Kerbal Space Program

[Rich n Em]

Downloaded the demo for this last night - only played an hour but managed to build some rockets, successfully sent up and brought back down...

BUT

I haven't the first idea how to get into a stable orbit!?

I don't have access to YouTube currently, so can someone explain, in VERY simple terms, how it's done??

[isee]

Rich n Em said:

Downloaded the demo for this last night - only played an hour but managed to build some rockets, successfully sent up and brought back down...

BUT

I haven't the first idea how to get into a stable orbit!?

I don't have access to YouTube currently, so can someone explain, in VERY simple terms, how it's done??

Ok, so build a rocket (bigger is seldom better)
Try to keep below 150m/s below 15km as otherwise you will be wasting a lot of your power to drag.
at 15km above earth rotate 45 degrees in the direction of your choosing.

At around 30km if you switch to a map or orbit view you will see a litle marker on your apex line.
when it gets to above 80km, cut power and click the apex point, then add a maneuvre. Play around with the control nodes of the maneuvre bit until you have a round orbit with neither of the opposing markers below 75km. Finish this planning stage well before your ship reaches the apex though.

Once set up, go back into the ship view and point it onto the blue marker on your compass. Press "T" to have your on board computer (if installed) keep that heading.

To the right of your map will be a countdown to maneuvre. fire your engine when it gets to T - 5. cut engine when the required velocity is reached (a little speedo to the right of your compass).


If done correctly, you will be in the same orbit you have projected using the maneuvre node earlier and still have some fuel left for useful things.

Additional tips:

It helps if you have just a short stage/rocket left by the time you are executing the manuevre node as it makes it a lot easier to point your rocket.

If building a rocket with more than one shaft, try to have all the engines firing from teh start, an unfired engine is dead weight. so rather than building 5stages, 5 fuel tanks and 5 engines in one shaft, consider using two engines, one for the 5 tanks, and one for the top tank.

you can use fuel lines to first drain the diagonally attached tanks so that when you destage what remains is ship full of fuel.

HTH

Edited by isee on Wednesday 3rd April 15:35

[BMW3s6]

Launch a rocket directly vertical, around 20k slowly start to turn 90 degrees to the east, around 75k is out of kerbal atmosphere, throttle to 0, and press m key, when you reach AP go full throttle untill PE is above 75k, then close of power, your now in orbit and won't come back down,

If you do this, you can reach the mun, by waiting for it to raise above kerbal, as it does you can then burn to the mun and press the m key, when the trajectory intercepts the mun it will turn yellow, switch of power and fast forward to the mun,

Read up about landing it's quite hard haha, basically you want to land around 0.5ms,

You can download a plugin called mechjeb and it acts like an autopilot and you can use it as much or as little for of it as you like, I learned by watching mechjeb and then practice on my own, or some course settings I just let the mechjeb deal with it

[BMW3s6]

isee said:

Not done playiong vanilla yet to be messing about iwth the mods.

You do make a good point, I for some reason designed my shuttle in a way that would leave teh reuelling tank behind... but then, I don't really need to leave it behind do I? I can just tansfer the fuel and leave... I suppose I could deliver one big orange tank for storage though. typiall me though, I have yet to attempt a single docking and I am already thinking about refuleiing etc.

To refuel the space station? You don't have too, just dock to the station and transfer fuel, I've had the for some time but only recently everything just clicked together so I'm still learning too

[isee]

BMW3s6 said:

To refuel the space station? You don't have too, just dock to the station and transfer fuel, I've had the for some time but only recently everything just clicked together so I'm still learning too

yup or rather refuel ships that will use the space station as a staging ground. I think i made the mistake of not including a large tank on my space station... Once again trying to fly before i walk, should have just tried some docking first etc.

also on another note, how can you refuel RCS (monopropellant) tanks? Same way as normal fuel?

[isee]

Bedazzled said:

Yup, just the same.

Do I need to ad a dockin gport to it or can I just transfer as long as teh ship is docked?
also does the fuel tank need to be docked or as long as teh ship it is attached to is docked it works?

[isee]

Here is what I made.

It reaches a stable and round high orbit with the second stage not fully depleted, and a full orange tank plus the smaller tank and a big RCS tank.

I have become somewhat of an expert at reaching precise and deliberate orbits. will try a docking maneuvre next.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/...

Edited by isee on Wednesday 3rd April 22:08

[isee]

Bedazzled said:

Docking is a pita to start with, but you soon get the hang of it. One tip is to position your RCS thrusters evenly around the CoG otherwise the translation controls also rotate the craft, and you'll want to throw the PC out the window!

yup had that issue due to 4 thrusters at one end and 3 at the other.
But my problem is not that
I can pretty mcuh have two craft match orbits by now, but how the feck do you get them to catch up?!?

also since mys tation is parked at 160km, i cannot warp it fast enough to skip some revolutions until they get closer due to small height differences.. it's driving me nuts!

[BMW3s6]

isee said:

yup had that issue due to 4 thrusters at one end and 3 at the other.
But my problem is not that
I can pretty mcuh have two craft match orbits by now, but how the feck do you get them to catch up?!?

also since mys tation is parked at 160km, i cannot warp it fast enough to skip some revolutions until they get closer due to small height differences.. it's driving me nuts!

Haha I've got the joys of this to look forward to then

[isee]

BMW3s6 said:

Haha I've got the joys of this to look forward to then

Also is it me or are all the youtube video tutorials are crap?
I spent 49 minutes yesterday watching a space shuttle tutorial video only to find that int he last 5 minutes it wa not capable of getting into a proper orbit or even fly through the atmosphere straight.

Then i watched a an orbit docking tutorial which just showed you how to even out the speed and orbit relative to the target, but no explanation on what markers on your compass have whcih effect under what circumstances and also I suspect my game maybe bugged. I have two craft in almost identical orbits (going in the same direction) but my radar says speed relative to the target is 3625 m/s which is well, impossible.

[Einion Yrth]

isee said:

Also is it me or are all the youtube video tutorials are crap?
I spent 49 minutes yesterday watching a space shuttle tutorial video only to find that int he last 5 minutes it wa not capable of getting into a proper orbit or even fly through the atmosphere straight.

Then i watched a an orbit docking tutorial which just showed you how to even out the speed and orbit relative to the target, but no explanation on what markers on your compass have whcih effect under what circumstances and also I suspect my game maybe bugged. I have two craft in almost identical orbits (going in the same direction) but my radar says speed relative to the target is 3625 m/s which is well, impossible.

Check out Scott Manley's tutorials - he has a rather irritating manner but he knows the game very well.

[Rich n Em]

I spent another hour last night vainly trying to get a stable orbit. I just couldn't seem to get the trajectory to be orbital, it didn't matter what angle or speed I was at, the trajectory always went back to Earth...

Maybe I'm not cut out for this game!!

I'll try again later.

[Einion Yrth]

Rich n Em said:

I spent another hour last night vainly trying to get a stable orbit. I just couldn't seem to get the trajectory to be orbital, it didn't matter what angle or speed I was at, the trajectory always went back to Earth...

Maybe I'm not cut out for this game!!

I'll try again later.

Let Scott Manley show you how.

[Alex@POD]

Last time I played this there was only talks of the Mun, it wasn't in the game at the time. The best I could do was to get a stable orbit, I never managed to get back to the launch pad though.
I might have to revisit this!

[Einion Yrth]

Alex@POD said:

Last time I played this there was only talks of the Mun, it wasn't in the game at the time. The best I could do was to get a stable orbit, I never managed to get back to the launch pad though.
I might have to revisit this!

Kerbin now has two moons and there's a whole bunch of other bodies in the system to (fail to) explore, too.

[BMW3s6]

isee said:

Also is it me or are all the youtube video tutorials are crap?
I spent 49 minutes yesterday watching a space shuttle tutorial video only to find that int he last 5 minutes it wa not capable of getting into a proper orbit or even fly through the atmosphere straight.

Then i watched a an orbit docking tutorial which just showed you how to even out the speed and orbit relative to the target, but no explanation on what markers on your compass have whcih effect under what circumstances and also I suspect my game maybe bugged. I have two craft in almost identical orbits (going in the same direction) but my radar says speed relative to the target is 3625 m/s which is well, impossible.

Yeah the best way for me to learn was to use mechjeb and watch it, from looking at the latest release of mechjeb you can use it to plot the route and let you fly the ship, so Im going to have a play with that later.

the biggest thing for me is to learn to use the nav ball and not watch the ship lol! so many times Im coming in ok then press the wrong button and then try to counter with another wrong button before spinning around and crashing.

[Rich n Em]

Well, I had another hour on it, just.

I managed an orbit! It wasn't pretty, an insanely high orbit path and VERY eliptical, but it was an orbit. Sadly I ran out of fuel trying to reduce the periapsis and my poor Kerbal is now stranded out there.

It was a win though. I think...

[isee]

Rich n Em said:

Well, I had another hour on it, just.

I managed an orbit! It wasn't pretty, an insanely high orbit path and VERY eliptical, but it was an orbit. Sadly I ran out of fuel trying to reduce the periapsis and my poor Kerbal is now stranded out there.

It was a win though. I think...

You could try to do some aerobreaking using your RCS at the closest point to erth, provided you get high enough.

[Rich n Em]

isee said:

You could try to do some aerobreaking using your RCS at the closest point to erth, provided you get high enough.

I guess I still have a lot to figure out, I have RCS boosters, and RCS fuel tank - didn't realise I could aerobrake! I'll try it later.

[isee]

After getting to within 14meteres from my stapce station last night and then spinning out of control and increaing the distance I have given up and installed MechJeb.

It's great! the constant space launches were beginning to grate on me so this will allow me to concentrate on tinkering again and rescuing the FleshJeb from minimus. but I thought it does the docking for you, but it only seems to match the orbit's inclination, nothing else...