Kerbal Space Program: Let's Light This Candle

Xeknos wrote:

I am so close to buying this game.

Right? I'm watching like a hawk for a Steam sale...

It's so cool to see so much happening in this thread these days! Yonder, those paratroopers are awesome -- I'd never have thought to do that. Some of these tanker designs are great, too; the best advice I can give for those is to strip off any excess weight that you can (those aerodynamic nosecones, for instance, don't actually do anything at the moment apart from add weight), and think carefully about balancing engine weight and specific impulse. SRBs can be handy at the very bottom of your stack to give you an extra boost off the pad, but they become a burden higher up, since their specific impulse is so low.

There are some really interesting trade-offs to be between different engines; I really like the tiny Rockomax radial engine, for instance, since it has such a high thrust-to-weight ratio compare to, say, the LV-909, but the 909 has much higher specific impulse, so unless your spacecraft is very small, the extra efficiency of the 909 is worth it, despite the extra weight. Similarly, while the LV-N seems like an obvious win with its high specific impulse, it's insanely heavy for its thrust, so it only makes sense on quite large spacecraft, where you're going to end up saving enough fuel to justify several extra tonnes worth of engines.

Sometimes you just want to do something fun, though -- efficiency and weight-reduction be damned -- so I've been working on this:

IMAGE(http://wootangent.net/~lsd/blah/discoveryone.jpg)

I like the idea of keeping those LV-N engines away from the crew, even if there's absolutely no need for it; the same goes for all the crew space outside of the lander, so the crew has room to relax on long trips. The lander attached to the front is set up for Duna, though I think I should be able to land it on the Mün on this shakedown cruise. By attaching different lander designs and flying up fuel I should be able to take this just about anywhere

Yonder wrote:

Tanstaafl: I am thinking of deorbiting my space station and starting afresh as well. The new larger and stronger docking modules seem like just the thing for a space station. I'm going to resist though, but I'm going to keep those in mind if I ever decide on a portable station to send off-world.

Those new docking clamps are definitely worth using -- they're a lot more sturdy than the smaller ones for bringing large modules together.

pneuman wrote:
Yonder wrote:

Tanstaafl: I am thinking of deorbiting my space station and starting afresh as well. The new larger and stronger docking modules seem like just the thing for a space station. I'm going to resist though, but I'm going to keep those in mind if I ever decide on a portable station to send off-world.

Those new docking clamps are definitely worth using -- they're a lot more sturdy than the smaller ones for bringing large modules together.

Sweet. I've been wanting to try those but haven't had a chance yet

Oh I wouldn't wait too long for a steam sale. The price is probably going to go up when it finally comes out of beta and its been selling pretty well. Always in the top twenty or so on steam.

Sigh. My space station just experienced a spontaneous, unplanned, rapid disassembly. Had brought my next module into orbit nearby, hit "]" to switch to the station (I just wanted to turn on the lights!) and boom. Station is now a disconnected set of rapidly expanding parts.

Looking on the official forums this looks to be a known issue and there is speculation that it is related to the new cupola module. Be careful switching between craft.

Official support thread.

pneuman wrote:

(those aerodynamic nosecones, for instance, don't actually do anything at the moment apart from add weight)

I feel betrayed.

tanstaafl wrote:

Sigh. My space station just experienced a spontaneous, unplanned, rapid disassembly. Had brought my next module into orbit nearby, hit "]" to switch to the station (I just wanted to turn on the lights!) and boom. Station is now a disconnected set of rapidly expanding parts.

Looking on the official forums this looks to be a known issue and there is speculation that it is related to the new cupola module. Be careful switching between craft.

Official support thread.

So glad you mentioned that, I was just about to send up my new habitation module, and if the cupola's are buggy will this would probably set it off:

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img801/7001/2013052600010.jpg)

Norfair wrote:
pneuman wrote:
Yonder wrote:

Tanstaafl: I am thinking of deorbiting my space station and starting afresh as well. The new larger and stronger docking modules seem like just the thing for a space station. I'm going to resist though, but I'm going to keep those in mind if I ever decide on a portable station to send off-world.

Those new docking clamps are definitely worth using -- they're a lot more sturdy than the smaller ones for bringing large modules together.

Sweet. I've been wanting to try those but haven't had a chance yet

Oh I wouldn't wait too long for a steam sale. The price is probably going to go up when it finally comes out of beta and its been selling pretty well. Always in the top twenty or so on steam.

And they deserve your every penny!

pneuman wrote:

It's so cool to see so much happening in this thread these days! Yonder, those paratroopers are awesome -- I'd never have thought to do that.

I'm glad you liked them!

Here is my next External Command Chair foray, every Kerbal's favorite amusement park ride the Tower of Terror!

Unfortunately I have to pack for a trip and climbing the Kerbals up the Launch Tower is a huge pain, so we're just going to send up one.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img546/1617/2013052600012.jpg)
Jumping the gap, without rolling off the handrail-less edge is part of the fun!

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img163/6642/2013052600013.jpg)

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img541/2026/2013052600014.jpg)
Strap in tight!

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img90/7650/2013052600017.jpg)
And we're off!

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img20/6165/2013052600018c.jpg)
The separation can get a bit twisty.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img59/1496/2013052600021.jpg)
The SRBs are just the beginning!

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img829/9408/2013052600022.jpg)
We'll actually break 45k km.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img842/3701/2013052600024.jpg)
And back down.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img543/1719/2013052600025.jpg)
He looks a little nervous.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img268/9473/2013052600026.jpg)
Probably because this ride has never landed in the water before and we have no idea what will happen.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img19/4360/2013052600027.jpg)
Oh God. I'm going to throw up.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img834/2589/2013052600028.jpg)
You're alive!

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img853/1885/2013052600032.jpg)
It works better when it lands on the ground.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img824/541/2013052600033.jpg)
I mean, obviously the engine explodes when it hits the ground, but that's just like the crumple zone of a car, it absorbs all the shock.

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img534/4569/2013052600034.jpg)
See, perfectly intact!

IMAGE(http://imageshack.us/a/img705/2876/2013052600035.jpg)
Aww, look at how sad he is that the ride is over.

Well, I caved and bought it. The first rocket I launched didn't quite make orbit, but I learned a lot. And playing the Enterprise theme song made it a special moment.

My tall multi-stagers keep getting terribly unstable, with tanks separating from each other without warning, sometimes on the launch pad. They are also very rough on my framerate. So I have started working on squat & wide designs consisting mostly of mainsail rockets each attached to only a single big orange fuel tank. Right now I've got I think 19 of them with a few solid fuel boosters just cuz. The payload then sits on top, in this case a ship designed to dock at my station, then land on Duma, unload rover car for some joyriding, then return home. I'll get some pics when I'm at home again.

Last night my attempt with this design failed because I ran out of monopropellent for my thrusters. I was so so so close to docking but could not do fine maneuvers.

A tug and an extra docking port in-line with the overall piece structure (on one end, basically) are essential for correcting for mistakes like that. Get yourself a small but heavy spacecraft with a good amount of RCS fuel and well placed thrusters and you can have it perform the last docking steps. My ships are becoming more and more modular due to stuff like that. I'm sticking the huge docking ports on both ends of everything now.

Edit: Im also finding that this technique gets progressively wobblier. I should check out the Quantum Strut mod. I wish Kerbalnauts could install struts in-orbit.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

I made a whole new lander and spacecraft assembly (the thing I use to move things to different planets) using the new, big docking ports (so much more stable).

Got to Duna, aerobraked into orbit, sent down my lander which actually is flanked by two hab units, underneath each is a small one man rover. Landing was picture perfect (festooned with 'chutes). Unclipped by rovers, drove one around and quicksaved. When I then flipped my rover, re-loaded and my rover self-destructed :(. Tried re-loading multiple times but it just sank into the surface and blew up. Maybe the new wheels? Undocked the other rover and saved, re-loaded to test and the rover was gone... Blech.

Disconnected the two habs, talked one of my Kerbals into talking a brief walk and the other two blasted off without him, abandoning him on Duna.

The lander made it back into orbit like butter.

So the good, everything I made worked as designed. The bad, bugs destroyed my rovers.

I'll give the tug a shot. I'm actually thinking of scrapping my current station (skyfall in Australia maybe) and building one that's more docking friendly and doesn't cause such a framerate drop when I get close to it.

I went through that too. Its hard to get one that is fun to look at and doesnt kill framerate.

I am very curious, but I imagine this game would mostly be a rocket simulator in terms of showing off perfect arcs before my stuff slammed into the ground. For someone with only decent understanding of physics and such, how approachable is this game?

Demosthenes wrote:

I am very curious, but I imagine this game would mostly be a rocket simulator in terms of showing off perfect arcs before my stuff slammed into the ground. For someone with only decent understanding of physics and such, how approachable is this game?

It is a game of trial and error, probably even for Yonder still. It is pretty approachable IMO. The game comes with some default rocket designs to play with and understand how things work together. The wiki has some good info and tutorials. Most of my launches still end in explosions or aborts.

Got my proper station assembled in Duna orbit. It was in 2 flights. 1 with the orange tank, the other with the rest of the orbiter structure, just all in a line instead of the way you see it now. The ship you see attached was the engine for the main flight and was able to unplug all the bits to assemble them into the nice shape. That orange tank is about 80% full and all those RCS tanks are pretty full too.

IMAGE(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-tEQgX8rtZHU/UaVOhDWmLII/AAAAAAAAAsc/vKVW_DnWYeI/w777-h540-no/Duna+Base.png)

Most importantly, my framerate is sitting at a lovely 60fps. Now I need a relief ship to come and replace Bill and Jeb with C list Kerbals. No need to waste their mixture of stupidity and courage babysitting a space station. Those two were also the first residents of the Kerbin space station.

Well, bad news. My space station did not have the fuel reserves I thought. My Duma ship ran out of fuel setting up its orbit to reach Duma. Back to the drawing board for me, after I scuttle my station. I could just End Flight it, but I want something more spectacular if I can.

Worse news: my station escape vehicle was built on a PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container to hold the crew. However, this is ridiculously fragile and shattered on landing, even with 4 parachutes. Apparently I should have used landing gear in conjunction with the parachutes, though I'm not even sure that would have worked.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Worse news: my station escape vehicle was built on a PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container to hold the crew. However, this is ridiculously fragile and shattered on landing, even with 4 parachutes. Apparently I should have used landing gear in conjunction with the parachutes, though I'm not even sure that would have worked.

Check the "Impact Tolerance" stat in the VAB (or on the wiki) -- while the game doesn't give a unit for it, it's just the m/s that it can survive on an impact. The cockpits and Command Pods have higher values to survive parachute landings on Kerbin, but the Lander Cans manage only 8m/s, and the Hitchhiker just 6.

Yeah, I looked at the values after it happened. Damn crazy. Feels like something that should be patched.

Hitchhiker Container Impact Tolerance: 6 m/s
Mk3 Cockpit Impact Tolerance: 50 m/s

That's a stupendous difference.

Latest patch fixes the problem with craft using the cupola mod spontaneously disassembling...

Squad wrote:

I'm happy to announce that the 0.20.1 patch is now available!

This patch fixes most of the issues encountered on the 0.20 release. Here's the changelog:

Bug Fixes and Tweaks:

Tweaked the logic for part-to-part collisions. Things should be much less likely to explode on contact.
Reverted the Mun's height values, so landmarks and bases shouldn't spawn below ground anymore (mind 20.0 saves though).
Tweaked part components on EVA so they start up with the right values.
Tweaked the suspension on the new Medium Rover Wheels, to fix jittering.
Fixed the too-low resolution on planetary diffuse and normal maps.
Fixed the screen resolution not being properly applied on game start.
Fixed some situations where the 'Control From Here' selection would be lost on resuming a game save.
Fixed a serious issue with the Cupola Pod that could cause spontaneous unplanned vessel disassembly.
Fixed an issue that caused internal spaces to spawn in duplicate sometimes. It was harmless but wasted resources.
Fixed the scale of Gilly in the Tracking Station scene.
Fixed a few issues with flags behaving weirdly after they were toppled down.
Fixed the camera jitter when walking around on EVA.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

I am very curious, but I imagine this game would mostly be a rocket simulator in terms of showing off perfect arcs before my stuff slammed into the ground. For someone with only decent understanding of physics and such, how approachable is this game?

It is a game of trial and error, probably even for Yonder still. It is pretty approachable IMO. The game comes with some default rocket designs to play with and understand how things work together. The wiki has some good info and tutorials. Most of my launches still end in explosions or aborts.

I also think this game is very approachable, even for people that don't have a relevant background. There is no cost modeling or anything like that, so after a relatively small amount of trial and error you should be able to just brute force things to space. You can go at your own pace from there, tweaking existing designs and trying entirely new ones.

I know there are also some mods that take some of the more fiddly stuff like rendezvous, although I haven't tried them.

Rendezvous isn't that fiddly, it's actually docking that is a major PITA. Spent 4 hours last night docking orange tanks to my space station (and the bad part is I'm unhappy with the way it looks after I'm done).

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/920138415783601136/2F844AF405231EBA1BC6BBB128BE89283F4F90E8/)

There is MechJeb which automates almost all the flying bits. I may start using it for things after I've done them manually a few times. I've hit the point where just getting into orbit has gotten boring and I don't want to spend another evening attempting to line up docking ports.

Remember that the game is still in beta and they are adding functionality all the time. Docking is a relatively recent addition, for example. Currently there is only sandbox mode but they are planning to add a career mode where you have to worry about budgets, crew training and such. They are also planning on expanding scientific missions and adding resource gathering (asteroid mining!). So stuff is still happening.

Multiplayer KSP? Sorta.

"Why play alone, when you can play alone together?"

Kerbal LiveFeed is a plugin, client and server that lets you see other players are doing while you play KSP. You can see their vessels and orbits in Map View, read live status updates of their ships, chat and share screenshots and craft files.

Docking can be REALLY hard if you dont do a few steps during your rocket construction. My first attempts at docking took HOURS because I didnt understand this.

Placement of your RCS ports should be based on your final stage's Center of Mass. There's a button to activate an indicator on the bottom left of the screen. Turn it on after your orbiting stage is completely built (dont include anything that will get decoupled before it achieves orbit). Then use it to put RCS clusters on. Use Quad symmetry to place them evenly around the rocket and use the angle snap to get them lined up perfectly.

I tend to use 3 sets. One right on the Center of Mass, then one each equidistant from the Center of Mass and as close to the ends as you can get. This gives you control of the front and back ends and if you eye-ball it right, you can translate left/right/up/down without rotating the craft. That ability is essential to docking.

For actually docking, if you havent already, get used to using WASD for rotation and IJKL for translation (pushing directly left/right/up/down without rotation). While docking, switch to Chase camera, using the V key to toggle through camera modes. This locks the camera so that as your craft move, the camera moves with it. You can move the camera behind the craft and trust that left is left, right is right, etc. Using these and decent RCS placement (most everything I build still rotates a bit when I try to translate) I've been able to achieve docking in just a few minutes nowadays.

Lastly, I wouldn't recommend Mechjeb for docking. It will burn TONS of RCS fuel overcorrecting to stay lined up with the docking ports.
A great mod for docking is Lazor systems' Docking Cameras. It lets you right click a docking port to activate a port's Point of View camera with some nice indicators for getting your port lined up.

So for docking, I haven't been using cameras, I've been relying on the navball. Once I realized what the various colored crosshairs meant, docking is fairly straight-forward.

IMAGE(http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/7/7a/Navball.png)

Line up with target prograde to point your ship's nose at your selected target. Line up with target retrograde to face directly away.

Orbit prograde and retrograde aren't orbital indicators if your target is a station or another ship. Instead they indicate your travel direction relative to your target. So if you face your ship along the orbit prograde, you're now facing the direction you're moving relative to the target. Face the retrograde and your facing away from your movement vector.

So what I'll do is use my main engines to move myself close to the station, then align my nose with the orbit retrograde and fire my engines at low power until my point of reference speed hits 0. Then I switch to "Docking" view and use my linear thrusters to move forward while pointed directly at my target (which you can set to be an individual docking port).

When docking, the trick is keep your orbit prograde and target prograde on exactly the same point. That indicates you're moving precisely toward your target with zero lateral movement.

Yonder wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

I am very curious, but I imagine this game would mostly be a rocket simulator in terms of showing off perfect arcs before my stuff slammed into the ground. For someone with only decent understanding of physics and such, how approachable is this game?

It is a game of trial and error, probably even for Yonder still. It is pretty approachable IMO. The game comes with some default rocket designs to play with and understand how things work together. The wiki has some good info and tutorials. Most of my launches still end in explosions or aborts.

I also think this game is very approachable, even for people that don't have a relevant background. There is no cost modeling or anything like that, so after a relatively small amount of trial and error you should be able to just brute force things to space. You can go at your own pace from there, tweaking existing designs and trying entirely new ones.

Astronomer Scott Manley's YouTube tutorial series is must-watch material for KSP noobs. It not only walks you through successful strategies for building and flying into low orbit, mun landings and more, but more importantly explains the real-world science behind what you're doing. The guy is a good teacher too.

Once assimilated, these authentic how’s and why’s makes planning, building and piloting on your own make complete logical sense. This series made the learning curve on KSP super smooth, and I enjoyed the practical astronautics knowledge it laid on me to boot!

Here’s the first one. Skip to 14:42 if you just want to learn about low-Kerbin orbit (though you’ll miss building tips).

Squad wrote:

Tweaked the suspension on the new Medium Rover Wheels, to fix jittering.

Excellent, I think this might fix my disappearing rovers on Duna!

Strut connectors are your friends!