I’ve been doing various things in KSP since I last posted about it. Re-did the Mun landing in the manner of Apollo 11, even including doing the midflight module reorganization so that the lander was on top. The project I’ve been currently working on has been to assemble a space platform for holding fuel and other supplies for more remote missions to stock up on once entering orbit.
Behold, the Icarus I!
The station is built up from from three separate launches as you see it there. The first launch took the base station module, which is on the right part of the image (including the crew capsule, six-way docking port on the right and solar panels). The second launch was the middle fuel module (the orange tank, redundant engine, RCS tank, and nosecone) and the cross-shaped docking port connector. The third launch brought an extra fuel module into play.
With this design, I have fuel modules with lifters that can be brought up to the station and bring up RCS fuel and a full orange tank. They can then dock up and transfer fuel onto the station. The station can hold five such modules in the main battery, and still have docking clamps available for other vessels to dock on and collect fuel / crew. The individual fuel modules can even be undocked and deorbited if desired, since they have a probe controller onboard, RCS thrusters, RCS tanks, and an engine.
Having such a thing in orbit should make missions to other planets far easier to sort out - no need to carry fuel for the transit, just make sure you get enough empty tanks in orbit to fill up.