Unmanned Command Pods

[BNSF1995]

In real-life, manned spacecraft are never launched manned on their first flight (except the Space Shuttle). Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, and Orion all had unmanned test flights before they were deemed safe for manned flight.

In KSP, you can't launch an unmanned command pod without a probe attached (mainly in a place that would make it look unrealistic, or where other parts that are supposed to go, if using mods). Perhaps in the next update, minimum crew requirements can be removed so we can carry out unmanned test flights of manned spacecraft.

[Starman4308]

In real-life, manned spacecraft are never launched manned on their first flight (except the Space Shuttle). Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, and Orion all had unmanned test flights before they were deemed safe for manned flight.

In KSP, you can't launch an unmanned command pod without a probe attached (mainly in a place that would make it look unrealistic, or where other parts that are supposed to go, if using mods). Perhaps in the next update, minimum crew requirements can be removed so we can carry out unmanned test flights of manned spacecraft.

For most things, this can be solved by sticking a probe core on top of your pod.

The only sticking point is early career mode, where you have no probe cores, but that bit of silliness can be modded away (I like the 0.4t probe core offered in Modular Rocket Systems).

[kerbiloid]

Put 1.25 probe core in every ship you build  between the last fuel tank and command capsule decoupler. This is also useful when your kerbonaut walks outside your ship.

Put a probe core in every last stage of your launches  this allows to manually deorbit them and keep the orbit clear.

[MKI]

In real-life, manned spacecraft are never launched manned on their first flight (except the Space Shuttle). Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, and Orion all had unmanned test flights before they were deemed safe for manned flight.

In KSP, you can't launch an unmanned command pod without a probe attached (mainly in a place that would make it look unrealistic, or where other parts that are supposed to go, if using mods). Perhaps in the next update, minimum crew requirements can be removed so we can carry out unmanned test flights of manned spacecraft.

In kerbal life, they invented Rocket Science before electricity (look it up!) and thus the used manned missions before probes. Our real life isn't reflected in the game, mainly because Kerbals have a different level of safe compare to ours.

If you REALLY want to test a craft, there are a number of VERY small probes that can fit almost anywhere. Use some creativity or partclipping and your good to go. But to argue Kerbals need to follow better safty procedures is killing the fun haha.

[Wahgineer]

I think it's pretty obvious that the kerbals had all of the same tech we have before starting their space program. One needs electricity to ignite engines, open the VAB doors, run the COMPUTERS that track the ships, etc. Like Bac9 said: they're incredibly capable engineers. Sure, they may not be the safest or smartest, but they are surely NOT childish imbeciles.

[arkie87]

But to argue Kerbals need to follow better safty procedures is killing the fun haha.

"is killing the fun" or "killing IS the fun"?

[Rakaydos]

Can we get a "Robo-jeb" probe that can be put in capsules like a Kerbal, but doesnt cost Rep when it is lost?

[Blackline]

I know its necro, but i only found this thread through google and no solution, so i made one:

 

[Razorforce7]

What I think the TS is asking is to have current crew pods and allow them to work as probe cores also. Just like the uncrewed gemini launch among other launches.
It's more a realism aspect. This suggests that the onboard systems of a crew capsule support both crewed and remote operations. This should allow for crew capsules (like the mk1 command pod) to do the same.

Without crew there should ofcourse be a onboard antenna with range limitations as if it were a probe.
Sure you can attach probe cores to it. But in early career you may not yet have the 1.25meter ones so it will look like crap with the smaller ones. 
And adding another part is adding another part. And with the 30part limitation in early career you'd want the functionality to be build in.
And honestly, I have nothing against it.

On 9-12-2014 at 1:38 PM, MKI said:

In kerbal life, they invented Rocket Science before electricity (look it up!) and thus the used manned missions before probes. Our real life isn't reflected in the game, mainly because Kerbals have a different level of safe compare to ours.

Is that a official statement? If yes, where did you get it from?
People like to argue that it is because you first get the required rocket parts to get to orbit before getting batteries or solar panels.

However that is so wrong. How do you think the KSC was build? With automative vehicles. Last time I checked such vehicles required a electric starter. And alot more electric systems also.
I take it the cranes at the VAB are just pneumatic pumps and things are hoisted with pulleys that you'll have to pull under manual labor?
I think not!
And what about the cockpit gauges and MFD's. Is it just a kerbal lighting a candal behind the dashboard that makes all the buttons glow?

Edited April 19, 2017 by Razorforce7

[Ferdoni]

how about a modular probe core? the more features you want, the heavier it is

Edited April 24, 2017 by Ferdoni

[The Aziz]

You'd get enough science to get the Stayputnik just by rollimg around KSC in a construction made out of two Fleas and a capsule. Just saying.

[ZooNamedGames]

7 hours ago, The Aziz said:

You'd get enough science to get the Stayputnik just by rollimg around KSC in a construction made out of two Fleas and a capsule. Just saying.

And two batteries*

[Blackline]

On 19.4.2017 at 7:13 PM, Razorforce7 said:

What I think the TS is asking is to have current crew pods and allow them to work as probe cores also. SNIP>>

Thats exactly what my config file does: set the required amount of kerbals to 0 for every manned command pod, thus making it remotely operable. Ill post the most up-to-date cfg later, it even includes the new KSP upgrade mechanics. 

[KSPFanatic102]

actually the American Space shuttle was manned on its first flight

but the Russian (Now Abandoned) Buran Space shuttle was Unmanned on its first flight

[ZooNamedGames]

3 hours ago, Space_taco said:

actually the American Space shuttle was manned on its first flight

but the Russian (Now Abandoned) Buran Space shuttle was Unmanned on its first flight

EM-1 of the SLS might be manned. 

[KSPFanatic102]

6 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

EM-1 of the SLS might be manned. 

They Tested the Orion Stage , Unmanned On board the Delta Rocket , but about the SLS i don't really know

[ZooNamedGames]

16 minutes ago, Space_taco said:

They Tested the Orion Stage , Unmanned On board the Delta Rocket , but about the SLS i don't really know

I was almost there for EFT-1. Damn boat.

[KSPFanatic102]

2 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I was almost there for EFT-1. Damn boat.

So you were about to witness it with your own eyes or something? , also what boat?

 

[ZooNamedGames]

26 minutes ago, Space_taco said:

So you were about to witness it with your own eyes or something? , also what boat?

 

I was there for the first launch attempt at the Banana Creek viewing center (arrived to the cape at 2am in the morning, fought chilling sea winds, and waiting ~12 hours on a cold bench for it to be scrubbed and reset to the next day due to winds, a mechanical issue on the booster and a passing cargo freighter tripped the range safety grid and caused a hold on the launch.

I couldn't return the following day due to being super busy. Course the second day it launched without issue and I wasn't there. Ugh.

[KSPFanatic102]

2 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I was there for the first launch attempt at the Banana Creek viewing center (arrived to the cape at 2am in the morning, fought chilling sea winds, and waiting ~12 hours on a cold bench for it to be scrubbed and reset to the next day due to winds, a mechanical issue on the booster and a passing cargo freighter tripped the range safety grid and caused a hold on the launch.

I couldn't return the following day due to being super busy. Course the second day it launched without issue and I wasn't there. Ugh.

I watched the whole launch from my home , without even moving a finger , From a Magical invention called "Youtube"

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, Space_taco said:

I watched the whole launch from my home , without even moving a finger , From a Magical invention called "Youtube"

Heh ! It's good, but never as good as being there in person  . Sadly I mean that too having seen several in person. You don't know the pure power of the rocket engine until the rumble shakes your chest when your standing 5 miles from the thing!

[KSPFanatic102]

4 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Heh ! It's good, but never as good as being there in person  . Sadly I mean that too having seen several in person. You don't know the pure power of the rocket engine until the rumble shakes your chest when your standing 5 miles from the thing!

The Problem is that i live 11,590.99 Kilometers from Cape Canaveral FL. (Measured using google earth) , and i can't simply do it

[ZooNamedGames]

104 miles according to me.

[Zeiss Ikon]

One simple method to give limited unmanned launch capability to, for instance, the Mk. 1 Command Pod (equivalent to the first Mercury test flights on Little Joe solid rockets, where they tested the parachutes and Launch Escape System) would be a simple event timer.  Something like action groups, only available from Day 1 in a career or science game: Set an event to occur at a specific time (decoupling, parachute arm, heat shield jettison), in a sequence that can't be changed after the vessel is moved to the pad (and a single timer should be able to control a large number of events over its run time -- at least a dozen -- because it's just a matter of adding switches along the single cam's track).  Timer starts at the first (ground controlled) staging event (which usually is used to ignited the first stage -- no launch clamps yet at this stage) and then runs without possibility of external intervention other than ground destruct signals.

This emulates a simple device that goes all the way back to V-2 days (the world's first ballistic missile used a simple timer to gradually tip over the gyro platform to provide the pitch maneuver that sent the missile downrange rather than having it fly straight up and fall straight back down on the launch site), and beyond (there were similar devices used in model airplanes and larger "drones" to provide pre-programmed sequences of turns, climbs, descents, etc. after takeoff, going back at least to the 1920s).

This could also be used to launch very simple probes (equivalent to Sputnik, perhaps, just orbits and transmits a "beep" signal until its onboard batteries run down) with a launcher that uses aerodynamics, initial tilt, and gravity turn to establish orbit (like the first Japanese satellite launcher, which had no active guidance onboard) -- thus making orbital craft, of a limited sort, available, virtually from the beginning of career or science games.

 

Hey, @Space_taco, at that distance, you might as well be on the Mun! 

[KSPFanatic102]

Just now, Zeiss Ikon said:

One simple method to give limited unmanned launch capability to, for instance, the Mk. 1 Command Pod (equivalent to the first Mercury test flights on Little Joe solid rockets, where they tested the parachutes and Launch Escape System) would be a simple event timer.  Something like action groups, only available from Day 1 in a career or science game: Set an event to occur at a specific time (decoupling, parachute arm, heat shield jettison), in a sequence that can't be changed after the vessel is moved to the pad (and a single timer should be able to control a large number of events over its run time -- at least a dozen -- because it's just a matter of adding switches along the single cam's track).  Timer starts at the first (ground controlled) staging event (which usually is used to ignited the first stage -- no launch clamps yet at this stage) and then runs without possibility of external intervention other than ground destruct signals.

This emulates a simple device that goes all the way back to V-2 days (the world's first ballistic missile used a simple timer to gradually tip over the gyro platform to provide the pitch maneuver that sent the missile downrange rather than having it fly straight up and fall straight back down on the launch site), and beyond (there were similar devices used in model airplanes and larger "drones" to provide pre-programmed sequences of turns, climbs, descents, etc. after takeoff, going back at least to the 1920s).

This could also be used to launch very simple probes (equivalent to Sputnik, perhaps, just orbits and transmits a "beep" signal until its onboard batteries run down) with a launcher that uses aerodynamics, initial tilt, and gravity turn to establish orbit (like the first Japanese satellite launcher, which had no active guidance onboard) -- thus making orbital craft, of a limited sort, available, virtually from the beginning of career or science games.

 

Hey, @Space_taco, at that distance, you might as well be on the Mun! 

if it was in KSP then yeah xD

15 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

104 miles according to me.

oh well

lucky you