, 2015 by AlexTheNotSoGreat

[Glaran K'erman]

Just wanted to let everyone know there was some sad news in my family this weekend, I've been away for most of the weekend and just got back last night. I will get back my normal routine tonight. Thanks for the patience.

[linuxgurugamer]

Just wanted to let everyone know there was some sad news in my family this weekend' date=' I've been away for most of the weekend and just got back last night. I will get back my normal routine tonight. Thanks for the patience.[/quote']

Sorry for your loss. Take all the time you need.

[Admac]

Minor rules clarification question;

I am building a station around Moho, and am using 2 reusable and refuel-able interplanetary cargo ships. They refuel in both the Kerbin and Moho SoIs

Launching Mass

Things that I think should count against my launchpad mass;

Launching the station core

Launching the two cargo ships

Launching the Munar Fuel miner

Launching the actual supplies into orbit

Things I'm not sure if they should count against my launchpad mass;

-Existing Kerbin LKO station I store the supplies between runs

Scoring mass

Things that I think should be tallied into my scoring mass;

Station itself

Two dedicated cargo ships

Things that I'm not sure if they should be tallied into my scoring mass;

Moho Surface materials mine and refinery(Dry or loaded?)

Moho Surface Fuel mining and refining stations

Moho Orbital shipyard

Things that I know aren't scored;

Munar Fuel depot

Kerbin staging station

Anyways. Looking for clarification on the few parts that I'm not sure about, and will be posting an entry once I finish up the last parts!

[Glaran K'erman]

Ok I see what you're saying, yea pretty easy rule is if it touches the station then it counts (its launch and all) but in this case you're going to be refuelling. Nothing comes to mind of this before is the entries I have checked out in the past and such. I will check with Norcalplanner and see what he thinks.

In terms of the surface bases, no. Those will not be tallied. However if you go down, fill up on ore, and happen to bring it back up to the station, then you can now add the mass of that ore.

By shipyard what do you mean exactly?

Edited October 22, 2015 by Glaran K'erman

[Admac]

The shipyard is also in orbit around Moho, and has lots of rocket parts storage and a bit of life support stuff, and existed mainly to build the actual station(EPL shipyard) I suppose it was pretty optional since I could have built the base on the surface with stakes, but EPL stakes are super buggy with large items on even a slight slope. The more I think about it the less it seems like something that should be part of the base. I'll still include the images of it, since it's part of the mission though!

[TheXRuler]

Heyo Glaran K'erman, I was just wondering, since I don't think I ever got a definitive answer from norcalplanner, whether you could help me out here.

I have been working on this challenge for some time and have almost finished my designwork for the station. However there remains the problem of power consumption. Now USI does have a nuclear reactor, which is huge, unwieldy, doesen't look the part and oversimplifies things, however the biggest problem is I CAN'T SEEM TO REFUEL IT. Since I am plannning on building a self sustaining station that refueling part remains very important. I could of course spam RTG's but that would bog down on my already rather high part count, and also feel like cheating.

I was wondering whether it would be ok for me to use the KSP-Interstellar Nuclear reactors with their own ISRU options and still be put in the modded division since I don't actually plan on using any of the KSP-I engines, I just really like those generators, because heat gradient, thermal problems, different fuel types and other aplications outside of EC generation.

TL;DR USI-Kolonizations Nuclear reactors suck, could I use KSP-Interstellar Reactors !NOT THE ENGINES! for power generation.

[Glaran K'erman]

Heyo Glaran K'erman, I was just wondering, since I don't think I ever got a definitive answer from norcalplanner, whether you could help me out here.

I have been working on this challenge for some time and have almost finished my designwork for the station. However there remains the problem of power consumption. Now USI does have a nuclear reactor, which is huge, unwieldy, doesen't look the part and oversimplifies things, however the biggest problem is I CAN'T SEEM TO REFUEL IT. Since I am plannning on building a self sustaining station that refueling part remains very important. I could of course spam RTG's but that would bog down on my already rather high part count, and also feel like cheating.

I was wondering whether it would be ok for me to use the KSP-Interstellar Nuclear reactors with their own ISRU options and still be put in the modded division since I don't actually plan on using any of the KSP-I engines, I just really like those generators, because heat gradient, thermal problems, different fuel types and other aplications outside of EC generation.

TL;DR USI-Kolonizations Nuclear reactors suck, could I use KSP-Interstellar Reactors !NOT THE ENGINES! for power generation.

Hmmm curious. I tend to empathetic to those employing workarounds so if that ends up being the case I dont see a major issue, but I am not sure you need one here. AFAIK USI reactors can be refilled just as easy as you were to be refuelling any normal craft. What USI mods do you currently have installed?

[Norcalplanner]

Heyo Glaran K'erman, I was just wondering, since I don't think I ever got a definitive answer from norcalplanner, whether you could help me out here.

I have been working on this challenge for some time and have almost finished my designwork for the station. However there remains the problem of power consumption. Now USI does have a nuclear reactor, which is huge, unwieldy, doesen't look the part and oversimplifies things, however the biggest problem is I CAN'T SEEM TO REFUEL IT. Since I am plannning on building a self sustaining station that refueling part remains very important. I could of course spam RTG's but that would bog down on my already rather high part count, and also feel like cheating.

I was wondering whether it would be ok for me to use the KSP-Interstellar Nuclear reactors with their own ISRU options and still be put in the modded division since I don't actually plan on using any of the KSP-I engines, I just really like those generators, because heat gradient, thermal problems, different fuel types and other aplications outside of EC generation.

TL;DR USI-Kolonizations Nuclear reactors suck, could I use KSP-Interstellar Reactors !NOT THE ENGINES! for power generation.

TheXRuler,

Sorry - I didn't realize I had left you hanging on something. The question in my mind would be "Is the reactor from KSP-I going to be used in any fashion to increase the score for the station (i.e., generating power for a modded engine to get it to a distant location, or powering an ISRU converter to create fuel which will increase the mass of the station before calculating the the final score)?" If the answer is no, especially if you're doing this in a career save and really want it for further development of your space program as opposed to pumping up your score, then I think it wouldn't be out of line to call the reactor cargo for the purposes of the challenge.

Glaran, what do you think?

[Glaran K'erman]

TheXRuler,

...what do you think?

I agree, I believe an engineer may be involved in the reactor refuelling for USI which would definitely add to the frustration if that were the case, but I have very little experience with them so don't quote me. If you can't work it out no problem.

[TheXRuler]

Thanks Norcal, no problem

And also thanks Glaran

Well the only way the reactor will increase the score is by it's own mass. I won't be using any of the KSP-I engines (they have really terrible TWR xD) to get anywhere. I won't even have any KSP-I engines on the station. I will of course be using the power generation capabilities to run all of the station and peripheral systems (including Life Support).

[Admac]

Mission summary Grand Orbital Moho

Goals;

Bootstrapping a high mass colony around Moho

Plan

Phase One

Launch a light seed mission to Moho

Use less than 100 tons that can be used to Build an industrial infrastructure

Gain a head start by packing 200% landing fuel and recycling the transfer vessel into initial starting parts

Vessels

Mohoer Mk2- High DV vessel to Bootstrap the rest of the mission. LS Supplies for 2 years, fertilizer to support a decade

Phase Two

Build local infrastructure

Use the initial facilities to make a robust surface base. Based on the mass of refined products and the weakness of Infernal Robotics hinges the initial vessel collapsed under it's own weight and had to be replaced with a more durable version

Vessels

Nova Station- immediately replacing the Mohoer after structural issues were identified

Fuel Wagon- 7.5m scale fuel truck with orbital logistics hub

Assistant Miner- doubling mine output with additional storage and power generation, ended up sliding down the slope and exploding, reactor was salvageable.

Phase Three

Build a Shipyard

Using now robust ground facilities build a lightweight shipyard in a 200KM orbit

Vessels

LightOShipyard- Lightweight and room for 8 engineers to crew. with inflatable storage, room for 800 tons of materials

Phase Four

Build the orbital station

Over the course of a year building a full scale civilianPopulations space station around Moho.

Vessels

MohoTenTen- 1462 Ton dry mass

Food Production for 1250 civilians

Housing for 1010 civilians

Quarters for 198 kerbals (Comfy seats are for kerbals without dining rooms!)

Using the food production infrastructure, 68 years of life support.

Four CivPop staffed Universities, also act as research labs. Also enough for an intramural league...

Four movie theaters to manage morale and accelerate training

Capacity for 1100+ tons of fuel and a logistics hub to resupply anywhere in the Moho SOI

Two massive fission reactors for redundancy and 1000+ years of fuel

Ultra high strength 12M reaction wheel and 1m/s accelleration fully laden

178 parts which is slightly too many for a civpop station, a bit of lag

Phase Five

Haul supplies

Once the station was complete, it occurred to me that it had no Kerbals and nothing in any of the tanks.

LFO was easy, just a matter of shipping it up via orbital logistics from the surface mines.

The colonists and supplies and water was much tougher, those would need to come from Kerbin.

To do it in 6 trips (the limit of my sanity) I will have to move 200 tons at a time.

To maximize efficiency I launched 2 interplanetary ships, so I could launch on each launch window on both planets.

Since I needed 5500 MS/DV to safely do the transit I had a boost tanker on each side(One Launched from Kerbin, the other manufactured in the Moho shipyard) to provide the first 1300 M/S of DV before detaching and returning to refuel. The Moho boost tanker was used to intercept cargo coming into the system lacking Delta V to be captured. Once the transport used the last of it's fuel, it would intercept and dock and decelerate the ship. Very tricky but only happened twice.

Vessels

SkyTel (x2)- carry 120 civilians and up to 12 kerbals.

4500 DV when fully loaded with colonists and supplies (200 tons payload)

BoostTanker(x2)- detachable Boost section providing more acceleration for better Oberth, and detaches after 1200-1400 DV

Returns to Moho or Mun to refuel after it's mission

A fully loaded Skytel with attached boost tanker is over 700 Tons!

I only ran a total of 6 resupply runs, this was by far the most time consuming and least fun part of the challenge. the supply ships had a acceleration of about 1 m/s/s, and had to do a total of 9000+ M/s burn for each round trip. AND lots of nodes to refuel the boost tanker and the core ship and reload supplies. Time warp past 2x caused explosions. I watched an entire season of ST Voyager running these flights. I could have ran another 4 to FULLY stock the station. but balls to that.

Category Advanced Tech

-USI Suite

-SpaceY+ Expanded

-CivPop

-Infernal Robotics(Looked cool, but caused me headaches)

-ExtraPlanetary Launchpads

-Mechjeb

-The LH2 IRSU patch from Cyrorockets

-Probably a lot more.

Scoring

Launchpad masses

2359 Mohoer Mk2

3539 tons Skytel (with Boost tanker)

3212 tons Skytel

3414 Munar Fuel Mine

6240 (2x(3470 launched, 450 landed)) Reusable SSTO LKO supply rocket

18760 tons in total

Points Tally

5004 Tons

497 kerbals (486 Civilians and 11 kerbals, or Kerbanauts if that isn't redundant)

1206 comfy seats (Private Residences) for 1010 civilians, and 196 Kerbals

Research lab (Four fully staffed Universities)

USI LS

Associated surface mining

Surface shuttle for 8

50+ years of LS (Should be a multiplier on population IMO, my 50+ years weighs 1200+ tons and represents most of my launchpad mass)

Positive= 798300

Negative= 37520

Raw score =760780

Moho x 6

Final Score 4,564,680

A more pedantic version of me would try to include some versions of the supporting crafts in my score, but I don't roll like that.

Also; 3000 points for the 50+ years of life support in the case was almost purely counter productive, since I launched almost 15000 tons of launchpad mass to set up the supply infrastructure to shuffle 1200 tons of stuff to Moho. It's a multiple of how many kerbals you have on station, so having it a score multiplier would make more sense to me.

Scoring Album

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Story Album

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Edited October 26, 2015 by Admac

[TheXRuler]

1200 Seats Oo man people really are abusing that part of the score calculator.

Still an incredibly impressive mission, that final thing is huge T_T how much of that did you build with EPL?

Edited October 26, 2015 by technicalfool
Laaaaanguage!

[Glaran K'erman]

Mission summary Grand Orbital Moho

Goals;

Bootstrapping a high mass colony around Moho

....

Scoring Album

http://imgur.com/a/tlbIg

Story Album

http://imgur.com/a/f2l9p

That is quite the city.....err station! Glad I am back to KSP full time tonight, looks like this one will take a while

Edited October 27, 2015 by Glaran K'erman

[Admac]

It was all one piece in EPL, which is the big perk of orbital shipyards! It did take six 5 star engineers 400ish days to build though!

I initially made one half the size, but no point in being timid!

[Glaran K'erman]

First off, here's the link to the album of the station: http://imgur.com/a/ZtJrX?

Second of all, here is the stats (for the advanced tech division!)

5 ports, 2 antennae, all science stuffs, solar/fission power

Orbital mass: 98.7 tons

Kerbals: 35 total, 29 comfy seats

Excessive launch mass: 587 tons

Science lab

No life support mods

1 Manned lander

1 Unmanned miner

Orbiting: Sarnus from OPM! (Let's do 5.5x multiplier?)

Advanced tech division (Near future - argon propulsion)

So, after 3 launches and several alternate dimensions of it getting vaporized, I finally got going to Sarnus. After staying up until 10:30 pm, a solid 2 hours, waiting for the orbit to reach all the way out there, I waited another 9 kerbal years to get to the damn planet! But finally, after a 1 hour deceleration, me and all 35 kerbals arrived at Sarnus, ready to science the life out of it!

Or to watch it burn in the Sanrnian atmosphere after some time!

Congratulations, AlexTheNotSoGreat! You have completed the Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge with an Altered Universe Division entry scoring 118228 points!

Well, well, well...we have finally been scored! And as it turns out you're in a different division! Because you chose Sarnus as your destination this puts you into the rarified air of the Altered Universe Division, which by the way OPM is not yet supported fully, your 5.5 multiplier worked out nicely (and where Sarnus orbits in the Kerbol system is rather convienent to help figure it out). This is a classic station that has all the cool bits and pieces you like to see. I am a sucker for anything with a Hab ring of any style, and call me crazy, but the circular solar arrays on the science lab add a bit of much appreciated charm. All in all well done and congratulations, feel free to use the badge in your sig!

Edited October 27, 2015 by Glaran K'erman

[celem]

Finally getting around to making a run at this challenge in RSS. Said I would, some months ago, but its finally happening!

Mucked about a bit trying to assemble in orbit, but gave up. Docking around Earth is significantly harder than Kerbin and I cant get it to work without costing epic dV. The main issue is getting the two pieces into an orbit with the same inclination. Due to the fact that Earth is tilted where Kerbin is not, and the fact that I dont have a perfect equatorial launch site (like KSC) I have to really focus to launch into a desired inclination, and an error of about 0.5 degrees eliminates all fallback fuel. I have mechjeb installed, but he is not capable of launching ships that are under the Realism Overhaul mod-suite, since he doesn't respect the fact that the vast majority of the engines can only ignite once (I would have to design with that in mind, and dont want to limit myself), so I cant use him to hit the perfect inclinations..

So while I assembled my craft successfully in LEO I realised it had cost so much fuel for Orbital Manouevering Systems to rendezvous and dock that Im actually better off launching a monolithic monster. Which is what Im doing now...pad weight is eight and a half thousand tonnes and climbing. Station will be heading to Low Mars Orbit.

After 6 and a half real-world hours in the VAB and testing stuff in LEO Im pretty happy, will make a few last tweaks tomorrow and then see if I can get this beastie on-site.

Kinda gave up on designing with the scores in-mind, I had planned to have a miner that could hop down to Mars, mine up some Ore and bring it up to the station, but that just doesn't work. The masses and dV-requirements involved, combined with the fact that I only have 2 engines with throttles, and maybe 6 that relight, makes single-staging off the martian surface only just possible with a bare minimum science lander. I want to say its actually impossible with the hardware I have here (modeled on realworld designs), which makes some kind of sense since these are mission profiles beyond humanity's current tech. (the payload fraction on my Mars SSTO is a joke, it should be able to get down from low-orbit, pop chutes, burn a little to help the landing and then scrape back to LMO, but its gonna have about 200dV for redock. And thats just with a 2man can and a few teeny sci instruments, the damned thing weighs over 40 tonnes. The very idea of mounting a drill is absurd, nevermind actually lifting Ore back to orbit.)

Once its on-site I might take a look at building a bare-bones unmanned miner and sending it out to join, but I dont hold much hope. Im also gonna have to try and calculate whether its going to be worth refueling it once it arrives in search of "mass-score", I imagine thats not really gonna work, its likely to cost me more points than it gains.

The distances involved here are crazy, i have 9400dV to LEO, 3210dV to Earth escape, 1060dV to Mars intercept. There is an atmosphere, but its so wussy and aerocapping is so sketchy in 1.0.4 that I doubt I'll risk that, so another 1440dV to capture to LMO for over 15kdV one-way, vs 6240 in stock (which would barely clear Earth's atmosphere and certainly wouldnt orbit...infact a stock craft that can reach Eeloo low orbit after max plane-change still lacks dV for low Earth.) Earth to Mars really feels like pushing the edge of the envelope for a payload of this size in a single launch, its costing hundreds of pad tonnes to squeeze a few hundred more dV out of the design.

Teaser:

All that work...all that mass and dV, just to carry 8 comfy seats to Mars XD

It is 176m tall (almost twice as high as the VAB, thankyou Hanger Extensions!) and weighs 8,497t with a vacuum dV of nearly 18k. Its partcount is just 164 including clamps and fairings. Yay procedural parts! The primary lifter stage uses a 10m core with a Saturn-V style F-1, but it wasnt powerful enough so it got huge boosters (those are the SLS liquid boosters, and im using 4), which still lacked oomph so there are SRBs too! The circularisation finalizer doubles as the interplanetary stage (gold in image), that centre core is 50m tall! (RealFuels kinda works like that, its burning Hydrolox, which has appalling density and leads to truly mammoth tanks) The engines on the transfer are Aerospikes. The station itself is powered by a Aerozine/NTO Aestus II cluster

Theres neither asparagus nor onion. Couple of fuel lines are used but they all originate in engine-less tanks. I could probably make my life easier by using these tactics, but they feel a bit cheap if you have already gone ahead and opted for realism mods. Despite the apparent inefficiency of my monstrous, single-piece interplanetary stage thats mostly cryo-balloon tankage and doesn't mass so much as you might think when dry.

Stay tuned...

Edited October 27, 2015 by celem

[Glaran K'erman]

Finally getting around to making a run at this challenge in RSS. Said I would, some months ago, but its finally happening!

...

Stay tuned...

I for sure love Hangar Extensions . Very happy to see another RSS entry, thinking about making further tweaks just for RSS in particular. It fits into the Altered Universe Division for now but the vast dV and realism overhauls can put it in another class rather quickly. I will be keeping these things in mind and will definitely be talking with Norcalplanner about it. In the meantime, keep building and good luck!

[celem]

Yeah....

Having some issues with Liquid Hydrogen boil-off now. I had consciously put the hydrolox on the transfer stage since it is all burnt leaving LEO, the station makes its own capture using the infinitely less-efficient hypergolics because I cant realistically preserve the more volatile cryogenics for the entire flight duration. The hypergolics also represent the vast majority of my throttling and restarting engines.

But despite launching 3 days before the window im too low on the IP-stage. I suspect the heating I suffered on ascent exacerbated the boil-off...

Currently fishing through various part packs looking for cryopumps, im sure I had some in a previous RSS install. Also, dont suppose anyone knows offhand where I can get hold of a J2-X? Thats another engine I used to have, right now I have have the 5-clustered version from the SatV second stage, but that ones a single ignition again Im pretty sure I recall the solo nozzle having 3 ignites.

Will have to keep digging, a big part of making the move to RSS/RO is grabbing as many motors as possible for NathanKell's configs to convert for you.

edit: ahah! It was FASA that had the decent hydrolox topstages; J-2 and M-1. Gimbals and multiple-ignites, goodie goodie! Also grabbed bobcat's soviet engines which are looking pretty awesome.

Off to redesign my transfer stage somewhat.

Edited October 27, 2015 by celem

[TheXRuler]

Finally got my Laythe lander working

[Bev7787]

Oh no... The competition are coming

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

A lander? For Sarnus??? - NCP

Sarnus, like it's real-life counterpart Saturn, has plenty of moons for landing. Awesome to see you finally put my station in too!

- - - Updated - - -

Now to find out how to equip the badge!

[celem]

Hit your name on your post, or the 'Forum Actions' dropdown at the top bar and edit profile. Can tweak your signature from there. And good work on your station

edit: still working away at my challenge. Ran it once and missed the capture. Launched into a bad inclination, took a sub-optimal transfer with a swing off the moon to try and fix stuff, but every burn was running over budget and the station was under its own power before breaking Earth's SoI. Got the Mars encounter and made an aerobrake pass at 55km but the station didnt have enough in the tank to close the orbit and ripped through to become a solar station.

Discovered a number of critical design flaws along the way, the lander has half-empty tanks (which means a lot for the launch vehicle, derp), bunch of RCS ports are set to the wrong fuel type and so on. Tweaked, revised. Redesigned my mission somewhat, we now have a refueling mission in LEO to deliver 14t Hydrogen and 80t oxygen. Its OMS matches the fuel mixture for the main mission's RCS systems so it can top that off too. Primary mission has also gained a probe lander for Deimos and Phobos each.

Edited October 31, 2015 by celem

[Glaran K'erman]

Mission summary Grand Orbital Moho

Goals;

Bootstrapping a high mass colony around Moho

Plan

Phase One

Launch a light seed mission to Moho

Use less than 100 tons that can be used to Build an industrial infrastructure

Gain a head start by packing 200% landing fuel and recycling the transfer vessel into initial starting parts

Vessels

Mohoer Mk2- High DV vessel to Bootstrap the rest of the mission. LS Supplies for 2 years, fertilizer to support a decade

Phase Two

Build local infrastructure

Use the initial facilities to make a robust surface base. Based on the mass of refined products and the weakness of Infernal Robotics hinges the initial vessel collapsed under it's own weight and had to be replaced with a more durable version

Vessels

Nova Station- immediately replacing the Mohoer after structural issues were identified

Fuel Wagon- 7.5m scale fuel truck with orbital logistics hub

Assistant Miner- doubling mine output with additional storage and power generation, ended up sliding down the slope and exploding, reactor was salvageable.

Phase Three

Build a Shipyard

Using now robust ground facilities build a lightweight shipyard in a 200KM orbit

Vessels

LightOShipyard- Lightweight and room for 8 engineers to crew. with inflatable storage, room for 800 tons of materials

Phase Four

Build the orbital station

Over the course of a year building a full scale civilianPopulations space station around Moho.

Vessels

MohoTenTen- 1462 Ton dry mass

Food Production for 1250 civilians

Housing for 1010 civilians

Quarters for 198 kerbals (Comfy seats are for kerbals without dining rooms!)

Using the food production infrastructure, 68 years of life support.

Four CivPop staffed Universities, also act as research labs. Also enough for an intramural league...

Four movie theaters to manage morale and accelerate training

Capacity for 1100+ tons of fuel and a logistics hub to resupply anywhere in the Moho SOI

Two massive fission reactors for redundancy and 1000+ years of fuel

Ultra high strength 12M reaction wheel and 1m/s accelleration fully laden

178 parts which is slightly too many for a civpop station, a bit of lag

Phase Five

Haul supplies

Once the station was complete, it occurred to me that it had no Kerbals and nothing in any of the tanks.

LFO was easy, just a matter of shipping it up via orbital logistics from the surface mines.

The colonists and supplies and water was much tougher, those would need to come from Kerbin.

To do it in 6 trips (the limit of my sanity) I will have to move 200 tons at a time.

To maximize efficiency I launched 2 interplanetary ships, so I could launch on each launch window on both planets.

Since I needed 5500 MS/DV to safely do the transit I had a boost tanker on each side(One Launched from Kerbin, the other manufactured in the Moho shipyard) to provide the first 1300 M/S of DV before detaching and returning to refuel. The Moho boost tanker was used to intercept cargo coming into the system lacking Delta V to be captured. Once the transport used the last of it's fuel, it would intercept and dock and decelerate the ship. Very tricky but only happened twice.

Vessels

SkyTel (x2)- carry 120 civilians and up to 12 kerbals.

4500 DV when fully loaded with colonists and supplies (200 tons payload)

BoostTanker(x2)- detachable Boost section providing more acceleration for better Oberth, and detaches after 1200-1400 DV

Returns to Moho or Mun to refuel after it's mission

A fully loaded Skytel with attached boost tanker is over 700 Tons!

I only ran a total of 6 resupply runs, this was by far the most time consuming and least fun part of the challenge. the supply ships had a acceleration of about 1 m/s/s, and had to do a total of 9000+ M/s burn for each round trip. AND lots of nodes to refuel the boost tanker and the core ship and reload supplies. Time warp past 2x caused explosions. I watched an entire season of ST Voyager running these flights. I could have ran another 4 to FULLY stock the station. but balls to that.

Category Advanced Tech

-USI Suite

-SpaceY+ Expanded

-CivPop

-Infernal Robotics(Looked cool, but caused me headaches)

-ExtraPlanetary Launchpads

-Mechjeb

-The LH2 IRSU patch from Cyrorockets

-Probably a lot more.

Scoring

Launchpad masses

2359 Mohoer Mk2

3539 tons Skytel (with Boost tanker)

3212 tons Skytel

3414 Munar Fuel Mine

6240 (2x(3470 launched, 450 landed)) Reusable SSTO LKO supply rocket

18760 tons in total

Points Tally

5004 Tons

497 kerbals (486 Civilians and 11 kerbals, or Kerbanauts if that isn't redundant)

1206 comfy seats (Private Residences) for 1010 civilians, and 196 Kerbals

Research lab (Four fully staffed Universities)

USI LS

Associated surface mining

Surface shuttle for 8

50+ years of LS (Should be a multiplier on population IMO, my 50+ years weighs 1200+ tons and represents most of my launchpad mass)

Positive= 798300

Negative= 37520

Raw score =760780

Moho x 6

Final Score 4,564,680

A more pedantic version of me would try to include some versions of the supporting crafts in my score, but I don't roll like that.

Also; 3000 points for the 50+ years of life support in the case was almost purely counter productive, since I launched almost 15000 tons of launchpad mass to set up the supply infrastructure to shuffle 1200 tons of stuff to Moho. It's a multiple of how many kerbals you have on station, so having it a score multiplier would make more sense to me.

Scoring Album

http://imgur.com/a/tlbIg

Story Album

http://imgur.com/a/f2l9p

Congratulations, Admac! You've completed the Grand Orbital Space Station Challenge with an Advanced Technology Division entry scoring 3,286,200* points!

What a station! This was a lot fo fun to look at and definitely makes me want to mess around with Civ Pop. This is our first entry using Civ Pop and while it surely fits in with station building it presented a unique challenge for scoring. As such, the score calculated in the post and the one awarded are a bit different, more on that later. I want to make sure to give Admac his due for putting together a mission of this size, great job! I would highly suggest checking out the story album, some great pics in there. Feel free to add the badge to your sig!

Great job again and happy building,

Glaran

- - - Updated - - -

The * refers to this being possibly among the last entries to use the standard scoring system. Specifically the 'kerbal' and 'comfortable seats' need some attention as well as some possible small tweaks to other things if it becomes obviously needed.

Keep calm and carry on, the challenge is only getting stronger!

Best and happy building,

Glaran

Edited November 1, 2015 by Glaran K'erman