Uses for space stations

[Xavven]

Today while playing KSP I got a couple of contracts to "perform seismic surveys on Gilly" and the same "on Bop". Luckily, I already had unmanned probes in both places to complete exploration contracts for those two bodies, and they both had accelerometers on them already! I raked in cash and science for very little work.

Building on this concept....

I remember a couple people remarking that their bases and orbital stations seemed rather useless (I forgot which threads) but I think I can see some potential here. When I build an orbital station near another planetary body (Jool comes to mind) I'm going to stock it with at least one pilot and scientist, fuel, an exploration ship, and a mobile lab. Think of how easy and convenient it will be when I get "perform visual surveys of X" contracts.

And when my probes run low on fuel, I can just bring them to a base or orbital station for a fill-up. Since my probes are so light, they only need a FL-T100 gas tank. One orange tank on a base would be good for more than 60 fill-ups.

[Camaron]

Yes, having a base station for your probe would go extremely well with those missions that want specific locations scanned. With a fuel hub, that probe could match many wild orbits before expending all of the fuel. Make lots of Kash. Bases on the ground could do the same service for rovers with surface based scans.

The people who said stations were useless in the past were right. New things are coming around to give these things purpose as the game develops, and as you've seen, some of the contract possibilities have breathed life into the need for serious orbital stations.

[FlyingPete]

They've always been useful as a way to store fuel and bits of equipment on orbit. When science came along, I found it useful to have an orbiting station at Minmus or the Mun with a lab. That way, a single lander can be used to hit multiple biomes, refuelling and resetting the experiments at the station.

A surface base still isn't all that useful in itself, unless you really like rover driving or you can position it at near the intersection of multiple biomes. In that case you could have a rover dock to the base and use it in the same way as the science space station.

[Pulstar]

With 0.90 I am slowly opening up to the concept of space stations and surface bases. From a profit-driven career mode point of view, a small exploration vehicle with a refueling hub pays for itself easily with survey contracts. Although it depends where, some bodies are ridiculously easy to survey.

Some ideas and observations I got after playing 0.90 for a long bit:

Xenon refueling hubs for low gravity bodies. Minmus, Gilly, Bop, Pol, a hybrid rover/ion engine lander with a command seat, profit.

Bop and Pol in particular are goldmines, you just need one ship for both. Tiny Ion Engine lander (command chair) attached to a LV-N mothership. Attach a ton of radial xenon tanks to the mothership, profit. Use the LV-N to haul everything between Bop and Pol as the need arises, ion only for excursions, refuel once in a while since you don't want too much xenon on the lander.

Laythe is just asking you to make a globe-flying jet with a claw and some rover wheels. Drop a rockomax 32 tank filled only with liquid fuel on some flat low altitude island. You're set for life. A decent jet design can easily go suborbital on Laythe saving a lot of fuel and making surveys quite easy regardless of the waypoint locations. Land near the tank, drive using rover wheels and land-dock with the claw to refuel.

With the exception of Kerbin and Laythe exploration contracts have best profit-margins on small bodies where waypoints, no matter how far apart, are fairly easy to reach. With in-situ fuel production added from mods, I think Duna/Vall are the biggest bodies where a reusable survey vessel is viable. Alternatively Duna becomes more viable with electric propellers.

[Camaron]

From a profit-driven career mode point of view, a small exploration vehicle with a refueling hub pays for itself easily with survey contracts.

Yes, exactly, all that stuff Pulstar said. In short, with the solid introduction of surveying contracts, both Orbiting hubs and ground hubs can suddenly be VERY useful, whereas, beforehand, it was hard to give them any serious meaning aside from bunny-hopping on a low gravity world just to use the lab.

Another reason this has become useful is because of the introduction of biomes on every world. When it didn't matter where you landed, and one landing could get everything you could have for a world, why have an orbital station around Moho? After one drop you've got everything you could ever get there. BUT NO MORE! 0.90 is really agreat update. Some of it's benefits are quite covert like that.

[Slam_Jones]

The best (most efficient IMO) use of stations that I've come up with is thus:

Get a contract to put a station on a solar orbit. Build a little station to the required specs, filling it with mostly unranked Kerbals (and an experienced pilot).

Take em just outside Kerbal's SOI, wait til the contract is considered complete, then burn retrograde and parachute back to safety.

I can usually launch one for about 50,000, and I receive about 200,000+ per time. And I get a few Kerbals to level 2!

[X-SR71]

Laythe is just asking you to make a globe-flying jet with a claw and some rover wheels. Drop a rockomax 32 tank filled only with liquid fuel on some flat low altitude island. You're set for life. A decent jet design can easily go suborbital on Laythe saving a lot of fuel and making surveys quite easy regardless of the waypoint locations. Land near the tank, drive using rover wheels and land-dock with the claw to refuel.

I did this, but I put the claw and rover wheels on the tank and left the plane as light as possible. Planted a flag in every island refueling at the tank when necessary - land near tank and tank attaches to plane.