Kerbal Space Program

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Tyyr
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Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tyyr »

Anyone tried this? It's sort of like the bastard child of Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress in SPAAAAACE! It's an indie game that is technically still in alpha but they've put it on sale for $22.99. It's available on Steam and they've got a demo. You're limited to just your home planet and it's moon and you've got maybe 1/4 of the parts and pieces the full game has but its still more than enough to get to orbit or even if you're dedicated land on the Mun and return so the demo should keep you occupied for a while and give you a good taste of what awaits.

The main part of the game is rocket building. You've got dozens of pieces with which to put your rocket together, that's the Minecraft part. The catch? This games doesn't fuck around, it actually models rocket performance and the simulation is getting ever more complex. Orbital maneuvering will kick your ass. That's the Dwarf Fortress part. Two nights ago I spent about three hours pissing around with the demo and eventually managed to put a Kerbalnaught into orbit. I almost stranded him there but I got him back and it was one of my proudest moments in gaming when the Bart-Simpson-zombie/Minion looking Kerbal stood next to his capsule safe and sound on the ground. I bought the game immediately.

Last night I refined my rocket a great deal, improved my piloting, and managed to put my kerbalnaught into a good orbit and return him to the surface. It was a good day.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Griffin »

I played it about a year ago, and got back into it recently when they let you port it to steam. I find it's very much one of those games where failure is fun, anything I build has a 50/50 chance of either exploding alarmingly quickly or getting stranded in orbit of the sun. I love it and I'd certainly recommend it; I haven't even got into any of the lander/rovers, docking, or spaceplanes yet.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Lt. Staplic »

I bought the game when it came out. My physics class mates and I found it back when it was still in Beta and have been playing it on and off since then.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by stitch626 »

I currently have 6 of the guys stranded on a decaying orbit into the sun... I have had 2 missions stuck in orbit of the planet, and one crash straight into the Mun.
So far, only 2 have made it back to the planet after achieving a sort of orbit. It is rather difficult, and that makes it enjoyable.

Also, I somehow managed to have my guy survive a space jump from orbit, without his capsule... might be a bug but it was the most entertaining re-entry yet.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tyyr »

Surprised but happy to see this many people know about it.

Admittedly I kind of cheated. Probably half my childhood non-fiction reading was on space travel and I was an aerospace engineering major for about two years before just going with mechanical. I'll post pictures of... well I only have one rocket worth talking about right now.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Lt. Staplic »

I can post pics/stats of some good rockets that will get you into orbit/around.

One glitch that you guys can take advantage of is the fact that the engines always draw fuel from the furthest fuel tank accessible to them, so you can set up "asparagus staging" If you have a rocket with six rockets radially attached, put engines on all seven of them, then take off the symmetry tool and put fuel lines going from one to the next to the next, and on the third one have it feed into the central rocket, then do the same thing on the other side, then set the decouples to go off two at a time starting with the first two rockets in the chain. The result will be all 7 engines running off the fuel in the first two, then 5 engines off the next two, then 3 of the last two, then you're left with one fully fueled rocket.

@ Stitch: AFAIK, re-entry is still a Work In Progress, there's no temperature build as you descend (although solar panels will get ripped off in atmosphere.) I am curious how he survived impact with the ground though.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tyyr »

He might have been time accelerated. I've learned the hard way that landing under time acceleration is dangerous, ie buggy as fuck. Try not to be time accelerated when your chute opens, not uncommon for it to be ripped off, or when you hit the ground. I've lost two capsules due to that.

Also, that's not really a glitch Staplic, it's a fairly common tactic for rockets using liquid fuel boosters. It makes more efficient use of the fuel by shedding mass (empty tanks) as quickly as possible. Now they're not usually as complex as the ones you see in Kerbal but it's not really a glitch.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Lt. Staplic »

Not if it's designed to do it that way, but that's just default how the rocket engines work. It's referred to as a glitch on the ksp wiki and in the forum, though idk if it's one the developers have any intention of modifying.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tyyr »

The Dragon 9 heavy does that style of staging. The big thing is that no one does it to the extreme that Kerbal does it. In the case of the Dragon 9 you only have two boosters that feed into the central core, not sixteen boosters like some Kerbal ships.

I doubt the developers would bother fixing it as from a rocketeering point of view there's no reason to do it the other way.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tyyr »

The Imperial Kerbin Spaceforce's Return to Flight

Well it's time to get back into space. After making orbit in the demo and promptly buying the game I started doing a little research (mostly on piloting) and decided that my original design needed some refinement.

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This is the KLV-1 "Juno 1" that I used to return to orbit. Thanks to some piloting tips I managed to get all the way to orbit in it. I managed about a 653 x 245km orbit made a few revolutions and returned to Kerbin. For comparison My original rocket used a central core three of those long tanks high with three boosters two tanks high. It was ugly, flew like a pig, and put me in a wonky orbit with an apoapsis of 2,880km. The KLV-1 exemplifies what I'd like to do with my rockets, trim them way down and reach orbit in a more elegant manner.

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It's an orbit, lopsided and 653 x 245km but it's an orbit.

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Jebidiah Kerman takes a celebratory periapsis EVA. Yes, my pod is larger than it needs to be, I don't need the big RCS tank or the battery but I like the way it looks.

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Return to Orbit Stats

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Some more flights and refinement resulted in in the KLV-1b "Juno 3"... yeah I screwed the name up. I got it down to a single long tank with a short tank on top for the core and two short tank boosters. I just barely got this into orbit, 100km x 90km and that's with a lot of RCS burning to do. Ironically, my most circular orbit yet.

Well with four successful flights down since going for return to flight (2 x KLV-1, 1 KLV-1a, 1 KLV-1b) There is a KLV-1c with short solid rocket boosters but I couldn't get it to orbit, no deaths though. I figured it was time to step up in rocket size.

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Meet the KLV-2d "Hera 5" (Yeah the naming is still messed up.) The KLV-2 didn't have enough thrust to reach orbit, just two solid rocket boosters. The KLV-2a didn't either with four. The KLV-2b was a test article for a new upperstage/crew module design, strictly suborbital. The KLV-2c was successful and made orbit. The -2d is the final refinement of the design. I wasn't happy with how staging was going, my SRB's tended to linger close to my core longer than I liked and in space if I didn't immediately start boosting with my mains after dropping a stage it would stay right there with me. Enter the sepretron! I went crazy with them. Each SRB has one set at an off angle that pushes them away from the core and for added style points spins them. The lower stage gets that proper Apollo look when I decouple as six sepretrons fire and push it away from me. Same with the other stages.

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Here's the full upper stage (Yes, those with a keen eye will tell this is a -2c upper stage). I had enough fuel left in the upper stage to deorbit with it rather than my usual RCS like a madman strategy. Yes, this is STUPIDLY huge. Parachute with three struts holding to the the 3 kerb crew module, decoupler, lander can struted through the decoupler to the upper crew module and to the RCS tank below, four RCS nodes, 2 solar panels, ASAS, decoupler, short tank with three sepretrons and it's engine. The -2d uses a slightly modified crew set up with sepretrons on the command module to detach it after the re-entry module decouples as well as radial parachutes. Excessive? Incredibly, but it looks damn spiffy in orbit to me.

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Deobrit burn complete and upper stage dumped. I keep the CM for a while longer before I retract the solar panels and dump it.

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Re-entry en-route to another successful landing.

So that was my second night with KSP and I am thrilled. I improved my piloting substantially to where I could get to orbit (barely) with only 28% of the fuel I used to get there my first time. I had four successful launches with the KLV-1 series and one failure to orbit (FtO) but I still got my Kerb back alive. I then stepped up to a larger rocket size and a whole new set of parts. After two FtOs and one suborbital test article I got my larger rocket into orbit successfully twice and everyone back both times.

On the table for my next night, some more flight experience with the Hera, including finally getting into a proper circular orbit on purpose. Work on orbital maneuvering (I can hands on stick it but I'm still completely lost with maneuver nodes), and possibly start tinkering on a KSV-3 with enough ass on it to possibly use it for a Mun shot. Oh, and finally get my naming of my rockets right.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Lt. Staplic »

Just a question. But why'd you put a battery/solar pannels on your manned rockets? the manned pods don't need electric power, just the unmanned cores.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tyyr »

Appearances. I know I could vastly reduce the size of my rocket buy chopping it down to just a command pod, a small RCS tank, a parachute and a few thrusters but that's just so... bleh. The Hera's command pod is much more substantial and could be used for a Mun shot or even if I'm feeling a bit bastardly for a Duna trip if I'm willing to confine them to a tiny space.

And I decided since I'm naming the rockets after gods I'll name the command modules after demi-gods so the Juno's CM is the Hercules and the Hera's will be the Perseus.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tsukiyumi »

How many planets/moons (muns) are available to get to? Can you land on them? Is funding an issue?
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tyyr »

Lets see if I can do this from memory. There's a six planets. Kerbin (your homeworld) has the mun and another moon. Eve (the Venus analogue) has one moon. Duna (Mars) has one moon. Jool (Jupiter) has ten moons. So there's six planets and about 14 moons I think. You can land on any of them you want to. Returning is another matter. Eve's atmosphere is so thick that you need an absurdly powerful rocket to get back to orbit making a manned return mission one of the game's hardest challenges.

Oh, one of my favorite projects I've seen is a guy who's build a base that floats in Leythe's oceans which is one of the moons of Jool.

Right now the game only has a sandbox mode but they are working on a career mode and all parts and pieces have costs at the moment but it has no affect.
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Re: Kerbal Space Program

Post by Tsukiyumi »

It sounds like a lot of fun.
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