I just spent the last 2 hours building some pretty crazy rockets with my 5 year old. He loves it as well. the explosions as much as the altitude records...so far we've only made 30,000 meters..
I've been unable to achieve "space" altitudes with just the solid rocket boosters. Finally got up there using a combo of srb first with then a liquid engine.
I must have spent an hour just building and launching failed stuff. It felt like that scene from the Right Stuff where every rocket keeps blowing up.
We had some pretty spectacular failures..including a 6 stage behemoth...They need to make a coupling for the 3-way coupling to hold the engine modules together.. I thought we had it made, but engines started vibrating with throttle up and smacked into each other...KABLOOOM.
Non orbital, too high an angle of climb. But reached an altitude of 761091, and got them back safe if a little shaken. The chute opening a little brutal at 22.4g
Chute: Module: Decoupler: SAS: Fuel: Fuel: 3x Fin #2: Motor: Decoupler: Triple Link: 3x(Fuel: Fuel: Motor: - 1x Fin #2 on SRB: affixed to lower Fuel)
Total: 6 Fuel, 3 SRB & 3 LFR on Initial Stage - 2 Fuel, 1 LFR on Upper Stage
I can't for the life off me figure out how that little pronged looking coupler works. I all too often ignite a stage then hit the space bar to decouple it only to have it slam into the back end of my other stage and then it shoves it all over the sky.
I just lost my whole evening playing this . Nice find Gunslinger !
My best result so far... Total Mission Time (Launch to Touchdown).. 20 minutes, 41 seconds. Highest Altitude Achieved 325211 Highest Speed Achieved 2188.1 Highest Speed over Land 1656.8 Total Distance Traveled 1400199 Most G Force endured 63.4 (ouch)
Landed with all Kerbal Astronauts alive (but maybe a little shorter than when they left)..
Here's the spacecraft on the pad ready to launch.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
I made a few hundred kilometers and a total flight time of just over an hour. Huge parabolic trajectory.. Top speed was something around 2,800 m/s. Perhaps if I had leveled it out I could have reached escape velocity instead I went vertical. I was worried I wouldn't come back.. But I eventually did. Some folks on the kerbal community have launched the poor guys into deeps space..to never return.. I used around 16 boosters/LO engines.
It takes time to figure out the couplings in order to attache the boosters and have them separate. You don't want the couplings and engines both on the same stage. Otherwise both will activate and the engines will fall away. Also, you have to zoom in close to make sure the boosters are actaully attached to the couplings and not to the booster next to it. Once you figure it out, it goes easier. I even managed to put parachutes on two of the boosters and it worked!
One evening on my own and one afternoon with my son playing..it is addictive trying to come up with outrageous designs.
Total Mission Time 1Hour 4 mins 59 secs Highest Altitude achieved 875272 Highest Speed Achieved 2788.6 Highest Speed Over Land 2782.9 Ground Distance Covered 5831996 Total Distance Traveled 6151263 Most G-Force endured 13.5
I used a new design using just liquid fueled rockets.. I named it Neptune 1 .
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Alright..the throw down has started... Soon as I get home from work, I'm building something to put the Saturn V to shame...
Paul, the liquid fuel certainly seems like the way to go for more compact designs with higher lifting capability. I hope to put the little guys on a non-return trajectory... I guess that wouldn't count? Maybe we can have an orbital competition, how many orbits and then a successful return.. May have to include a retro rocket stage as stage 1 to decel for re-entry.....
passing through 2100 KM and climbing . I still have my upper stage rocket motor attached with a little fuel to help with the descent...
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Gunslinger, a mini competition would be great . We could put a budget cap on our spacecraft or just go for the most outrageous designs we can make work .
As I type this I'm passing 2700 km and climbing, I think I will attempt to stop the climb at 3000km..
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
I was unable to stop the climb with my remaining fuel.... Houston we have a problem! 3726 K and climbing.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
lol.. I hope the O2 supply and food and water are well stocked Paul!! There was some talk on the game's community forums of what the planetary specs were, so you can figure out proper escape velocity and trajectory. I'll have to crack my old orbital mechanics book...but that would be no fun.. we have to wing it!!
I agree.. Different classes would be fun.. Monetary limit, limited to # of stages, and then the unlimited open category! You can also figure out multiple capsule returns I think...
I too played with my Son on this one. A lot of Kerbal's died to bring you this message.
My tips so far are, plus getting into a stable orbit (spoiler tags I guess):
Click to reveal..
- Something like this will get you into orbit
- Aim to be level with the ground by about 40,000m and at 2,300m/s velocity. Remember, the planet is small but very dense (I mean, look at those astronauts! ) so you don't need to be as high as for Earth.
- With the ship above you can keep enough fuel to retro for a re-entry after you get bored of orbiting, use the marker on the ball to get opposite velocity
- Also, from the Kerbal forum someone did the math on the planets mass/atmosphere that helps a lot, i.e
".. took data points from one of my orbit and worked out the planet's mass from there. It's only one orbit, and perigee is grazing the atmosphere at that(43700m), but apparently the math works out well enough. According to him surface escape velocity is 3.431 km/s, and at 100 km altitude i' goes down to 3.176 km/s. The planet itself masses around about 5.29e22 kg"
Hope that helps!
Last edited by FearlessFrog; 07/14/1108:17 PM. Reason: Planet mass added
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,813PanzerMeyer
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PanzerMeyer
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Joined: Apr 2001
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Originally Posted By: FearlessFrog
A lot of Kerbal's died to bring you this message.
I think "Bothans" sounds catchier.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
I have been completely unable to get the liquid fuel tanks attacked to the nozzles. Same with the tri-couplers. How have you guys managed that?
l'Audace, toujours l'audace
I dont have pet peeves; I have major, psychotic hatreds. - George Carlin
Even if you have a crown and sit at a throne In the end you will have nothing Even if you are destined for great riches In the end you will return to the dust
I think it was a bug, just updated it and it all works as advertized
l'Audace, toujours l'audace
I dont have pet peeves; I have major, psychotic hatreds. - George Carlin
Even if you have a crown and sit at a throne In the end you will have nothing Even if you are destined for great riches In the end you will return to the dust
I too played with my Son on this one. A lot of Kerbal's died to bring you this message.
My tips so far are, plus getting into a stable orbit (spoiler tags I guess):
Click to reveal..
- Something like this will get you into orbit
- Aim to be level with the ground by about 40,000m and at 2,300m/s velocity. Remember, the planet is small but very dense (I mean, look at those astronauts! ) so you don't need to be as high as for Earth.
- With the ship above you can keep enough fuel to retro for a re-entry after you get bored of orbiting, use the marker on the ball to get opposite velocity
- Also, from the Kerbal forum someone did the math on the planets mass/atmosphere that helps a lot, i.e
".. took data points from one of my orbit and worked out the planet's mass from there. It's only one orbit, and perigee is grazing the atmosphere at that(43700m), but apparently the math works out well enough. According to him surface escape velocity is 3.431 km/s, and at 100 km altitude i' goes down to 3.176 km/s. The planet itself masses around about 5.29e22 kg"
Hope that helps!
Thanks FF!
Last try, my poor guys were going at full speed through 1.000.000km altitude... Dasvidania, tovaritch Kerbal! I'm feeling like some kind of Sergei Korolev.
Damn I love this little game, it's really entertaining, but time consuming.
Murphy's Law says, "Whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least expect it." (And, of course, we all know that Murphy was an aviator.)
I got a setup like FearlessFrog's but much bigger. 18 solid rocket boosters for the first stage (it really needs it), 3 liquid fuel rockets with 3 fuel tanks each for the second stage, and one liquid fuel rocket with 4 fuel tanks for the third stage. Going straight up it gets some 5km/s at its peak.
l'Audace, toujours l'audace
I dont have pet peeves; I have major, psychotic hatreds. - George Carlin
Even if you have a crown and sit at a throne In the end you will have nothing Even if you are destined for great riches In the end you will return to the dust
I managed a fairly stable orbit today and had enough fuel for a de-orbit burn. I was hoping to land within sight of the launch site, but overshot a little. Also, if you look on the KSP forums you will find a number of user created rocket parts. Some of them are quite good too!
Here is my latest stack.
SRB's expended and jettisoned:
Almost there:
Positioning for a correctional burn to keep the orbit circular:
This must be a breathtaking sight in real life..
After completing the de-orbit burn (I just ran the engine until I was out of fuel). Last stage away.
Looking down on the launch site.
Splashdown was in the ocean to the East of the launch site. Next time I will initiate the de-orbit burn a little sooner.
I'm having way too much fun with this!
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Most of the new rockets and stuff that people have made feel like cheating with their excessive thrust/weight ratio. These three mods though just add new ways to mount the existing rockets. THe OPA mod adds a very light weight low thrust rocket to get you out of orbit.
Got do make the Kerbals do two orbits, and back waaaaaaaaaaaaay south of launch pad, initiated the de-orbit burn too late. But still, mission complete!
I found out that the best design are the simpliest ones.
Murphy's Law says, "Whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least expect it." (And, of course, we all know that Murphy was an aviator.)
I figured I had better learn to land without a parachute (call it training for the future moon landings).. Squirrely. I crash it more often than landing safely, but it is possible to get it down in one piece. It doesn't carry much fuel so you have to be quick.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Ok..stock game... I made it out to 28,000 km+ and 4 hours before I ended it. No return.. I was going for outrageous design.
I present the STS Debt Ceiling:
The engines looked like they were going to blow apart on launch and actually cause quite a bit of damage on the way up, but was able to keep it together.
I only see grass close in to the launch site. I am using version 0.84 which I think is the latest.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
I love Jebediah. He's so excited to be an astronaut. Bill and Bob might have choosen the wrong career path.
I finally managed to make a few orbits then come back down...alive...sort of. I checked the missions results:
Maximum G's?
69.5
Ouchies. At least Jeb seemed happy about it!
"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." -Dwight D Eisenhower
They are 'instrumentation' for a good orbit... Jeb only requires alt >>0.
Bill & Bob will be happy when the orbit is stable and circular (or at apokerbal/perikerbal) - note how the three are plenty happy about the situation as you pass down through ~100m, where the time to impact is high, alt is good, and descent rate and rate changes are low... You can also nail it in orbit too, but that is harder.
I got Bob and Bill to just calm down (not smiling, though) in orbit. During re-entry they freaked out...maybe it was the 69 g's....
"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." -Dwight D Eisenhower
This little sim/game has been great on teaching my 10 year-old the difference between falling with style, i.e. orbital micro-gravity and actual zero-gravity. I guess it's just easier to visualize how you can go around a sphere with enough +v and not hit the ground then you're doing great
I found this via their forum too, escape velocities at various heights etc. I think I might have lost the 10 year-old about here though - lol
* Added copying of parts (and sets of parts) by holding Alt while clicking on them. * Replaced tricoupler textures and UV mapping (UV map by Dippeggs) * Parachutes can now deploy automatically if jettisoned along with other parts (allowing for parts to be safely landed) * Stage decouplers can now share fuel across stages. * Added Keys to control the camera in the VAB (+/- for zooming, pgup/pgdown for scrolling) * Added Keys to control the camera in flight (+/- for zooming) * Added some sound effects for the parachute opening * Added cfg-definable parameter for parachute autodeployment delay * Added a debugging console to the game (can be toggled with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C) * Right-clicking the Symmetry Button will now step the symmetry mode back. * It is no longer possible to select a part of the ship while the mouse is over any interface items. * Added toggle key to switch between precision or instant input modes (Caps Lock) * Pitch, Yaw and Roll gauges change color to indicate mode (orange for instant, cyan for precision) * Exposed Kd, Ki and Kp parameters for tuning the SAS and CommandPod modules
Bug Fixes: * Fixed the staging lock LED not turning purple after launch * Icons no longer show a transparent border floating around then mousing over disconnected parts. * Fixed a bug where deleting a symmetrical part would sometimes leave its counterparts floating around. * Fixed a bug where creating a new stage with a decoupler and then removing it would generate errors. * Fixed most sound volume decay over distance problems. * Fixed a bug that caused a massive performance drop when fuel tanks emptied (fuel tank switch lag bug) * The Flight camera will now remain always centered on the ships center of mass. * The Screenshot function will now create a Screenshots directory if one isnt found. * The altimeter will now go past 999,999K correctly (it will move up to 1000M, then 1000G, 1000T and so on) * Fixed a bug that could cause large ships to explode at 5,000m altitude. Note: We expect there will be some server difficulties because of the sudden rush of traffic. Please bear with us as the server explodes
Cheers
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
There does seem to be some issues with .85 . I may go back to .84 until the next version becomes available. The game is just in the Alpha stage of development, so I guess these things should be expected to some extent.
Last edited by Paul Rix; 07/20/1101:21 AM.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Sometimes, rocket stacks can be a bit... pushy. I've built a few when the first stage is so powerful it just concertinas up the rest of the stack. It's not always fatal, however!
"Houston, we've had a problem." (But Jeb was enjoying himself...)
With one of the rockets that I have been messing with the boosters would end up snapping off of the bottom of the rocket and detonate the liquid fuel tanks the moment you hit "launch." Getting some of these things from destroying themselves can be just a little hard.
l'Audace, toujours l'audace
I dont have pet peeves; I have major, psychotic hatreds. - George Carlin
Even if you have a crown and sit at a throne In the end you will have nothing Even if you are destined for great riches In the end you will return to the dust
Sim, your next challenge is to get into a stable orbit and then get your three green heroes back down safely somewhere close to the launch site.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Uncle Jesse: You know why tornadoes and blonds are so much alike? Luke Duke: No. Uncle Jesse: At first, there's a lot of sucking and blowing, and then you lose your house.
Stable orbit is easy, and I normally aim for a low 'Kearth' orbit of around 40k. Typically I go vertical until around 18k, then disable SAS (t) and let the nose pitchover, with my rocket design I will run out of fuel in my first stage a few seconds later at which point I stage.
After staging aim the nose at the horizon and throttle up until I reach 2330 km/s
This particular orbit I made at 39k and left overnight, I had a difference in apogee and perigee of around 200m which I was pretty pleased with
Nice. I can do orbits, even stable ones, but circular ones are beyond me without more instrumentation. Also, my penchance for really stupidly large and structurally unsound stacks has probably taken away a bit of time I could have spent learning better technique. I really should know better!
Then again it can be fun having such a powerful first stage that it destroys everything else above it.
I technically know how to achieve an orbit, I have done so plenty of times, manually, in Orbiter, but the control in KSP is just so "squirrelly" I've not bothered to try very hard. I did achieve a highly elliptical "almost" orbit one night before bed, left the game running and 8 hours later they were re-entering. But they were in the semi dark (sun was up, but just barely above horizon) and when the capsule touched down it exploded. Which I find extremely silly, not being allowed to land on the night side.
When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. ~Benjamin Franklin
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." Winston Churchill
ASRock M3A770DE AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz Quad-Core CPU Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 G.Skill Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 Samsung 1TB 7200 SATA 3.0Gb/s HD x2
I agree, it can be done but the manual control in KSP can be very dependent on the rocket stack in the early stages, which is where you need all of the control.
One thing that would be really nice to be able to do is to "script" or program a flight path in, so that it flies on a pre-scripted autopilot rather than having to take control manually or leave on SAS all the time, which can be really marginal at times. If that were to be implemented then I could dig up all of my old lecture notes and try to implement some of it.
Orbiter is a more complex sim. KSP is more fun though (it is designed to be light hearted and fun). The physics are pretty good though.
SAS can be toggled on or off with the T key. You will still have to turn it off for any major attitude changes.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
...there are some really great tutorials available for Orbiter though - the first one you should read is "Go Play In Space". Written for the previous version, but I think most is still valid.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Version 0.9 was released yesterday. Seems to run a little smoother on my system now (even with the community created parts). They are now accepting pre-orders for $7 which, considering how much time I have wasted/invested in this game, seems like a bargain.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Anyone is playing this? I managed to create a ship that gets me to 5400m/s with 6-7 minutes. But if I attach any additional stages, they get caught on launch pad...
Decided to re-visit this one. version .10 or some such is out. Had a nice launch, been in orbit for about 2 days, but I forgot to leave fuel for reentry, say hello to kerbal satellite Athena I. Back to the drawing board.
"He's not just a regular moron. He's the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together with the express purpose of building the dumbest moron who ever lived."
. Nice find Gunslinger !
.
.
Perhaps this weekend. Going to try multiple capsule launch and return!
