VSP Constructor Station

So you've set up a nice and smooth Kethane mining operation, and you're practically rolling in the green stuff. Your fleet of Munar Kethane Tank Trucks are rolling across the jagged plains, fuelling your refineries, and only occasionally disintegrating into a bazillion little pieces.

Then you realize there's no way you're going to spend all the fuel you're making, whether you're just keeping the Kethane or converting it to something more explosive. Doing so would mean launching a shuttle from Kerbin, landing on Mun, filling all tanks, and shuttling back and forth to some rocket ship also built on and launched from Kerbin, parked at a convenient distance from the Mun. If said ship has a goodly size, you're going to need so many more return trips.

Such a hassle. It's almost as if it would be easier to just build a launch facility in orbit…

Using the absolutely brilliant Extraplanetary Launchpads mod, this pack includes all you need to set up such an orbital launch facility pretty much anywhere in the solar system. In its basic, un-expanded configuration, the resulting fully stocked space station holds the following resources to enable all of your off-world construction needs:

• 19790 rocket parts
• 7146 units of liquid fuel
• 8734 units of oxidizer
• 9810 units of monopropellant
• 4000 units of kethane
• 8000 units of xenon gas
• 18 crew members

…and more batteries than you can shake a landing strut at.

Out of these totals, you should easily be able to get 70 – 80 percent or so into orbit just by using the supplied parts. Net mass of a newly constructed, 379-part station in Kerbin orbit should be around 220 – 230 tons, while fully resupplied it weighs in at some 270 tons.

All station components come fitted with preconfigured launch vehicles which should allow you to easily set up shop in a 100 km orbit around Kerbin itself. Should you want to go further, the docking ports on either end of the structures will let you connect a rocket with longer range once they are parked in orbit.

If you're feeling particularly insane, you could even mount a good-sized booster at the end of the completed space station and watch the whole thing disintegrate into a festive mess of space debris. Or you could fit your own, larger launch vehicles underneath before leaving Kerbin, but where's the fun in that?

If required, the docking ports and the modular setup also lets you expand the station with as many sections as your computer can handle. Thus, there is almost no limit to how large ships you can construct – making that round-trip to the limits of the solar system a walk in the park.

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This pack requires a few mods to work:

• Extraplanetary Launchpads
• Kethane Pack
• MechJeb
• B9 Aerospace Pack
• Procedural Fairings

You should most likely also install FAR, because that's what I use, and I have not tested launching these things without it. If something seems amiss, you could also check out the mods required by VSP Munar Kethane Tanker – I might have missed something.

The pack contains:

• VSP Constructor Station A

This is the most vital part of the station, containing the launch pad where you'll build your ships, as well as a command capsule.

• VSP Constructor Station B

This construction workshop is practical, as it will let you assign more kerbals to building your space ships, speeding up the process considerably. It also holds a little bit of rocket fuel. Nose cone strictly optional.

• VSP Constructor Station C

This little bit could probably be expanded with a fuel tank or two if you're only heading for Kerbin orbit, but its main function is adding a docking hub for your rocketpart canisters.

• VSP Constructor Station D

Reasonably symmetrical rocketpart canister, fully loaded. Four of these connected to the central hub gives you quite a bit of storage capacity, and if you don't mind your station wobbling dangerously and turning into a meteor shower, you can serial link a ton of these.

• VSP Constructor Station E

This gargantuan flying fuel tank is by far the hardest to launch, at least when fully loaded. If you're happy with refuelling it when it's in place instead, right click it in the VAB to adjust the amount of fuel you'll be sending into space.

• VSP Constructor Station F

The final part of the standard configuration, this section gives your kerbals a place to chill, as well as adding yet more rocketpart storage to your station. This is also the only part with space for xenon and Kethane gas.

Vehicles for resupplying fuel, rocketparts and so forth not included. You're going to have to design those to suit your needs, be it Mun fuel shuttles, Jool rocketpart transports or Kerbin crew carriers. You could also add smelters and ore containers to the space station, but it might be easier to build these from the station itself than to launch the humongous things from the ground.

All provided launch vehicles are designed to let you rendezvous with eachother at a 100 km Kerbin orbit, then decouple their payloads right before or after docking. Decoupling before makes the docking process easier, decoupling afterwards lets you transfer excess fuel into the station itself.

Remember that space junk is a crime against nature, so be good and recycle – by crashing leftover thrusters into the planet/moon/sun/asteroid below.

Related mods:

Dragonfly drone Mk-2! KT-18 Sparrow CR-90 Corellian Corvette Stock!(no mods) Mercury 3 (Freedom 7) IN STOCK KSP!!! Space Station Z PPDX Space Station Escape Pod Mk-2 ISP Mothership Class “CAESAR” Base + Orbital version Falcon Heavy – Duna Return (Stock)