After a looooong hiatus, I'm finally about to reprise some work on the station.
One of the most embarrassing problems I've encountered was: how to deliver the two final modules (Starchaser laboratory and Greenhouse module) to the station?
That elements haven't flight capability, FOI hasn't a modern tug in his inventory and the modules are too big and heavy for an Eridanus ride (in the philosophy of the Starlab station, they was derived from tanks of FOI rockets, in this case the Neptune-1b rocket second stage, that has an excessive diameter for the spaceplane's cargo bay).
A first idea was to launch it along with Eridanus but not in the cargo bay, but in the (until now unused) nosecone of the Quasar 220-E launcher, in an "Apollo 9" style rendez-vous and docking in earth orbit.
Concept of the stack (payload in yellow):
The idea, altough ambitious, was dropped because too convoluted and complex. And we have a weight problem too.
Other ideas was to use spacecrafts as tug. Antares-derived space tug:
and relative integration test.
The old "Ercole" ("Hercules") space tug developed for the Gaia station and never used since then:
Lately, Fausto convinced me about the convenience of giving flight capability to the modules, thus resolving "brutally" the problem.
As the modules was never meant to be flight capable, no physical room was reserved in the meshes for proper fuel tanks. My only choice was to add external pods. In the Greenhouse I was also forced to give up two of the five windows of the module.
Currently, this is the new appearance:
And this the integration with the Jarvis L launcher:
Unlike the previous Starlab core and Challenger expansion modules, my idea is to give only limited flight capabilities to the Starchaser and Greenhouse modules. Most of the orbital maneuvres would be performed via Jarvis L second stage, that after the insertion in the parking orbit has sufficient fuel reserve for the task.
The launch manifest for the station is currently the following:
Starlab 1: Launch of the Starlab core station (launcher: Quasar 452)
Starlab 2: Launch of the Challenger multipurpose expansion module (launcher: Jarvis E)
Starlab 3: Launch of the Greenhouse module (launcher: Jarvis L)
Starlab 4: Launch of the Starchaser laboratory (launcher: Jarvis L)
Starlab 5: Launch of the Exposed Facility and canadarm (Launcher: Quasar/Eridanus)