Shep is going to love this little rocket game

[ray245]

The game is kinda like Spore, where you get to build and design your own space rocket. It's a freeware and the game allows the gamers to add more modification and to build more engine parts for your rocket.

Sadly, I don't have the skills to build a rocket that is equivalent to a Saturn V. The highest altitude that I managed to reach was merely 140000m above sea level.

Link is here: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

A youtube video that gives you guys a better idea about this game:

[Norade]

The game needs a lot of work. A wire frame mode would do well so you can place parts, as would some form of radial symmetry tool. The ability to slide stages between one another without removing entire parts would also be nice. So would a separate button to fire the parachute. Allowing finetuning of which decouplers are grouped with some sort of tool would also be great so groups could be made a changed easier. There's also no proper way to stabilize the tricoupler, whic braces would do easily. As it stands the tricoupler tends to shake itself to bits.

That said I 'beat' the game on test design 7 and launch 10 or so. I did so with 4 solid boosters followed by 3 fuel tanks and a motor and reached LEO at ~6 minutes and hit a peak altitude to 385 kilometers. Peak speed was 1,865.3m/s with peak G's of 12.4. Because of how I built the thing and my lack of a desire to go back and delete things when I had them balanced properly I never decoupled the capsule from the final stage or had a working parachute. Though that is more due to having to fight the game than because I couldn't make them work if I had more time. Had I some orbital thrusters and if this game had orbital mechanics I would have been able to preform missions there.

In all it's clearly a game with potential, but one that is very flawed at this early stage.

[Norade]

Looks like with practice you can pitch over and make orbit, though with such basic controls it seems like more bother than I would care to try. You can also, with practice, reach proper escape velocity which for this world is 3.14km/s at an altitude of 100 kilometers. However again, with the tools and parts as they stand you would need to build a just barely stable wobbly rocket to do so.

[Vanas]

Well, it's a fun little diversion. Definitely in alpha, but it looks like it's got potential,yes.

After littering the ground with burning rocket pieces and cosmonauts, I finally came up with a bizzare arrangement that has fired a capsule to well over 700km and performed a decent (with all crew surviving!) suborbital hop.

The Barely Guided Fireball class.

The first stage is those twin stacks of solid fuel boosters. Somehow the top ones don't quite burn through the bottom ones before they run out of fuel.

[weemadando]

Yeah, it's fun, but you can tell that it's alpha. That said, it's something that I'm now officially interested in.

[HMS Sophia]

Bandwidth limit exceeded... I am displeased.

[HMS Sophia]

Yeah there server appears to have shut down. Is there any chance anyone who has it could upload it to mediafire or something?

[xthetenth]

The first stage is those twin stacks of solid fuel boosters. Somehow the top ones don't quite burn through the bottom ones before they run out of fuel.

God, that's bad. I should either upload or pester blue till he uploads the Derpflinger class (Yes it's a WWI joke) because I'm on the wrong computer. My bottom stage is a trio of liquid fueled rockets which wouldn't be able to lift the thing. So I augmented it with two rings of 6 solid boosters set to go off in sequence because the liquid ones last a bit over twice as long. That thing moves.

[Kryten]

Yeah there server appears to have shut down. Is there any chance anyone who has it could upload it to mediafire or something?

The site's back up.

[HMS Sophia]

Yeah there server appears to have shut down. Is there any chance anyone who has it could upload it to mediafire or something?

The site's back up.

Not for me

[Norade]

I managed escape velocity with a stack of nine two liquid fuel rockets coupled to three solid boosters topped with a single stack of a liquid fueled rocket with three fuel cells. Decoupled the capsule once that ran out and managed a peak velocity of 4.06 km/s meaning my trip to Mars would take roughly 160 days. I think I'll try for something even crazier now!

[HMS Sophia]

I found a mirror! i'm happy...

Also, have you seen some of their plans? Tech tree's, campaigns, space-planes, all that jazz. This could be awesome.

[HMS Sophia]

Just made jsut over 170 km in altitude with a two stage liquid fuelled rocket

[Mr. Coffee]

Well, fired the Kerbals up with the three stage rocket. Triple liquid engine with three SRBs first stage, triple liquid engine and a half a dozen SAS modules second stage, single liquid third stage. At the end of the first stage the Kerbals were hauling balls at 4.4km/s @ 400km alt. Jeb seemed pleased, but I think he's on drugs. Bill and Bob lost their shit from launch onward, but I think that's mostly because right as count-down reached zero it suddenly dawned on them that I didn't give their capsule a parachute because I had no intention of bring them back down.

[HMS Sophia]

I think I just attained orbit :p... Oh no, it's just a high arc. very high.

In the orbiter forum, the guy that is making this game explained everything in regards to the crew.
They have... bravery, intelligence and they're going to get nausea.
Pilots (like jeb) are low int, high brav, and dont care because they are pilots.
The other two (as crew) have low brav and higher int, and so get scared more easily. Bob I think has the lowest bravery.

Eventually here are going to be pilots, engineers, scientists and other specialists

[Norade]

I just managed 4,570 m/s before blowing away from the final stage. Achieved by going with four stages; the first was 12 SRB's, then the next was 9 LRB's with 2 fuel tanks, then a hard kick with 3 more SRB's, the last stage was a long burn of a single LRB with three fuel tanks. I could likely push past this by making stage 2 have three fuel tanks per engine, then, so it can lift off, I would need to make the bottom stage 18 SRB's. Not having the thing flop around and die would be a bitch at that stage though.

[Mr. Coffee]

I would need to make the bottom stage 18 SRB's. Not having the thing flop around and die would be a bitch at that stage though.

Try directly connecting the SRB modules to each other instead of using those flimsy horizontal couplers and make sure you put an SAS module on tome of each SRB in the stack. Helps keep the wobbles down a good bit.

Also, check the SA forums, they've got a fair bit of a threadnaught for the game over there including a bunch of custom modules and connector stages for making your Kerbals die in hilarious ways FOR SCIENCE!

[Scottish Ninja]

For any of you still looking for a mirror, there's one linked here. I'm downloading now.

[Norade]

I would need to make the bottom stage 18 SRB's. Not having the thing flop around and die would be a bitch at that stage though.

Try directly connecting the SRB modules to each other instead of using those flimsy horizontal couplers and make sure you put an SAS module on tome of each SRB in the stack. Helps keep the wobbles down a good bit.

Also, check the SA forums, they've got a fair bit of a threadnaught for the game over there including a bunch of custom modules and connector stages for making your Kerbals die in hilarious ways FOR SCIENCE!

Ah, that makes sense.

[HMS Sophia]

huh
Slightly unexpectedly, you can reach 158km's with a single stage rocket.

Liqued fuel, two fuel tanks, a breakaway thing, then your module. Don't bother with an SAS, it's easy to fly like this, and detach the rocket just after it runs out of fuel.
Now I'm going to see what happens If I attach a pair of solid rocket boosters to the stage...

[Norade]

I'm closing in on 5km/s exit velocity having reached 4.78km/s on this last run. I think running a longer burn time with less force on the final stage my well get me there.

[HMS Sophia]

Added a pair of solid rocket boosters on those breakaway struts. So a two stage rocket now makes it too 244km's, an increase of about 90 km's. That's not a bad boost

[PeZook]

Building and balancing complex rockets is a real pain right now. The rocket editor needs a SERIOUS overhaul.

Also, there really has to be a way to attach more than one liquid fuel engine to a fuel tank.

[Bluewolf]

PeZook, they're adding symmetrical placing soon, thus eliminating some of the balance problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxeN7RM7 ... r_embedded

[PeZook]

Yeah, I just read it on the blog and even commented

This and the ability to insert piece into the assembled rocket will surely elliminate a lot of headaches. Still, I managed to get up to 1100 m/s with a really simple design.