Kerbal Space Program

[Will T.]

I got a satellite in high Kerbin orbit towards the beginning of my time with the game. That has thus far been one of my very few successes.

I've attempted to build a space station, but 24 out of 25 attempts to launch the parts have ended with them running out of fuel before achieving orbit. Even when I did finally get the parts up there, I was nowhere near being able to dock them. Several Kerbals are currently in orbit with no fuel and will never be returning home. I've sent a handful of Kerbals to orbit and brought them back, but just as many have died on reentry. One recent mission was much like the one Alizee described, with the nosecone + parachutes separating from the main module ... only unlike Alizee's mission, this was not an unmanned rocket.

I've attempted a manned mission to the sun on a couple of occasions, but have yet to successfully reach it due to fuel limitations. I'm thinking of trying to get to the Mun soon.

My brother has I believe two Kerbals in separate ships orbiting the sun directly. I wonder how they're doing...

[Zork Nemesis]

I've attempted a manned mission to the sun on a couple of occasions, but have yet to successfully reach it due to fuel limitations.

I turned on infinite fuel and managed to get there after 40-something days. You can get to about 10,000 meters from what the game calls the surface before the ship just outright explodes.

[Soup Nazi]

Failures included a variety of tip-over-on-the-pad incidents

Are you using a support structure to launch?

[Greebo]

Heh, guess I've got a bit of re-learning to do.
I grabbed the Kerbal X stock rocket and went to the Mun...only I must've burned more fuel than usual on the way because while trying to land, I ran out of gas about 10k above the surface....oops.

I've basically taken my pre-.21 save game and deleted all the items I had in orbit. That way I can keep my rocket designs and start from scratch.
I think I might start making more videos, even they'll require extensive editing to make it look like I know what I'm doing!

[Boss Llama]

Failures included a variety of tip-over-on-the-pad incidents

Are you using a support structure to launch?

Yes - they're both a blessing and a curse

I like to try things on the pad without the support towers first (hence the tip-over events), because adding them puts a nasty restriction on the shape of the rocket - can't have fins or engines protruding in certain directions and can't have too wide of a bottom stage, or the towers rip them right off/collide. I lost more than a couple tail fins to the towers, which tends to yield unsatisfactory (downward) rocket trajectories.

No explosions today, but a couple of firsts for me:

My first probe to escape Kerbin:


My first successful landing of a ship that had neither fuel nor parachutes:

[Tilgasse]

Kerbal Disposal Systems Limited is currently enjoying moderate success in its endeavor to build a space station. We currently have the base station in place and are building the solar panels to launch next. 2 Deep Space Probes powered by Ion Drives are due to leave the system next week

[TACOBELL]

I played a bit, I love it.

Here is some of my videos of it.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA58F9BA39ED98816

but THIS was my favorite thing to build so far

[ADevilishPotato]

I QQed pretty hard the other night when i missed my KSS rendezvous which then led bob kerman to skim off the atmosphere, slow down, crash, and die

[Zork Nemesis]

I QQed pretty hard the other night when i missed my KSS rendezvous which then led bob kerman to skim off the atmosphere, slow down, crash, and die

Quicksave is your friend. Always push F5 before you begin anything that has a chance for failure. If you fail, hold F9 and try again.

[Boss Llama]

I managed to achieve a Low Kerbin Orbit tonight with a small satellite carrying large solar arrays and a battery pack. It optimistically has a docking collar on it, for theoretical merger with another unit to be sent later.

Reaching successful orbit (albeit low and un-pretty) took about 40 tries to get right. Most ended early with the usual troubles, though I had a couple heart-breakers that were right on the money but where I didn't have quite enough fuel to push in to the orbit I needed - 13 seconds of a 17 second burn for example. To avoid that, I settled for the 70km range instead of the 100km range, to ensure I made it.



It ain't high and it ain't pretty, but it's orbit!

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[ADevilishPotato]

I managed to achieve a Low Kerbin Orbit tonight with a small satellite carrying large solar arrays and a battery pack. It optimistically has a docking collar on it, for theoretical merger with another unit to be sent later.

Reaching successful orbit (albeit low and un-pretty) took about 40 tries to get right. Most ended early with the usual troubles, though I had a couple heart-breakers that were right on the money but where I didn't have quite enough fuel to push in to the orbit I needed - 13 seconds of a 17 second burn for example. To avoid that, I settled for the 70km range instead of the 100km range, to ensure I made it.



It ain't high and it ain't pretty, but it's orbit!

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Oh your fuel wastage through the lower atmosphere makes me cry

[Zork Nemesis]

Personally, I find my favorite pastime is screwing around with what I deem the "paper airplane" bug (I doubt anyone else calls it that). Basically what you do is you take one of the satellite cores, fix a pair of delta wings, and as many canards/control surfaces as you can fit on the back. Have it launched by separating it from a rocket sled. You can then fly the thing by holding down S/Ascend and rapidly mashing W/Descend to abuse the game's physics. This works until the core runs out of electricity at which point you'll plummet back to Kerbin and likely explode.

I went a few steps further: a couple of model rocket engines for an extra flight boost. A parachute for safe landing, and a seat for Jebediah or whoever feels brave enough to pilot an ornithopter to that island with the runway.

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Also, there's no reentry damage implemented yet (or any sort of non-crash damage; g-force be damned), allowing for such fun things like this:

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[ADevilishPotato]

Oh Zork...my sides...they hurt....

[Cpt._Keyes]

whoa...AF...all those boosters are just jacking up your drag coeeficient...the way it is calculated (admitedly, wrongly) in this version...the aerodynamic caps you plunked on those just increase it further. I would use 4 boosters at most, and ditch the wings...use gyros and RCS. all you need for reentry is a small monofuel engine rather than those two smaller boosters up high

[Boss Llama]

Yeah, I know it's inefficient - I was hitting 600-700km on a single tiny rocket with smaller stuff, but I was committed to using a big orange tank for no reason other than looks From my experiments, they actually produce less power than they consume to launch, when used in atmosphere like that. I was having trouble figuring out what was going on with the power:weight ratio - there were time when the more power I added, the worse it performed. One of the previous (much larger) versions I was messing around with was unliftable with 12 SRBs and 4 Mainsails going full bore, but flew just fine with 4 SRBs and 1 Mailsail. The wings were actually necessary on this monstrosity, as without them it would spin on launch and head for the nearest hillside. I intend to go back to smaller/more efficient models today.