Kerbal Space Program

Expect KSP's servers to implode today, xkcd just gave it a Colbert Bump.

Oh boy...

kaBLOOM.

Been experimenting with the trial.

All the ship names have been variations on "Fiery Death"

Except for my two most successful craft, "Really Fiery Death," which was the first ship to attain orbit and return, and "Cold death in space alone," which was the first to get close to Mun, get affected by the moon, orbit at a minimum of 9 million meters from Kerbin, and safely return.

Really Fiery Death was about 15 hours.

Cold Death In Space Alone took 3 weeks, 14 hours, 57 minutes, and 20 seconds.

I think I'll get the whole game over the weekend.

Well worth it. I redid my OS, so I lost all my in-progress missions. Had ten up in (various) orbits, and a lot of spent stages drifting along.

Welp, time to get busy replacing those...

I caved and bought the full version, and so far I haven't even broken through the atmosphere. I can't even make a plane I can control. @_@

Don't feel too bad, I can't control planes too well either. I blame this in large part on the camera not following my craft, ala Ace Combat or HAWX.

Getting a rocket out of atmosphere, on the other hand, is significantly easier, especially if you use Mech Jeb.

Finally made one that can go half way (only half) over the ocean. And it has 3 jets. :D

Planes are quite difficult. Fore-aft balance matters a hell of a lot; less of a concern with a rocket - just stack it up and fire it off. The only problem with rockets is that I tend to end up seeing how much more stuff I can cram onto an otherwise viable and workable design until it either hasn't enough fuel to make orbit anymore or it blows up somehow.

I've yet to make a spaceplane that can broach atmosphere, although I did manage to make a few mostly viable basic jetplanes.

Single-crewmember rockets are practically childs-play, as Hunter just mentioned. Three-crewmember rockets are a bit harder, as the larger fuel tanks and engines weight a great deal more, and long stacks of large components seem to be rather unstable and prone to oscillating to the point where the entire stack disintegrates rather spectacularly - I resort to sticking reinforcing beams all over the place to compensate. Looks like stale butt-crack, but it holds up. Plus, large components need more boosters to compensate for their additional weight. My last offering had fifteen large boosters surrounding a trio of large engines and 12 large fuel tanks daisy-chained together, but I screwed up the routing of fuel hoses so I ended up jettisoning six perfectly fueled tanks. The stubby second stage, comprised of a single large tank and a large engine, was enough to make orbit, but I was eyeing that fuel gauge and being delicate on the throttle. It's strictly a low-orbit shot, but it worked. Once I figure out that fuel glitch, I'll have much more useable fuel on the second stage to play with. Might do a Mun pass with it. I might strip down the Service Module (typically an advanced SES, some RCS fuel tanks and a four-pack of RCS thrusters) to save weight.

edited 12th Sep '12 2:40:35 AM by pvtnum11

Dont feel bad. I built about a half dozen planes before I built one that didn't get destroyed before liftoff, and another couple tries before it was better than 50/50.

Just downloaded the demo. Almost landed on the moon but came up a bit short on fuel and OV-051 Crash N' Burn lived up to its name.

Made it. [1]◊

edited 12th Sep '12 9:10:53 PM by jaustin89

...not exactly a stellar landing, but it'll do... All I've managed so far are low-altitude passes, but hey - I got them back.

Any landing you can walk away from... Besides trying to make a really viable lander with what your given in the demo is rather difficult, It'd need a fairly wide footprint to remain vertical and all you have for parts is the stuff intended to launch a 3 man crew from the planet.

Use fins. Saw a youtube where a guy did it with non-articulating fins as landing gear, demo stock parts only. The problem is that the lander is a bunch of deadweight atop the stack until I actually intend to land.

The lander, if you have enough fuel, should be capable of returning to Kerbin, since Mun has really low gravity. The guy in the vid stuck the fins on radial decouplers, so after he touched down on Mun and took off, he ejected them to save weight for the return trip.

You'll get lots more options when you have the full game, including retractable landing gear and side-mounted rockets. Really easy to make a lander out of that stuff, but I've yet to actually get one to Mun.

...so I fixed my fuel-routing problem, but the stack oscilates so badly (even after sticking a bunch of braces all over the place), that if I attempt to pitch the rocket over to give it some lateral movement (needed for injection into orbit), my upper stage ends up collapsing under the stress. This led to the comical situation in which my crew capsule ended up glued to the top of the ascent stage after the upper stage disintegrated, and the ascent stage still thrusting away at 100-percent power. So I now have absolutely no control over the ascent stage, I can't steer for crap, and my only hope at that point is that the ascent stage doesn't nose over on its own accord and, overheat, explode, or overheat AND explode.

It ran out of fuel finally, so my capsule ended up on a sub-orbital trajectory - even managed a short EVA trip to inspect the base of the capsule, since it was slammed into the ascent stage in a rather unplanned fashion.... At least the parachute survived, and we all got home alive.

I'll probably scrap the design and start over. Too unstable for my tastes, and even with fifteen large boosters, I only gain a measly 2000 meters of altitude - large parts weigh a lot. Single-crewmember rockets are soooo much easier to manage.

The trick with large parts is to use most of them to get out of atmosphere, while the rest and your small parts are used for vacuum operations. This is why it's hard to launch the new three man capsule; the thing's designed to connect to large parts on the bottom.

But here a tip to pull it off: Boosters. Lots and lots of solid fuel boosters, radially mounted at the bottom.

So I got a guy just barely into orbit, and now just barely out of orbit. He's been up for 8 in-game hours and he keeps skimming the upper-atmosphere, slowing him down barely every time, each orbit taking half an hour. He's purely in the atmosphere now, but at about 60k meters up, so he'll be up there for a while.

Also, pressing N causes your RCS and flaps to start thrusting backwards, which I wish I had remembered before separating 8 hours ago. <_<

Yes, using Translation mode on RCS is really helpful.

I used that to keep an orbit from decaying (part of it was scraping atmo) and again to de-orbit. But it's slow, they have very little thrust, and it's pretty much last resort.

Although I saw a guy rescue a crew capsule from Mun using a pile of thrusters in Translate Mode strapped onto a flying RCS gas can, and landing legs.

sweet.

I've used RCS for de-orbiting as well. Sometimes you forget to turn those damned engines off.

So I tried to see if I could make orbit with just SRB's.

First stage is four large units, second is a single large, third is a single large, and the final is a single large. Almost made it, but all I managed to do was end up on a long ballistic trajectory, 1,500 KM's mostly straight up. I didn't nose over in time for the tangential velocity needed to establish orbit.

G-forces at lauch were pretty high - it accelerated...

...like a rocket.

YEAAHHHHHHHH

I ended up swapping out the fourth stage for a single liquid engine and three tanks, and that worked pretty well. I'll try it again with just SRB's and see if I can finangle a stable orbit (although it'll be pretty eccentric) this time.

Only one question... how will I deorbit...? Small SRB fired off as a retro? Nah, useless weight.

RCS, maybe?

other wise youd need to hold onto 1 small SRB

RCS tank and thrusters is deadweight until I need to deorbit, though.

true...you've made yourself quite a challenge.

So I swapped out the large SRB's for small ones - less thrust and only 25 seconds of burntime, but they weight only a third of what the large ones do.

Using three of them on a tri-coupler, a second stage of a singular small and a final stage of a singular small, I ejected my capsule out of Kerbin's gravitational influence.

Adding an RCS maneuvering pack to the thing was no different - ejected right out of influence - but I was able to fire the thrusters and put my little one-man capsule back into a highly elliptical orbit.

Then it did a pass around Mun and got slingshot right out of Kerbit orbit. More weight might help keep it from reaching Apoapsis of over 50 million KM's.

Well, 0.17's out, and the servers are overloaded.

This, naturally, surprises me about as much as lag in Jita.

What's new?