Kerbal Space Program

[davepoth]

IanMorewood said:

Get to the Mun isn't a problem, landing and then getting back tends to be a little troublesome. Also the latest version sucks up pretty much all the power my system has.

It seemed pretty simple with the ship above. I realised the trick is to use as many engines as your computer can handle. I get around 0.5 FPS on the first stage.

[isee]

davepoth said:

It seemed pretty simple with the ship above. I realised the trick is to use as many engines as your computer can handle. I get around 0.5 FPS on the first stage.

Although I think what you built is awesome, the trick is not as many engines as possible, nor as many stages as possible

A two orange tank core and 4x2 orange tank radial rockets, all with a mainsail engine attached (so 5 at liftoff) is plenty enough to get a large payload to the mun. Just make sure the radial tanks feed the core engine too so by the time they destage you have a core with unused fuel still.

Basically the less dead weight in the form of unstaged engines you have the better.

But I will try to make wha tyou made simply cause it looks great!

[GrumpyTwig]

Despite my earlier post, I stumped for the full game on Steam.


So far far I've managed to stick a satellite into Kerbal orbit, using one of the standard saved craft, some kind of communication satellite.

I've also then gone onto put a second comms satellite into Mun orbit.

Now.... what the hell are they good for? I have no idea but it was fun

[BMW3s6]

check out the plugin data sys I think its called, it lets you scan the surfaces of planets Ive been trying to drive around the mun to find the Neil Armstrong monument

[davepoth]

isee said:

Although I think what you built is awesome, the trick is not as many engines as possible, nor as many stages as possible

A two orange tank core and 4x2 orange tank radial rockets, all with a mainsail engine attached (so 5 at liftoff) is plenty enough to get a large payload to the mun. Just make sure the radial tanks feed the core engine too so by the time they destage you have a core with unused fuel still.

Basically the less dead weight in the form of unstaged engines you have the better.

But I will try to make wha tyou made simply cause it looks great!

I've only got the demo which doesn't have a lot of the parts, so it's a struggle to do things efficiently. That rocket has 16 stages...

[davepoth]

Bedazzled said:

davepoth said:

I've only got the demo which doesn't have a lot of the parts, so it's a struggle to do things efficiently. That rocket has 16 stages...

Buy the full version, it costs buttons. The more income they get the more they can develop a superb game.

I don't have a PC that'll run it - I'm forever fixing my Mum's laptop when she gets all kinds of malware on it though, so I have the occasional go on there.

[GrumpyTwig]

http://www.youtube.com/user/StompThompson

Some really good videos on this chaps channel regarding KSP, some good inspiration at least

p.s. this is quite funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzMVtFaB4OU

Edited by GrumpyTwig on Sunday 14th April 14:52

[Potatoes]

Robbaz got me into KSP, I love his reviews/walkthroughs although more comedy than helpful:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD1262982675...

His videos of getting Jeb to the cheesecake planet and then launching a rescue mission are great.

[...Mole...]

my best achievment on this so far is crashing on the Mun! Ive been attempting several one way missions to strand a poor
kerbal there for a while to test my designs for a small launch rocket and lightweight setup. Using mechJeb 2 helps
a lot!

[FunkyNige]

Bedazzled said:

Landed a rover on Laythe (first moon of Jool) yesterday, the aero braking was a bit hairy as I was low on fuel and entered the atmosphere at 4,500m/s! Found dry land, more by luck than judgement...

How do you aim at the distant planets? I've made it my challenge to map all the planets and moons (more interested in sending out unmanned probes than manned landings for some reason!) but have difficulty getting into orbit around other planets, even Minimus was a bit hit and miss...

Been playing this on and off for about a year now, still can't work out how to get close to a ship to get into orbit from a horizontal take-off without having a rocket powered ship bolted to a throw-away air breathing plane!

[GrumpyTwig]

FunkyNige said:

Bedazzled said:

Landed a rover on Laythe (first moon of Jool) yesterday, the aero braking was a bit hairy as I was low on fuel and entered the atmosphere at 4,500m/s! Found dry land, more by luck than judgement...

How do you aim at the distant planets? I've made it my challenge to map all the planets and moons (more interested in sending out unmanned probes than manned landings for some reason!) but have difficulty getting into orbit around other planets, even Minimus was a bit hit and miss...

Been playing this on and off for about a year now, still can't work out how to get close to a ship to get into orbit from a horizontal take-off without having a rocket powered ship bolted to a throw-away air breathing plane!

I've yet to use it but I think you're forced to use something like http://ksp.olex.biz/ , haven't tried that myself yet as still getting to grips with basics.

Still don't quite get the use of maneuver nodes myself...... Doesn't help all their forum is down too.

[IanMorewood]

Air breathers aren't much use over 16km (but use much less fuel) so all I use them for is to get light rockets into the air so they can be put in a stable low orbit with much less fuel than would be required to get them off the ground otherwise.

[jmorgan]

Managed to blow up another design, too much power and not enough structural support. Need a handy parts list to print out. And read some more design stuff.

[EventHorizon]

Downloaded this & now im addicted!. Great little game with loads of potential. (also quite educational to boot, huge learning curve)
Is it possible to get a single stick rocket that has two solid boosters in line then an upper atmos fuel tank & nossle into orbit? I get close every time but not quite there yet.

How do attach more boosters the radial decoupler doesn't work?

Edited by EventHorizon on Thursday 18th April 15:43

Edited by EventHorizon on Thursday 18th April 16:28

[jmorgan]

I seem to have problems with the couplers as well.

Takes ages to snap on if at all.

[FunkyNige]

Bedazzled said:

<<great advice>>

Getting boosters onto the decouplers can be really awkward, sometimes you need to put the couplers quite low in order to get them to snap on. I find having the snap to angle thing on helps.

[EventHorizon]

Found a pre saved rocket in the garage & modded it a bit i can now make orbit with spare booster capacity. Problem now is getting onto the same plane as the mun. How can i alter my orbit around earth to bring it on to the plain of the moons orbit?.

Also how can you tell where mun is going to be when you get there? i.e. in the future. When plotting maneuvers.

[IanMorewood]

My favoured route for attaching solid boosters is via hard points makes it easy to stick boosters to a liquid tank.

[FunkyNige]

EventHorizon said:

Found a pre saved rocket in the garage & modded it a bit i can now make orbit with spare booster capacity. Problem now is getting onto the same plane as the mun. How can i alter my orbit around earth to bring it on to the plain of the moons orbit?.

Also how can you tell where mun is going to be when you get there? i.e. in the future. When plotting maneuvers.

If you take off and just point East/West to get into orbit you should be in the same plane as Mun, to intercept it I cheat a bit and burn so the Apoasis (highest point of orbit) is just past the Mun's orbit, make sure the lowest point of your orbit is above 200k and hit warp until they meet... If you're going to intercept it the orbit trajectory will go bonkers for a second, then you'll get a couple of little circles come up called 'Mun encounter' and 'Mun escape', you need to slow down to get into orbit before you reach Mun escape.

The official way to intercept it I believe is to get into a circular orbit, when Mun is just over the horizon do a prograde (direction of travel) burn and you should get to it.

[EventHorizon]

Thanks i gave it a try, got so close to an orbit insertion at Mun all i needed was a 2 second retro burn but controls had gone dead even had a little left in the tank.

Space flight is a cruel mistress.