Space Stations

From 1969 a party can put its own space station in orbit, live aboard it, and grow it up, down and outward. A station is a set of sealed habitat modules on its own patch of orbit, with power, life support and a thruster that keeps it from sinking. Orbit is its own land in the region group, so you fly there the same way you fly to the Moon.

Research

Everything here is in the crafting menu’s spaceflight section.

The station transceiver is researched like the long-range radio relay (see Communications). The methalox plant is unlocked with the propellant plant.

Getting to orbit

1. Build a launch pad (40 steel) and use it to pick the orbit as its destination. An admin must approve the pad before anyone can fly.
2. Build a launch complex office (40 steel) within 3 tiles of the approved pad. Use it to start your party’s station project.
3. Hand the office the materials: 180 steel, 40 glass, 40 copper and 60 electronics. When the last of it is in, the station is ready on the pad.
4. Members of the party use the office to fly up. The first member to arrive founds the station on a free part of orbit, and everyone after them arrives at the same hatch.

Only your own party can board your station, unless you welcome visitors at a docking port (see below). You can also fly up without a station in a two-stage rocket (80 electronics, three seats) or, from 2026, a reusable rocket (see below). Rocket crews arrive in a small capsule with a few hours of air and one bunk. To come home, strap in on the capsule’s tile and deorbit; the capsule is used up.

The way home from a station is the return hatch in its workshop, which flies party members back to their launch complex.

The starter station

The station is built around a central hub with arms on each side, and a truss keel running south from the airlock. Everything outside hangs off the keel, so a suited crew member can reach it hand over hand.

The hub holds the heater, radiator and CO2 scrubber in its corners. The workshop holds a bench, the supply crate, the orbit console and the return hatch. The crate has hull patch kits, two pressure suits and helmets, two suit tanks, a suit patch kit, two safety tethers, cable, two sorbent cartridges, food and water. From 2013 it adds a node module kit, and from 2026 a sector beacon.

Living aboard

• Air. Each module keeps its own air. With the hatches between modules open, they share it. An open hatch to nothing, or a hole in the hull, is a breach: patch it with a hull patch kit.
• Power. Solar wings and arrays only charge while the station is in sunlight. The radioisotope generator gives steady power in the shade, and a fuel cell burns hydrogen and oxygen. The orbit console shows the orbital day.
• Sorbent. In orbit a CO2 scrubber uses up its sorbent bed as it works, a little under three hours of steady scrubbing. An empty bed stops the scrubber. A sorbent cartridge (4 plastic) refills it.
• Solar wear. Solar wings and arrays lose about 3% of their output an hour in sunlight, down to half. Two glass sheets replace the worst cells.
• Heat. A radiator (15 steel) sheds heat into space while a module is warmer than room temperature.

Wear and orbit decay only happen while people are playing.

Going outside

Space is vacuum: wear a pressure suit, helmet and a filled suit tank before you open the outer airlock hatch. Outside, you need something to hold. Truss (2 steel each) gives handholds. If you push off from a handhold, you keep drifting until you reach another one.

A safety tether (1 steel) clips you to a handhold: use it beside one to clip on and again to unclip. If someone drifts away anyway, the orbit console can winch them back.

Growing the station

• More modules. Use a module kit in hand in orbit. You can unfold it where you stand, or release it as a pod. A pod is steered with its thrusters (one unit of propellant a tile), from the pod or from the orbit console. Line it up four tiles from a module and hard dock it with a wrench. A docked module can be folded back into a pod.
• Decks. A node module kit (70 steel) used on a node’s open deck hatch builds a new deck above or below, with a node at the same spot. Climb between decks through open deck hatches on both sides; with both open, the two decks share air. Carry power between decks with cable risers.
• Sectors (from 2026). Stand within 4 tiles of the edge of your station’s area and use a sector beacon (15 electronics) to claim the space beyond it. Walk or drift off that edge to cross into the new sector. Edge couplers (4 copper) carry power across: secure one on a cable one tile in from the edge and another at the matching spot on the far side.
• Limits. A station holds at most six decks and sectors in total. Modules and pods must stay two tiles back from every edge.

Visiting other stations (from 2013)

A docking port (30 steel) lets other parties visit. Set it up inside your station. Use it to choose who may dock: only your party, your guest list, or everyone. Owners can add up to ten parties that also have a docking port to the guest list.

• Ferry. At any docking port, choose Ferry to another station to cross to a station that welcomes your party. You arrive beside its port. To come home, use that port again and pick Home: your station. You land at your own port, or at your station’s return hatch if you have no port.
• Parcels. Holding an item at a port that welcomes you, choose Leave a parcel to leave it for that station’s owners. Owners can leave parcels at their own port for any guest party. Each party collects its own parcels at that port.
• Boarding raids. A station that does not welcome you can still be boarded by force, but only while some of its owners are online. At any docking port, choose Force a docking and stay in the collar for 30 seconds. The owners are warned as soon as you start. You arrive beside their port and ferry home the usual way.

Visitors cannot fire your thruster, steer your pods, build decks or sectors, or use your orbit console’s winch.

Asteroid mining

Now and then a small asteroid drifts past your station, and the crew is told when one shows up. Go out on EVA to it:

• Tether it. Use a safety tether on the asteroid to hold it beside the station; the tether is used up. An untethered asteroid drifts on after about half an hour.
• Mine it. Hit it with a pickaxe or jackhammer. Each swing frees a few lumps of iron ore, copper ore or water ice, and sometimes silver or gold. Worked out, it crumbles to dust.

A station has at most two asteroids nearby at a time, and they only arrive while someone is playing.

Defending a station

• Hull armour plate (15 steel). Use it on a module’s core to bolt it on; a module takes three. Each plate stops one strike of debris (or a meteorite on Mars and the Moon) that would have holed the hull, and is used up doing so.
• Point-defence turret (45 electronics, from 2013). Run a cable to it. A powered turret shoots down most debris and meteorites heading for modules within 7 tiles, before the armour is touched. It also fires on raiders forcing a docking at a port within 7 tiles: each turret adds 15 seconds to the crossing, up to two turrets.

Orbital artillery

A station can drop shells on a ground world below it. Build an orbital battery (60 electronics) on your own station, run a cable to it and rack orbital shells (15 steel each) into it, up to six. A salvo fires three. Use the battery, pick an awake ground world, choose how to aim and enter the X and Y coordinates of the target.

A target designator works like a rangefinder: look through it and click a spot outdoors. It tells you the coordinates to pass up to your crew, for example over a long-range radio. If the aim doesn’t check out on the ground, the shells burn up in the air. A salvo can’t reach anything indoors or underground.

Everyone within 15 tiles of the target sees a streak of fire falling toward it and hears a shriek 10 seconds before the impact, so there is time to run. Taking out the spotter, or cutting or taking over the striking party’s spy satellite, stops further strikes.

Zero-g manufacturing

A microgravity lab (40 electronics) makes goods worth flying home in a freighter. It only works in orbit, standing inside a sealed module, with a cable run to it, and only while players are online. Load it by using a stack on it (up to 200 of each feedstock), then click it to pick what to grow. Each batch takes about a minute:

Examine the lab to see its programme, what is loaded and why it is stopped. A breach or a cut cable pauses it; switching programme starts the batch over but keeps the feedstock.

Orbital refinery

An orbital refinery (35 electronics) smelts asteroid ore on the station, with no fuel, so it doesn’t have to fly home first. Like the lab, it only works in orbit, inside a sealed module, with a cable run to it, and while players are online. Use ore on it to load it (up to 100 of each kind), or feed it from a conveyor belt. It drops up to four pieces of metal beside itself about every 20 seconds, and belts and arms can carry that away:

It takes no water ice; melt that in an ice melter or an electrolyser. Use or examine the refinery to see what it holds and why it is stopped.

Keeping it up

A station starts at 400 km and sinks about 30 km an hour while people are playing.

The reboost thruster (25 electronics) climbs 20 km per burn, using 20 units of rocket propellant, up to 420 km. Fill it with rocket propellant (its tank holds 200). Only your party can fire it. The orbit console shows the altitude.

Reusable rockets (from 2026)

The reusable rocket (120 electronics) carries eight crew and a ten-item hold to orbit. After each launch its booster lands back beside the pad with an empty tank and some wear. A worn booster will not fly until you repair it with steel sheets. The crew ship arrives as a capsule that takes all eight crew home in one deorbit. It burns rocket propellant or methalox, and a flight on methalox wears the booster half as much.

Cargo freighter (from 2013)

The cargo freighter (60 electronics) is a rocket with no crew. It flies a hold of up to 20 items to another world for your party. Build it beside an approved launch pad and load the hold by using items on it. The hold takes the same goods as a lander’s hold. Fill it with 200 units of rocket propellant or methalox, then use it and choose Launch. The freighter is used up.

• To orbit, the cargo lands in a crate beside your station’s return hatch.
• To another world, it lands beside your party’s launch complex office there, or at that world’s usual arrival point.
• If the other world turns the flight away, the crate comes back to where the freighter stood.

Freight routes

A freight dispatcher (20 electronics) runs a launch pad as a standing route, so nobody has to be at the pad. Build it within 2 tiles of the freighter, use it and choose Set up a route, then pick how many items each freighter should carry. From then on, the dispatcher loads the freighter at the pad from closed crates right beside the dispatcher. Once the hold carries that many items and the tank is full, it launches the freighter for your party. Build the next freighter at the pad and the route carries on. The dispatcher waits while the other world is asleep, and examining it shows what it is waiting for. You can pause the route or clear it at any time.

Satellites

A satellite launcher (50 electronics) puts one satellite into orbit for your world. Build a ground station (25 electronics) within 7 tiles of your launch pad. Point the approved pad at orbit, load a satellite into the launcher and fill it with 150 units of rocket propellant or methalox, then use it and choose Launch. The satellite then works through that ground station. A ground station holds one satellite of each kind.

Raiding ground stations

A ground station belongs to the party that first launches a satellite to it. Its satellites then serve only that party: only its members get a GPS fix, read the station’s reports or launch more satellites to it. Long-range relays near the dish keep their comms link whoever owns it.

Another party can raid it. Use the station and choose Take it over or Cut one of its satellites, then work at its desk for 30 seconds. Its owners who are online are warned when the break-in starts. Taking it over makes all its satellites answer to your party. A cut satellite drifts out of contact but is not destroyed: whoever holds the station can use it, choose Reacquire and work at the desk for a minute to get it back. To keep a satellite from its owners for good, raiders have to take the station over. Guard your ground station like the rest of your base.

Methalox

Methalox is a cleaner rocket fuel made from methane and oxygen. The reusable rocket and the cargo freighter burn it. A tank holds one fuel at a time, so fly a craft before you switch it to the other fuel.

• In a lab: mix carbon dioxide with hydrogen (1 to 4) for methane, then methane with oxygen (1 to 2) for methalox.
• Methalox plant (50 steel): load water ice, cable it, and draw methalox with a container. Each piece of ice also needs carbon dioxide. Outside on Mars the plant takes it from the air. Inside a habitat module it takes the CO2 the crew breathe out, so it also helps the scrubber.

Other worlds and radio

From a launch pad on your station, a crewed lander can fly down to the Moon (and Mars once it opens), and any craft can fly home to the mainland. A station transceiver (20 electronics) is a long-range radio relay with its own dish. Give it a network key and power, and it talks to relays on other worlds that share the key.