Kerbal Space Program

sparkletwist · April 15, 2014, 07:56:23 PM

I bought this a few days ago and I have been having fun with it. :D

Nomadic and I have talked about it on IRC a bit... any other CBG Kerbalnauts out there?

My most recent accomplishment is landing on the Mun
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Hibou · April 15, 2014, 08:48:17 PM

I build big rockets that send upwards of a dozen Kerbals into long, distant elliptical orbits around the Sun, never to see their home again. Sometimes I also build space stations. Those are also typically in distant orbits.

Nomadic · April 15, 2014, 10:29:24 PM

It's definitely an amazing game. I think my highlight was pulling off a Jool transfer orbit where by chance I ended up intercepting Duna as I was plotting my burn. I used that to pull off a beautiful slingshot maneuver. Using an aerobrake at Jool to kill my momentum without burning any more fuel on arrival was just frosting on the awesome cake, I ended up using roughly a thousand dV less than I'd planned to and was able to use the extra fuel to go on a grand tour of Jool's moons. Most hilarious moment? Was going to Minmus and not paying any attention at all, managed to lithobrake at the Mun instead. My capsule survived the "landing" though by using my engines as a sacrificial "airbag" so I consider it a success and nobody can tell me otherwise.

Lmns Crn · April 16, 2014, 05:36:58 PM

I have a lot of fun with this game!

I'm feeling a little conflicted about it, because when last I put the game down, it was an old-version Career Mode game where I had just crashlanded Jeb on Minmus. The lander had no surviving engine (and was standing at a jaunty angle, because one of the landing struts broke off), but Jeb was in good spirits about the whole thing (and helpfully transmitted back a bunch of science). But since it's an older version, I'm not really going to be able to go back and design his rescue mission.

sparkletwist · April 16, 2014, 06:13:18 PM

Career mode isn't that old to begin with. It was introduced in version 0.22, and they're only up to 0.23.5 now, so your save might still load.

I had to launch my own rescue mission, after noticing that my Mun lander did not have enough fuel left in it to get back up into Munar orbit.
I installed the KAS (Kerbal Attachment System) mod to be able to make a pipe, sent a second lander full of fuel to the Mun, and used much of the last of its fuel to hop the existing lander over to the new site.
The Kerbal krew was then on their way back home.
On their return, due to a navigation error on my part, they ended up in a very high (450km) orbit and I had to send up another retrieval ship to get them, but their craft was never meant for landing and I knew I'd have to shuttle them anyway, so this was not really an emergency.
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Nomadic · April 16, 2014, 06:58:19 PM

Pfft sparkle... all kerbal ships are meant to land, it's just that some of them aren't meant to survive the landing. Big difference.

Hibou · April 16, 2014, 08:17:50 PM

Quote from: Nomadic
Pfft sparkle... all kerbal ships are meant to land, it's just that some of them aren't meant to survive the landing. Big difference.

Especially if the landing zone isn't meant to survive the landing either.

Lmns Crn · April 17, 2014, 06:31:31 AM

I need to figure out docking. I have some big ideas about space stations and whatnot, but they're all Some Assembly Required.

Nomadic · April 17, 2014, 03:40:15 PM

Quote from: Lmns Crn
I need to figure out docking. I have some big ideas about space stations and whatnot, but they're all Some Assembly Required.

Download the lazor docking cam mod, it will make your life so much easier with docking.

sparkletwist · April 17, 2014, 04:46:37 PM

Or, if you're feeling really lazy (or would prefer to focus on rocket science rather than piloting) you can use MechJeb.

Beyond just the ability to dock, when assembling space stations and such I always use it to calculate the orbital rendezvous and such because I can never do that right.

limetom · April 17, 2014, 08:38:14 PM

I've been ~~blowing up~~ sending Kerbals to other worlds for a while now.

There are a number of things to keep in mind when docking.

The first is a fairly obvious one: you need to get the ships to the same place at the same time. Doing this means, by and in large, remembering how the period of an orbit is related to the size of an orbit. Lower orbits--that is, orbits closer to the parent body--are always faster than higher orbits. So let's say you've gotten two spacecraft (A and B) up into roughly circular orbits at about the same height, but spacecraft A is some distance behind spacecraft B. What you would want to do is raise the orbit of spacecraft B. This allows for spacecraft A to catch up, because spacecraft B starts moving slower, while spacecraft A starts moving faster.

When you start getting close, you don't have to pay quite as much attention to this. Instead, you want to start looking at your relative velocities. Luckily, the navball has a target mode, once you set the object you want to dock with as your target. Using what are usually the prograde and retrograde markers, you get to see markers of your relative velocity towards the target. The key here is to kill your relative velocity by burning towards the "retrograde" marker, and then burning towards the target. You may, depending on how close you were to begin with, and how well you've killed your relative velocity, may have to perform this maneuver several times. Generally this will be done with your main engines, but as you get closer, you'll eventually want to switch over to RCS.

Note that when you get really close, you can target not only individual craft, but individual docking ports. It's no help if you want to dock to a specific docking port if the indicator is pointing towards the center of mass of the craft. You can do this by right-clicking on the desired docking port. You may also, depending on the shape of your craft, need to control from a particular docking port on it. This can come in handy if you want a large, multi-piece interplanetary craft, as it is much safer to pull than push due to the part physics in KSP.

Scott Manley recently updated his tutorial series. There are two episodes especially relevant here. The first is on rendezvous, and the second is on docking proper.

And one last thing: practice makes perfect. It took me a long time to get good at docking.

LordVreeg · April 18, 2014, 10:38:17 AM

http://xkcd.com/1356/
love you guys

sparkletwist · April 18, 2014, 01:53:00 PM

Quote from: Nomadicall kerbal ships are meant to land, it's just that some of them aren't meant to survive the landing.

Pretty much!

The Kerbal krew was sent out again on a second Munar mission, in the brand new Ion 4, an upgraded ion engine powered ship, with the goal this time of being able to complete the Munar landing and return without need for rescue. They used a larger Munar lander that allowed them to land and take off again with (barely) enough fuel, but the greater mass of the ship meant that the xenon reserves of the ion engines-- normally not a problem at all so I didn't even think much about them-- were insufficient to get them back to a low Kerbin orbit for a pickup ship, nor to either of the little space stations that I had been building. Loathing the idea of having to call for rescue again (and not really sure what could be done anyway) Jeb instead gave their return trip from the Mun a 35km periapsis around Kerbin. Bill and Bob pointed out that their ship was never meant to actually land and had neither landing gear nor parachute... but of course such things are mere luxuries to Jeb. He managed to get the craft's speed down to a sufficient level that upon hitting the ground it was merely blown apart into hundreds of pieces rather than completely obliterated. The command module skidded to a stop amid the fireball, with Jeb feeling like the mission was a complete success, as they did manage to get back to Kerbin without calling for help at all.

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Hibou · April 18, 2014, 04:02:07 PM

Quote from: LordVreeg
http://xkcd.com/1356/
love you guys

Can confirm, am physics. Except the bit about NASA

Xathan · May 04, 2014, 02:02:33 AM

Funny, I think I must have picked up this game the same time you did, Sparkle.

I've been having a major blast with it. I've managed a few Mun and Minmus landings and have stranded a few kerbonauts in a solar orbit...I'll get into details later, but felt the need to chime in. And delurk while doing so.

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