Kerbals in Spaaaaace!

[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.

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.

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?

(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?

[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/...ges-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:

Spoiler

Show

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?

Sadly no.

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.

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.


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.

[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