Kerbal Space Program, Revisited.

[Napoleon the Clown]

For shits and giggles, I decided to see how fast I could get a craft going. Not sure just how fast I got up to before invoking the kraken, since I used an unmanned set of engines with infinite fuel and went to the tracking station and maxed out my time acceleration. After a certain point I returned to my set of engines and it went fucking nuts. Last I saw of its velocity, it was probably well in excess of 1000 km/s.

For anything other than dicking around to see what happens when you do one thing, career mode is a more enjoyable experience, for me. I want to get more of MechJeb unlocked so I can have it take care of setting up the nodes and shit. I've ended up deciding to do as much as I can in the way of bringing back my science equipment rather than transmitting it, since you lose so much information like that. Only thing I can think of it being worth the loss is multiple crew/EVA reports. Everything else is good for only one go, so that 40% loss or whatever is a shit deal when you can just bring it back home with you. That might change when I'm landing places with higher gravity than Mun, but we'll see. I can overkill my rockets thanks to asparagus staging, so yeah... I managed to get a Munar lander back to Kerbin with enough fuel left to make a successful landing using one parachute and a last minute firing of my engine.

Okay, so coming back to the planet with all that shit attached isn't terribly realistic, but KSP doesn't have you burn up in the atmosphere if you fuck things up, so I might as well do things in a way that gets me science faster.

Eventually I'm going to have the stuff to make rovers that can allow me to more fully explore the places I land. Sure, there's just going EVA, but goddamn Mun car!


Just how challenging is it to get to the asteroids? I imagine they're pretty goddamn small, so precision is important. According to the TV Tropes, successfully getting one back to Kerbin is worth hella science, though.

[Grumman]

I've ended up deciding to do as much as I can in the way of bringing back my science equipment rather than transmitting it, since you lose so much information like that. Only thing I can think of it being worth the loss is multiple crew/EVA reports. Everything else is good for only one go, so that 40% loss or whatever is a shit deal when you can just bring it back home with you. That might change when I'm landing places with higher gravity than Mun, but we'll see. I can overkill my rockets thanks to asparagus staging, so yeah... I managed to get a Munar lander back to Kerbin with enough fuel left to make a successful landing using one parachute and a last minute firing of my engine.

Okay, so coming back to the planet with all that shit attached isn't terribly realistic, but KSP doesn't have you burn up in the atmosphere if you fuck things up, so I might as well do things in a way that gets me science faster.

If you're performing a manned mission, it's possible to send a Kerbal out on EVA to collect the science from the instruments and put it in your command module. That way, you don't have to drag the Science Jr and other stuff back with you to Kerbin.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The fastest I ever managed was using the Orion mod (cheating I know). It was essentially the Orion drive, a huge stack of magazines for it and a small control system at the top. I throttled up to max and left it running overnight (in real-time, for a laugh).

Came back the next morning to find I'd crossed the orbit of Jool on the far side of the sun and was doing something like 0.5% lightspeed. I was well past solar system escape velocity at any rate, my trajectory was one perfectly straight line.

[Napoleon the Clown]

I've ended up deciding to do as much as I can in the way of bringing back my science equipment rather than transmitting it, since you lose so much information like that. Only thing I can think of it being worth the loss is multiple crew/EVA reports. Everything else is good for only one go, so that 40% loss or whatever is a shit deal when you can just bring it back home with you. That might change when I'm landing places with higher gravity than Mun, but we'll see. I can overkill my rockets thanks to asparagus staging, so yeah... I managed to get a Munar lander back to Kerbin with enough fuel left to make a successful landing using one parachute and a last minute firing of my engine.

Okay, so coming back to the planet with all that shit attached isn't terribly realistic, but KSP doesn't have you burn up in the atmosphere if you fuck things up, so I might as well do things in a way that gets me science faster.

If you're performing a manned mission, it's possible to send a Kerbal out on EVA to collect the science from the instruments and put it in your command module. That way, you don't have to drag the Science Jr and other stuff back with you to Kerbin.

Oh my god this boosted my science collecting so much. Bringing back instruments is easy. The thing that helped was being able to sit and get multiple reports for EVA/soil samples/capsule reports in one mission. Send my Intrepid Kerbal out on EVA to pull data, then get back in the capsule. A single mission to Minmus netted me something like 400 some odd science. I should probably watch some more of Scott Manley's videos to see what else I can do to streamline science collection.

[Grumman]

I've got six SSTO variants now, and a resupply truck capable of rearming and refuelling three of them. At the moment it refuels via the satellite bay (which is only on the B, C and D variants), but I plan on modifying it so that it can also refuel them via the top-mounted docking ring.

Here's the F-variant: a long ranged two seater with an ion drive.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Good god the nuclear engine is efficient. Useless in atmosphere, but the specific impulse being 800 and the fuel tank I gave it ended up giving me over half an hour of thrust while in space. Round trip to Duna and back, with an orbit of Ike for even more science, and I got over a thousand points of science without even landing. Would have hit an orbit of Minmus and Mun but my return put me in a polar orbit of Kerbin, which is not so hot when you want to enter an orbit of either moon.

[PeZook]

It's kinda cheat-y, though. There's a mod, KSP Interstellar, which gives a lot more interesting mechanics for nuke propulsion (ie. reactor management is a thing)

[Nephtys]

Time for my most ambitious KSP project yet.

Meet the KSC Argotanic


She's got a hex-mounted nuclear drive, and is powered by 6 radioisotope generators plus a backup array of solar cells. Onboard science suite. Crew of 12.

Her main mission is to visit planets beyond Kerbin orbit, and perform SCIENCE! with her compliment of two Mk4 Expendable Pioneer class lander shuttles berthed in opposite docking bays.


For additional utility (and if I need more fuel!), she makes use of two Mk5 Menial Labor class space tugs to grapple objects and bring them back to the ship at close range. They're stowed in the lower cargo berth, which I could also use to hold spare fuel tanks if need be.


I'm running with only the NovaPunch parts and C7 Aerospace parts. We'll see if this thing can actually accomplish a Duna landing with it's shuttles, and get them back to the mothership. I'm horrifically bad at docking however, and with these specific landing bays, it's going to be even harder...

[PeZook]

Just use Mechjeb. Its data readouts make rendezvous, and thus docking, much less headachetastic even if you don't care about the autopilot functions.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Yeah, MechJeb makes things a lot easier, even without the autopilot. It can help you get maneuver nodes planned out better. Especially the node editor, which makes fine tuning a breeze. Dragging on the node branches can be a pit of a PITA, but with MechJeb you can adjust any axis by even fractions of a meter per second if you want to be hilariously anal. Or sit and move the maneuver window around by 1 second at a time. It helps get ideal passes of stuff.

[PeZook]

And frankly, certain maneuvers get really stale in the more complex missions. Your mileage may vary, but for me doing twenty samey launches/dockings to build something large in orbit is just ugh, so I just overengineer the mother, load it with monopropellant and let Mechjeb do the honors.

[PeZook]

And since we're bragging:



Antimatter powered interstellar ship, with an onboard lab and only one lander, but an awesome one with 8000 isp, allowing it to do MULTIPLE landing missions on one tank of fuel.

[Nephtys]

What are those dark orange panels? Apparently on motors? What mod?

[Zaune]

They're radiators, and part of the Interstellar mod.

[PeZook]

Yeah, the KSP Interstellar mod has heat management as part of its vastly expanded power/propulsion mechanic (basically: all advanced super-propulsion systems have to be managed, and it includes dumping heat as well as managing fuel)

The radiators look pretty cool when unfolded, too.

[Vanas]

Hopefully this isn't that much of a necro, the thread's still on the front page after all...

Following a space/time cataclysm, all of history was rather regrettably undone. Still, after a few hundred years of rebuilding, SeffTech is pretty sure it's back where it started and there's no differences whatsoever.

So, when the lord of the manor called to inform Mission Control that there was a chance that Kerbal Columbus may be on the verge of proving that the world is not, infact, banana-shaped, SeffTech lunged wildly into action, constructing a mighty probulator devised to wipe the smile off of that smug git by discovering it first.



The Mk.I Orbital Probulator is suffering from some minor defects owing to its quick construction time. Two of the solar-panels are spacially coincident, for example, and the large fairing over the Probulator itself is not technically attached to anything. No matter, these will be resolved in time. For now, the important fact is that the craft worked more than flawlessly.

Entering Kerbin orbit with 1/4 of a tank left in the second stage, the Probulator swept around the planet and determined that Kerbin is indeed quite large. Still, with the fairing still 'in place' and the rocket still intact, Mission Control rapidly tired of that sort of SCIENCE and started looking for a new target. A few minutes later, it was noticed on the news that William Kerbschel has recently discovered a *second* moon of Kerbin, which he has dubbed 'Kerbal Sidius'. As it is tiny and crappy, the Kerbal Space Program and its affiliates are just calling it 'Minmus'

With a quick tap on the boosters, the Orbital Probulator Mk.I blasted well out of Kerbin orbit, the little not-entirely structually sound but kind of bullet-shaped machine crossing the distance in a little under two weeks before Minmus deigned to catch up with it.

Initial inspection of the Minimal surface took place at a 40ish Km pass, which revealed the surface to be greenish and surprisingly low-res. Burning the engine again to lower the orbit in an attempt to see if the surface was entirely .jpeg, the Probulator soon passed over this wide, seemingly much more interesting Minimal maria. Possibly a place to land kerballed craft in the future, it was interesting enough for mission Control to remember that they should probably deploy the Probulator at some point, rather than just have it freeload on the back of the third stage.



Now in a mere 7km orbit, the redesignated Minimal Probulator is using its large dish to electromagnetically bleep incessantly at the Minimal surface, informing this dead and crappy world both that it has been claimed for SCIENCE and that SeffTech is back in the game, so long as we don't open a Chrono-Vortex and destroy history. Again.

Not too bad for something designed to reach LKO.

[HMS Sophia]

So 0.24.2 is out. Contracts, funds, prestige and so on are all now in the game. Very very exciting... or it would be if the contracts didn't quickly become repetitive. But don't worry. As with almost everything else, there's a mod for that (or soon will be). And there's a mod for how easy it is to rack up funds. And a mod for... well, it's ksp. We all know, right?
Anywhoo...I'm thinking, now that this has come out, of rebooting my KSP PBP gamey thing. Sort of like the BARIS game in terms of irreverence and silliness but with extra flying rockets (and hopefully fewer explosions....). Would anyone be interested in taking part in something like this? It wouldn't be the stock game. Mods would be heavily involved to make things more dramatic/exiting/explodey...

[Lagmonster]

What are the current round of 'essential' mods for this game? I've heard MechJeb - and assume it's up to speed with 0.24.2. Is there anything else that adds solidly to the experience without breaking it?

[Zaune]

What are the current round of 'essential' mods for this game? I've heard MechJeb - and assume it's up to speed with 0.24.2. Is there anything else that adds solidly to the experience without breaking it?

Ferram Aerospace Research completely overhauls the aerodynamic model into something pretty close to real life. It makes some aspects of the game easier but others considerably harder.

Procedural Fairings is self-explanatory, and an essential companion to FAR.

And one of my personal favourite content mods is the Firespitter pack, which lets you build helicopters, propeller-engined aircraft and some 50s-style jet fighters.

[Napoleon the Clown]

If you want an up on the difficulty, Deadly Reentry will make it so you actually have to worry about how fast you are going in atmosphere. You'll need to worry about how fast you ascend, how fast you hit the atmosphere, the angle you hit it at, keeping your craft pointed the right way as it reenters the atmosphere... Definite difficulty spike, as I understand.

Editor Extensions is a good one. It'll make it easier to precision build a ship.

[Steel]

I played 'Better than Starting Manned' which is a total rebalance and includes Deadly Reentry. I found it to be a really cool, new and challenging experience.

The biggest change was certainly deadly reentry, as it does totally change the way you plan your missions. Very interesting addition.

I don't think BTSM will be updated to the latest version of KSP with contracts for a while yet, so that isn't something to worry about for now.

[PeZook]

Nowadays, I consider Final Frontier to be essential. It's basically a mod which tracks Kerbal achievements throughout the game, awarding them neat ribbons for things (though it's a bit overzealous until tweaked). Kerbal Interstellar gives a point to setting up outposts on other worlds to use their resources and gather SCIENCE!, although it doesn't play well with other mods that modify the tech tree. It also provides advanced engines, though with nicely balanced tradeoff for using them.For a lightweight mod with a similar purpose to Interstellar, you might consider Near Future Parts (not quite sure at the name ).

[Lagmonster]

This is now a sticky until people get bored of Kerbals, which is impossible because everyone loves Kerbals.

[Jub]

So, I made some things...



Some of them are pretty normal, but most of them are like this one below.



This is my biplane.



It flies.



It needs a few struts.



Also a larger tail on the next version.



It's prettyish from the front.



And, importantly, Jeb seems to like it.



This is my helirocket.



Loads of whirling blades.



Struts for strength.



Wings and reaction wheels to make it fly up.



A rocket cluster for space flight.



Main engines firing!



SPACE!



Will we make it back?



Nope.

[Nephtys]

Welp, now I want to build a helicopter-carrier. That carries a smaller plane and launches it. Too bad it's pretty much impossible to figure out how to stabilize it in air once you lose control, since then I'd want to land on it too