SkyLab Program :: Crew Rotation Vehicles
A cheap and dirty vehicle to rotate crew on LKO Stations.
Disposable.
SkyLab Crew Rotation Vehicle
This is what I came as a Crew Rotation Vehicle:
- MK1 Drone Core
- With a so small crew capacity, I can't spare a seat for a pilot on every mission!
- 3 Crew
- 3 Cheap Puff engines
- 3 RCS Trusters
- 2 Batteries and 2 Solar Panels
- Since this thing is going to be stationed on the station (pun not intended!) for a long time, it's convenient to be useful and serve as a backup system for power.
- Heat Shield
- Shielded Clamp-O-Tron
- Cheaper than an ordinary Clamp-O-Tron attached to a Nose Cone.
It ended up being a bit overkill, with a full tank it's able to reach the Mün and go back, but any extra propellant can be used to refill the station's reserves, helping savings on refuel missions.
The launch vehicle ended up coming to this, as I was trying to use the cheaper and lowest tech as possible, as I intend to reach a sustainable station as soon as possible - i.e., with the lowest investment on R&D as possible:
However, all crafts are disposable. At the end of a mission, this is all I can get back:
Costing 13,280F (full tanks), or 31,606F (full stack) only about 6,650F is recoverable (assuming you splashdown on KSC shores!).
So each seat will cost me, at very best, (31,606 - 6,650) / 3 = \~8,318.66F .
Downloads
References
- Forum on What did you do in KSP1 today.