Vehicle Assembly Base (NTM: Space)

The vehicle assembly base is a machine in NTM: Space that is used to construct orbital rockets for traveling to space stations, other celestial bodies, and for launching satellites and stations into orbit.

Crafting

The vehicle assembly base is crafted in an assembly machine with the following recipe:

Usage

After placing the assembly base with sufficient vertical space above it, rockets can now be constructed within. It accepts rocket parts and drives in the various slots, which are as follows:

Payload input, accepts the landing capsule, orbital station core, or satellite that you wish to launch
Stage designer, accepts fuel tanks in the top slot, fins and landing legs in the middle slot, and thrusters in the bottom slot. The arrows can be used to cycle through the stages of the rocket.
Construction button, constructs the rocket and inputs it into the result slot. If the rocket designer slots are empty and the result slot has a valid rocket, this button can be used to deconstruct a rocket.
Result slot, this is where the constructed rocket will be output.
Start drive, a programmed drive can be placed here for flight planning, these drives are associated with the currently selected stage
Destination drive, a programmed drive can be placed here as well, once both drives are inserted, the current stage will show whether or not it can make the currently specified journey

Example Rocket

The return stage of the rocket, for traveling from the surface of the Mun back to Earth

The launch stage of the rocket, to take the upper stage from the Earth to the surface of the Mun

Each stage of a designed rocket can make a single journey segment (eg. Earth -> Mun), and multiple stages can't be consumed for a single journey. To demonstrate this, here is an example rocket that is designed to travel from the Earth, to the Mun, and then back again (a two-stage rocket).

Note the use of the programmed drives in the drive planner, the top slot being where the rocket is launching from, and the bottom slot being where the rocket is traveling to.

Also note that the return stage must be constructed first before the lower stages can be built.

It is ideal to make your upper stages as light as possible, since the lower stages must lift the entirety of the rocket above them!