Aurora Space Station

Aurora C.R.P. (Commercial Research Platform) Space Station

I’ve done some minimal testing but she’s still a work in progress (as far as performance goes, design wise she is complete). So if you find any bugs in her please do mention them!

She has two counter-rotating carousels (labeled activation group 4) so there should be no angular momentum imparted onto the rest of the station as they turn. There are (5) docking ports for visiting spacecraft and cargo ships (sized at 100% , scaled up to 205% in tinker panel) and (4) larger docks (again sized 100%, scaled at 265% in tinker panel) for additional modules to be added. She’s also got a small S-Band antenna (labeled activation group 2) near the front docking ports and a larger high gain antenna (labeled activation group … uhhh well it’s labeled) at the rear by the solar panels.

She should have sufficient power for the carousel rotation with the provided solar panels; however I have not tested her when on the night side of an orbit. There are (5) batteries located in a cargo bay towards the aft which I hope is sufficient (and can be charged back up fully by the panels during the daylight portion of the orbit) but …. It’s possible more may be needed! To activate the carousels just enable the activation group (AG4) then move slider 1 to the max. You should be able then to deactivate AG4 and the electric motors will keep turning (so you can then have slider 1 available for other components).

Downsides: She doesn’t have much gyro control so turning her will be a chore! I know it’s a cheat but the best way to orientate this station is prolly to use the time warp cheat (set the desired heading then enable time warp at 10x speed, or higher, briefly) and she’ll lock on the desired heading. In addition she has no propulsion so you will want to have a cargo module or spacecraft docked to the front port to give her occasional boosts.

I’ve included in the download two additional optional modules I designed for her. The first is an airlock/small habitation module that attaches to the front docking port which would have been used for the first assembly flight (before power and life support systems were powered up). The second module is the “orbital greenhouse”. It has (3) greenhouse levels and a support level bellow it!

This is the first real build I’m truly proud of (at least enough to post it for the SimpleRock… err sorry I mean Juno players). I incorporated a good majority of the building techniques I’ve learned over the past 2 years, 3,677 hours of game play (using inlets, strut mounted fuel tanks, different window assemblies and numerous geometric configurations) to make a craft that has a good amount of detail to look realistic but not so much to blow up your PC (mobile users I’m not sure how your devices will react). So I truly hope you enjoy this craft and can use it not only in-game but perhaps as a template on some good ways to construct craft with neat detailing!