KerbalX

Details

• Type: VAB
• Class: station
• Part Count: 54
• Mods: 3
• KSP: 1.11.1

Mods

• New Tantares
• New TantaresLV
• Squad (stock)

The idea for an artificial orbital structure when it was bought up by Oberth and Tsiolkovsky independently but it wasn’t until 1951 when Von Braun proposed his rotating wheel in space when it started a serious discussion. The Soviet and American space programs began developing ideas for habitation in space that could support military, lunar, and other operations.

The initial proposals were for short-term one-use facilities such as the USAF’s Manned Orbital Laboratory to acquire and analyze photographic reconnaissance since early spy satellites were severely limited in their capabilities. The Soviet Union responded with their own plans although there were competing programs between Chelomei and Korolov which would be known as the Durable Orbital Station (DOS) and Orbital Piloted Station (OPS) which were eventually called Salyut and Almaz respectively.

Sergei Korolov’s OKB-1 was both successful and ambitious and had been in the midst of developing super heavy lifters such as the N-1, a number of lunar lander proposals, and even ideas for space station. However his untimely death in 1966 left OKB-1 under the leadership of Vasily Mishin who, among other projects, sought funding for a large modular space station called the MKBS (Multi-Module Cosmic Base Station) which would be made up of interconnected modules and various spacecraft.

The MKBS project would go hand-in-hand with the N1 rocket as a counter strategy for a big space station that would exceed the initials of the Salyut program. However like the N1 rocket it would eventually fall prey to failure and would cancelled in 1974. However some of the data and plans for the cancelled MKBS would be rolled over into a new program, Mir, which was initiated in 1978 as the next step in the Soviet space station program to come after Salyut 6 and 7.

The Almaz program would eventually be folded into the new Mir space station and by 1981 there were four separate modules planned for the third generation space station. The first module, Mir Core Module, would be launched in 1986 and was built from the seventh DOS core used for the Salyut stations. A year later, the first module Kvant-1 would be added and over the course of a decade the station would grow to seven modules which even the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 didn’t stop.

The Mir, while Russian-built, would become the world’s first international space station where even the former rival, the United States, would help to fund modules and missions through its Space Shuttle program. It would stay in orbit for a record-breaking 15 years and was occupied for over 4,500 days with twenty-eight different resident crews and a total of 137 flights to the station. The last visitors to the station were in 2000 only a year before the station was turned off for the last time and it plummeted into the atmosphere in 2001.

The Kir Core Module is an approximation of the Mir Core Module made with Tantares parts and is a modified version of the Baruti 7. It can technically operate as its own space station with six different docking ports that can be used for spacecraft or expansion through additional modules.

Built in the VAB in KSP version 1.11.1.