Kerbal Space Program Options

[The_Hunter]

EDIT: I finally landed on the moon. At the speed of 425.7 m/s. I didn't know that it was that fast.

haha thats alost like coming in like a meteor.

Optimal landing speed is between 200 and 300 at heights above 5000.
Below 5000 meterst you want to keep it at 80 till you can see the ground and want to slow down to 10 or below and deploy your landing gear

[Knossos]

I now learned from my mistakes (mostly) and landed on the moon. That's not a proper lander, but hell, Scott Manley made it through.



P.S. With about 12 units of fuel remaining. Oh well, Jebediah doesn't care much, actually.

EDIT: Pic after I just landed.



This post has been edited by Knossos: 7 May 2014, 0:32

[The_Hunter]

Not bad tho it seems you don't have enough fuel to return back to Kerbin with that lander.
I recommend playing around with nuclear engines as they are very fuel effecient for moon landings.


Also meanwhile i managed to land on Duna establishing my first colony there:

[8igDaddy8lake]

"blowing up" planets just send you to N/A hell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLscXyIP4c8

Laughed so much at this. Reminds me of my mistakes in Unity... I once made a fishing game, and all was going great until the boat collided with a fish. Needless to say, the boat started flying across the sky, above the massive expanse of ocean. I showed it to my friend while singing the "I Can Show You The World" song from Aladdin, literally dropping him to the floor with laughter.

8.52 x light speed...GREAT SCOTT! He invented the warp drive!

[Serialkillerwhal...]

Quick question..........how do i get this stupid "Kerbin" planet between me and Mun out of the way?

How many teratons of TNT?

And how much rocket fuel is worth 1 teraton of tnt?

This post has been edited by Serialkillerwhale: 7 May 2014, 3:52

[Thelord444]

Stop making me want to play this game everyone! *goes to get the game*

Great, now i well post pics of horrible failures later.

[8igDaddy8lake]

I love how this discussion all coincided with a Steam sale on KSP...

[Comr4de]

As much as I really want to play more of KSP as a full version, the price tag is really stomping on my balls.

EDIT: I finally landed on the moon. At the speed of 425.7 m/s. I didn't know that it was that fast.

Didn't realize that 16 USD is too much (its on sale on steam and humble bundle now. Go Get it!)

I'll post some of my accomplishments later. At work and I like money.

I love how this discussion all coincided with a Steam sale on KSP...

I've had this before the sale, but yes, the peeps saying its a bit much is already lols considering its 26 USD by default.

[Knossos]

Didn't realize that 16 USD is too much (its on sale on steam and humble bundle now. Go Get it!)

I'll post some of my accomplishments later. At work and I like money.



I've had this before the sale, but yes, the peeps saying its a bit much is already lols considering its 26 USD by default.

I live in a country where the exchange rate is a little bit less ghastly than Zimbabwe's. Sorry bout that.

[Comr4de]

I live in a country where the exchange rate is a little bit less ghastly than Zimbabwe's. Sorry bout that.

I see, well now I feel a bit of an ass

Still, it's worth it, especially right now since its got a chunk of it off.

[DELETED MEMBER]

I love how this discussion all coincided with a Steam sale on KSP...

Indeed, i am kinda impresed it didnt get a thread before
have two pics from the mun landing (nothing like IVA landings) i did 5 minutes ago (clicky for biggah)

[Serialkillerwhal...]

Apparently I get "Science" for taking a surface sample of my own launch pad.

Wat

[Comr4de]

Apparently I get "Science" for taking a surface sample of my own launch pad.

Wat

Welcome to Kerbal Space Program

It'll only give you so much Science but its best to assume they just needed to have someone to collect some rocks to compare to moon rocks - think of it that way!

[Kalga]

I just bought the game last night! (and now I have a Steam account... and the icon is next to my Origin icon, which is next to my Desura icon...)

... and in the space of 2 hours of playing I manage to kill off at least 12 of those astronauts, blow up 7 rocket and 3 planes...

[Thelord444]

Playing it now, first 10 launches a fail, going to YouTube for tutorials now

[Comr4de]

If you're looking for tutorials, I highly suggest Scott Manley. Saved me a ton of time by watching his videos.


Also handy link from one of his tutorial playlists:

[Thelord444]

That's exactly what i am watching right now

[Thelord444]

First Mun landing was a fail, a big one, but at least no injuries happened!

[Thelord444]

Okay gotta say this, this game has SO many capabilities, planet bases, space stations, weapons, freaking solar systems, and mods, so this is really addicting, but its too complex for me, need to master it first to get to it, sort of like FSX.

[Serialkillerwhal...]

Welcome to Kerbal Space Program

It'll only give you so much Science but its best to assume they just needed to have someone to collect some rocks to compare to moon rocks - think of it that way!

Apparently so.

By the way how do you make screenshots for KSP?

[Admiral FCS]

Apparently so.

By the way how do you make screenshots for KSP?

I think it's either F1 or F2, one of them turns off HUD for you to take wallpaper shots.

Too lazy to upload my pictures ATM, and somehow even though I can make space stations without that much problem I still can't get a return lander to land on Mun

[Knossos]

Apparently so.

By the way how do you make screenshots for KSP?

I use print screen, it's just as useful.

[Serialkillerwhal...]

Ahh, anyway what do you name your rockets? I've themed mine of the NASA series, with my own touch.

The Capricorn sub-orbital series is named after the fish-goat thing.

The end project, the Dionysus series is named after the Greek god of wine (Read: getting drunk).

[Comr4de]

SCREENIE TIME:


First Mun landing...one way trip actually, the second rocket was a modified version of the one below with a CPU to bring him back... Fun times.


Dubbing it the "Hex" Since it had 6 separate booster tanks that fueled the center, this was the first "workhorse" that sent my Kerbals to the Mun/Minmus and back.


First landing on Minmus, yes, using the 5th iteration of the Hex Rocket design.


Should have taken pics of the rocket that sent these up, but since then deleted them for the next versions, first bases on Minmus were sent off with some relative ease.


Millennium Station is complete after three rendezvous. Nodes and RCS are your friends. This was before I binded translations to my keyboard so docking was extremely tricky. Many attempts to catchup to my parts were a total pain.


As time went on and basically made my trips around Low Kerban Orbit/the local Moons almost a how-to demonstration to friends and family, my ambition and rockets grew synonymously. Next up Duna!....Sadly this design was completely insane and only made it to orbit...once. You can kinda make out the later stages are the predecessor to my interplanetary ship designs. Lucky for me when I launched this, a week later the next KSP update was out, and after a few prototypes I came up with:


The new Hex 'Spectrum' Rockets. Named a different color depending on their destination. My targets: Duna/Red, Eve/Violet, Laythe/Blue, respectively. This design is essentially a jumbo sized version of my Hex rockets, but carry a payload of a large fuel tank, 4 smaller tanks (relatively) with Nuclear engines to make the burns. They worked perfectly but due to the sheer size/weight the burns were quite extensive. Your burns will vary depending on size, but mine on this workhorse run about 5-10 minutes, but barely take any fuel.


Prepare for 20+ minute burns!


Red Hex on route to Duna.


Almost there, and a bit fast too..


Atmosphere Braking is fun, especially when you are moving about 5km+/s, better hug that atmosphere to slow me as much as possible. Since Duna's atmosphere is freaking thin, you had to play 'how low can you go', If i had gone any higher (around 7km) I simply slow down a bit and keep on going! 5km was the magic number. This maneuver basically became my 'go-to' method of getting to a place fast...normally you want to orbit around it but, why not just have the atmosphere do the work for me?


All my first flights to newer bodies are unmanned, thus had more room for fuel/less weight making my landers extremely easy to land. Even so because of the low altitude atmosphere breaking, this took several tries to land properly.


Touchdown on Duna!


Right away I sent Violet Hex off to Eve, same principle for landing was utilized but since the atmosphere was thicker, it was much easier to land. Took me two tries...mainly because the first one crashed since the gravity is much higher here. These were not equipped with parachutes and quite frankly I wanted to see if I could land with just engines; I had plenty of practice to fly these in failed rocket design attempts and landed them on Kerbin - so I knew they would work on Duna (where it's lighter) and possibly Eve.


Entering Eve's atmosphere.


So much purple, it hurts!


Took a break from designing and launching rockets to Laythe to test out making Transport vehicles. Behold the Terrainorizer!


After some crazy thinking, I began to alter my Spectrum Rockets to hold transport slots.


And it worked.


Meanwhile on Minmus.


Sadly since the Gravity is so low on Minmus, my Terrainorizer (I still love that name by the way), doesn't cope well, you essentially have to throw on RCS simply to keep it on the ground. Oh and yes it is equiped with SAS systems in case it flips over....or starts spinning midair - whichever comes first.


Blue Hex headed towards Jool.


Burns are strikingly the same as my previous runs on Duna and Eve, it only gets longer to get there for obvious reasons but it servers to have little challenge for now..


Having to double check how low I can go on Jool, I do 2 burns to adjust my trajectory towards Laythe.


It actually takes me several tries to get to Laythe, simply because I'm going too fast and the target is actually a moon. Realistically we would want to orbit Jool first but in this run too much fuel was being burnt simply to aim at Laythe. Screw it, we're doing it the usual way.


Since Laythe is mostly composed of water (?) and only has a few islands to land on, I choose the North Pole since it was not only easier to get to from where I was coming from, but because aiming at any of the other islands were posing to be a huge challenge. First 'landing' was actually headfirst into the ocean at about 1.5km/s. So using atmosphere breaking near the north pole was the way to go.


Once inside the atmosphere and relatively close to the exact north pole, landing was a breeze compared to Eve and Duna.


I fucking love this game.


It's getting late, going to post the next wave of pics later. Next up: New Mun bases using the Spectrum rockets as the bases, the Fatman-52, Manned Duna mission and back and the beginning of my Kerbin/Duna Interplanetary Shuttle, the 'Arc'.

[Admiral FCS]

How did your solar panels NOT burn up in Eve?

I would love to take screenshots if not for the fact that I'm too lazy to register for a image hosting file AND a lack of content Might get some up after I finish this semester and go home with my crappy laptop though