Actually I bought Space Station Manager a few years ago now.

Previous versions had goals of building out/managing the station to produce
positive cashflow (you can stop s******ing, it's only a game), and
eventually building out the station to truly monsterous proportions.
Currently the latter objective is the pretty much what you do.

For power you have solar arrays, the RTG, and with player made mods a number
of other options (fusion reactors, etc)

All of the powerplants require some kind of cooling, so radiators and
heatpipes handle that.

Nearly all of this requires crew, so there is a standard crew module, as
well as a ring (no, it doesn't spin unfortunately).

A crew onboard requires lifesupport so there is a lifesupport (LS) module,
as well as an algae tank/dome module.

There is a fourth resource generated/used by station components, money. So
there are communications arrays, lab modules and factories.

The factory has the advantage of allowing you to recover more material/money
off of portions of your station that you salvage (destroy).

To connect everything beyond a simple inline Solararray-Lab-LSS-Hab-radiator
arrangement there are the hub/keel modules (allowing habitable station
sections to be connected, and giving a conduit to power, LS and waste heat),
and truss/truss-node modules to link sections and provide a conduit for
power and waste heat (no LS).

The challange is that the truss/node/keel modules can only handle so much
flow of power/LS/waste heat. Building large stations that don't have
significant sections in operable due to blackouts is a problem.

Stations don't have to be all in one piece, you can construct 'free flyers.'

You can actually make a nicely profitable station/sattillite out of a
truss-node, a couple of solar panels, a radiator and 3 communications
arrays.

The SSM community has constructed lots and lots of addons, including a
Shuttle, other sorts of nodes (6,8,10 attachment points), orbital death
rays, star drives, hydroponic domes, robot arms.

SSM allows modules not only to be just attached to specific port, but
rotated on that axis in 45-degree increments, so all sorts of tinkertoy
arrangements of station components (racetracks, power towers, etc) can be
arranged.

http://4sure.co.nz/ssm-index.shtml has some nic screen captures of station
arrangements.

One note, with the default surface tile included, you will be eternally over
the South Pacific. However the surface map can be changed out for others,
like the Moon and other locations on and off Earth.

My opinion on it is that it's a nice toy and was worth the 20 dollars I
spent on it.

If you want the thrill of launch/docking operations, go get Orbiter
http://www.orbitersim.com and is free.

Mistaril http://www.mistaril.com has also released a new sim/game called
SpaceMax that's looks to be more of a space station operations simulator.

Jeffrey Cornish

"Frank Scrooby" wrote in message
...
Hi all

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 15:52:07 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article , Frank Scrooby
wrote:
http://www.mistaril.com/space_station_manager/
Simulates building a station.
...
...how accurate is the modelling...

Does it include budget cuts, politically-mandated redesigns at random
intervals, and filling out JSC paperwork? :-)

Don't forget the obligatory contracts to the Russian government...

The simulation seems to assume that you are a private contractor/company
with the aim to make profit in LEO.

From the demo I can't see any problems with JSC paperwork,
political-mandated redesigns or Russians contracts.

The simulation start date is January 2041.

You do have a budget. In the demo you start with something like '$ 200'
and
a service module which looks suspiciously like the Russian service module
that formed the backbone/basis of ISS.

A 'Node' (six point connector) costs you something like '$ 5' and appears
immediately (disappointing for me, I wanted to see a 2041 era Space
Shuttle
pull up and do a delivery, maybe that is in the full version ;-)

You have to add Life support modules, crew space (which seem ridiculously
small), solar arrays (you can also add RTG generators the size about 1/4
to
1/3 the size of the service module! - I want to see the Environmental
Impact
Study on those babies), radiators, labspace, and a lot of cooler sounding
modules. Presumably if you register/buy the product you get to play with
the
heat pipes, more advanced solar arrays, the torus-shaped crew
accommodation,
the Algae life support module (that also helps out your research labs),
the
Comms relay and the mysterious 'other modules' button.

It seems like a cute toy. I was wondering if anyone else had sunk their $
20
in and was pleased, displeased or otherwise emoted on the subject.


Thanks and regards
Frank Scrooby