Kerbal Space Program, Revisited.

[Grumman]

Alas, today's patch just "fixed" parachutes. I haven't tested them yet, but I fear my 3,000 m/s Kerbal Re-Acquisition Trajectories will no longer be saved by a parachute or two deploying in the mesosphere...

It also "fixed" the heat shielding - they were incorrectly being treated as having zero mass in 1.00. I'll have another go later but 1.01 and 1.02 feel like a step backwards in terms of fun so far.

[Imperial528]

Actually they had mass. The problem is that their physics significance was 1, which flags them to be "physicsless." This lead to their mass being applied to the command module they were attached to but the drag being applied to the heat shield. Because of this the CoM moved behind the CoD causing pods to flip over during reentry and burn up if you didn't have the charge for SAS. With a proper physics significance flag of 0, the CoM moves when you place a heat shield.

[Napoleon the Clown]

So, thanks to the absolutely hilarious Danny2462 on YouTube, I decided to try a design that introduces extreme spin to a craft. One of his videos demonstrates what this does. Namely, if you have a Kerbal go EVA while you're spinning at such an extreme rate it will accelerate the poor little thing to velocities well in excess of the speed of light. And this is how I discovered that the game recognizes yottameters. After number crunch, I found that my average velocity was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.484e14 times the speed of light. This caused a few issues.

[TimothyC]

1.0.5 is now out.

[Adam Reynolds]

I recently have taken to watching Scott Manley's Kerbal videos. One of my favorites is how he manages to get a kerbonaut in orbit of the Mun with an EVA suit and a broken lander:

Wish I'd thought of something that clever using this system. I had no idea Kerbal EVA suits had that much delta-v.

[TimothyC]

I've put together a small lander using the new Mk 1 crew cabin. 1500m/s deltaV, plenty of TWR.

http://kerbalx.com/TimothyC/Mk-1-Lander

[lordroel]

Question is it possible to fly a spacecraft out the of the Kerbal system.

[Zaune]

Question is it possible to fly a spacecraft out the of the Kerbal system.

Yes, but without modding there's not really a lot of point.

[lordroel]

Question is it possible to fly a spacecraft out the of the Kerbal system.

Yes, but without modding there's not really a lot of point.

So there is nothing beyond the Kerbal system of worth.

[Zaune]

Only in the fanfiction.

[lordroel]

Only in the fanfiction.

If i wanted to, could i build a spaceship that could fly towards the edge of Kerbal space.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Shouldn't be too hard. I did that a few months back. Granted I was using the Project Orion mod for it so I had waaaaay more delta-v than standard components.

My ship was: Orion engine module, biggest possible stack of magazines (as opposed to fuel tanks) and a one-man cockpit at the top.

Launched, cranked the engines up to max speed that wouldn't cause an overheat, sped up the time and went off to make dinner. Came back an hour later (in real time) to find my insane Kerbalnaut riding an Orion ship with empty magazines that was doing about 6% of light speed and was out past Jool's orbit.

[lordroel]

[quote="Adam Reynolds"]I recently have taken to watching Scott Manley's Kerbal videos. /quote]

He makes it so easy in his videos to bring a Kerbal into orbit, so far i have not been able to do that, and it is not the lake of trying to prevent me from getting one into orbit, just it seems to fail at one point during the mission.

[Dominus Atheos]

How are you trying to achieve orbit? The simplest way is just to go straight up until your apoapsis reaches 70,000km, turning off your engine until you reach that altitude, then pointing prograde (the green dot on your navball) and turning the engines back on until your orbit circularized.

There is a tutorial in the game that will walk you through that step by step.

[Dominus Atheos]

Nevermind, my explanation was terrible and there's no "ground-to-circular-orbit" tutorial in the game. Let's just do what I should have done in the first place and post this Scott Manley video "Launching Rockets To Orbit":

[Napoleon the Clown]

Question is it possible to fly a spacecraft out the of the Kerbal system.

Yes, but without modding there's not really a lot of point.

So there is nothing beyond the Kerbal system of worth.

Exploiting a physics bug, I have managed to eject a Kerbal all the way out to ~8,000 yottameters (8*1027 meters, a distance that exceeds the diameter of the entire fucking universe) and there was nothing to see. There's honestly no point in going beyond Eeloo beyond being able to say you did it. And without physics exploits that allow you to go faster than light, it'll take you a rather long time.

If you want a real challenge, go to Eve, land, and get back. IIRC, the calculate delta-V is somewhere around 11.5 km/s. Easy as hell to fly there and get a good orbit, landing isn't bad either. Getting back into orbit? Much harder.

[lordroel]

Yes, but without modding there's not really a lot of point.

So there is nothing beyond the Kerbal system of worth.

Exploiting a physics bug, I have managed to eject a Kerbal all the way out to ~8,000 yottameters (8*1027 meters, a distance that exceeds the diameter of the entire fucking universe) and there was nothing to see. There's honestly no point in going beyond Eeloo beyond being able to say you did it. And without physics exploits that allow you to go faster than light, it'll take you a rather long time.

If you want a real challenge, go to Eve, land, and get back. IIRC, the calculate delta-V is somewhere around 11.5 km/s. Easy as hell to fly there and get a good orbit, landing isn't bad either. Getting back into orbit? Much harder.

So far i have not manged to get one of my Kerbals in orbit, does this mean i suck in the game.

[Dominus Atheos]

Are you playing career? To start out, you're just supposed to be doing science in and around the launchpad, you can't get into orbit until you're like 3 nodes into the tech tree and have upgraded the launchpad and VAB to launch reasonably sized rockets.

[Napoleon the Clown]

So there is nothing beyond the Kerbal system of worth.

Exploiting a physics bug, I have managed to eject a Kerbal all the way out to ~8,000 yottameters (8*1027 meters, a distance that exceeds the diameter of the entire fucking universe) and there was nothing to see. There's honestly no point in going beyond Eeloo beyond being able to say you did it. And without physics exploits that allow you to go faster than light, it'll take you a rather long time.

If you want a real challenge, go to Eve, land, and get back. IIRC, the calculate delta-V is somewhere around 11.5 km/s. Easy as hell to fly there and get a good orbit, landing isn't bad either. Getting back into orbit? Much harder.

So far i have not manged to get one of my Kerbals in orbit, does this mean i suck in the game.

Getting into orbit requires having the right parts, a stable rocket, and following the right path getting into orbit. Once you've done it a few times it's pretty simple to do, but you need to use proper gravity turns. If you just try to go straight up you'll either hit escape velocity or throw yourself into the void. The best way to get into orbit is to slowly angle over, adding the planet's rotational velocity to your orbital velocity. By the 10km mark you'll want to be at about 45*. This helps pick up lateral velocity with upward velocity. Go to map view and watch your apoaps until it hits around 80 km, which puts you a healthy amount over the atmosphere. Kill the engines at that point and set up a node to circularize. Then just obey the node's instructions.

Complicated at first, but once you master it you can get some insane shit in orbit.

[TimothyC]

If you want a real challenge, go to Eve, land, and get back. IIRC, the calculate delta-V is somewhere around 11.5 km/s. Easy as hell to fly there and get a good orbit, landing isn't bad either. Getting back into orbit? Much harder.

The break down for an Eve Shot is nasty:

• 3.5kps to orbit
  • At least 2 of which need to have an acceleration of at least 10m/s2
• 1.25kps to transfer (presuming aerocapture which is a lot harder now)
• 8kps to launch back into orbit
  • At least 5 of which have to be at 18m/22 or higher
  • For this, you really want aerospikes or Vectors for their relatively flat ISP curves
• 1.25kps to transfer back to Kerbin.

14 kps or so (being somewhat conservative, presuming a lowlands landing on Eve, and no Eve capture burn. The best bet is still to park the transfer stage in Eve orbit so you don't need as large of a rocket to return.

I've never pulled it off, even in the era before Eve's atmo became the flaming death that it is today.

[Grumman]

After waiting way too long for it, 1.1 is finally coming out. This time, I might actually complete my plan to send a fully functioning colony ship to Laythe without the looming spectre of a major update convincing me that I'm better off waiting.

[lordroel]

Complicated at first, but once you master it you can get some insane shit in orbit.

What is the biggest thing you can bring into orbit in one launch.

[Dominus Atheos]

Well if you attach enough boosters, you can get anything into orbit. I think the largest thing I ever put into orbit was this:



This is what it looked like before it launched

That was part of personal challenge of mine to get all of Minmus's science in one trip, which required several of these to be sent to refuel the orbital mothership which in turn refueled the lander.

[Starglider]

What is the biggest thing you can bring into orbit in one launch.

Not the absolute largest, but one of the more plausible and impressive.

[TimothyC]

1.1 pre-release update on steam now.