Kerbal Space Program

No worries, when I started playing KSP I couldn't land without crashing if my life depended on it. I'm still not great at landing but I can bring the lander down safely most of the time now.

KSP takes patience but is extremely rewarding when you manage to do something you had trouble with before. Docking is something many players are afraid of. My first rendezvous and docking took two days. Now I can set up a rendezvous and docking in a couple of minutes, get my rendezvous within 1km every time and dock with hardly any RCS. If it gets too frustrating you can always use MechJeb. I haven't used it since 0.22 though. I wanted to become a better pilot and MechJeb was holding me back.

There are a couple of mods I can highly recommend though:
Kerbal Engineer Redux (helps to custom-build a vehicle with precise delta-V requirements)
Docking Port Alignment Indicator (way better than the stock tools imo)
Kerbal Alarm Clock (allows you to save maneuver nodes and warp to them)

And the Launch Window Planner gets you interplanetary transfer solutions even outside the optimal time window. I'm usually willing to burn 10-20% extra delta-V if it gets me there 100 days early or so.

Thanks for all the tips I might give it another go over the weekend

I am able to do all of those things. I am shoddy at shipcraft, though its nice I can use a stock rocket and load it separate of loading a build to mount to it now.

There is a tutorial for rendezvous and docking, a playermade tutorial. I recommend it, it is the system I use for interplanetary travel. Before that tutorial, I could barely sync with planet orbit, and could absolutely not sync with things without gravity (fueling sattelites). Now, I can >1km rendezvous.

That's how I learned, tutorials and scenarios. The building tutorial sucks, they literally don't expect you to build anything to escape orbit.

Well, as far as engineering goes: I build a lander for Eve with >10km/s, launched it into orbit, docked the interplanetary transfer stage, refueled everything...

... and then I realized that I forgot to put the stupid, <censored>, <censored>, ladders on the <censored>, <censored> lander. I launched a very expensive, over-engineered piece of junk today...


Here, beautiful, isn't it. Note the lack of ladders... *sigh*

We all make mistakes. That is why there is a rewind button as well as a fast forward button. Or a reload at later save point, at any rate.

Well, we learn form failure and sometimes reaching the goal is so much sweeter...
The toughest engineering challenge is done! I've done science on Eve's surface and returned my Kerbalnaut from 2145m. Yup not from the tall 7000m mountains, from an ant hill!

May I present:



Out of fuel is the story of Shepsey Kerman, the first Kerbal to set foot on Eve's surface. He invented Eve Extreme EVA! He is the new Jebediah! Nothing can stop him!

Never forget your EVA fuel! You got 500-600m/s free delta-V in your backpack. One day it might save a life.

Every time I open this Thread, I feel like i'm reading the journal entries of a Kebal space program engineer and the trials they face.

Keep up the good work Col_Jessep.

I think that's what we call "cutting it fine".

This is KSP, I'm cutting it fine all the time! I build a new SSTO plane yesterday and let Jeb have some fun with it:



If you want you can give it a whirl yourself. I'm still working on it but I'm almost done:



Careful, the Valkyrie is a big girl! She is very stable but I haven't tested her when she used up most of her fuel yet. ;P

PS: Test done. She flies just fine on fumes. I fixed a glitch where the hatch was obstructed.

Here is how you get her itno orbit:



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PPS: This is crazy! I really liked the wing design of the Valkyrie and how she handles so I build a suborbital version. Just airbreathing engines and enough fuel to last me almost half an hour at full thrust.

I've started testing her:
+ she takes off with like 50m/s
+ she flies fine with reaction wheels disabled
+ she flies perfectly steady without SAS
+ she does not want to spin no matter what!
I've been trying to get her into a death spin for 30 minutes now - it's not happening! The second I take the fingers off the controls she rights herself and points her nose prograde. First I thought it was because I had such a high thrust to weight ratio. It still works with only one of the three engines though!



Try for yourself.

I have a theory I need to test with one of my other designs tomorrow...

Judging from that last video, they don't take Drag into effect for airplanes. otherwise you would be warping all sorts of parts on that aircraft.

The drag model in KSP is special...
For one thing it is based on mass. Yup, it doesn't matter how wide your rocket is. Nosecones are basically useless (even after the changes in 0.22). Nobody thought that KSP would get this big at first. The drag model worked well with what KSP was back in the day. With a proper drag model nobody would ever have gotten any rocket into space in early KSP. You simply didn't have the parts for it. Besides, most newbies have enough trouble wrapping their head around orbital maneuvers and steering their rocket as it is. Who knows how you make a decent gravity turn when they start to play KSP? Watch new players build their first rockets and fly them. Probably not a good idea to make things even harder for them...

I'm tempted to install Ferram Aerospace Research and Deadly Reentry. Ferram (known as FAR) is a plugin with advanced model for drag, lift and atmosphere. DR adds heatshields and forces you to think about how you want to enter an atmosphere. Everything that's not protected from the reentry heat will suffer damage and go poof if it heats up too much. The Mk 1 capsule comes with a heatshield but other than that you want to plan ahead on how you come back into atmo.

Col_Jessep, can you do this stuff?

I recognize some of those parts as B9 Aerospace and probably some Infernal Robotics stuff. Never looked into weapons in KSP. My enemies are gravity, aerodynamics and limited funds. I have started using FAR and Deadly Reentry to make everything happening in atmospheres more realistic and dangerous. It's a ton of fun if you have to think of ways how you can get rid of heat before your parachutes burn up. Mission Controller Extended supplies me with missions and makes me think about my budget.

And of course I'm back to building planes. My 220t refueler "Leviathan" can bring 3 orange tanks worth of LOF into LKO. Or it can fly to Jool.



There is a Kerbal on the wing in the front to give you an idea how large the Leviathan is. Landing it is a bit tricky.


My Minmus Kethane Miner:



And the refinery in Minmus orbit:

I didn't record any of it, but in career mode my kerbal got stranded out of fuel between the moon and kerbal.

Reluctant to cheat in career, I actually put together a rendezvous mission. I stuck a probe atop an empty crew pod with plentiful batteries, and actually used my rendezvous skills to match orbit within .3 km of the stranded vessel. Then he did an EVA maneuver to reach the empty vessel with fuel, and actually made it back to orbit.

On the way I noticed. When you do a curved reentry, can you actually go fast enough high atmosphere to actually re-exit back into orbit? That sort of bothered me as I almost ran out of fuel before stopping myself from doing this.

Well done! 0.3km is very good for a rendezvous that is not in a low orbit.

Yes, it's called aerobraking. It's a great way to save fuel if you want to get into orbit around a body with atmosphere. Here is a calculator that tells you how deep you have to go to get to your desired apoapsis after aerobraking: http://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/

I recommend to stay a bit over the recommended height or you aerobraking might turn into an aerocapture and then you have to land or start burning your engines.

There are some extra rules for Ferram Aerospace Research and Deadly ReEntry but that's a different story.

In other news: There was a secret change to the way flame outs work on jet engines. The turbo jets will now keep producing thrust even if you fall slightly below 100% air capacity. I can get my high performance SSTO "Hurricane II" almost into orbit with jet engines alone. It just needs 27m/s to get it into a stable orbit now. Took 72 units of liquid fuel to get me there:



This is a test in stock KSP, this stuff doesn't fly with FAR and DRE...

Just recently got back into KSP in a rather "serious" manner, decided that I needed a space station to act as a refueling depot for future missions......after 6 Assembly Launches, 1 Crew Transfer and an Emergency Crew Escape Vehicle(Hidden behind the Station) I present the Interplanetary Kerbal Space Station!


It's not much yet, and the Big Fuel Tank is still empty, and maneuvering it is very, VERY wobbly but it's a start! Next Task is to start filling up Fuel Tank, maybe bring up a second one and I want more Docking Space for smaller craft. Then it's figuring out a Lander and hopefully a rover and then I can get to some serious exploring!

Mike

Nice! I like how you got the solar arrays perfectly aligned. The wobbliness is hard to avoid without mods. Even if you use the large docking ports you get some wobble with a station that size. With Kerbal Attachment System you can add struts later by sending a Kerbal out on EVA with the necessary parts. But I guess you want to play stock for now.

I'm currently waiting for a couple of mods to be updated, mostly B9 Aerospace. Just doing small stuff atm.

I blame my OCD, it was hell to get them aligned!

Yeah, I prolly won't get into mods in any big way until 'release' most likely, I do kinda like the working within constraints(though they can be very limiting right now) so I'll be waiting.

Mike

I would recommend that you look at some UI mods. KSP's vanilla UI leaves a lot to be desired and these mods add some really nice convenience features:

Kerbal Engineer Redux: Readouts of all the things; velocities, orbital periods, AP, PE, inclination, delta-v, TWR... I do not play KSP without. Must have.
Precise Node: Allows you to set up very precise burns and have KSP calculate your trajectory further. Must have because fiddling with the maneuver nodes in KSP is infuriating.
Kerbal Alarm Clock: Set up alarms for maneuver nodes, AP, PE, AN, DN and most importantly sphere of influence changes! I highly recommend to set up automated alarms that pull you out of time warp 5 seconds before every sphere of influence change. Every time you warp past an SoI change KSP messes up your trajectory a bit. Your finely tuned Dres encounter is suddenly a near miss and you have to fiddle with it again. With KAC pulling you out of warp this problem is almost entirely negated.
Docking Port Alignment Indicator: For your OCD docking needs. Comes with an indicator for rotation angles on docking ports and makes docking fun.

Then there is a graphics mod, City Lights and Clouds: Looks really nice and doesn't have any performance impact as far as I can tell. I recommend to plant a flag at the end of your runway though. Makes it easier to find KSC under clouds.

Is there a way to turn an engine off after its started or a way to shut off single engines ?
I only started playing yesterday

I made an orbital jet, but when i get too high the jet engines malfunction and cut out, i want to shut them off so i can use just the rocket engine, and then have the jet engines again for after re-entry/.

I thought of having 2 sets of jet engines one set for take off at stage 3.
then rocket at stage 2 for interstellar flight.
Then jets as stage 1 for re-entry landings.