Stand-Alone Laboratory

Overview[]

Skylab Launch — Skylab 1 in Space Agency. Click here for the real-life image. Note the Long Medium Fairing on top of the modified Saturn V 3rd Stage Stand-Alone Laboratory.

The Stand-Alone Laboratory is a station part which has everything necessary to serve as a one piece functional space station.

It comes equipped with built-in Solar Panels to re-charge its on board batteries (stored as cargo), a rocket engine with internal fuel tanks (which can be re-filled). It also comes equipped with eight Cargo slots pre-loaded with 2 Batteries, 2 Oxygen Tanks, 2 Carbon Dioxide Scrubbers, and 2 Water Tanks. Its solar panels generate 100 units of electricity (without the batteries on-board), of which it consumes 6. It is essentially NASA's space station Skylab, made out of a Saturn V Third Stage.

Trivia[]

You can build the Skylab (albeit two radiators instead of one) by adding a hub and two MSS Sensor Modules.
On top of the "X" of the solar panels is the Apollo Telescope Mount (keep in mind that Hubble was not yet launched).
There are some pieces of glass inside the laboratory, it maybe either the experiments being conducted or the mirrors and lenses of the telescope, as its real-life counterpart has one.
If you drag the part from the menu in the rocket building section, and discard it, you can see for a split-second something like a retracted Solar Panel Large without the cover.
It is possible to put any medium connector on this part when building your rocket. If you do so, the lab will behave like a Saturn V Third Stage with RCS, and you can put any stage on top of it. Doing this results in it looking strange. Trying to separate with a connector will cause this part to disappear, losing the valuable resources. This is probably due to Andy messed up with the code of this part, ended up glitched.
The lab is a good starting platform for any small-scale stations, and can still provide valuable power generation and storage well into construction.