Kerbals in Spaaaaace!

[Jimorian]

I just got into Kerbal Space Program, and now with the .20 release, it seems that a good amount of the sandbox elements are in place, so I figure it would be nice to have a thread about it.

First Post Game Data:

Kerbal Space Program home page (https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/) (includes wiki)

Planetary Encounter Calculator (http://ksp.olex.biz/)

Rough delta-V map (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25360-Delta-V-map) of the Kerbal system.

Some Video Tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEm5nyZU3a-O2ak6mBYXWPAL) (YouTube playlist from Scott Manley's page)

Some specific tutorials:

Rendezvous and Docking Maneuvering (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHkY3FusJIQ).
Direct ascent to docking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRoCXYOOT4M)

General KSP YouTuber list (main page link, followed by any playlists)*

Chickenkeeper24 (http://www.youtube.com/user/Chickenkeeper24?feature=watch): Kerbal Space Program (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9B4CCF833FBBB997), KSP Permadeath (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-9a7jxv76lnhKm0kbWoW4NzwGIkxa1l), KSP Livestreams (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-9a7jxv76kSi0qNQveExy--NvNaWpZ4).

Gaming with Stomp (http://www.youtube.com/user/StompThompson/featured) (not organized by playlist, but just a little over half of his 60ish videos are for KSP)

HOCgaming (http://www.youtube.com/user/HOCgaming?feature=watch): Kerbal Space Program (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL255850B23BE046BD), KSP Test Pilot (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhLOhvd4zR4JLlGqpkXvPnEO), Inter-Planetary Fleet (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhLN7-FxUsvmoWfT2mwPzG2c), International Subscriber Space Station (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhJtazquFjqdJiQKvP-duh2o), Challenging YouTubers (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhKrJBDxp_drL3BFuSnUhM-w), Permadeath Space Program (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhIbuw5Bc8dXMSDdoCxdcAuS), Bop Mis-Adventure (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhK60kBUkfrOeCB0d5VUCAMo), THAT'S NO MOON! Base (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhKXxxJtG4N7YsDfKlhMlPke), Iconic Spacecraft (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfHzlqjLEvhJ8bi0Ut1ZQ6EHJw6RGf2rd).

kurtjmac (http://www.youtube.com/user/kurtjmac): Kerbal Space Program (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD603D8234AE51EF0).

Macey Dean (http://www.youtube.com/user/MaceyDean): KSP Gameplay and Tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnfM-w9LSGDvI-yHF7zWzRA_Uc-0hpy1c), KSP Featured (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnfM-w9LSGDtYX25e3s2290jhD9nYHlBt), KSP Spaceplane to Laythe (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnfM-w9LSGDunAAz7b-TYKzynaPK642ig), VTOL Fighter - Isprit (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnfM-w9LSGDttW_gOXzlKAgMssgxghIZb), Harbinger Class - KSS Spirit of Kerbin (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnfM-w9LSGDtzy3R6gdsFO4apdt-tNolf)

Magneous (http://www.youtube.com/user/Megneous/featured): Kerbal Space Program (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi_uw99_XZ4l4r0W7GYvDf76tmmXrQ9Us).

Play Daily TV (http://www.youtube.com/user/xPDxTV): KSP Season 1 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8A2BA9415DB44B1B), KSP Season 2 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL878E79C9F644ABCC), KSP Season 3 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL09C9D1FEF4194A43), KSP Tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2476BD11DBE12254), KSP Subscriber Challenges (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB730C9CDE0DBE759), KSP Season 4 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-3jCz97rM_ORchju2kHHR0z_CWJu_hvj), KSP Funday Mondays (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-3jCz97rM_PuggX3yGxZcABlirKUS9ec), KSP Done Sensibly (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-3jCz97rM_OkKp3kjGeVfA61tJWvq7cl), KSP Tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-3jCz97rM_P2zaqi9mfBsgqiZ1PXw5Py) (newer), KSP Hardcore Viewer Mission Control Career Mode (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-3jCz97rM_OIVqxNJCCTTEFCUhi3WQWO).

Procrastinaut HQ (http://www.youtube.com/user/Pleborian): KSP Season 2 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP7JjzcyLEc7pAMhobs64bxCHJaQJyuEF), KSP Season 3 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP7JjzcyLEc4bVX3X9Zrc7a6NV8T1xS09).

Scott Manley (http://www.youtube.com/user/szyzyg?feature=watch): KSP 0.19 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEmc4Uif5gQCiaY35eJvuecE), KSP Tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEm5nyZU3a-O2ak6mBYXWPAL), Reusable KSP (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEkj16QN9poJyRrfAugyiC7W), Kerbal Space Planes (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEl22GX0wHURGH0FQBXripwN), KSP Easter Egg Hunting (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdEno5zUDzlDAT55tITWhGsyC), KSP Livestreams (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYu7z3I8tdElnMGSvPxQ_KAuBeVh26YGO).

Thor LP (http://www.youtube.com/user/watchnasatvcom?feature=watch): KSP Insane Rockets Divison Season 1 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaAaXnRVJRmCmmPeC7f6xQ6kOW4V66y8z), Season 2 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaAaXnRVJRmAIqy_Y8F2w22EF6GVKsfxk), Season 3 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaAaXnRVJRmD8xyAL58gEPGeNXxhK7NOJ), Season 4 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaAaXnRVJRmDxsdYcqLnZYqdRG0vg898u), + 2 episodes of season 5 not in a playlist yet.

*not responsible for failed classes/relationships due to time lost viewing enclosed content

Some Mods

MechJeb (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/12384-PART-0-20-Anatid-Robotics-MuMech-MechJeb-Autopilot-v2-0-8)
Mission Controller (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34026-0-20-2-Mission-Controller-v0-6-%2806-13-2013%29-ALPHA)
Kethane (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/23979-Kethane-Pack-0-5-1-Two-new-parts-particle-effects-shareable-deposit-files-more%21)
KW Rocketry (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/33168-20-2-KW-Rocketry-2-4)
Kerbal Attachment System (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25563-0-20-KAS-v0-3-1-Kerbal-Attachment-System)
Ioncross Crew Support (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/26935-0-20-Ioncross-Crew-Support-Plugin)
KSPX (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30472-KSPX-Kerbal-Stock-Part-eXpansion-mod-reposted)
Damned Robotics (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/9675-v0-19-Damned-Robotics-Version-1-3)
Extraplanetary Launchpads (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35217-0-20-x-Extraplanetary-Launchpads)
Caterpillar Tracks (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35147-Rubber-Band-Inc-Caterpillar-Tracks-Alpha)
Kerbal Engineer (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/18230-0-20-Kerbal-Engineer-Redux-v0-6-0-3)
Deadly Reentry (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32342-Deadly-Reentry-2-2d)
Ferram Aerospace (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/20451-0-20-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-9-5-1-Aerodynamics-Fixes-For-Planes-Rockets)
Chatterer (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25367-0-20-2-Chatterer-v-0-4-1)
RCS build aid (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35996-0-20-*-RCSBuildAid-0-1-Helper-plugin-for-balanced-placement-of-RCS-thrusters)

______

I've gotten to the point where I can make some moderately big lifters, and can put space station frames, and fuel "trucks" into orbit. I'm pretty good at matching orbits for rendezvous, but still getting the hang of docking efficiently.

My big project right now is taking a couple of space stations to Jool, one for a high orbit outside the moons, one for low orbit inside the moons.

Some screencaps

The station "train". In front, a 4-engine nuclear tug that pulls the assembly to hopefully avoid oscillations in the docking clamps along the structure. Next one of the Fuel trucks, then the actual station frame (with 18 total ports), another fuel truck, then behind that but not visible, a standard engine tug for moving things around in Jool orbit.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/908a7ed4-df62-485c-883b-d67af7ecece1_zpsc6e7d75b.jpg
This is the launcher for the station frame.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/b93a613d-3a53-42d2-a812-56a77de141d4_zps1f434d8e.jpg
And the launcher for the fuel truck (below the final orange tank is my standard space tug that once it delivers the load, can detach and be used to move around other objects).
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/b0cef574-0c65-4d14-b3b0-9c5c723ca1a9_zps661c7101.jpg
And here's a look at my Kerbin orbital station showing the structure a bit better (and with another fuel truck docked at one of the lower ports).
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/4324f2e9-e2cb-4aec-ac73-9894e32a7cf6_zps33e1f1da.jpg

[Avilan the Grey]

I WILL buy this. But not until it gets closer to official non-beta status.

[factotum]

I WILL buy this. But not until it gets closer to official non-beta status.

You're missing out--the core game is extremely playable even as it is; think how Minecraft was in its alpha stage.

[Avilan the Grey]

You're missing out--the core game is extremely playable even as it is; think how Minecraft was in its alpha stage.

More a matter of too many games as it is. :smallsmile:

[Zorg]

I'm a big fan of Kurtjmac's videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/kurtjmac/videos).


Some pics of my Kerbals:

Jeb on EVA back in 0.13 or so on his way with Bill & Bob to the Mun:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2012-10-2422-57-01-11_zps754180d8.jpg


Munsat 1, my permanent Munar station:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1400-34-37-74_zps5e6b1fc4.jpg


Munbase 2 (#1 is a modified lander), a purpose built base with room for 8 kerbals and carrying two rovers (one is on mission to a Munar Arch):

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1400-37-05-22_zps68ac9a80.jpg


Dawnstar, my Space Station around Kerbin:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1400-39-40-41_zpsb837c3c5.jpg

[Sharoth]

Ohhh!!! Now THIS looks interesting. I will have to check it out later.

[Jimorian]

Hmm, I copied my save folder and tried to see what it was going to be like getting those big ships to Jool. It looks possible, but I need to redesign some of the pieces a bit. I had torque problems unless I kept thrust to 35% or less, but since I have 4 engines, I already knew it was going to be long burns, so that's not too big of a problem. But I need to add fuel hoses to get fuel to flow from the rest of the train to the engines through the structural beams. Looks like I was able to get about 1600 m/s out of the first orange tank, not sure how much out of the 2nd yet.

[t209]

I know this from Robbaz (Think of him as Thorkell from Vinland Saga). I heard that you can mod it and create a mecha (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRQmsSFiwoc).

[AdmiralCheez]

This is a fun game. But my space program is the strangest thing - We've put a Kerbal on the the Mun, and brought him home safely. We've built a space station, launched additional modules and docked them to it. We've rescued a stranded pod drifting around the cosmos. But for some unknown reason, we can't build an airplane that leaves the runway intact. You would think rocket science would be harder than airplanes, but you would be wrong.

[Hawriel]

More like this.

Kurbals in spaaa--BOOM!.

Hmm ok back to vehicle hanger.

I'm not very good with the game. I just cant grasp how to pilot and do other maneuvers. Hell im just glad I got two objects into a stable if totally crooked orbit.

Im not bashing the game. I think its wonderful. Kurbal has a steep learning curve for me. I have no idea how people seem to get the hang of the game. when Im struggling with simple rockets.

If a parent asked me what games they should get their kids this is the second name on my list. Right after minecraft.

[Jimorian]

There's absolutely no shame in not understanding orbital mechanics. I took several Physics classes, and while I could do the math, I never quite got the counter-intuitive nature of moving around in orbit until playing this game.

The genius of KSP is that the developers have removed the math from the view of the player enough with the interface that it is possible for people who aren't into science to play the game with enough practice.

There's a sequence in KurtJMac's series where he gets completely frustrated with seeming to lose the handle on the game for a while, and then he takes on docking (when it was new) without looking up any tutorials, just using what the game gave him and his previous experience. When he finally gets the clamp to lock, you could feel his sense of accomplishment at conquering that task.

But it's definitely still a HARD game in a lot of ways.

Edit: oh, and to your last comment -- I can't WAIT to see what will happen with space exploration in 20 years when a generation who have played KSP grows up, gets through college, and does whatever it takes to make the feelings and dreams they experienced through the game become real. :smallsmile:

[Jothki]

Edit: oh, and to your last comment -- I can't WAIT to see what will happen with space exploration in 20 years when a generation who have played KSP grows up, gets through college, and does whatever it takes to make the feelings and dreams they experienced through the game become real. :smallsmile:

Their first rockets blow up on the launchpad, killing multiple astronauts and setting back the space program another few decades?

[Eldan]

Never heard of this game before, but it looks quite interesting. Where can one get it, and how much does it cost?

[AmberVael]

There's a link to the store on the Kerbal Space Program Home Page (https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/) and it can also be purchased on Steam.
On either site it is 23 USD.
Scratch that, just double-checked before posting, and while it is 23 USD on the main site, Steam has it on a sale for a little over 15. I might just snatch it up now that I've seen that.

I haven't actually bought it yet, but I've probably had more fun with the free demo than I have with some games I have spent that much money on. And from what I've seen in videos, you got a ton more cool content if you buy the game- such as airplanes, better parts for moon landers, the ability to get your Kerbals out of the landers and airplanes, all kinds of nifty stuff.

[AgentPaper]

Picked this up a bit back, just before patch .20. Really loving it so far, haven't run out of things to do yet. Had a lot of fun putting together a keostationary space station and landing Kerbals on various planets and moons.

Probably the most impressive thing I've done so far though is my Mach 8 Glider:

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/4857/aiu.pnghttp://imageshack.us/a/img90/7483/dnl.jpg

[Storm Bringer]

You would think rocket science would be harder than airplanes, but you would be wrong.

On the contrary, a reusable airframe is much hard to make than a rocket. the rocket only has to work once :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:


their is a quote somewhere form one of the NASA guys saying that getting concord to work was a great technical achievement than getting to the moon, because the concords flew pretty much day in, day out for years, whereas the Apollo program rocets only needed to work for 2 weeks, max.


edit: AmberVael, steams doing a Weekend Deal on Kerbal space program right now, so it's cheaper than normal till Monday.

[Grif]

Man. After Scrolls, I'm almost broke.

But this game just tickles me the right way. CURSES! :smallmad:

[Eldan]

Get the Demo. I have it and it is fantastic.

My first flight drilled itself into the ground.
My second went into a wild spin, but I managed to detach the capsule and parachute the astronaut. He still died.
My third flight went up more or less straight, but I forgot how to fire the thrusters of the second stage.
My fourth flight just cleared a height of just a hair under sixty kilometers. In the end, the capsule just sort of hung there, so I had to use my third stage to actually get thrust towards the ground to get my astronaut back. He survived the landing. Yaay.

I think now I'll just try one with three times as many solid fuel boosters. What could go wrong.

Edit:
Steering is for suckers. I removed the winglets on the bottommost stage and instead went from three solid fuel boosters to twelve, in two stages of six. Wooo. This is no longer a rocket. It's a barrel of explosives.


PPS: Boosters first. Decouple from scaffolding second.

PPPS: SOO MANY EXPLOSIONS.

PPPPS: The USC 7 "Stack of 24 solid fuel thrusters and one liquid engine" went up to 400km before leaving the pilot stranded in orbit.

[AmberVael]

Well, I caved and went ahead and bought the full game due to the sale. I wanted to try out the airplane hanger first, but I did not have much luck there. I could get things off the ground, but then they would spin in circles before exploding. No control whatsoever. Boooo. :smallfrown:

I decided to try and make a rover instead, maybe something that could break landspeed records... but then I saw that all of the wheels had low tolerances except the landing gear, and you can't actually turn very well with those things. If at all. I did make a nice slow vehicle to roll around Kerbin with, but there isn't much to see at that speed.


So, I moved on to making a satellite. After a few questionable structural failures, and absurd amount of solid fuel boosters and structural linkages, the NotASpycraft Mk. 3 made it into a stable, fairly nice orbit. It's unmanned and and laden with lots of equipment, solar panels, and batteries. No idea what I'll do with it, but it actually does have enough fuel to come back down if I ever want it to, so that's fun.

I think my next goal will be to shoot missiles at all the other planets, just 'cause. :smalltongue:

[AgentPaper]

Fortunately, you don't ever need to worry about running about things to do, because there's a quite healthy community around the game that comes up with all sorts of cool stuff, from challenges (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forumdisplay.php/26-Challenges) to achievements (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24581) to extra features (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forumdisplay.php/35-Addon-Releases-and-Projects-Showcase).


Edit: Also, for those that like to plan their flights and fuel usage in advance, this is extremely useful: Delta-V Map (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25360-Delta-V-map). Best used with something like MechJeb (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/12384-PART-0-20-Anatid-Robotics-MuMech-MechJeb-Autopilot-v2-0-8) or Kerbal Engineer (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/18230-0-20-Kerbal-Engineer-Redux-v0-6-0-3) to make it easier to tell how much delta-V you actually have.

[AmberVael]

I went back to try and make another high speed rover- and one that would actually be usable. My final design was rather unusual. (http://imageshack.us/a/img841/1415/1iy0.jpg)

The two separate wheel sets (the landing gear and rover wheels) are necessary for this thing to work. Landing gear can't steer well or under their own power- they're inefficient and clumsy. However, they're the only wheels that withstand high speeds. The rover wheels can work off of electricity, which this thing recharges instantly, and they are very maneuverable. The landing gear has enough strength to lift the whole thing off the ground and are taller when extended than the rover wheels, so you can switch from one to the other easily.

In addition, I put on some instruments for giggles, lots of lights, and because I'm evil, an external chair. (http://imageshack.us/a/img827/4531/78kl.jpg) (Bill is only smiling there because he doesn't know what he's getting into.)

It's hard to see even from the side, but the jet engines are angled down slightly to keep the thing on the ground. Nonetheless, through repeated testing, I found that when you're going at top speeds (top speeds being about four hundred miles per hour) any slight movement can result in unforeseen consequences. (http://imageshack.us/a/img703/6728/wcoq.jpg)
(Don't worry, Jeb is still completely cool with this. (http://imageshack.us/a/img442/1220/ybk4.jpg))

[factotum]

Well, I caved and went ahead and bought the full game due to the sale. I wanted to try out the airplane hanger first, but I did not have much luck there. I could get things off the ground, but then they would spin in circles before exploding. No control whatsoever. Boooo. :smallfrown:

You have to be very careful where you have the centre of mass of a plane compared to the centre of lift (there's a button in the hangar that shows both)--you need one in front of the other, and if you have it one way round the plane will actually be flyable, and if it's the other way round it's impossible to control, as you discovered. Problem is, I can't remember which way round it has to be!

[EDIT] Just checked it out--the centre of lift has to be *behind* the centre of mass. This is why most people end up building uncontrollable planes, because they tend to have big wings forward and tiny little tailplanes, resulting in a forward centre of lift.

[Jimorian]

Thor LP (http://www.youtube.com/user/watchnasatvcom?feature=playlist) is a YouTuber with a series calles KSP: Insane Rockets Division (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaAaXnRVJRmCmmPeC7f6xQ6kOW4V66y8z) where basically he builds some wacky construct, then spends the rest of the episode modifying it until it actually flies! (most of the time).

Here's a few episodes of the newest season where he builds some ridiculous aircraft (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy7ZcXmyQRM&list=PLaAaXnRVJRmDxsdYcqLnZYqdRG0vg898u). :smallbiggrin:

[Soralin]

I recommend checking out this fanmade kerbal space program trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkDOOsGg-9I :)

[Eldan]

Yup. Had to get the full version. This is one of the best games I've played this year (somewhere between Deponia and Portal 2).

That said, about three out of four of my vehicles still fail to get out of the atmosphere.

[Jimorian]

I edited in a bunch of YouTubers with playlists into the first post. Don't blame ME if your life falls apart while trying to watch the hundreds of hours of videos contained within it. :smalltongue:

I now have space stations around Mun and Minmus, so I'm doing the grunt work of fueling them up before starting to stretch out to other planets or make some moon bases.

I also did some test maneuvers to Jool from different orbits. From Kerbin, it took about 2000 m/s delta V to get to Jool orbit. Then I tried it from Minmus, and got 2900! Then I realized I needed to do it with Minmus on the far side of Kerbin from the sun so that it was in the direction of Kerbin's solar orbit, and it was 2300 instead. But the fact that it was easier to get to Jool from much deeper in Kerbin's gravity well was a good illustration of the Oberth Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect). A Scott Manley video explaining how it works in KSP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEra14FVD4o).

[AmberVael]

Probably the most impressive thing I've done so far though is my Mach 8 Glider.

Didn't comment on this before, but I felt I should- that IS pretty impressive. How exactly does it work? I mean, you call it a glider, but you need SOME method of getting up to those speeds. What does it use? What exactly qualifies it as a glider as opposed to a plane or a jet?


You have to be very careful where you have the centre of mass of a plane compared to the centre of lift (there's a button in the hangar that shows both)--you need one in front of the other, and if you have it one way round the plane will actually be flyable, and if it's the other way round it's impossible to control, as you discovered. Problem is, I can't remember which way round it has to be!
Hm, okay. I will try and fiddle around with that next time I make a plane. Thanks!


Thor LP (http://www.youtube.com/user/watchnasatvcom?feature=playlist) is a YouTuber with a series calles KSP: Insane Rockets Division (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaAaXnRVJRmCmmPeC7f6xQ6kOW4V66y8z) where basically he builds some wacky construct, then spends the rest of the episode modifying it until it actually flies! (most of the time).
Oh, I remember watching some of those those. It was very entertaining.


Yup. Had to get the full version. This is one of the best games I've played this year (somewhere between Deponia and Portal 2).

That said, about three out of four of my vehicles still fail to get out of the atmosphere.
Heh, yeah, that's how KSP tends to go. You'll learn though.
Generally, it doesn't take a lot to break atmo. I recommend trying a very minimal craft- command module, some SAS, and maybe two very small stages of liquid fuel and engines. In learning the smaller designs and what makes them stable, you'll figure out how to translate that into much larger rockets that can get further.

Or you know, you could just slap a ton of engines (http://imageshack.us/a/img843/7717/13z9.jpg) on your rocket and then land on the mun anyway. (http://imageshack.us/a/img825/9580/zv3y.jpg)


I finally landed on the mun rather than horribly crashing on it! Wooo! Now I can see what there is to see, use some instruments, awkwardly drop my last stage so it looks like my lander is lopsided... (http://imageshack.us/a/img94/7159/wdqw.jpg)
Note: There isn't anything to see on the mun, really.

[Eldan]

Heh. I tried the "giant stack of solid boosters". Never managed to make it stable, but man did it produce a lot of thrust.

Had to share this one.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/6536/1t11.png

Note that there were originally two more stages that are now entirely gone.

[AmberVael]

Heh. I tried the "giant stack of solid boosters". Never managed to make it stable, but man did it produce a lot of thrust.

Would you believe that those 18 solid fuel engines barely even lift that rocket off the ground? It is a crazy heavy rocket. Combined with the seven mainsail rocket engines though, they carry the thing quite a ways.


Also, collapsed on the landing pad, eh? Amusing how it managed to do it so neatly. :smalltongue:

One thing I'll note is just how many fins you've got on there. And what you may note about mine is that it lacks any kind of fins and just attempts to look like a bell curve. It has been my observation that fins, especially when combined with some SAS, tend to gum up the works more than they help. It flails them all around, which makes you less stable, so it flails around even more... better to go without, if you can.

[AgentPaper]

Didn't comment on this before, but I felt I should- that IS pretty impressive. How exactly does it work? I mean, you call it a glider, but you need SOME method of getting up to those speeds. What does it use? What exactly qualifies it as a glider as opposed to a plane or a jet?

Well, here's a picture of it in the SPH:

http://imageshack.us/a/img853/4857/aiu.png

For those not in "the know", there's currently a bug in the aerodynamics system where if you flap your control surfaces up and down, it produces a bit of thrust. Do that quickly enough, with enough surfaces, on a small enough craft, and you get, well...Mach 8 Gliders. :smalltongue:


Edit: On a less exploity note, I've also had some fun making this:

http://imageshack.us/a/img46/2447/6p2.pnghttp://imageshack.us/a/img543/6977/1vg.png

It has 12 probes, and can launch all of them into a stable orbit, from which point each of them can be maneuvered into whatever orbits you want. Great for setting up a communications network without having to send up each probe individually. It doesn't leave any debris in space either: The lower stages are jettisoned before a stable orbit, and the central stage can de-orbit itself as well after releasing the probes.



Edit2: Well, that was pretty interesting. While testing out a new rocket designed to apply my probe array technology to military purposes (more on that later), I looked up and saw...this:

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/6969/9hr.png

Yes, that is a full Munar eclipse of Kerbol. I didn't even know that could happen in this game.

[Storm Bringer]

ok, stupid question of the day time;

how did you make that nosecone? I havn't a clue how to do that.

[AgentPaper]

ok, stupid question of the day time;

how did you make that nosecone? I havn't a clue how to do that.

That would be one of the mods I mentioned earlier: KW Rocketry (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/33168-20-2-KW-Rocketry-2-4)

We should probably have a list of common mods in the first post. I'm currently running:

MechJeb (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/12384-PART-0-20-Anatid-Robotics-MuMech-MechJeb-Autopilot-v2-0-8)
Mission Controller (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/34026-0-20-2-Mission-Controller-v0-6-%2806-13-2013%29-ALPHA)
Kethane (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/23979-Kethane-Pack-0-5-1-Two-new-parts-particle-effects-shareable-deposit-files-more%21)
KW Rocketry (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/33168-20-2-KW-Rocketry-2-4)
Kerbal Attachment System (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25563-0-20-KAS-v0-3-1-Kerbal-Attachment-System)
Ioncross Crew Support (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/26935-0-20-Ioncross-Crew-Support-Plugin)
KSPX (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30472-KSPX-Kerbal-Stock-Part-eXpansion-mod-reposted)
Damned Robotics (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/9675-v0-19-Damned-Robotics-Version-1-3)
Extraplanetary Launchpads (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35217-0-20-x-Extraplanetary-Launchpads)
Caterpillar Tracks (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35147-Rubber-Band-Inc-Caterpillar-Tracks-Alpha)

[Jimorian]

We should probably have a list of common mods in the first post. I'm currently running:

Excellent idea. I pasted your list into the first post. :smallsmile:

[Eldan]

Hmm. Mods. I'll have to look into those later.

I now have a satellite with sixteen of the largest solar sails on it in orbit. Man was that a pain to get up. The rockets couldn't go over about 3 G or the arms of the satellite part would just snap like a twig. still got it up, though.

Now Im' trying planes. My first three prototypes immediately backflip when I try to lift off.

[Impnemo]

Deadly Reentry (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32342-Deadly-Reentry-2-2d)
Ferram Aerospace (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/20451-0-20-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-9-5-1-Aerodynamics-Fixes-For-Planes-Rockets)
Chatterer (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25367-0-20-2-Chatterer-v-0-4-1)


edit: almost forgot - RCS build aid (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35996-0-20-*-RCSBuildAid-0-1-Helper-plugin-for-balanced-placement-of-RCS-thrusters)

[nhbdy]

Good to see this game getting a thread here, it is an amazing game that I have had a ton of joy playing with, though my lastest project has been to refine a fuel tanker design for lifting my excessive wants into orbit (a full orange w/ an RCS tank on top (rockomax size) for docking/storage)... my last one was.... unstable? ~45% of the time it would suffer rapid unplanned diss-assembly and fail to make orbit, but on the plus side, it never left debris! (gotta love probes to de-orbit stages that are no longer needed)

EDIT: and once I can stop being lazy and do that, I plan on building a few stations in interplanetary space just outside of kerbin's SOI (matching it's orbit so they stay close) for use in further exploration, kinda a silly idea, but I think it sounds like fun, and deep space stations are always cool in my book

EDIT EDIT: also thought I may share some albums of my station launches so far (for this file)
initial launch: http://imgur.com/a/azqf1

escape pods: http://imgur.com/a/Rtv0d

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Been playing this since .18 came out, and I got to say it's worth every damn penny.

I do...however see two problems with the OP:

1. You failed to note Macey Dean (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzHLUXIFiY) in the list of Youtubers. SACRILEGE. :smalltongue: The man is the unquestioned Lord of KSP. In the linked video, he carried out an orbital war, and in his current videos, he has landed a colony on Laythe, complete with a defense force. And he did it via aerobraking, without correction, all the way from Kerbin. Holy Crap Baskets!

2. You seem to have MechPleb MechJeb listed as a mod, as opposed to CHEATING. Kindly make the correction (or note how people shouldn't start with it!).

BUT! Let's be constructive here. For one thing, let me just save everyone here a load of trouble: Build Asparagus (not sure if in tutorials). Asparagus Staging is where the side rockets on a larger rocket each have a fuel line pumping their fuel in as seen here:
http://i.imgur.com/kh7BN.png
If you activate all rockets in an Asparagus formation, and then detach them in the given order, you're fuel efficiency is amazing!

Some pics of my space program:

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s231/sithlord7/screenshot158_zps8c1b11ec.png
A successful moon-lander...that was only equipped for orbit...

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s231/sithlord7/screenshot157_zpsdb036cf8.png
Same ship on the landing pad.

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s231/sithlord7/screenshot28_zps1cf7162e.png
My first Space Station Habitation Module. Status: Consumed by The Kraken.

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s231/sithlord7/screenshot78_zps20f24b7c.png
Experimental Rover Design (utter crap for steering).

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s231/sithlord7/screenshot53_zpsd32ccd9f.png
The Symbol of Kerbin Space Dominance (not seen: plaque reading: If you can read this, you are never going home).

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s231/sithlord7/screenshot1_zps9fb5bd87.png
Current ISS Habitation Module. Destroyed by Mass Drivers (stock-part missiles) without 'Quicksave' functioning properly.

[AgentPaper]

2. You seem to have MechPleb MechJeb listed as a mod, as opposed to CHEATING. Kindly make the correction (or note how people shouldn't start with it!).

Really don't. MechJeb is no more cheating than using ASAS is cheating. Yes, it helps you fly and plan out maneuvers, and can even take over some of the mundane tasks for you, such as Very Simple Launch #438. There's certainly merit in turning it off and piloting things manually from time to time, but because it's fun, not because it's the only "legitimate" way to do things.

Personally, the fun of the game for me is almost all in the design and engineering aspects, not in the piloting, so I use mechjeb fairly often. I also don't use save states whatsoever, again out of preference, so mechjeb helps me to avoid messing up and losing a mission.

[factotum]

Now Im' trying planes. My first three prototypes immediately backflip when I try to lift off.

Centre of lift forward of centre of mass, like I said earlier--get that moved backward and it'll work a lot better.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Really don't. MechJeb is no more cheating than using ASAS is cheating. Yes, it helps you fly and plan out maneuvers, and can even take over some of the mundane tasks for you, such as Very Simple Launch #438. There's certainly merit in turning it off and piloting things manually from time to time, but because it's fun, not because it's the only "legitimate" way to do things.

Personally, the fun of the game for me is almost all in the design and engineering aspects, not in the piloting, so I use mechjeb fairly often. I also don't use save states whatsoever, again out of preference, so mechjeb helps me to avoid messing up and losing a mission.

I personally find designing and flying ships to be equally fun, so I tend to dislike Mechjeb on that arguement (but I'm not one to be too upset over people having fun :smalltongue:). I've also been soured on it due to...let's be civil and just leave it at: certain "aggressive" members of the staff/community who develop KSP, and their several attitudes ("astronauts = meat-puppets").

I really only meant #2 in jest. I generally take part in the non-official KSP Forum, the one on the Unmentionable Site, so that's probably why I made the comment. It's something of a sore subject with them, and an endless source of hilarity.

Also, I linked to Macey Dean. I feel like that absolves me from everything ever. :smallbiggrin:

[Eldan]

Centre of lift forward of centre of mass, like I said earlier--get that moved backward and it'll work a lot better.

Just built a new arrangement, three paralell fuselages , downward sloping wings with the landing gear at the tips and lot of wing area. Got into the air easily, currently it's crusing along on SAS and seems to be doing perfectly fine.

These things have enormous amonts of fuel, don't they?


Now I'm tempted to build a gigantic plane and use that to bring my spaceships into the upper atmosphere and launch them there. Or just attach some rockets to a plane and detach the wings and engines once I've done the fuel intensive parts of launching.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Now I'm tempted to build a gigantic plane and use that to bring my spaceships into the upper atmosphere and launch them there. Or just attach some rockets to a plane and detach the wings and engines once I've done the fuel intensive parts of launching.

Just build a space plane. I have't got one up, but I'm told it's a game of patience. Attach rockets and jet engines, but only run the jets until you slowly (45 degrees?) hit 20,000 meters, then cut engines, throttle rockets and drive that sucker straight up! I've seen some people manage much higher, like another 10 to 20,000 meters.

Pro tip: A single jet engine is more stable than two, especially if one of them suffers blow out. Then, voila! A Spaceship, that is also a Plane!

[Eldan]

There she is. Icarus I. I'm trying to use her to bring up a small base module for a space station. Just a pod and some solar panels with some connectors. The wings and jets can be blown off, as can the landing gear.

http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/2160/22pj.png

[Eldan]

As predicted, the wings just ripped itself off.

That's my main critique on this game, by the way. Airplane design is extermely complicated. Half the time, I feel as if I'm fighting my own computer and I can almost never get it to attach the parts where I want them, no matter how much rotating and sliding things up and down a milimeter at a time I do. Some parts always don't attach to each other or refuse not to stand at a 3° angle.

[Zorg]

I don't even try at spaceplanes, not my skillset.

Well, I successfully probulated Duna:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1701-34-46-53_zpsf7b5b925.jpg

and saw a partial Eclipse:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1701-40-02-75_zpse150701c.jpg

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1701-40-12-60_zpsfcb916c8.jpg

and landed a large rover on the Mun:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1701-51-45-55_zpsa75f5e92.jpg

I call it the MCR, or Munar Command Rover. It's quite stable at up to around 15m/s, but over that you have to be careful turning. It also has low ground clearance, so when going laterally over a crest you can bottom out the centre section and do some critical damage (blew out a couple of batteries).

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1702-11-26-61_zpse6109d7a.jpg

Unfortunately I edited it slightly and lost two very important bits: the crew ladder on the back (not so bad) and the horizontal RCS thrusters for braking assist. Tapping 'B' at over about 4m/s causes it to lock up on the front wheels and pitch forward alarmingly.
Braking at 28m/s results in a 1080 degree frontflip :smalleek:

Hanbus totally nailed the landing though :smallcool:

[Eldan]

I guess after a stable satellite, a moon landing would be next. I've managed to get into orbit around the moon on some of my first flights, but never tried landing.

[Zorg]

If you can get to the mun you can land - it's getting back that's the tricky part :smalltongue: I landed a Kerbal on Minmus before getting a proper satellite around anything other than Kerbin as it requires much more accuracy (unless you want to land on a very particular spot).

[factotum]

Minmus is probably a better first target than the Mun--it takes a bit more effort and orbital messing around to reach it, true, but the actual landing is a piece of cake; the nice low-lying blue areas are all at 0 altitude, so if you aim for those you don't need to worry about coming down on a mountain and hitting the ground when your altitude still reads 2000m, and the gravity is so light you can get into orbit using just the manned manoeuvring thrusters on a Kerbal spacesuit!

As far as the rover tipping over thing is concerned, try putting yourself into Docking Mode while driving one. The problem is that the WSAD controls which operate the wheels also operate the normal pitch and yaw controls, and that tends to cause some trouble--if you're in docking mode you can have the Linear mode set, so the controls aren't trying to tip your rover over at the same time as turning it!

[Zorg]

For the screenshots I didn't have it in docking but for driving I do normally. It still has stability issues, but I think that's just a general terrain issue.

[The Succubus]

It's probably where I've been seeing too much of Kevak lately but I initially read this as "Kobolds in Space." :smalleek:

Looks awfully fun though. Might pick up a copy soon. =3

[Cikomyr]

Is it weird that I had more fun with the demo than the full thing?

The full game is just.. overwhelming in term of the quantity of components. I have no idea what I should use...

[Eldan]

After many, many explosions and ripped wings, behold:

USC Icarus VII!

http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/6554/am20.png

Edit: I know what you mean about the demo. In fact, I'd recommend starting with the Demo and playing that for a few days. Getting things into stable orbit and so on. The full components are too overwhelming.

[nhbdy]

Is it weird that I had more fun with the demo than the full thing?

The full game is just.. overwhelming in term of the quantity of components. I have no idea what I should use...

had the same thought when I first upgraded, but you get used to it over time, and the increase in parts means more possibilities, eventually you get to the point where you know exactly what you WANT to use (though not necessarily what you should use) and it becomes more fun than the demo.... and I REALLY enjoy docking... and mods...

[Zorg]

So I landed some dudes on Duna:

The MCRD1 'Dauntless':

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1803-08-22-80_zps782a988a.jpg

Crew of three: Commander Nelemy Kerman, Pilot / Engineer Shepke Kerman and Science / Comms officer Richbles Kerman.

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1803-08-36-71_zps39c9e7d9.jpg

Yes, it looks awesome ( :smalltongue: ) but it is a royal PITA to get down to the surface! Five chutes and a skycrane and it still took four attempts to get a non-explodey and/or upside down landing - and that's with ten practice runs on Kerbal too. Still blew all six tyres and ripped off a few non-essential bits of equipment.

It drives well, and if you gun the throttle you can pop a wheelie too :smallcool: Also the command section at the back can easily be removed in the VAB and replaced with things like fuel tanks (good luck landing that!) or the hitchhiker container (my first thought but then I decided I liked having a window & interior view.
The Mk2 will have an improved skycrane and a few minor tweaks, but overall very pleased if I do say so myself :smallbiggrin:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r314/Gotthammer/KSP2013-06-1803-10-42-57_zps048e8625.jpg

After going back into the game to get screenshots I then hit "end flight" :smalleek: Luckily I had a quicksave... back in orbit... :smallsigh: On the plus side I get to land somewhere new and exciting. Might try and find one of those giant canyons...

[dethkruzer]

Has anyone had any performance hiccups with this game? I have, on at least two seperate instances, suffered a seemingly unprovoked BSOD while playing the two latest versions.

[AgentPaper]

Has anyone had any performance hiccups with this game? I have, on at least two seperate instances, suffered a seemingly unprovoked BSOD while playing the two latest versions.

I did have a BSOD just yesterday, actually. That's the first and only time it's happened so far, but it is a bit worrying.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

I keep being returned to desktop. My game keeps playing, so it's only a button-click away, but it's really annoying in the middle of a delicate docking sequence for the game to CTD, leaving my thrusters going, and causing a massive orbital collision.

[Eldan]

It has crashed once or twice. But not badly or regularly.

That said, it requires insane amounts of RAM for me. 1.5 to 2 GB of RAM, at least.


In other news, Icarus X is my first space plane prototype to get off the runway. Its thrust is still only about 1G, it can barely be steered at all, I need to constantly pull up in order to avoid nosediving and I run out of fuel about 6K above ground, but I'm getting there.

And for all that, I still need six jets and two boosters.

[dethkruzer]

I did have a BSOD just yesterday, actually. That's the first and only time it's happened so far, but it is a bit worrying.

I personally find it worrying, since I only recall having experiencing one BSOD that happened outside of KSP, and i've had my computer from around 2008.

The two latest BSODs have had the screen flash black a few times, occasionally showing the borders of the KSP window, or the bottom edge toolbar on my desktop, before giving me a BSOD for a few seconds, after which the computer proceeds to reboot in a painfully slow process.

Although there was one time when the screen flashed black a few times, before complaining that the screen isn't getting any signal, meanwhile the speakers produce this terribly loud static noise. on this instance I had to manually power-down the computer and turn it back on.

These problems seem to come up most often while assembling vehicles.

[Jimorian]

Zorg, that rover looks awesome!

I get fairly frequent crashes. Error is always "CantGetCurrentThread" or something like that. Fortunately, the game auto saves frequently enough where it's not too annoying, but there doesn't seem to be a pattern. It's done it in the middle of lots of keypresses, sometimes when starting up, and also when simply idling, both in foreground and background.

[Eldan]

Finally found out how to make my space planes lift off more "easily".

By accident. For some reason, Icarus X was always driving slightly to the right and off the runway. So I thought, why not, put the engine at about 10% trust, turned all the rudders to the side and proceeded to gently roll of the runway and curve around in the opposing direction.

Now I have a near infinite runway to gain ground speed on *and* I can use hills as ramps.

[Cikomyr]

I do know that this game makes my laptop to become hotter than my girlfriend..

and not to brag, but that is not easy feat.



Btw, overheat so much it shuts down, even in eco-mode with a lapfan.

[Jimorian]

Yeah, physics engine optimization is a really big task ahead for the developers, even though they've already streamlined some things. I read that lag caused from too many parts/objects in the engine is a CPU issue, not GPU, so there's a real limit on craft or space station size for a lot of people even with normally powerful game machines.

[Grif]

Finally got my first probe in orbit, after some finagling with the smaller rokkits. :smallbiggrin:

Now if only I can bring the poor Kerbal back...

[nhbdy]

Finally got my first probe in orbit, after some finagling with the smaller rokkits. :smallbiggrin:

Now if only I can bring the poor Kerbal back...

manned... PROBE?!?!?

Rescue mission time? (it's much easier if the kerbal has EVA fuel)

[Grif]

manned... PROBE?!?!?

Rescue mission time? (it's much easier if the kerbal has EVA fuel)

Might as well put the grunts to work eh? :smallamused:

(That and I just belatedly realised I used the space airplane command module instead. Pfft.)

[Hawriel]

I finally mashed my first probe into Mun yesterday.

[Avilan the Grey]

I finally mashed my first probe into Mun yesterday.

Manned? :smallbiggrin:

[factotum]

I need to constantly pull up in order to avoid nosediving

It's possible to "lock in" the pitch control so it's constantly pulling up for you--I forget how you do it, though!

[Trekkin]

Oh man, KSP. If it weren't for Squad, it'd be my favorite space sim.

I'm trying at the moment to cycle through my Kerbals until Bill, Jeb, and Bob show up, then send them to every planet in the system without landing back on Kerbin. Even with docking, it's the sort of thing that has in the past resulted in unplanned lithobraking; somehow I rarely run out of fuel except when trying to slow down.

[Eldan]

I think I'm giving up on Space Planes for a while. There's so much stuff left to do with rockets and they are just too complicated.

That said, this game is a great learning tool. I think I learned more about various mechanical subjects here than in all my university physics courses. I'm a biologist. I never thought I'd care this deeply about the structural integrity of some struts.

[Trekkin]

Have you considered vertical launch spaceplanes?

A lot of the finicky nature of spaceplanes stems from KSP's lift/drag model; if I recall correctly it's fairly high priority for improvement. In the meantime, jet engines make great first stages for lightweight rockets, and gliders at least fly relatively intuitively.

[dethkruzer]

I just finished futzing around with 2-stage space planes, and I actually got it to around 20 kilometers with the first stage befor the intake air ran out, and this wasn't even going at a 45 degree angle, I just shot straight up after getting my landing gears of the runway. The second stage I got up to about 45 kilometers before I stopped the experiment and attempted re-entry.

[Eldan]

Huh. I rebuilt from the ground up into Icarus XII and for some reason, I went straight out the other end.

Too much thrust and backflips off the runway.

[nhbdy]

And for those that enjoy modding as much as I do, I just realized that my favorite mod was not listed here, the B9 aerospace pack: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25241-0-20-2-B9-Aerospace-Pack-R3-2-New-pods-IVAs-engines-fuselages-structures

[Leon]

I was playing Kerbal ICBM Program for a long time tonight ~ MultiStage Booster rockets arcing off all over the place and exploding in big effects.


A friend of mine sent me his files to make a SR71. I cant get it off the runway intact but it looks cool, did however get a Pre-made jet off the ground and land it again.

[The Valiant Turtle]

One thing that helped me immensely was realizing that you only need big rockets for big jobs and most of us tend to over-build at first. Sure you eventually need the big guys, but there's quite a lot you can do with small ships. This is really eye opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KmW39zzYt8

He flies a rocket to Gilly, which is a moon of another planet, and returns safely to Kerbin (with a stop at Minmus just because he happens to get close). The amazing thing is the entire rocket has 5 parts (it was a reddit challenge): A 1-man pod, a small Rockomax tank, a nuclear engine, a big orange tank and a mainsail. The only real difficulty he has is takeoff without flight control surfaces. The landings without gear are moderately difficult, but he pulls them off, including safe return to Kerbin. The part where he separates by just firing the engine and blowing up the stuff below it is pretty hilarious. Admittedly, he's Scott Manley, and he's awesome.

[AgentPaper]

Yup, often it's best to stay small. For example, here's a pic of my rocket that sent a (small) rover to Eve:

http://imageshack.us/a/img211/8606/2to.pnghttp://imageshack.us/a/img707/9915/iuv.png

As you can see, it comes in at just under 25 tons, and doesn't even use asparagus staging*. The first two stages get the thing into orbit, and then the rest of the maneuvers are done by the top stage.


*Which, while nice, really isn't as awesome as much of the community seems to think. It's better than pancake staging but not by a huge amount. Once aerodynamics become more realistic, it'll be even less of a difference, and if anything pancake staging will likely become better. I've started to shy away from it even now because it leaves a lot of mess around and too often ejecting the stages causes explosions.

[Hawriel]

Manned? :smallbiggrin:

Sadly no. :smallamused:

edit.

On asparagus staging. I think long term it will not be the best option. When a campaign mode is implemented it will be a log more experience to do. Especially with disposable rockets.

[AmberVael]

The part where he separates by just firing the engine and blowing up the stuff below it is pretty hilarious.

Seems like sound Kerbal design practice to me. :smalltongue:

What really impressed me was his ability to land that absurd contraption. I haven't managed to land safely back on Kerbin with a proper lander, let alone a top heavy piece of crap like that. The Mun is hard enough to land on, and it has low gravity.

[factotum]

The amazing thing is the entire rocket has 5 parts (it was a reddit challenge): A 1-man pod, a small Rockomax tank, a nuclear engine, a big orange tank and a mainsail.

Building that way does actually offer some advantages, though--less parts means less weight and less fuel required to get the thing into space. For instance, if Scott had built the lander at the top in the normal way (with at least landing legs, a ladder and a proper separator to split the stages) would the big tank and Mainsail have been enough to start it on its way? For that matter, would the nuclear engine have provided enough thrust for it to land at its destination with it being heavier?

[AgentPaper]

Building that way does actually offer some advantages, though--less parts means less weight and less fuel required to get the thing into space. For instance, if Scott had built the lander at the top in the normal way (with at least landing legs, a ladder and a proper separator to split the stages) would the big tank and Mainsail have been enough to start it on its way? For that matter, would the nuclear engine have provided enough thrust for it to land at its destination with it being heavier?

A ladder wouldn't have added anything, but legs would have saved him a bit of fuel whenever he landed, since he could land at a higher speed rather than needing to slow down to a snail's pace or risk having his engine explode. This wouldn't have saved much for landing on gilly (where you land at a snails pace anyways), but it would have helped on Kerbin, and incidentally would also have prevented the last-minute tip and crash.

The separator would also have saved him all the fuel he spent to blow up the large tank. The separators weight little enough that he almost certainly would have gotten more delta-V if he had one.

Overall these things probably would reduce your range, but not by an appreciable amount, and it's absolutely worth packing them to make it less likely that you fail catastrophically.

On the other hand, there definitely is something that many rockets would be better off without: RCS. Too often I'll see rockets with huge reserves of RCS, when for the most part you don't need any. Small manned ships especially don't need RCS whatsoever, even for docking, since you can spin around just fine without it using the torque from your command module.

[Eldan]

Someone talked about ICBMs. I thought I'd build a Rod from God instead. Well, kind of, I can't find anything dense and heavy enough to be a tungsten rod. But I'm building a station with large fuel tanks attached. Each tank can be detached and has a tiny engine pointing upwards instead.

[Trekkin]

On the other hand, there definitely is something that many rockets would be better off without: RCS. Too often I'll see rockets with huge reserves of RCS, when for the most part you don't need any. Small manned ships especially don't need RCS whatsoever, even for docking, since you can spin around just fine without it using the torque from your command module.

You can spin, yes, but how do you move orthagonally to your engines' thrust vector? Maybe it's just me, but I'm used to docking by establishing the relative orientation of the docking ports first, then flying on RCS until I'm lined up, then using the engines to close the distance.

That's really the only time I use it other than landing, though. Come to think of it, since I switched to nuclear engines in nacelles I don't need RCS on my interplanetary ships, just on my landers and the little nuclear tugs I use to build them in orbit.

Thanks; you just saved me several tons!

[factotum]

A ladder wouldn't have added anything, but legs would have saved him a bit of fuel whenever he landed

I haven't done the experiment, but I'm pretty sure the additional fuel required to accelerate or decelerate the extra mass of the legs (particularly during a landing) would far outweigh any minimal savings you'd get by being able to land a few metres per second faster.

[Eldan]

Ah, that embarassing moment when you notice that you've successfully completed the first four stages of your moonlanding and then blown off your lander because you put your separators in the wrong place.

[dethkruzer]

Ah, that embarassing moment when you notice that you've successfully completed the first four stages of your moonlanding and then blown off your lander because you put your separators in the wrong place.

Yeah, I'd recommend testing out all stages at least once in kerbins atmosphere before doing the actual flight

[Jimorian]

I'm finally putting into action the plan for my station in high Jool orbit. Here's the first train with the station frame, 2 large fuel tanks for the trip (and hopefully some left over), the nuclear tug to move it all, and 2 small tugs on the head and tail to shift everything around once it arrives.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/85a10466-e70f-4505-b9fd-0f9d90205743_zps9684963c.jpg

It's in its trajectory towards Jool now, and just about to reach Minmus orbit. But instead of warping to rendezvous right away, I'm now building and launching the support fleet to follow it to complete the station and fuel it up. That way I'm not having to wait for proper Jool opposition for each flight.

Here's the Kerbin orbit station to show it when it's "complete". 4 orange tanks and an RCS stack (with multi-dock extension) on the bottom for permanent fuel storage, 4 small tugs, a heavy orange tug, and a nuclear tug all docked to it.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/2fe0d298-60b7-4eab-b7ff-4fa981721252_zps1d4089c3.jpg

[Cikomyr]

.... that's impressive..

Do you ever need to refuel the station? How fuel-efficient are your fuel tank mission?

[nhbdy]

That is completely awe inspiring, on a completely unrelated, yet highly amusing note, there's a mod for using nuclear weapons as launch fuel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwrLR2kv5KA

[Eldan]

Man that's awesome. I love how every explosion lights up the entire night half of the planet.

[Cikomyr]

It's pretty cool. But is he using a maneuver-maker?

[Mando Knight]

Yup, often it's best to stay small.
As your payload weight goes up, the required fuel also increases. As the required fuel increases, so does the structural mass. Since the structure has weight, you have to factor in that mass increase to your fuel budget...

*Which, while nice, really isn't as awesome as much of the community seems to think. It's better than pancake staging but not by a huge amount. Once aerodynamics become more realistic, it'll be even less of a difference, and if anything pancake staging will likely become better. I've started to shy away from it even now because it leaves a lot of mess around and too often ejecting the stages causes explosions.
There's a reason vertically stacked stages are more common than asparagus stages in real rockets, after all... (also, such stages are much simpler to produce)

[Eldan]

Well, I just successfully smashed my first lander into the mun.

Because I can't manage to get enough fuel on it. I ran out of fuel, including everything for the return trip, just to get into a descending moon orbit. I keep packing more rockets on the thing and just burning up everything just to get into orbit. Oh, well, back to planning. It's farther than I ever got. 90% of my landers can't get out of Kerbal orbit.

[nhbdy]

Well, I just successfully smashed my first lander into the mun.

Because I can't manage to get enough fuel on it. I ran out of fuel, including everything for the return trip, just to get into a descending moon orbit. I keep packing more rockets on the thing and just burning up everything just to get into orbit. Oh, well, back to planning. It's farther than I ever got. 90% of my landers can't get out of Kerbal orbit.

are you perchance just building your landers too big? because most of the people I see struggling are building landers far bigger than needed, for scale, I can make a mun landing and return mission using only demo parts, you really don't need much, it's all in efficiency.

[Mando Knight]

The Apollo Lunar Modules were quite small themselves... the whole thing was just under 14.7 metric tons, and two thirds of that were the descent stage. The CSM that ferried it into place was only about twice that.

That's another trick you can try: use a CSM to tow your lander into orbit.

[Trekkin]

What does your ascent profile look like, Eldan?

Also, where in the trip are you staging and how are you planning to intersect the Mun's sphere of influence?

It sounds to me like you're starting the gravity turn too late or with too low a thrust-to-weight ratio.

[Eldan]

I found it rather easy to get into a Mun-orbit once I got into Kerbal orbit. That part was easy. In fact, I find that generally, I don't have much of a problem understanding how I have to change orbits.

The problem was getting up there. My moon vehicle is really quite basic. The smallest capsule, four small side engines, one of the smallest fuel tanks, four lander legs. It should be enough to land on the Mun and then get back to Kerbal.

But, well.
It seems to need giant amounts of fuel to get anything into orbit. I started with four small-sized engines then started scaling up from there to see what I'd need to get the lander into a good orbit and then on a Mun trajectory. Now I'm building with three exponentially growing stages, the lowest of which is four of hte giant orange tanks with Mainsail engines and 16 of the largest boosters. And I still barely get to the Mun before running out of fuel.

[AgentPaper]

You need ~8000 delta-V to go to the moon and back.

If you're having trouble, you might want to look at an existing design for inspiration. This guide (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Apollo_11) for example provides you with the details of a ship can can do it, plus step by step instructions for how to do all the maneuvers.

If you don't want to do a step by step guide, I would suggest posting screenshots here of your designs so that we can give more accurate advice. Use F1 to take screenshots.

[Trekkin]

http://i.imgur.com/a4IYKUN.jpg

Here. I flew it to the Mun and back manually; MechJeb is just there to show the delta-v. Getting into orbit eats into stage 3's fuel; by that point you have around 1000 m/s to crash into the Mun, and another ~2900 to land, take off, and crash back into Kerbin. The whole thing is overbuilt by a factor of at least two.

Now, when I fly manually, there's a feeling of spontaneity to the whole trip: I'm going to reach another celestial body, but I'm not sure which one. I twitch the throttle from "the engines are overheating" to "the engines exploded" in lieu of gradual thrust adjustment, I forget to turn until halfway through a burn, and I generally skip all the nice things like orbits and just aim for things until the map says I'll hit them, then take the appropriate steps to not die. I am a horrible space pilot. If I can still get something that small to the Mun and back, you know it's too heavy for the job.

[factotum]

The problem was getting up there. My moon vehicle is really quite basic. The smallest capsule, four small side engines, one of the smallest fuel tanks, four lander legs. It should be enough to land on the Mun and then get back to Kerbal.


Does it really need four engines? Would a single bottom-mounted engine be lighter? If you're really struggling, you could always do what NASA were originally planning to do for the Moon mission before they decided to go with the single massive rocket approach--namely, an Earth orbit rendezvous; put up several separate ships into Kerbin orbit and get them to hook up together. Multiple launches means each one can be smaller. In the case of a Mun voyage two ships should be ample; one to actually perform the trans-Munar injection burn, and one as the lander you'll use when you get there.

[Jimorian]

Strangely, I haven't tried any landings yet, so most of you are way beyond me for that. I'm just fascinated by the logistics of space, so putting stations everywhere is a natural extension of that. Of course, once they're in place with all these massive tanks of fuel, all I have to worry about it getting the probes and landers to them and I can top them all off for whatever mission I want. :smallsmile:

Building up my support fleet for the Jool station.

Train with the 3 extra fuel tanks, RCS lower extention, and 2 tugs being pulled by a 4-nuke-engine tug. This will be enough to "complete" the station, but most of the orange tanks will be empty by then. When it was full, it weighed in at 184 tonnes.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/870182f7-1ba8-483e-aa63-58dc5a973179_zpsc7fadce3.jpg

So here's 1 of the resupply tanks I'll send with the fleet. No idea yet how many I'll need to top off the station, though it's looking like it will get there with maybe half the fuel left, so perhaps 6 will do.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/a4a1fc5b-6b66-4f23-822e-ee21bded8775_zpsdc4fd1f3.jpg

The main station has left Kerbin influence, but with the nuclear engines, it takes several passes to get enough delta-V for the full trip, so here's the current orbits of the parts train, and 2 fuel tanks (the 3 highly eccentric orbits). That represents about 1/3 of the total delta-V to get to Jool, the rest of which I'll supply on a long burn at Periapsis for each of them. I'll probably have time to get a couple more fuel tanks in orbit while waiting.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/03ec0feb-4cf8-4f5a-96b0-2975a6db71ca_zpsd992ed9b.jpg

[Eldan]

Hm. That seems a solid design, Trekkin. I'm just wondering. No nose cones on your side engines? I mean, half the numbers in the game mean more or less nothing to me, but I'd assume those would be worth it.

Oh, and for the central engine, why three stacked smaller tanks instead of one big one? Is that in some way more efficient?

The four side engines for my lander were mainly for symetry. The way I had it set up, I couldn't place the engine directly under the tank, there were attachment points there. So I placed them around the central fuel tank. Tree might work too, or even two.

[Trekkin]

You'd think they help, but the way drag works, I don't believe they do. I'll just go run off and test it.

EDIT: And the two stacked smaller tanks are so the engines line up nicely to sit on the pad; if I could do 3/4ths of an orange tank I would.

I'm not sure how you're seeing three tanks. above the decoupler is a Poodle engine inside the cowling, and above that is a Rockomax X32 tank. Below it are an X32, an X16, and a Skipper engine.

[Eldan]

Hm. My lander looks almost identical to yours, but yours has more fuel, it seems and a central instead of a side engine. I think I'll follow your lead on that.

[Zorg]

At the moment nosecones are purely cosmetic and only add to your drag. The plan is that they will subtract, but the system can't handle that yet.

[AgentPaper]

http://i.imgur.com/a4IYKUN.jpg

Here. I flew it to the Mun and back manually; MechJeb is just there to show the delta-v. Getting into orbit eats into stage 3's fuel; by that point you have around 1000 m/s to crash into the Mun, and another ~2900 to land, take off, and crash back into Kerbin. The whole thing is overbuilt by a factor of at least two.

Now, when I fly manually, there's a feeling of spontaneity to the whole trip: I'm going to reach another celestial body, but I'm not sure which one. I twitch the throttle from "the engines are overheating" to "the engines exploded" in lieu of gradual thrust adjustment, I forget to turn until halfway through a burn, and I generally skip all the nice things like orbits and just aim for things until the map says I'll hit them, then take the appropriate steps to not die. I am a horrible space pilot. If I can still get something that small to the Mun and back, you know it's too heavy for the job.

Looks like your design is mostly solid, although you definitely have way too much RCS on there. Cut out the large tank, and replace it with 4-8 of the small radial ones. You should only use RCS at all when you're landing, and even then it's not really necessary if you do it right.

More importantly, it sounds like your issue is that you're not transferring to Mun correctly. Pointing yourself at Mun and thrusting will get you there, but is extremely inefficient. This is why you're running out of fuel so early. Orbital mechanics aren't an optional nicety, they're absolutely essential. I would suggest doing some of the tutorials on the wiki to familiarize yourself with them, starting with Luna 9 (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Luna_9), which teaches you how to do a transfer and land on Mun.

[Trekkin]

More importantly, it sounds like your issue is that you're not transferring to Mun correctly.

You're right, but that wasn't the point of the design. Usually I fly with the maneuver nodes and a healthy respect for orbital mechanics; to put this to a more rigorous test, I flew the design there and back by guesswork and overcorrection. I figured if it could survive my least sensible flying style it was probably fairly forgiving so it might make a nice starting point for other people trying to figure out Mun rockets. Sure it's not perfect; I tried to make it easy to fly, not efficient.

The RCS is there for a similar purpose. I don't usually land with it, but back when I was learning how to land, it was great for stopping slight lateral movement without tilting the ship away from vertical. It's there as a big, overly massive, hydrazine-filled security blanket. I mean, I usually land on my engines, too, but again, going for forgiving here. The point was to have enough RCS that someone trying to land it couldn't possibly run out--and enough fuel in the main engine to boost the full RCS tank back into orbit. I never actually used the RCS.:smalltongue:

Also, directly confirmed on the nose cones being worse than useless. They're outperformed by not having anything and on par with random junk of equivalent mass.

[AgentPaper]

You're right, but that wasn't the point of the design. Usually I fly with the maneuver nodes and a healthy respect for orbital mechanics; to put this to a more rigorous test, I flew the design there and back by guesswork and overcorrection. I figured if it could survive my least sensible flying style it was probably fairly forgiving so it might make a nice starting point for other people trying to figure out Mun rockets. Sure it's not perfect; I tried to make it easy to fly, not efficient.

The RCS is there for a similar purpose. I don't usually land with it, but back when I was learning how to land, it was great for stopping slight lateral movement without tilting the ship away from vertical. It's there as a big, overly massive, hydrazine-filled security blanket. I mean, I usually land on my engines, too, but again, going for forgiving here. The point was to have enough RCS that someone trying to land it couldn't possibly run out--and enough fuel in the main engine to boost the full RCS tank back into orbit. I never actually used the RCS.:smalltongue:

Also, directly confirmed on the nose cones being worse than useless. They're outperformed by not having anything and on par with random junk of equivalent mass.

Sorry, I mistook you for Eldan, who was having trouble getting to Mun and back.

[Trekkin]

Oh. Suddenly things make a lot more sense. I think Eldan was having trouble with liftoff, though; I forget which tutorial covers that.

[Eldan]

Oh, I have no problem at all with orbital mechanics so far. I mean, I just burned six orange tanks of fuel and twelve boosters to get into Kerbin orbit, then maybe ten percent of a tiny tank to nudge myself to Mun.

Never tried pointing myself straight there, I went for a wide orbit around Kerbin, then an expanding apoapsis until I was on an approach vector that took me into a very shallow curve around the Mun. A bit of luck, really, but I landed in a fifty kilometer Mun orbit without really trying on my first try.

Then I crashed brutally because I was landing on the night side, couldn't see the ground and had way too much speed.

[nhbdy]

Oh, I have no problem at all with orbital mechanics so far. I mean, I just burned six orange tanks of fuel and twelve boosters to get into Kerbin orbit, then maybe ten percent of a tiny tank to nudge myself to Mun.

Never tried pointing myself straight there, I went for a wide orbit around Kerbin, then an expanding apoapsis until I was on an approach vector that took me into a very shallow curve around the Mun. A bit of luck, really, but I landed in a fifty kilometer Mun orbit without really trying on my first try.

Then I crashed brutally because I was landing on the night side, couldn't see the ground and had way too much speed.

I'd guess your trying to lift something too heavy, or have sub optimal staging then, because with 7 orange tanks I can get a full one, with RCS and a tug sporting twin nuclear engines to low kerbin orbit

[Mando Knight]

Oh, I have no problem at all with orbital mechanics so far. I mean, I just burned six orange tanks of fuel and twelve boosters to get into Kerbin orbit, then maybe ten percent of a tiny tank to nudge myself to Mun.

Are you dropping your extra mass as you use it up? That might help...

[Hawriel]

I finally landed my first probe on Mun. Took me three tries. I then tried to fly it to a near by object ran out of fuel and crashed it.

Now I'm working on an Apollo type capsule.

[factotum]

I'd guess your trying to lift something too heavy, or have sub optimal staging then, because with 7 orange tanks I can get a full one, with RCS and a tug sporting twin nuclear engines to low kerbin orbit

Sounds about right--I know I can get a full orange tank with RCS and a probe body attached into LKO using a five-booster setup. Don't really like to build my boosters bigger than that because of the chances of Fun happening on the way up!

[Eldan]

I must be doing something wrong, anyway. I'll make a second attempt tonight because I think the basic setup is right, I just need to learn how to land.

[Artanis]

Hat Films (whose Minecraft-related stuff might be familiar to some people) have a video of them attempting to play KSP (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzsSK7-yKNU). Their "accomplishments" in the video are the exact opposite of impressive, since one of them is terrible and the other two had never even seen the game before, but it's entertaining as hell to watch.

[Eldan]

Third try, actually managed to get the capsule down to the Mun in one piece. No fuel to get back, though. Adding more boosters.

[Trekkin]

Concerning fuel:

Is there any table or anything out there that lists the delta-V required to get back from low orbit around any planet in the Kerbol system to low Kerbin orbit? I've been using that map that looks like a subway map, but it's telling me around 4.5 km/s delta-v for returning from Jool, and the wiki says only 1.9.

I'm trying to design a reusable module for getting back; the idea is it carries the lander and a drop tank there on the outbound trip, then jettisons both and returns home on an integral fuel tank. I'd like to make it relatively light, but if I have to burn 5 km/s getting home...

[Jimorian]

I haven't checked, but the difference might be re-establishing a parking orbit around Kerbin vs. just ploughing right into the atmosphere for return because you don't have to worry about atmospheric heating for now. So yes, it is probably the higher number for what you have in mind. You can still use atmospheric braking, however, to drastically lower the dV required on board for return.

EDIT: added some mods and YouTubers to OP.

[Trekkin]

Ah, okay. That works, then; I can use the twelve-engine nuclear tug I wanted, so long as I use the shrouded solar panels.

[Jimorian]

Just because you put your engines on backwards doesn't mean you can't get into space (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpbsaypZlhg). :smalltongue:

[Leon]

I had a Kerbal in a sub orbit for 20mins and he lived!
His career was sadly cut short three attempts later when his Rocket disintegrated at 10000m.

I think i have found the cause of a lot of my failures ~ staging has been backward as every time i use it its a horrid mess compared to most of the times i do a simple manual rocket until this last one where i moved it around and put another Kerbal into space for a short amount of time and had him walk away from it

[Trekkin]

Yeah, staging can be finicky. I try to get all my rockets up with two or fewer stages discarded in atmosphere; usually one during the vertical ascent and another during the transit from gravity turn to circularization.

Then I go and do something silly, like this:
http://i.imgur.com/wu46J5C.jpg

That's my reusable twelve-engine nuclear tug for bringing landers to other planets. Very large landers. The engines are so densely packed that when I jettison the fairings, they demolish the other engines; since the central tank's decouplers are so relatively fragile, the only way to get it into space was to build the atmospheric stages on top of it like a 400-ton hat made of fire and structural inadequacy.

You could see the gaps between the parts all the way up; when it contracted after I shut the engines down, I thought something had broken.

[Cikomyr]

Yeah, staging can be finicky. I try to get all my rockets up with two or fewer stages discarded in atmosphere; usually one during the vertical ascent and another during the transit from gravity turn to circularization.

Then I go and do something silly, like this:
http://i.imgur.com/wu46J5C.jpg

That's my reusable twelve-engine nuclear tug for bringing landers to other planets. Very large landers. The engines are so densely packed that when I jettison the fairings, they demolish the other engines; since the central tank's decouplers are so relatively fragile, the only way to get it into space was to build the atmospheric stages on top of it like a 400-ton hat made of fire and structural inadequacy.

You could see the gaps between the parts all the way up; when it contracted after I shut the engines down, I thought something had broken.

Man. If only NASA would consider our suggestions to build the next shuttle...

[Trekkin]

I rather hope not.

I'm not being political here; looking at what NASA wants to do, I'm not sure a replacement vertical-launch reusable sort-of spaceplane is the best solution.

I mean, look at KSP. We don't have to deal with chronic fatigue on parts, radiation, thermal control...we're working with a massively simplified simulation, and even then reusable craft are a pain and a half to put together just because getting things safely back through an atmosphere needs loads of mass and careful design. Rockets that only have to be rockets before they become junk are easier to engineer.

Looking at the real world, if I recall correctly the Shuttle stayed in service as long as it did mainly to build the ISS; with that done, a direct replacement might not suit NASA's needs.

[factotum]

Looking at the real world, if I recall correctly the Shuttle stayed in service as long as it did mainly to build the ISS; with that done, a direct replacement might not suit NASA's needs.

I think the main problem with the Shuttle was that it was built for the requirement to put 30-ton satellites into orbit, and then hardly ever got used for that purpose! If they'd built it smaller, lighter, and with a reduced payload space, it would have been a much easier package to manage and they might actually have achieved their stated intent of getting things into LEO for a few tens of dollars per kilo.

[Impnemo]

The major cost of the shuttle wasnt the shuttle, it was payroll. Techincal tweaks here and there will save money comparatively but unless you can drastically enhance turn around times and launch frequency the over head kills you. And suppose you can, what do you launch that often and why? As long as the focus remains scientific or achievement based youre going to have a very limited scope of missions. Commercially, the only thing we are allowed to do is park satellites in orbit.


http://unoosa.org/oosa/en/FAQ/splawfaq.html#Q6


Can any State claim a part of outer space as its own?

No. The Outer Space Treaty states that outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. The Treaty establishes the exploration and use of outer space as the "province of all mankind". The Moon Agreement expands on these provisions by stating that neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon (or other celestial bodies in the solar system), nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non- governmental entity or of any natural person.

You found a new world Mr Columbus? Well, its a nice place to visit but you arent allowed to live there. So long as it remains the "province of all mankind", mankind ain't going there. Not permanently anyway.








OT detour aside, found this interesting:
http://i.imgur.com/9pJYQSs.jpg

Multiplayer KSP mod. (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24926-0-20-Kerbal-LiveFeed-Passive-Multiplayer-Plugin-Client-Server-v0-6-6)

[Trekkin]

It's not multiplayer; it just overlays other people's flights onto your map view and into picture-in-picture, if I'm reading this right. You can't directly interact with their stuff.

[Impnemo]

See where other people are, what theyre doing, talk to them, observe them, share ships, in game. But not "multiplayer" because you cant collide. 'K. For certain values of multiplayer, true.

[AgentPaper]

See where other people are, what theyre doing, talk to them, observe them, share ships, in game. But not "multiplayer" because you cant collide. 'K. For certain values of multiplayer, true.

Importantly, you can't dock with each other, build a Space Station together, or form up into a Interplanetary Convoy and play tag on Laythe, so no, I wouldn't say that it's actual multiplayer. :smalltongue:

[Impnemo]

By the same token, skies arent clouded with kinetic kill vehicles and anyone can play with any one regardless of modding done. Game + in game community = single player?




As an aside, if you read the thread


I started to experiment with seeing if I could get a Vessel converted as a byte array, to serialize over the network. Basically to add a button like the Screenshot button, to to send your current vessel/spacestation/moonbase over the network. And I have just succeeded (getting it as a byte array that is)

My aim is to allow cooperative building of space stations/bases. After you have attached new modules press the sync button. It sends it across to the other clients they match it against the same station/base. Save their orbit data for it, destroy their instance, recreate the station from the incoming data, but use their saved local orbit data on it.

Of course this isn't perfect, (what happens if you are docked, and someone else hits sync etc). But I think this could be a lot of fun!

So...

[AgentPaper]

By the same token, skies arent clouded with kinetic kill vehicles and anyone can play with any one regardless of modding done. Game + in game community = single player?

Those are nice features, sure, but they don't have any bearing on whether it's actually multiplayer or not.

The other feature you mentioned, though, is much closer to multiplayer, though still not quite.

I'm not trying to say that the system isn't really cool and great, just that it's not multiplayer, and billing it as such is only going to disappoint people and take away from how cool it actually is.

Edit: Also, please put that picture into a spoiler, it's stretching the screen.

[Trekkin]

I'm sorry if I appeared to be dismissive; it really is a wonderful mod.

I've just always looked at the idea of multiplayer in KSP as a series of conceptual challenges. I'm assuming this as the goal: Let's say I have a buddy named Bob with a craft in orbit around, say, Jool. I'm sitting on the pad at KSC. We both want to meet at Duna and dock our ships together, and then...well, that's a good question.

Warp is the first issue, and it's the first thing people ask about multiplayer. The naive solution, running at the lowest requested warp, is manageable for two people with similar objectives; I do my burns while Bob waits, and then time speeds up until Bob burns, then it stops while I do my orbital insertion, then the same for Bob, etc. As you add more people, or as you add more hardware, you end up spending a lot of time just sitting waiting for your friend to move his things. Space flight takes a lot of chronological legerdemain to make into something constantly exciting to control; multiplayer robs us of the best way of implementing that.

Then there's reversion. Gamist, I know, but being able to save and revert is really important for dealing with bugs in the physics computation or avoiding having warp crash you through a planet. Say my launch botches and I want to restart; what happens to any maneuvers Bob has made in the meantime?

And then say we do get there, rendezvous, and dock. Who controls the resultant vessel? How do fuel routing and RCS thrust assignment change? This is a more solvable problem, but there's still a lot of conceptual decisions to be made, and nearly every one is either player decision-intensive or suboptimal in some logistical respect.

The answers to these questions end up determining a lot about what kind of game KSP is trying to be, and what it's trying to emphasize, so I'm always curious what stand a given mod or mod in development is trying to take--and whether or not they answer at all is my determinant of how close to multiplayer it is.

[Eldan]

On my forth try, I finally managed to land a lander on the moon without exploding. It did slide down a hill and break off all its legs, but the engines are still there, as is the fuel tank, so I hope it should get back.

Those capsules from attempts II+III are in no way still full of living Kerbals constantly filling the aether with cries for help.

[Soralin]

http://unoosa.org/oosa/en/FAQ/splawfaq.html#Q6

Can any State claim a part of outer space as its own?

No. The Outer Space Treaty states that outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. The Treaty establishes the exploration and use of outer space as the "province of all mankind". The Moon Agreement expands on these provisions by stating that neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon (or other celestial bodies in the solar system), nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non- governmental entity or of any natural person.
You found a new world Mr Columbus? Well, its a nice place to visit but you arent allowed to live there. So long as it remains the "province of all mankind", mankind ain't going there. Not permanently anyway.
That doesn't say that you can't live there: You don't need to hold ownership or property of an area of land to live there or gather resources there, you only need ownership if you want to prevent other people from doing so. And since no one can hold ownership or have property of those areas, no one has a claim to prevent anyone from living anywhere.

[dethkruzer]

the only way to get it into space was to build the atmospheric stages on top of it like a 400-ton hat made of fire and structural inadequacy.

Can I quote this?

[factotum]

Those capsules from attempts II+III are in no way still full of living Kerbals constantly filling the aether with cries for help.

Well, that gives you an objective...you need to send other landers to rescue these non-existent Kerbals before anyone notices they're not there. :smallwink:

[Trekkin]

Can I quote this?

By all means.

[Impnemo]

That doesn't say that you can't live there: You don't need to hold ownership or property of an area of land to live there or gather resources there, you only need ownership if you want to prevent other people from doing so. And since no one can hold ownership or have property of those areas, no one has a claim to prevent anyone from living anywhere.

Youre not reading that quite right.


The Moon Agreement expands on these provisions by stating that neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon (or other celestial bodies in the solar system), nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non- governmental entity or of any natural person.

When the resources are not yours you may not profit from them nor from refined or developed end product or result. At all, full stop. You may not use resources in space for military or commercial purposes. You can use them for scientific and achievement purposes. You may put a man on the moon for the sake of putting a man on the moon. You may put a man on Mars for the sake of putting a man on Mars. You can even bring rocks back to study in a lab somewhere. You may not bring rocks back for profit, much less anything made from them. If you can not profit from your labor, you will not labor.


If you acquire a resource (fish, oil) in international waters, you take ownership of the resource. This can not happen in space.

[AgentPaper]

-snip-

Edit: Whoops, made a response but actually this is getting into political talk, so I scrubbed myself. I'm sure this is a very complex and interesting topic, but this isn't really the place to talk about it. :smalltongue:

[AMX]

When the resources are not yours you may not profit from them nor from refined or developed end product or result. At all, full stop. You may not use resources in space for military or commercial purposes. You can use them for scientific and achievement purposes. You may put a man on the moon for the sake of putting a man on the moon. You may put a man on Mars for the sake of putting a man on Mars. You can even bring rocks back to study in a lab somewhere. You may not bring rocks back for profit, much less anything made from them. If you can not profit from your labor, you will not labor.

No.
Look up "commons" (as in "Tragedy of the Commons") - property of the entire community, and every member of the community gets to profit from them.
Of course, aforementioned Tragedy illustrates why you need some kind of regulation and oversight... you know, kind of like Article 11, Sections 5 thru 7 of the Moon Treaty...

[Trekkin]

SO I have an odd problem with some of my interplanetary flights: they arrive at their destinations in retrograde orbits, which means more than once I've launched a lander back off the planet surface in the wrong direction.

I know I can just speed up time in Map View and look which way the transit stage is going, but is there any way to tell at a glance which way something's orbiting? It'd be handy to be able to notice I'm going backwards and compensate with the transit stage rather than having to do a Hohmann transfer from retrograde.

[Impnemo]

No.
Look up "commons" (as in "Tragedy of the Commons") - property of the entire community, and every member of the community gets to profit from them.
Of course, aforementioned Tragedy illustrates why you need some kind of regulation and oversight... you know, kind of like Article 11, Sections 5 thru 7 of the Moon Treaty...



K.


An opposing idea, used by the United Nations Moon Treaty, Outer Space Treaty and Law of the Sea Treaty as well as the UNESCO World Heritage Convention involves the international law principle that designates some areas or resources the Common Heritage of Mankind.[28]

Instead we apply the unique "common heritage" approach which is:


Common heritage of mankind (also termed the common heritage of humanity, common heritage of humankind or common heritage principle) is a principle of international law which holds that defined territorial areas and elements of humanity's common heritage (cultural and natural) should be held in trust for future generations and be protected from exploitation by individual nation states or corporations.

...First, there can be no private or public appropriation; no one legally owns common heritage spaces. Second, representatives from all nations must manage resources contained in such a territorial or conceptual area on behalf of all since a commons area is considered to belong to everyone; this practically necessitating a special agency to coordinate shared management. Third, all nations must actively share with each other the benefits acquired from exploitation of the resources from the commons heritage region, this requiring restraint on the profit-making activities of private corporate entities; this linking the concept to that of global public good. Fourth, there can be no weaponry or military installations established in territorial commons areas. Fifth, the commons should be preserved for the benefit of future generations, and to avoid a “tragedy of the commons” scenario.


Any benefit of any activity you do you must share with me. You can not make a profit for yourself through your own actions, because its my resource as well. Even if I cant or wont do anything to acquire that benefit myself, because one of my descendants could at any given future point in perpetuity. No profit, no profit motive, no development, no benefit gained by anyone. As I pointed out, this is a very different approach than that towards resources in international waters.

[Impnemo]

SO I have an odd problem with some of my interplanetary flights: they arrive at their destinations in retrograde orbits, which means more than once I've launched a lander back off the planet surface in the wrong direction.

I know I can just speed up time in Map View and look which way the transit stage is going, but is there any way to tell at a glance which way something's orbiting? It'd be handy to be able to notice I'm going backwards and compensate with the transit stage rather than having to do a Hohmann transfer from retrograde.

IIRC every planet is rotating west-> east right? If youre going solar "up" or out to a farther away planet you want to under shoot and get your encounter behind the target. If you want to go 'down' to a planet you want to overshoot and encounter it ahead of its orbit. Either way the planet should pull you into orbit rotating prograde.

[AMX]

Any benefit of any activity you do you must share with me. You can not make a profit for yourself through your own actions, because its my resource as well. Even if I cant or wont do anything to acquire that benefit myself, because one of my descendants could at any given future point in perpetuity. No profit, no profit motive, no development, no benefit gained by anyone. As I pointed out, this is a very different approach than that towards resources in international waters.

Sharing profit is not the same as giving away all profit.

Also note 11-7(d):

(d) An equitable sharing by all States Parties in the benefits derived from those resources, whereby the interests and needs of the developing countries, as well as the efforts of those countries which have contributed either directly or indirectly to the exploration of the moon, shall be given special consideration.
The ones who invest something get more of the profit.

[Trekkin]

The under-overshoot thing helps, but I was looking more for an easy way to verify orbital direction from the map that didn't involve just speeding the thing up and watching it.

Although I suppose I could always switch to it and check the Navball...

[Impnemo]

Are you looking for planetary orbits or trying to see which way you are coming around the planet for your mid course burn? If you mouse over the encouter and escape points you can see where the planet will be and from there which direction its heading relative to you.


Heres a good capture tutorial:
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/27236-Tutorial-Step-by-step-Interplanetary-Hohmann-transfer-guide-and-tips

In this one he uses a maneuver node editor to change his course while focused on target, that should help your mid course burn. Picture 15 is good.

OT stuff:


Sharing profit is not the same as giving away all profit.

Also note 11-7(d):

The ones who invest something get more of the profit.

Phrases and clauses and such like that can be tricky.

An equitable sharing by all States Parties in the benefits derived from those resources, whereby the interests and needs of the developing countries -clause- shall be given special consideration

The clause youre bringing up isnt saying that the sharing must be especially directed towards those doing the work, rather, special consideration must be made for the countries who arent able to in addition to those who are. The nations bordering say, the Caspian Sea would have to divy the resources of the sea among them as they are all equally able to reach the resource. They don't have to share that with the USA or Mozambique. If we established that unique Sea as Common Heritage for all mankind then those nations would have to offer Mexico a slice even if there is no way for Mexico to ever access that resource. Given the time it was put in place, and the rampant anti-colonial fervor of that time, its a hedge against the USA and the USSR to prevent them from using resources in space while most of the world still went without electricity or running water. As long as the hedge is in place, it is going to continue to prevent development.

In either event, yes, taking the profit and sharing it by any method means you are not making the profit for yourself. Starkist/Chicken of the Sea dont "share" their profit earned from Tuna fishing in international waters with everyone who has a common heritage with the ocean. They reap the full reward of their own labor. They being employees and shareholders. This despite the fact that there must be limits on their labor to prevent a collapse of the Tuna stock. Thats the "tragedy of the commons" that you, and more importantly they, would want to avoid. As a rule you don't eat your own seed grain, but when its common different forces come into play.

[Trekkin]

Right, figured it out; I forgot how to check orbital inclination.

Continuing to desperately avoid OT stuff:

How do people handle insertion into the SOI of an atmosphere-bearing body they intend to land on? I set a low periapsis, drop my lander and my getting-there fuel tanks, and let the lander aerobrake down while my transit stage boosts its periapsis out of the atmosphere once it aerobrakes into an orbit.

Is there more fuel-efficient way, though?

[AgentPaper]

Right, figured it out; I forgot how to check orbital inclination.

Continuing to desperately avoid OT stuff:

How do people handle insertion into the SOI of an atmosphere-bearing body they intend to land on? I set a low periapsis, drop my lander and my getting-there fuel tanks, and let the lander aerobrake down while my transit stage boosts its periapsis out of the atmosphere once it aerobrakes into an orbit.

Is there more fuel-efficient way, though?

Rather than boosting out of the atmosphere, have the transit stage move into a slightly higher orbit, so that it comes out the other end all on its own. Err high, since you can always just let it dip back in again if its orbit is too elliptical.

All of this is a bit hard to calculate, though you could probably have MechJeb's lander interface help. Simply lower your periapsis until right after it tells you you're going to hit the ground, then drop the lander, turn around, and burn prograde until it says you're not hitting the ground. Since the lander interface takes air resistance into account, that should allow your lander to land and your orbiter to orbit with minimal fuel usage.

Alternately, save before the burn and try it out a bunch. Make notes of your speed coming in and the height of your planned periapsis so you can do the same thing next time.

[AMX]

I managed to land on the Mun in the demo, but didn't have enough fuel to return.
I think I'll leave it at that until the game is finished...

Also, my officially last attempt to convince Impnemo:

Phrases and clauses and such like that can be tricky.

An equitable sharing by all States Parties in the benefits derived from those resources, whereby the interests and needs of the developing countries -clause- shall be given special consideration

The clause youre bringing up isnt saying that the sharing must be especially directed towards those doing the work, rather, special consideration must be made for the countries who arent able to in addition to those who are.

Tricky enough that you're misreading it.
It's not "those who can't, as well as those who can" (i.e. everybody) - it's "those who can't, as well as those who do."
Which leaves out people who could, if they wanted - exactly the ones who need to be motivated...

Given the time it was put in place, and the rampant anti-colonial fervor of that time, its a hedge against the USA and the USSR to prevent them from using resources in space while most of the world still went without electricity or running water. As long as the hedge is in place, it is going to continue to prevent development.
Prevent?
No.
"Inhibit" maybe, but it's explicitly meant to allow making a profit.

In either event, yes, taking the profit and sharing it by any method means you are not making the profit for yourself. Starkist/Chicken of the Sea dont "share" their profit earned from Tuna fishing in international waters with everyone who has a common heritage with the ocean. They reap the full reward of their own labor. They being employees and shareholders.
You forgot taxes.
Which mostly benefit other people... but somehow, that hasn't stopped fishing...

This despite the fact that there must be limits on their labor to prevent a collapse of the Tuna stock. Thats the "tragedy of the commons" that you, and more importantly they, would want to avoid. As a rule you don't eat your own seed grain, but when its common different forces come into play.If they are in it for the long haul, and believe that everybody else fishing in the same area is just as diligent as them...
For some reason, it's not working as well as you seem to think.

[Trekkin]

Finished, AMX? How do you mean?

As far as I know (and if I've got this wrong, someone please tell me) the basic physical model is done; at least for the short-to-mid-range future I believe the developers are looking at implementing more flight planning and reversion logic as part of bringing career mode online. There's also the normal flow of new parts and fixes to old parts, but I think the way the game handles rockets moving in space is done.

[Artanis]

So I broke down and got the game. I've been using the Scott Manley tutorial videos, and they've been pretty helpful, but in my case, as they say, "you can't fix stupid".

I got into orbit on the first try using the tutorial, did the second try without the tutorial, and am doing a relatively good job of (eventually) getting the periapsis and apoapsis within 20% of each other. Then I tried his second tutorial, Minmus, and...yeah.

Got there on the third try, slammed into the planet. Slammed into it a couple more times along the way to my tenth ******** try, at which point I managed to land. I even got back safely, though I was so low on fuel that poor Jebediah XII had to orbit Kerbin four times as I used minimum-power one-second burns at optimum points to de-orbit, winding up with 0.17 units of fuel when I finally popped my last stage. But hey, he lived (for once)! :smallbiggrin:

Now, on to learning how to make better rockets. As I expected, "swap the engines and fuel tanks for bigger ones" didn't help at all, but I was surprised at how little effect bolting on an extra 2-solid-booster stage had on my launch :smallconfused:

[AgentPaper]

SRBs aren't good for getting you extra Delta-V. What they're good for is getting larger rockets off the ground that usually wouldn't be able to because of a low thrust-weight ratio.

The reason they aren't good for delta-V is because you start to lose efficiency the faster you go in atmosphere due to air resistance. Liquid engines usually have a low TWR and thus won't get you fast enough to lose delta-V, but SRBs have much better TWR and can easily send you faster than you should.

To stay efficient, make sure you throttle down your main engine after you're off the launchpad, aiming for 100 m/s speed and low but still positive acceleration. Do this until you reach ~10km, at which point the atmosphere is much thinner and you're free to throttle up and gravity turn and such.

[Eldan]

I'm really overbuilding, it seems. After I finally got my lander to the moon and back, barely, I sent the same lander to another planet with no problem.

Perhaps 20 mainsail engines is too much for my first stage....

[factotum]

To stay efficient, make sure you throttle down your main engine after you're off the launchpad, aiming for 100 m/s speed and low but still positive acceleration.

I usually set my limit at 200 m/s, not 100...if you're going too slowly you burn a lot of fuel just maintaining speed through the lower atmosphere, if you go too fast then air drag losses become significant; I find 200 is a nice sweet spot between the two.

[AgentPaper]

I usually set my limit at 200 m/s, not 100...if you're going too slowly you burn a lot of fuel just maintaining speed through the lower atmosphere, if you go too fast then air drag losses become significant; I find 200 is a nice sweet spot between the two.

Just did a few tests, and there doesn't appear to be much difference between the two. I did both with the same rocket, and they both got to about 32km.

I think this is actually because terminal velocity rises as you get higher and higher. At 1000m, it's 100, but by 10,000m it goes over 200m/s. So, going 100m/s is more efficient at the start, and 200m/s is more efficient at the end.

However, what's really efficient, is to start at 100m/s, and then slowly throttle up to 200m/s by 10,000m, effectively maintaining terminal velocity. Obviously it's tricky to get this just right, but using MechJeb to ensure accuracy I used this method to get the same rocket up to 42km, 10km higher than either of the above methods.

Just for proof, I also did a test a 300m/s, which only got me up to 24km, and at 50m/s, which only got me up to 11km.

Finally, I did a test at 150m/s, which got me up to 38km. So, it seems if you want to be efficient, you can either aim for 150m/s the whole way, or go for 100m/s at the start and slowly ramp that up as you go along.

With some clever engineering, you could probably design a rocket that always has the right TWR to maintain terminal velocity at any given point on it's trajectory while at full throttle. This should be possible, or at least close to it, since your TWR naturally rises as you use up fuel. You'd probably need a short kick to get you up to speed off the pad, which is what SRBs are for.

I might do some playing around later today to see if I can figure out the math for such a thing.

[Artanis]

SRBs aren't good for getting you extra Delta-V. What they're good for is getting larger rockets off the ground that usually wouldn't be able to because of a low thrust-weight ratio.

The reason they aren't good for delta-V is because you start to lose efficiency the faster you go in atmosphere due to air resistance. Liquid engines usually have a low TWR and thus won't get you fast enough to lose delta-V, but SRBs have much better TWR and can easily send you faster than you should.

To stay efficient, make sure you throttle down your main engine after you're off the launchpad, aiming for 100 m/s speed and low but still positive acceleration. Do this until you reach ~10km, at which point the atmosphere is much thinner and you're free to throttle up and gravity turn and such.
For clarity, I took the rocket from Manley's Minmus tutorial and added a couple SRBs that would fire while the liquid engines did nothing, then turn on the liquid engines when I dropped the SRBs. Basically, I took what worked starting from 0m and 0 m/s and did the exact same thing from a starting point of from a thousand or two meters and 80 m/s. However, that only seemed to make things worse, if anything, which was a valuable lesson in just how much I have left to learn.

[AgentPaper]

For clarity, I took the rocket from Manley's Minmus tutorial and added a couple SRBs that would fire while the liquid engines did nothing, then turn on the liquid engines when I dropped the SRBs. Basically, I took what worked starting from 0m and 0 m/s and did the exact same thing from a starting point of from a thousand or two meters and 80 m/s. However, that only seemed to make things worse, if anything, which was a valuable lesson in just how much I have left to learn.

Ah, in that case, your problem is actually going too slow, not too fast. You should fire the main engines along with the SRBs, and maintain terminal velocity as I outlined in my previous post. This should get you a bit of extra delta-V. If you still end up doing worse overall, it's probably due to some inefficiency somewhere else in your maneuvers.

[AMX]

Finished, AMX? How do you mean?

A version number that does not start with "0." would be a good start...

[Artanis]

Yay! Got to Minmus and back without actively watching a tutorial while doing so. Asparagus staging (which I had read up on beforehand) was a massive help in the fuel department: I still had enough in my main tank for 80% of my orbit-Minmus-instead-of-flying-past-it burn*, and when I got back to Kerbin, I had literally two orders of magnitude more fuel left than last time. I then proceeded to waste 90% of that trying to circularize my orbit before saying getting bored and deorbiting, but still.

Also, I learned a valuable lesson when landing: if the altitude isn't changing but your velocity is still at 20 m/s, you will explode upon hitting the ground :smallredface:


*I know there's an official name for this sort of thing, but I can't think of what it is. I want to say "Orbital Insertion Burn", but don't know for sure. I'll probably kick myself once I find out though.

[AgentPaper]

Yay! Got to Minmus and back without actively watching a tutorial while doing so. Asparagus staging (which I had read up on beforehand) was a massive help in the fuel department: I still had enough in my main tank for 80% of my orbit-Minmus-instead-of-flying-past-it burn*, and when I got back to Kerbin, I had literally two orders of magnitude more fuel left than last time. I then proceeded to waste 90% of that trying to circularize my orbit before saying getting bored and deorbiting, but still.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, asparagus is pretty good. Well, staging in general is good, but asparagus is a bit better than pancake for now, since we don't have air resistance. It also allows for much larger rockets, since pancake stacking gets very tall very fast with our current tank sizes. (You can attach them radially, but then you may as well just use asparagus)


Also, I learned a valuable lesson when landing: if the altitude isn't changing but your velocity is still at 20 m/s, you will explode upon hitting the ground :smallredface:

Heh, yeah that horizontal velocity can be a bitch. You should be burning retrograde rather than directly up until you're right above the surface. That should keep horizontal velocity to a minimum.

*I know there's an official name for this sort of thing, but I can't think of what it is. I want to say "Orbital Insertion Burn", but don't know for sure. I'll probably kick myself once I find out though.

That is actually what it's called. I think "capture burn" is also acceptable, but less official.



Also, speaking of Asparagus, I decided to take it to its logical conclusion:


http://imageshack.us/a/img802/9319/gfk.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img819/2636/a98j.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img14/5113/2ao9.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img822/3613/38rv.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img801/4305/i29.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img707/6051/dg0p.png

[Impnemo]

Ah, in that case, your problem is actually going too slow, not too fast. You should fire the main engines along with the SRBs, and maintain terminal velocity as I outlined in my previous post. This should get you a bit of extra delta-V. If you still end up doing worse overall, it's probably due to some inefficiency somewhere else in your maneuvers.

Yes, you shouldnt have an exposed engine on the pad that isnt helping to lift you. Otherwise the engine is just dead weight youre dragging up, which is compounded by all the fuel it would be burning that youre also dragging up. The wiki has a table on stock aerodynamics terminal velocities.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin#Atmosphere


If youre going slower than the listed speeds youre losing too much to gravity. If youre going faster than the listed speed youre wasting fuel/delta v pushing air around. If you have to throttle down to stay on the ideal ascension profile then you ought to consider changing to less powerful/more efficient engines - say, swap the mainsail for a skipper etc. To determine which engine to use it is helpful to remember the formula for acceleration - a=f/m. Acceleration is force/mass. Conveniently, max engine thrust is given in kilonewtons and mass is in metric tonnage. This allows us to plug the thrust of your engine(s) against the mass of our ship very easily... if you have the engineer add on or dont mind adding all the parts yourself.


As an example, a three part rocket - mainsail rockomax jumbo-64 with a mark 1-2 command pod on top. Total mass on the pad is 46 tons. Mainsail has 1500kN thrust. Thats 32.6 meters/second^2 of acceleration and its thrust to weight ratio increases as it burns down the fuel. At burn out the same ship has 107 meters/second^2 of acceleration. Thats almost 11gs of force. :smalleek:

[AgentPaper]

Well, instead of that, I decided to play around with solar panels, robotic parts, and fairings:

http://imageshack.us/a/img407/5317/r9c.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img824/6893/5ail.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img694/8242/tcv.png

[Leon]

I did it, a Kerbal is in Space and Orbiting.

Salute Jedidiah Kerbal for his achievement. He will be remembered as the first Kerbalnaut from Upper Atmosphere Explorations to achieve an orbit.
Shame it is around the Sun.

[AgentPaper]

More fun with solar panels and cramped fairings:


http://imageshack.us/a/img441/3233/gqk.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img600/3156/moy.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img850/4154/jl9.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img153/5174/vfi.png

[Trekkin]

That is an intimidating capacity for solar power generation.

I assume the possibility of adding an equally formidible ion engine array has already occured to you?

[AgentPaper]

That is an intimidating capacity for solar power generation.

I assume the possibility of adding an equally formidible ion engine array has already occured to you?

Mostly I'm just trying to figure out how many panels I can fit into those fairings. I don't think I've hit the limit quite yet, heh.

As for ion engines, I don't have the patience for those. Not sure what I'd even want to do with them, anyways.

[Hawriel]

I am getting very skilled at smashing my vehicles into Mun. I am so skilled I find new ways, and added complications to do it.

I am glad to say my last lander can survived a very ruff landing that scattered parts all over the place. Jerwig will now have to hike it over to Jeb's Landing to meet Jebediah and Bill. Eventually I will land a habitat in the same quarter of of Mun they are standing in.

Note to all. Make sure your rovers are not top heavy and make them longer than a lander can is wide. Other wise it will roll over forwards on you. Also the rubber wheels are not suited to use on the Mun. However I did discover that they can be repaired by your Kerbenaut.

Now i just need to figure out how to attach a two seat rover underneath my hab module and not smash it on landing.

[Trekkin]

Can you use a skycrane type of arrangement, Hawriel? If your hab module can land on its own, it might be able to carry enough fuel to hover, drop the rover, move over, and then land.

[Artanis]

Before I bother trying to add mods to the game...do they work with the Steam version, or will Steam just re-d/l the whole thing and erase them? I'd like to get MechJeb (mostly just to save effort on relatively trivial calculations*), but if won't work out, I'd rather not waste the time and effort trying to get it to work.


Also, minor vent, feel free to ignore this bit:

Grr, I decided to try to put a satellite in orbit around Duna, got it up into space, looked up a "when to send ships to other planets" calculator, aaaand...it turns out I have to wait a good quarter of a game year before I can send it. The soonest point I can send something to another planet is about three game weeks for Moho :smallfrown:


*Like "how much delta-v is left in my tanks", for example.

[AgentPaper]

Before I bother trying to add mods to the game...do they work with the Steam version, or will Steam just re-d/l the whole thing and erase them? I'd like to get MechJeb (mostly just to save effort on relatively trivial calculations*), but if won't work out, I'd rather not waste the time and effort trying to get it to work.


Also, minor vent, feel free to ignore this bit:

Grr, I decided to try to put a satellite in orbit around Duna, got it up into space, looked up a "when to send ships to other planets" calculator, aaaand...it turns out I have to wait a good quarter of a game year before I can send it. The soonest point I can send something to another planet is about three game weeks for Moho :smallfrown:


*Like "how much delta-v is left in my tanks", for example.

I've been using the steam version with lots of mods, and it doesn't hamper it at all. If you try and overwrite the main files, that will get wiped out each time the game updates (but not between updates), but there aren't really any mods that do that.

[Pie Guy]

Grr, I decided to try to put a satellite in orbit around Duna, got it up into space, looked up a "when to send ships to other planets" calculator, aaaand...it turns out I have to wait a good quarter of a game year before I can send it. The soonest point I can send something to another planet is about three game weeks for Moho :smallfrown:


You know you can speed up time to like 50,000x when you're just on the launchpad before you do anything, right?

[Artanis]

You know you can speed up time to like 50,000x when you're just on the launchpad before you do anything, right?
I didn't know that I could do that on the launchpad :smallredface:

[Jimorian]

Another option for being able to do full warp from map mode is to put a satellite into Kerbin orbit at around 2 or 3 million meters (it doesn't have to be that high, but it makes it easier to pick it out from wider zooms). That way, if you have a ship in low orbit somewhere that doesn't allow full warp, you can click back to this in map mode, warp to your heart's content, then switch back.

[Impnemo]

Before I bother trying to add mods to the game...do they work with the Steam version, or will Steam just re-d/l the whole thing and erase them? I'd like to get MechJeb (mostly just to save effort on relatively trivial calculations*), but if won't work out, I'd rather not waste the time and effort trying to get it to work.


*Like "how much delta-v is left in my tanks", for example.

If thats really all you need, remaining delta-v in stage/total, twr, maximum/current thrust etc you can get all that with flight engineer.

[Hawriel]

Can you use a skycrane type of arrangement, Hawriel? If your hab module can land on its own, it might be able to carry enough fuel to hover, drop the rover, move over, and then land.

That's what I'm trying to pull off. I created a hab module by using two of the large passenger modules and making it so they would rest side ways on the heavy lander legs. There is a lot of room between the feet and the cylinder to play with. I will most likely have to add another fuel tank to the hab and more boosters for landing for the added weight of the rover.

My biggest and admittedly silliest problems come with how to construct the rover while sticking on the side of my hab in the assembly building. It gets kinda wonky in their with odd angles. The second is well is me not being nitpicky on how the rover looks. I want it simple but look more than steel plate, wheels, battery and drivers seat. I know silly. I'm getting hung up on how my hot wheels car looks instead of how it works.

I have made neat rovers on their own in the assembly building. Is there a way for me to import a saved craft while working on another one? That why I can just load the ship/hab, then load the rover attach and call it a day.

[Jimorian]

I've seen youtubers talk about a mod that let's you load in subsections of ships, so that you could say, have a rover module, then attach it to your standard lifter stage. I don't see this mod listed in the OP, though.

One thing you can do in vanilla, at least, is build your rover in the SPH to give you proper bilateral symmetry there with wheels and whatnot, save, copy that .craft file to your VAB folder, then load it in from there to build your lifter under it using proper rocket symmetry. If your command unit isn't pointed upward for launch, you can place a small dock in that direction so that you can choose "control from here" while on the launch pad to not have to translate directions in your head while reaching orbit and beyond.

In my own play I've built yet another new space station, and had lots more docking practice. Though it's funny, I've gotten so used to slugging around massive objects, that when I went to dock the "escape" pods on the docking tree pointing off the side, I had trouble with how twitchy they were even with fine controls on.
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/69b7fbe9-3121-4f15-9bb6-01508e482789_zps3365d691.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/d402943d-2f0b-4fd7-b04a-2cae50a8a553_zps75e3d93f.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz186/JimorB/Kerbal/77fe5a0d-bed5-4440-a685-b7c619c3cb8a_zpsf06e343c.jpg
I have an idea for a video let's play that I think will be pretty unique, but I'll need to install another hard drive to have room for the files.

[AgentPaper]

Those solar panels aren't very efficient. The ones in front are blocking the ones in back, so depending on the angle of the sun you're getting at most 33-50% of the energy you would get if they were all on the same plane.

[Jimorian]

True, but given how big it is now and with all the attached ASAS's, I've given up on station keeping, and this assures me that I will still get solar power even when the plane of the panels is straight on to the sun.

[Trekkin]

I don't so much mind solar inefficiency anymore. Now I just put a pair of QBE cores on my rocket sideways and put 1x6 solar panels on all the faces but the one opposite the attachment.

In flight, it looks like a four-bladed sidewheel steamboat, but the efficiency is a constant 50% no matter orientation and plane, at least as far as I can tell.

[AgentPaper]

Ah, yeah I always put at least one RTG on all of my ships just to ensure I have power for control.

[dethkruzer]

Well, I decided to take a shot at this game after a brief Hiatus, and I managed to get a space-station in Kerbin orbit. We shall see if my own general incompetence is enough to blow it to kingdom come.

[d12]

A friend and I have been playing for a few months and we routinely exchange .craft files and screencaps of various things we've done, and that's one of the great things about having friends who also play. :smallsmile: As a bonus, there's a native Linux version, so neither of us have to reboot to play.

Lately I've picked up again after a couple hiatuses mostly due to frustration and glitching that I ran into. Last night I finished assembling a ship which I'm hoping I'll be able to send out to Eeloo to rescue Jeb, who has been stranded in orbit there for a few game-years now. It's part of my "let's see if I can retrieve the guys I stranded early on" program.

The ship itself was originally a test platform for the 3rd generation Sisyphus-class space station core, to see if the Clampotron Sr. docking ports would hold the side fuel tanks under thrust better than the standard clampotrons, which they did (docking clamp shenanigans were the death of an earlier mission to drop rovers on all of Jool's moons). There was some wobbling after cutting throttle, but it eventually settles down if I avoid turning the ASAS on.

The last 2 side tanks (the ones without RCS tanks) were a redesign to save on weight and incorporate quantum struts for more stability (this after I found a glitch in the quantum struts that can cause phantom forces to push the ship out of its orbit if they attach to a side-mounted object, such as a ladder or light (that's just my best guess about what happened)). Afterwards I flew up a slightly modified munar/minmusar lander to dock on the end so Jeb could plant a flag before going home. I didn't originally think I would be using the ship for anything other than testing so I didn't think to put a large docking clamp on the end, so I added some quantum struts to brace against the side fuel tanks. I haven't actually performed a throttle-up test on the fully-assembled ship yet, but it should work. The fully assembled ship is pictured below. Sorry about the size--I was running in 1920x1080.

http://i.imgur.com/1jKNrGx.jpg

The image was captured just after jettisoning the cruise stage (this would generally do the trans-munar injection burn as well as the beginning of orbital insertion) after transferring its remaining fuel to any tanks that weren't full. And yes, I use Mechjeb. I prefer the Smart A.S.S. over the standard ASAS (even though Mechjeb is considerably worse about RCS bleeding, especially during docking procedures, which is why I still include ASAS on my ships). If C7's video about 0.21's ASAS is accurate though, I might only keep MJ around in the future for the information windows.

Speaking of information windows, I have reason to believe the delta-v stats are horribly inaccurate at this point, so don't mind that. It doesn't seem to update the figures properly when docking fuel tanks to a ship. Some back-of-envelope calculations I've done suggest that I should have more than enough dV to get out there, perform the mission objectives, and return. The lander itself has around 4000m/s in it and lots of RCS fuel (yes, I have done returns on maneuvering thrusters after running out of fuel :smalltongue:), so Jeb could theoretically return in the lander after claiming Eeloo for glorious Kerbania, leaving the main ship to do whatever else.

Other planned missions under the "let's see if i can retrieve the guys I stranded early on" umbrella are rescuing somebody trapped in a highly eccentric, nearly polar Joolean orbit, and rescuing another kerbal stranded on the surface of Eve. I've thrown together a couple designs that should theoretically have enough dV and trust-to-weight to achieve orbit, but I cannot do precision landings on planets with atmospheres and so I would also likely be sending a rover for him to drive out to the rescue ship after it lands. If I remember right, all 3 of the stranded kerbals are the original, iconic guys (ie, Bill, Bob, and Jeb).

[dethkruzer]

well, following the extremely dangerous and difficult orbitting of the spacestation Kerman 4, and the disasteriffic docking attempt of the fuel-pod module Kerpod 1, the new fuel module, Kerpod 2 is in matching orbit with the Kerman 4 and is slowly catching up. I estimated it will take the Kerpod about 9 days to catch up with the spacestation.

EDIT: After several attmpts at succesfully docking, and one head-on collision, I decided to give up for now, leaving the spacestation and fuel module in orbit.

[Jimorian]

Some 0.21 early look videos from YouTubers in the media group. Still no firm date on the release, but I can't wait!

Scott Manley (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9oH49oFlN8)
Pleborian (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3Aw1euRWQ)
HOCGaming (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_NrC9eEeU4)
Danny2462 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UYdI1HlUKc)

[Artanis]

I am officially terrible at this game. Out of 14 missions to Minmus and Mun, I have 3 successful landings and 2 surviving Kerbals :smallfrown:

[Jimorian]

The new ASAS and SAS modeling should make things a lot easier as long as you make sure to provide plenty of electrical energy to run them.

[Artanis]

Yay! Finally got a Kerbal back from Mun alive! It took every last drop of fuel to get his Kerbin periapsis low enough to aerobrake, but it was enough :smallbiggrin:

Also, I discovered that landing is much easier if you use some pylons to make your landing gear stick farther out.


Now I'm trying to figure out how to get a tanker into orbit. Ideally I want to get two orange tanks' worth of fuel and a few cans of RCS up to where they can refuel ships before a trip, but it takes a stupid amount of fuel just to get that kind of weight into orbit and adding 150 SRBs just seems like cheating :smallfrown:

[AgentPaper]

Yay! Finally got a Kerbal back from Mun alive! It took every last drop of fuel to get his Kerbin periapsis low enough to aerobrake, but it was enough :smallbiggrin:

Also, I discovered that landing is much easier if you use some pylons to make your landing gear stick farther out.


Now I'm trying to figure out how to get a tanker into orbit. Ideally I want to get two orange tanks' worth of fuel and a few cans of RCS up to where they can refuel ships before a trip, but it takes a stupid amount of fuel just to get that kind of weight into orbit and adding 150 SRBs just seems like cheating :smallfrown:

A good size for a tanker is one large orange tank and one large RCS. It still takes a lot of fuel to get that up there, but it is doable.

[Artanis]

A good size for a tanker is one large orange tank and one large RCS. It still takes a lot of fuel to get that up there, but it is doable.
Thank you, I'll keep that in mind :smallbiggrin:.


On a related note, what kind of staging do you suggest for launching such a vehicle? Asparagus-staging the first megatanker actually wound up working really badly because the power-to-weight ratio got so bad so fast as the engines dropped off. Halving the payload will obviously have a huge effect, but I'm wondering if there's some more that I can do.

[AgentPaper]

Thank you, I'll keep that in mind :smallbiggrin:.


On a related note, what kind of staging do you suggest for launching such a vehicle? Asparagus-staging the first megatanker actually wound up working really badly because the power-to-weight ratio got so bad so fast as the engines dropped off. Halving the payload will obviously have a huge effect, but I'm wondering if there's some more that I can do.

Asparagus should work out just fine. The easiest way to do it is just 7 orange tanks in an asparagus formation, with the 8th red tank on top as the payload. That has just enough delta-V to get into orbit without dipping into the payload's fuel. Make sure you use Skipper engines instead of mainsails for the better efficiency, since you don't need all of that power.

Edit: Just tested this, you can actually get away with a half tank in the center of the asparagus, and you still have a bit of fuel left over, plenty to kick you into a higher orbit if necessary, or to transfer over before detaching the last engine. Or alternately, you could replace the last tank with a quarter-tank of fuel and probably still be fine.

Edit: Edit: Turns out you hardly even need a center tank at all. I replaced it with a X200-8 tank and a poodle engine, which was exactly enough to get me into a 85/77 orbit without touching the main tank. And this is with a bunch of extra bits on the tank to turn it into what I call an AutoTanker: RC-L01, RCS thrusters, and two PB-NUKs, as well as the normal 2 of each kind of docking port.

[AgentPaper]

After playing around with the normal orange tank tanker a bit, I decided to ramp things up (as Kerbals are wont to do), and try it out with the 3.75 orange tank that comes with KW Rocketry:

http://imageshack.us/a/img829/3597/hiwq.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img541/350/rqnz.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img203/3843/i3w9.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img560/6227/muea.png

That's 10935 Liquid Fuel and 13365 Oxidizer in total, almost four times more than the normal orange tank. In addition, I have 4 large monopropellant tanks hidden in the white fairings on the top and bottom, for a total of 3000 monopropellant. Large connectors at front and back allow it to be attached to large constructions, while 4 small and 8 tiny ports allow smaller ships to re-fuel. I've even made it automated, with 2 large Remote Guidance units, powerful RCS thrusters for minor orbit changes, and 2 PB-NUKs to ensure constant power supply.

My preferred method to orbit is to burn normally until I hit an 75/65 orbit, then jettison the final pair of boosters to a slow deorbit and use the RCS to circularize. It really takes a lot of RCS to change this thing's orbit, so you really do need to get to 60-65 periapsis unless you want to spend 500+ monopropellant just to circularize.

[Jimorian]

0.21 has been released! Be aware it breaks earlier saves, so if you want to continue previous missions, install into a new folder so you can keep both.

Kerbalnaut Selection Process Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlbHmsHOe-U). :smalltongue:

EDIT: Scott Manley's guide to keeping both with Steam version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRoKhjhu08Q).

[Jimorian]

This guy (http://www.youtube.com/user/Nassault630) makes some pretty amazing cinematic KSP videos, including this one of Jeb doing his thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Mtv_HN184). :smallcool:

[factotum]

Just doing some messing around in 0.21 and discovered the hard way that the Kerbal X doesn't have enough fuel to land on the Mun and then get back into orbit, much less back to Kerbin--wonder why they even bothered to put a ladder and landing legs on the capsule? Other than that it's a pretty good rocket and I think a few minor modifications would be enough to make it a pretty good space station crew bus...

[Forbiddenwar]

The last time I tried to play this game was back before there was a solar system, and only one mun. Wow, so much has changed and now everything confuses me even more. Like, why is there more than one capsule/rocket/fuel tank/etc . . .?

Can anyone recommend some simple video tutorials detailing building and flying? I can't even get into orbit now (did they change the gravity too?)

[factotum]

There are some built-in tutorials now. Scott Manley did one a few months ago which I think is still mostly valid, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgPr4q5tj-Q

[Derthric]

So I picked this up during the steam sale and never got around to it until recently. And for that I apologize to my new tiny green overlords and their god-king Jebediah.

I assumed getting up and working would be long and frustrating but it is an obscene amount of fun. Just messing around with a probe of my own design and somehow even the failures are fun.

The Pathfinder Unmanned Probe Mission Debrief
The pathfinder program was born and Pathfinder 1 subsequently went into cartwheels at about 7k up and crashed into the sea. It was then decided to define some mission parameters, so the Mun was selected as a target destination. And Pathfinder 1a was set to launch. Unfortunately Pathfinder 1a had staging issues and exploded on the pad, and Pathfinder 1b just nosedived around 12k. But then "the real Pathfinder 1" made it into orbit and set out for its destination, the Mun. Unfortunately someone at mission control fell asleep(aka I left the time warp on too long) and missed a scheduled maneuver and now "the real Pathfinder 1" is somewhere between Kerbin and Duna orbits with just an ion engine to maneuver. Which was the real plan all along of course. But finally Pathfinder 2 made it to Munar orbit. There was much rejoicing in Mission control, followed by the question, what does the probe do.....

[Jimorian]

Another amazing cinematic video by Nassault, this time for "Bill" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhpy9zBpLMw).

[Jimorian]

A mobile 2D game similar to KSP called Simple Rockets (http://jundroo.com/project/SimpleRockets) might be of interest to others in the thread. Here's a Scott Manley overview video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_DULhkPg64) for it.

[Jimorian]

Nassault has done it again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Q03O-F4fE). (Avert your eyes from the comments, you do not want to be spoiled on this one.)

And to add more content to this post, some of the .22 features have been talked about in pretty concrete terms. Looks like the big change is that there will some kind research and development tech tree, and that one factor is whether you send back data via antenna, or actually bring your probe back to Kerbin for even more analysis. But it sounds like maybe resources are one of the later stages of developing Career Mode, so no mining just yet.

[Storm Bringer]

ok, dum newb question time:

I am having trouble with some of the heavier KW rocketry solid rocket boosters. they keep falling off my rockets when I load the rocket. but not always, or predictably. sometimes I load and they all stay on, other times I load and three fall off, and I reload and two fall, but a different two the three that fell off last time.

WTF is going on? why does it sometimes work and sometimes not?

[AgentPaper]

ok, dum newb question time:

I am having trouble with some of the heavier KW rocketry solid rocket boosters. they keep falling off my rockets when I load the rocket. but not always, or predictably. sometimes I load and they all stay on, other times I load and three fall off, and I reload and two fall, but a different two the three that fell off last time.

WTF is going on? why does it sometimes work and sometimes not?

Sounds like they're just barely held up, and random factors are causing some or others to fall each time. Try putting a few extra struts on them.

Also, how is your rocket held before liftoff? Are the rockets sitting on the ground, or are you holding it up with the launch clamps?

[Storm Bringer]

Sounds like they're just barely held up, and random factors are causing some or others to fall each time. Try putting a few extra struts on them.

Also, how is your rocket held before liftoff? Are the rockets sitting on the ground, or are you holding it up with the launch clamps?

held up with the clamps.

right, next newb question: will a decoupler break the support struts? or will they weld to two parts together (I.e. can I still dump the SRBs when they are empty?)

[AgentPaper]

held up with the clamps.

right, next newb question: will a decoupler break the support struts? or will they weld to two parts together (I.e. can I still dump the SRBs when they are empty?)

Yes, decouplers break struts.

[Jimorian]

Yes, decouplers break struts.

Same goes for docking ports, so you can brace between sections that will undock so that it won't break up during launch. In any case where parts separate, struts will never by themselves hold parts together, they need a connected path between other parts to function.

[Jimorian]

.22 is out! With the first bit of Career Mode, that being a tech tree, and research methods that accumulate "Science" points in order to unlock branches of the tree.

Pleborian has a pretty nice look at how the early bit works (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2gAa2ENfiE).

Unfortunately, I'm going to be crazy busy with deadlines the next few days so can't play it yet. :smallfrown:

[AdmiralCheez]

I'm liking the new research part of career mode. I imagine new players are going to find it a lot easier to learn with the slow introduction of parts, rather than being thrown everything at once. When I first started playing a couple versions ago, I remember being intimidated trying to find what I needed for a basic rocket, and having no clue what 90% of the parts were for.

Oh, and I really like the new "recover pod" button that pops up when you mouse over the altimeter. It's a lot more convenient than going to the space center and loading the tracking station.

[AgentPaper]

What I really need is a list of science I haven't done yet. I assume there will be a list on the wiki relatively soon that shows all of them, but it'd be nice to have an in-game checklist to help keep track.

[Jimorian]

What I really need is a list of science I haven't done yet. I assume there will be a list on the wiki relatively soon that shows all of them, but it'd be nice to have an in-game checklist to help keep track.

It's probably not too much of an issue in this version, since there appears to be a surplus of ways to get more than enough science to unlock all the things. Scott Manley reported that some people have uncovered the entire tree within 4 flights, and he thought he had figured out a way to do it in 3.

But definitely a nice way for new players to build up a working knowledge of all the parts and what they can do, while experienced players can zip through this challenge fairly quickly and essentially end up back in sandbox mode in no time. Some of the let's players working this mode will probably have to throttle back their efficiency to get enough episodes to show, heheh.

I bet when they start adding in budgets, crew training, mission goals, etc., this will start to be challenging enough where picking just the right ways to get your science will add a nice bit of tension to each flight.

[AgentPaper]

It's probably not too much of an issue in this version, since there appears to be a surplus of ways to get more than enough science to unlock all the things. Scott Manley reported that some people have uncovered the entire tree within 4 flights, and he thought he had figured out a way to do it in 3.

This has definitely not been my experience. After 5 flights, I've managed to unlock about the same number of techs, and am now out of ideas on what to do. I may just not be inventive enough to figure out all the things I can currently do, but 3-4 flights seems insane for how much research you need. Mind linking to a guide for that?

[Jimorian]

I haven't been able to find a Reddit thread about it, but the sub-Reddit is getting huge amounts of new threads right now, so it's probably buried. But as one example of ways to "spam" science I saw in a video:
You can do an EVA over each Kerbin biome while in orbit, and each one gives a unique report with its own science points.
I'm guessing the "final" flight is a huge rocket with tons of goo pods that just does a series of planetary fly-bys around the solar system before coming back to Kerbin for recovery.

But in general, it appears that it pays to think of every possible different condition you can perform an experiment in. In just a sub-orbital flight, you'd have 1) on the pad 2) under acceleration 3) high atmosphere 4) in space 5) re-entry heat 6) floating under parachute(?) 7) landed.

[factotum]

This has definitely not been my experience. After 5 flights, I've managed to unlock about the same number of techs, and am now out of ideas on what to do.

Have you actually been getting crew reports, soil samples, and so on? I did three flights before I even realised any of that was a *thing*, so the only science I got on my first missions was from recovering the capsule! Next objective is to put a Goo into orbit and see how much science that gets me, then I'll probably attempt a Munshot. You can apparently also get science by, for instance, gathering soil samples from different places on Kerbin, so I'll probably make my Goo mission a polar orbit and see if I can get some samples from the poles on the way down...

[EDIT] OK, I did those (the Munshot was only planned as a flyby, but when I'd made my trans-Munar injection burn I realised I wouldn't have enough fuel to land anyway!). I got 119 science from the Mun one--two EVA reports, two Goo reports, a crew report from when I was at Munar periapsis, and 12 just for doing the flyby. I had 5 things researched before, should be 7 after this!

[Hawriel]

Version .22 is out as of yesterday, or the day before.

The first version of career mode is in the game. It has a rudimentary tech tree and more science equipment. Antennas have a function.

In order to unlock new parts you must spend science. You earn science points by making science by using the experiments and observing them at different stages of flight. You can also recover space craft for science.

[factotum]

Er, yes, we've been discussing it for the past page or so?

[Jimorian]

Scott Manley tries to max out science as quickly as possible.

Mission 1: 372 Science (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNXTFj3ozNY)
Mission 2: 6000+ Science (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIjqvLcsz8g)

He had 8 top tier techs still unlocked after spending the science.

He has enough inefficiency with mission #2 and he even cut that short a bit because he was tired that he feels it's possible to unlock everything after just 2 missions.

[Storm Bringer]

bloody show off.....

i'm struggling to get enough science together. my medicore rocktry skills were previously propped up by the KW rocketry pack and it's excellent range of parts, which has now been taken form me.

[Jimorian]

bloody show off.....

i'm struggling to get enough science together. my medicore rocktry skills were previously propped up by the KW rocketry pack and it's excellent range of parts, which has now been taken form me.

One of the things to remember about Kerbin is that you can get unique science from each biome (shore, water, highlands, grasslands, desert, icecap, and one other I'm forgetting), plus you can do the same science a few times, though with diminishing returns.

I've also heard that the devs made it easy for parts mods to hook into the tech tree so that they can become part of the career mode, so hopefully your favorite mods get updated soon. :smallsmile:

[nooblade]

I remember there's also a badlands biome. I think I've only encountered it from a space EVA. Haven't messed with planes yet.

I really like the science so far. It's a challenge system built into the game. Not shabby either. A masochistic part of me wants to have to pay for each little rocket part too and keep a budget somehow.

It's a little silly what little it takes to get the first upgrade. However I'd rather do a quick EVA launchpad sample for cheap science and use separators to go to Minmus (easier to land/leave than the Mun) than build a self-destructing rocket like Scott Manley did. Also you can bring some goo canisters, nifty.

[factotum]

I'm probably not going to unlock the rest of the tech tree because it just feels like a lot of grind to get to the point you could be by just playing sandbox mode. It was interesting to play around with for a while, but I really want career mode to get finished and fleshed out to re-interest me properly in the game, I think.

As for Scott Manley's second video, I just don't like the idea of sending someone on a six year and change mission in a one-person capsule! Yes, there are no food, waste or oxygen limits in the game right now, but it pricks my suspension of disbelief something fierce to do such a thing. A simple trip to Duna and back (which is, what, around 100 days if you time everything to perfection?) is stretching it, IMHO.

[Artanis]

Scott Manley tries to max out science as quickly as possible.

Mission 1: 372 Science (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNXTFj3ozNY)
Mission 2: 6000+ Science (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIjqvLcsz8g)

He had 8 top tier techs still unlocked after spending the science.

He has enough inefficiency with mission #2 and he even cut that short a bit because he was tired that he feels it's possible to unlock everything after just 2 missions.
Scott Manley doesn't count. He's the guy who saw the "Get to Eve and back with 10 parts" challenge and decided to do it with just five AND throw in a stop at Minmus along the way :smalltongue:

[AgentPaper]

Was struggling to unlock the first 5-6 techs before, but now I just finished a mission to Mun and Minimus (only planned Mun, but had a lot of extra fuel so why not), and now I've suddenly got 710 Science to play around with.

I think the big thing between the people who are finding it easy and the ones who struggle to get even a bit, is a difference in expectations. When I first started doing missions, I was expecting more long, mostly passive experiments, like putting a lab into space and then staying there for a long time and slowly building up science.

However, it seems that the way the game expects you to play, is to constantly push the limits of what you can do with what you have, and keep doing new things. Once I decided to stop durdling around and just went for it, things became a lot easier, and more fun.

That said, I think it would be cool if you could get science for more stuff than just visiting new places. Those should definitely be a major focus, but I'd like it if you could build up science by doing stuff like carrying large payloads into space, setting up stations, and other long-term projects. That way, the player can decide to be crazy and daring and shoot for the mun on their second mission, or they could decide to take things slow and build up their parts and expertise before taking on more challenging stuff.

[Jimorian]

I've been looking at the unlock cost in Credits of all the individual parts on top of the Science cost, and I'm thinking that it would be pretty pointless if the way to make money matched gaining science, so there's probably a plan to reward players monetarily in a different way. That way you have to do one kind of mission to get science, and another kind to get money.

I'm also wondering if there will be a way to convert extra science into money once the tech tree has been exhausted, but with still a lot of science out there to be explored.

[AgentPaper]

Yeah, money will be interesting. I'd expect that you get Government grants that basically function like quests, ie "Get into space" or "Land on the Mun" that give you fixed amounts for specific goals. Sort of like Science, but more meant to signify big landmarks. These would also help serve as a sort of "tutorial", giving you a structured path to follow if you so wish.

The other way of money, would be to get paid by private companies to do certain things, such as putting up satellites.

Or maybe they could contract you to design rockets for them. For example, they might say, "make us a rocket that can lift X weight into Y orbit." You design a rocket as normal, and then fly it to the goal to prove that it's possible. Then, you get paid based on how cheap the rocket is.

[Gnoman]

Did this release screw with the physics? I've nearly duplicated (had to use the non-vectored engine, but that didn't seem to hurt maneuvering much) one of my most reliable old orbital launch designs, but I can't seem to get it into orbit (or very far past the atmosphere, for that matter).

Relatedly, my parachute is failing constantly. Even with just the capsule, it seems to be 50/50 if it will stay attached.

I've never had these issues before.

[AgentPaper]

Was the game accelerated when the parachute deployed? Both initially and at 500 meters? I've noticed that mine detach whenever I'm sped up, but if I slow down for those two points, it works just fine.

Also make sure you don't have any mods installed from before the patch.

Other than that, I'm not sure. Would be interesting if true.

[factotum]

Which version does your orbital rocket design date from? I have a feeling they did change the physics slightly a version or two ago--don't think they made any changes to that side of things in 0.22, though.

[Gnoman]

Hmm. I WAS using time accelleration much of the time. I'll have to try that.



I was able to achieve orbit consistently with very close to this design in the last version.

[factotum]

"Very close" does not mean "identical". :smallwink: I've had similar issues--tried to build something that worked in an earlier version, but swapping out the engine for a different one (due to not having the other one unlocked) and thinking it would be fine. It wasn't.

[Storm Bringer]

just made my first manned Munar fly-by, ever, and my first Munar encounter without using MechJeb (like I said, I'm a mediocre awful rocket pilot, and I preferred to use unmanned probes in sandbox, to save on killing random kerbs when I screw up).

Never planned to, just realised that my "high orbit" mission had about one and a half t-800 tanks left over after hitting a stable 75 km LKO , so I just played with the manuver planner to see if I could wing a munar pass.

and, I was able to pull off a free-return, sub-munar shot, that got with a within a thousand Km while grabbing as much data as I could (with a craft with only limited power for comms, so most had to be taken back) before shooting back down to Kerbin.

a quick burn at apoapsis took me onto a direct impact re-entry. It was a bit hairy when I realised I was hitting the 30K line at something like 3,500 M/s, but a combination of aero-breaking, three parachutes deployed early, and frantic burning of my 50Kn landing engine got me down to a nearly perfect touchdown, which happened, by chance, to be on a nice flat piece of ground.

counting info sent back, I reckon I got close to 150 science form a fairly simple mission.

I am well chuffed with myself.

[nooblade]

I tend to use F5 for quicksave and hold F9 to reload a quicksave when landings or maneuvers go badly myself. Maybe someday I'll try to play through without quickload.

Personally, I don't like landing on the Mun at all. Well, the only one I like is Minmus. When I stopped playing KSP before 0.22, it was right about when I should've tried landing a Kerbal on Duna.

Also, I just tested a neat idea I had for a quick mission for early science. If you can do interplanetary stuff, then it's easy.

I left Kerbin's sphere of influence (high orbit over the sun) and reentered maybe a week later. I managed with a couple goo canisters, a materials science lab, some solar panels and antenna etc, the first LV-T30 liquid rocket, 3 x FLT-400, and some solid fuel. So maybe this could be a second mission. Stupidly I didn't bring extra batteries for it myself.

The trick is to leave Kerbin in a way that doesn't make your orbits too different. Probably there is a better way to do it but I burned to go radially in, toward the sun more or less directly. I wanted to use a gravity assist from the Mun, but worked without one.

http://i.imgur.com/HdYsK0J.png

Managed a reenter by burning radial out and a little retrograde to get back to Kerbin, as indicated by the navball. There were a few other useful tricks like dodging the Mun and doing an aero-capture (lots of velocity to kill). There's plenty of time for adjustment (radial burn so useful) after reentering Kerbin's sphere of influence and any burn I wanted to do took maybe a second.

http://i.imgur.com/xlCPpAy.png

Not bad I guess? Again, I didn't transmit more back because I forgot batteries.

[factotum]

Nice one!

I don't generally have too much of a problem landing on the Mun these days since I learned the trick of it--namely, always thrust exactly down the retrograde marker on the way down. That will naturally tend to kill your horizontal velocity, and the gravity of the body you're landing on will do the rest. It does help to have a lander that has a reasonably wide base so you're less likely to tip over if you *do* have any residual sideways velocity, though!

[nooblade]

Well, probably I should've unlocked docking ports instead of nuclear engines so I could do an Apollo-style transfer craft and lander craft. Although I would have to bring home both to get all the science. Perhaps that would help with the fuel problems I typically have.

[razark]

Although I would have to bring home both to get all the science.
If you have solar panels, you could spam transmit the science from the lander.

We really need a way to transfer science/samples from one craft to another.

[Artanis]

Nice one!

I don't generally have too much of a problem landing on the Mun these days since I learned the trick of it--namely, always thrust exactly down the retrograde marker on the way down. That will naturally tend to kill your horizontal velocity, and the gravity of the body you're landing on will do the rest. It does help to have a lander that has a reasonably wide base so you're less likely to tip over if you *do* have any residual sideways velocity, though!
I found that putting the legs on the ends of some struts that stuck out really helped in this regard. Admittedly it was in the old version when I did this, but the basic concept should still remain valid: find a way to stick the legs way the hell out to the sides :smallwink:

[factotum]

I prefer to use fuel tanks rather than struts--the lander I currently use has four of the smaller FLT tanks arranged in a triangle with landing legs at the "points" (at least, as pointy as anything can be that's made up of circles, but you know what I mean)--that's pretty darned stable, and it easily has enough fuel to land on the Mun and get back into orbit *twice*.

[AgentPaper]

Well, after my mission to the Mun and Minimus, I decided to get a bit more ambitious and try for an inter-planetary mission. I installed Mechjeb, mostly just so I could get accurate Delta-V statistics without needing to do a ton of math. It went smoothly at first, but unfortunately, I under-estimated the amount of delta-V I would need by a bit, and ended up on Duna without enough fuel to get home!

Fortunately, all the science I had done along the way allowed me to unlock the first Probe part, along with some other choice pieces of equipment, which I used to build an improved rescue craft to fly over, pick up poor Jeb, and fly him home. Luckily I remembered to get new surface samples and EVA reports on the way back, since the ones I took on the way in were, of course, still sitting on the original craft. I don't remember exactly how much science I managed to get, but was over a thousand.

Not to be kept down, I proceeded to plan an even more ambitious journey, this time to Jool, including an Aero-capture (unfortunately not low enough to be considered "in atmosphere" somehow), and two more landings (Pol and Bop). This one went off without a hitch, even leaving me enough fuel after the final Kerbin aero-capture to get back into a stable orbit and plan a landing at KSC, right on the track from the VAB to the launchpad, just in time to watch the sun go down.

This ended up being an extremely profitable mission, giving me a total of 9,125 science. The surface samples from Bop and Pol were worth 360 science each! I now have the entire tree unlocked. Obviously, the next step is to get some mods that add all sorts of extra stuff to unlock, and continue with the SCIENCE! I'm thinking a round trip to Eve-Gilly would be a good next step, or maybe setting up a permanent base somewhere.

[Jimorian]

I've been making a run through of the science, not doing anything spectacular, just what would probably be an average mission at that stage of development. I've also been taking notes, and so far (up to Tier 8, the top tier), it takes this many science points to unlock each Tier (counting the start as Tier 1)

Tier 1: 0 (0 Cumulative)
Tier 2: 5 (5 Cumulative)
Tier 3: 53 (58 Cumulative)
Tier 4: 180 (238 Cumulative)
Tier 5: 720 (958 Cumulative)
Tier 6: 1280 (2238 Cumulative)
Tier 7: 3000 (5238 Cumulative)
Tier 8: 5500 (10738 Cumulative)

One thing I'm trying to work out is how much Science is really to be discovered with a particular observation, given how the points decay after each iteration. The only ones I've figured out so far are transmitting data for the Goo pod and the Science Jr. canister.

Using a quick and dirty spreadsheet, it looks like for the Science Jr. Canister, if you start with 100 units, there are actually 140 total potential points to gather. 20 iterations at 20% transmission efficiency will get you 133 of that.

With the Goo pod, 100 units has a potential of 180. at 40% efficiency, 10 iterations will get 164 of that.

Now that I know how to work that out, I'll see if I can give solid numbers for other types of observations.

[Edit] Just worked out the thermometer. 100 units has a potential of 125, and at 60% transmission, 5 iterations will get 120 of that. This also has to be at least in "near" space above an object to work.

To give an example of how each of these pays out, being Near Ike will give a base value of 175 for the Science Canister, 70 for the Goo pod, and 56 for the thermometer.

[Edit2]I've made so many notes during my own experiments with this system that I think I'm going to make a video tutorial/guide for it. But definitely aimed at the "average" player in that it won't be about maxing out points in a single uber-mission, but a nice steady progression with basic rocket models that are easy to fly. Just as an example, with just putting a bare capsule on the launch pad for the first mission, it's possible to get 30 science points.

[Choyrt]

So, my wife and I had date night last night, and we are usually poor so we get to see maybe two movies a year in theater. We have had our eye on Gravity for some time because of the director.

Am I the only person who, while watching this amazing film, kept visualizing Kerbals in place of Clooney and Bullock?

http://img10.picoodle.com/i5ap/choyrt/slpv_89a_u76ny.jpg


http://img15.picoodle.com/i5ap/choyrt/wx67_531_u76ny.jpg

[AgentPaper]

So, my wife and I had date night last night, and we are usually poor so we get to see maybe two movies a year in theater. We have had our eye on Gravity for some time because of the director.

Am I the only person who, while watching this amazing film, kept visualizing Kerbals in place of Clooney and Bullock?

I haven't seen it, but I can tell you now, if I ever do, that's all I'll ever see.

I'd yell at you for ruining the movie for me, but I think we both know that everything is better with Kerbals. :smalltongue:

[Jimorian]

I haven't seen it, but I can tell you now, if I ever do, that's all I'll ever see.

I'd yell at you for ruining the movie for me, but I think we both know that everything is better with Kerbals. :smalltongue:

Here's hoping that Nassault makes a Kerbal version of Gravity!

[nooblade]

I saw Apollo 13 recently, that was a neat movie. If Gravity doesn't have anything on that, then meh.


I've made so many notes during my own experiments with this system that I think I'm going to make a video tutorial/guide for it. But definitely aimed at the "average" player in that it won't be about maxing out points in a single uber-mission, but a nice steady progression with basic rocket models that are easy to fly. Just as an example, with just putting a bare capsule on the launch pad for the first mission, it's possible to get 30 science points.

Sounds neat, I always like hearing different people try to explain rocket science and astrophysics.

For the capsule-only first mission, IiRC I only get 12 points without moving the thing. Doubling that without rolling the capsule around would be a good thing. Otherwise I'd rather stick with the first upgrade only or maybe use a limited jump rocket.

[factotum]

For the capsule-only first mission, IiRC I only get 12 points without moving the thing.

I thought you'd get more than that, but I just tried it, and putting a capsule on the pad, crew report, EVA report, surface sample, recover got me 12.9 science...I'd love to know how you can get 30!

[Jimorian]

I thought you'd get more than that, but I just tried it, and putting a capsule on the pad, crew report, EVA report, surface sample, recover got me 12.9 science...I'd love to know how you can get 30!

OK. :smallsmile: (spoilered for those who like experimenting on their own)

1. Crew Report from inside capsule: 1.5
2. EVA, while hanging on ladder do EVA Report (flying at Kerbin's shores (this may be a bug, but staying on the ladder of any landed craft for an EVA report on Kerbin counts as "flying" in that biome, which is counted separately from actually being on the ground)): 5.6 (now get back in)
3. EVA again, let go of ladder, EVA Report (Launch Pad): 2.4
4. Sample (Launch Pad) 9.0 (now get back in again)
5. EVA, walk down to ground just away from Launch Pad, EVA Report (from KSC): 2.4
6. Sample (KSC): 9
7. Climb back in, recover vehicle.

TOTAL SCIENCE: 29.9 :smallcool:

If you wanted to take the time to walk your kerbal down to the water, another EVA and sample would probably put your first mission over 40 points.

[Derthric]

Overall, I am loving this update. And not just for the science upgrade but I seem to see less noodling of my rockets(though I might just have gotten better at building them) and smoother frame rates and load times too.

My one gripe is that with the inclusion of Crew, EVA and soil reports, it is scientifically disadvantageous to make unmanned probes since you miss out on that much extra science on those missions. I guess I just wish the unmanned probes had their own science generation like a basic camera or telemetry info.

Also has anyone done the math comparing the transmission devices? From what little I did it seems the high end ones just aren't worth the power draw.

[gomipile]

Also has anyone done the math comparing the transmission devices? From what little I did it seems the high end ones just aren't worth the power draw.

Agreed. The first antenna you get is rather nice. If you have two of them and two experiments, you can click back and forth between the experiments and keep both antennas transmitting constantly with just a little extra waiting. Three antennas would be able to transmit faster than I can keep up with.

[Jimorian]

Steam's having a sale on KSP this weekend, 40% off. So if you've been on the fence, now would be a good time to check it out.

[Trekkin]

My one gripe is that with the inclusion of Crew, EVA and soil reports, it is scientifically disadvantageous to make unmanned probes since you miss out on that much extra science on those missions. I guess I just wish the unmanned probes had their own science generation like a basic camera or telemetry info.

This. Oh goodness, this.

I love the new science, but the mechanics are just weird. No, don't read the thermometer on the Mun, bring it back with you. Same with the capsule. Moving rocks from one capsule to another is crazy talk. Mostly I just don't like how the asymmetry of the lab module makes it so awkward to work with, though. Who put all the doors on one side?

I can't wait for experiments to be a moveable resource, like fuel, so I can finally do Apollo relatively faithfully -- or, more likely, hit all the Mun biomes in far fewer goes and transfer all the data into one capsule for the trip home.

[AgentPaper]

Yeah. I don't know why they made it so important to bring stuff back with you. If you look at all the NASA missions, the only ones that came back to earth were the ones that really needed to, which basically meant manned missions and that one asteroid sample mission. Other than that, it's just pictures and data being streamed back to home.

I like the idea of having high-profile manned missions to get rock samples and crew reports, and requiring crew to use labs and such for extra science, but unmanned missions should be a viable choice as well, especially early on. Instead, you don't have unmanned modules to begin with.