Kerbal Space Program

[Swagger897]

As far as rockets go (never made a plane in KSP ever), if the rocket is wiggling while in ascent it needs to be strutted up. If it appears solid but tipping over, your mass is too high and/or your rate of turn is also too high. Don't chase prograde while climbing, if anything stay just outside of the yellow circle.

If you like your design however, and don't want to make large changes to it, add some fins to stabilize the whole assembly. A tall and narrow rocket will be the most difficult rocket to use on its ascent.

 

[BKGlover]

Ok. Let me put it this way. Capsule on decoupler, decoupler on one solid rocket booster, booster has fins. I've not even gotten to the upgrade for struts yet, if I have I don't know it, but I don't think there's anything struts will do.

 

[Swagger897]

Ah, there's your problem... SRB's don't have any gimbal (AFAIK) and you can't control the throttle on it either. That means you're relying solely on the SAS within the capsule which is at the very top of the rocket, which is easy to tip over. If you were using something like a liquid fuel rocket that has gimbal authority, it would be very easy to control. Fins will do very little from my experience with a rocket like this, unless they have some sort of motion capabilities. Even then, your rocket is probably going incredibly fast and the amount of air they move would still make you tip out of control.

 

[BKGlover]

This is going too fast and isn't easily controllable...

Uh huh. Note that it's not the initial launch that would die horribly, but the one after an hour trying to do contracts...with the same rocket, minus the extra bits.

Regardless, I got the plane to fly again and THIS TIME the game itself decided I should just go 🤬 myself and semi-locked mid maneuver, leaving me hitting every button on the dead keyboard while the plane slowly falls into a easily recoverable stall. Three contracts and progress gone. I'm done.

 

[eran0004]

This is going too fast and isn't easily controllable...View attachment 870122

Uh huh. Note that it's not the initial launch that would die horribly, but the one after an hour trying to do contracts...with the same rocket, minus the extra bits.

Regardless, I got the plane to fly again and THIS TIME the game itself decided I should just go 🤬 myself and semi-locked mid maneuver, leaving me hitting every button on the dead keyboard while the plane slowly falls into a easily recoverable stall. Three contracts and progress gone. I'm done.

Yeah, something is clearly wrong there. You might need to reinstall the game.

 

[eran0004]

I just reinstalled KSP and started a new science campaign. After the first couple of flights I decided to land at Minmus in order to gather a bunch of science. Unfortunately, as I prepared for landing and deployed the landing gear I noticed that the engine nozzle extended below the landing gear, probably bad news for the stability of the craft. I aimed at the flattest piece of ground I could find and adjusted the throttle to land very gently. After touchdown the rocket was actually standing upright, more or less. It was balancing on the nozzle and tilted around 5 degrees or so.

Good, I thought. Hopefully it will remain upright. Unfortunately fate had other plans. Apparently, Valentina Kerman, climbing out of the crew module and hanging on to the side of the craft, was enough to make it fall over. Thanks to the low gravity of Minmus the fall was slow and nothing got damaged. In fact, it actually made it easier for Valentina to access the science experiments that were stowed away in the middle of the craft. The only problem was how to launch the craft again to return back to Kerbin.

After collecting all the science data it was time to make an attempt to return to orbit. The craft's reaction wheels weren't strong enough to put it back up again, but they did manage to make the craft point 15-20 degrees over the horizon and that was all I needed. In the heat of the moment I lit up the engine and went full throttle. Didn't care much about the direction, as long as it was somewhat upwards. When I saw that the apoapsis had reached 120 km I killed the engine and took a few seconds to analyse the situation. Turns out I had burned towards the north, which would take the craft into a polar orbit. This is not good, I thought, although in hindsight it wasn't as bad as what I did next, because in order to fix what I thought was a big problem I decided to burn towards the south to make it an equatorial orbit. Not a very difficult maneuver, it was done very quickly. Then I burned prograde for a few seconds to lift the periapsis above ground level. I took a quick glance at the fuel gauge and noticed that this little launch maneuver of mine had consumed 75% of the fuel and all I had left now was around 120 meters per second delta v. Oops. And then I realised how dumb the maneuver was, because an equatorial orbit is more or less needed in order to get to Minmus, but it's not a requirement for returning back to Kerbin. A polar orbit would not have been the most optimal return trajectory, but it would have been just fine. And way better than my current situation: stuck in orbit around Minmus with 120 meters per second delta v.

I created a rough plan, which looked something like this:
Step 1: Burn prograde to leave Minmus' sphere of influence.
Step 2: Burn prograde around Kerbin to raise the apoapsis as far as possible (the logic/hope being that a higher apoapsis means a slower speed and less delta v required to return home).
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Land at Kerbin.

Great plan. I started with step 1 and 2. After those maneuvers I had 87 m/s delta v left. And that looked like game over. I tried to set up a bunch of different maneuver nodes from there but the best I could get was 2,7 million kilometers away from Kerbin. Then I remembered that I had brought two RCS jetpacks for Valentina! So when the craft reached apoapsis, Valentina grabbed her jetpack and stepped outside to push! When both jetpacks were depleted the velocity at apoapsis had been reduced from some 180 m/s to 145 m/s. Periapsis was still a long way from Kerbin, but from this position it seemed like there was potential for a gravity-assisted slingshot around the Mün. I set up a maneuver node and fiddled around with the settings for a while and then it suddenly appeared: a trajectory, slingshotting around the Mün and ending up a sweet 34 kilometers above the sea level of Kerbin! Just one tiny detail was worrying me at this point: The maneuver would cost me 84.8 m/s delta v, out of the 87 m/s I had left. This burn would have to be executed to perfection, or else Valentina would be stuck in a highly eccentric orbit between Kerbin and the Mün.

Making it a bit more complicated was the fact that Valentina was a level 1 pilot, which meant she could provide assist in pointing the craft prograde or retrograde, and to stabilise the craft in the current orientation. But she couldn't provide assist with pointing the craft in the direction of the maneuver, so this burn had to be done manually. One hand on the throttle, the other hand at the steering controls. One eye at the burn timer, the other at the periapsis indicator. When the time came I burned at full throttle until ten seconds remained on the timer. Killed the throttle, then set the throttle limiter to ten percent and burned again until ten seconds remained. Then set the limiter to a half percent and burned again until ten seconds remained. Then I burned in small increments, each time making sure the craft was pointing dead center in the maneuver direction on the nav ball. Eventually the timer reached zero. The result: 35 kilometers above sea level, beautiful!

Gravity took care of the rest. The capsule entered the nightsky of Kerbin at three kilometers per second and raced halfway around the globe, touching down at dawn. +400 science and one amazing adventure.

 

[Jtheripper]

I just reinstalled KSP and started a new science campaign. After the first couple of flights I decided to land at Minmus in order to gather a bunch of science. Unfortunately, as I prepared for landing and deployed the landing gear I noticed that the engine nozzle extended below the landing gear, probably bad news for the stability of the craft. I aimed at the flattest piece of ground I could find and adjusted the throttle to land very gently. After touchdown the rocket was actually standing upright, more or less. It was balancing on the nozzle and tilted around 5 degrees or so.

Good, I thought. Hopefully it will remain upright. Unfortunately fate had other plans. Apparently, Valentina Kerman, climbing out of the crew module and hanging on to the side of the craft, was enough to make it fall over. Thanks to the low gravity of Minmus the fall was slow and nothing got damaged. In fact, it actually made it easier for Valentina to access the science experiments that were stowed away in the middle of the craft. The only problem was how to launch the craft again to return back to Kerbin.

View attachment 1175241

After collecting all the science data it was time to make an attempt to return to orbit. The craft's reaction wheels weren't strong enough to put it back up again, but they did manage to make the craft point 15-20 degrees over the horizon and that was all I needed. In the heat of the moment I lit up the engine and went full throttle. Didn't care much about the direction, as long as it was somewhat upwards. When I saw that the apoapsis had reached 120 km I killed the engine and took a few seconds to analyse the situation. Turns out I had burned towards the north, which would take the craft into a polar orbit. This is not good, I thought, although in hindsight it wasn't as bad as what I did next, because in order to fix what I thought was a big problem I decided to burn towards the south to make it an equatorial orbit. Not a very difficult maneuver, it was done very quickly. Then I burned prograde for a few seconds to lift the periapsis above ground level. I took a quick glance at the fuel gauge and noticed that this little launch maneuver of mine had consumed 75% of the fuel and all I had left now was around 120 meters per second delta v. Oops. And then I realised how dumb the maneuver was, because an equatorial orbit is more or less needed in order to get to Minmus, but it's not a requirement for returning back to Kerbin. A polar orbit would not have been the most optimal return trajectory, but it would have been just fine. And way better than my current situation: stuck in orbit around Minmus with 120 meters per second delta v.

I created a rough plan, which looked something like this:
Step 1: Burn prograde to leave Minmus' sphere of influence.
Step 2: Burn prograde around Kerbin to raise the apoapsis as far as possible (the logic/hope being that a higher apoapsis means a slower speed and less delta v required to return home).
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Land at Kerbin.

Great plan. I started with step 1 and 2. After those maneuvers I had 87 m/s delta v left. And that looked like game over. I tried to set up a bunch of different maneuver nodes from there but the best I could get was 2,7 million kilometers away from Kerbin. Then I remembered that I had brought two RCS jetpacks for Valentina! So when the craft reached apoapsis, Valentina grabbed her jetpack and stepped outside to push! When both jetpacks were depleted the velocity at apoapsis had been reduced from some 180 m/s to 145 m/s. Periapsis was still a long way from Kerbin, but from this position it seemed like there was potential for a gravity-assisted slingshot around the Mün. I set up a maneuver node and fiddled around with the settings for a while and then it suddenly appeared: a trajectory, slingshotting around the Mün and ending up a sweet 34 kilometers above the sea level of Kerbin! Just one tiny detail was worrying me at this point: The maneuver would cost me 84.8 m/s delta v, out of the 87 m/s I had left. This burn would have to be executed to perfection, or else Valentina would be stuck in a highly eccentric orbit between Kerbin and the Mün.


View attachment 1175240

Making it a bit more complicated was the fact that Valentina was a level 1 pilot, which meant she could provide assist in pointing the craft prograde or retrograde, and to stabilise the craft in the current orientation. But she couldn't provide assist with pointing the craft in the direction of the maneuver, so this burn had to be done manually. One hand on the throttle, the other hand at the steering controls. One eye at the burn timer, the other at the periapsis indicator. When the time came I burned at full throttle until ten seconds remained on the timer. Killed the throttle, then set the throttle limiter to ten percent and burned again until ten seconds remained. Then set the limiter to a half percent and burned again until ten seconds remained. Then I burned in small increments, each time making sure the craft was pointing dead center in the maneuver direction on the nav ball. Eventually the timer reached zero. The result: 35 kilometers above sea level, beautiful!

View attachment 1175239

Gravity took care of the rest. The capsule entered the nightsky of Kerbin at three kilometers per second and raced halfway around the globe, touching down at dawn. +400 science and one amazing adventure.

View attachment 1175238

Cool details, i just got it on ps4, having a ball with just tutorials for now.
Works great, looking forward to try out lots.

The sequel looks so nice in videos too, impressive moons surfaces etc, interstellar travel, etc. Maybe in 2023, 24..

I wonder if you can monitor your heat/temp on modules while in flight? So you can adjust in real time to avoid disaster.
It be practical to have a slow time while checking all data.

Edit: i was in orbit and i took the pilot out for a space walk, with the little jetpack.

Not easy to control lol, i tried get back to the capsule but it was accelerating back down with gravity towards to surface of the planet.

Lost in space lol, the little pilot ended burned in re-entry haha. Cool game, nicely done, just some little bugs here and there up to now, almost nothing up to now though.

 

[eran0004]

Edit: i was in orbit and i took the pilot out for a space walk, with the little jetpack.

Not easy to control lol, i tried get back to the capsule but it was accelerating back down with gravity towards to surface of the planet.

Lost in space lol, the little pilot ended burned in re-entry haha. Cool game, nicely done, just some little bugs here and there up to now, almost nothing up to now though.

Yeah, on EVA you need to use small movements or else things can go really bad really fast

I built my first aircraft since reinstalling the game. I built it for the purpose of going to the north pole to do some research. Last time I played this game I used an autopilot mod, but this time I'm playing without mods so I expected the plane to be hard to fly, but to my surprise it handled perfectly. Even the flaps worked pretty much like flaps are supposed to! The heading was more or less stable, just had to make small corrections every once in a while, and the pitch was easily controlled by trimming the elevators. The cruise speed at 6000 meters was 280 m/s and the landing speed around 50 m/s.

The aircraft has room for one pilot and two passengers. It has just enough fuel to make it to the pole and back and it carries four different science experiments.