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Super rushed. Just wanted to put something together for a proof-of-concept for something I'm working on. Good headphones or sound system required.

Does anyone know a mod that has good looking launch towers (that is not FASA)? If not, can anyone make one? Thanks!

Hi. I was wondering if anyone knew any mods (besides FASA) that added launch towers/clamps. Thanks!

When i did my first launch I got to space but then came back and burned up, so Jeb died. What happened to you?

problem: try's to launch and it stays in VAB/SPH and all buttons become unclick-able. step 1 launch step 2 all buttons become unclick able mods: log:https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7y2vay2s055kf5/output_log.txt?dl=0 EDIT:my save file was croupt

Can Squad add some more launch pads at KSC and some more switchable launch sites. I dont want to use any mod like Kerbal Konstructs for it. I want them KSP Stock. And yes some launch pads should have lightning rods.

I launched the pre assembled stock satellite launcher.

There are two YouTube channels hosting the event. Looks like they offer different views of the launch. Both are included below. Thankful for dual screens. Launch is scheduled for 1:42 PM Eastern.

We get a lot of players believing that their parachutes have been destroyed during launch, so I made this to help explain.

Watch it here: http://www.roscosmos.ru/317/ Liftoff confirmed!

This is an in-depth tutorial, but still directed to beginner-intermediate players, on how to do a proper launch and gravity turn with the new aerodynamic model introduced as of version 1.0. This tutorial works for versions 1.0 to 1.3. More than giving a script or set of instructions, my goal with this tutorial is for you to gain an understanding of the factors that affect your rocket's behavior during launch, so that you can apply it to any rocket you fly. For that, you'll need to go through the entire post, but I'm also including a TLDR as a "cheat sheet": TL;DR (courtesy of @kBob) 1. Turn ON SAS and set throttle to give TWR of ~1.5. 2. Launch! 3. When your speed reaches 50 m/s, perform a pitch over maneuver (tip towards the East until pointing between 5° to 10°). 4. When SAS stabilizes (i.e. the control input arrows on the bottom left are all centered), turn it OFF. Avoid control inputs and use only throttle to control your gravity turn (throttle up to turn slower, throttle down to turn faster). 5. When your altitude reaches ~40 km, turn SAS ON. Start pitching down manually towards the horizon and adjust throttle to keep your Ap around 45 seconds in front of you. 6. When your Ap reaches the desired altitude, cut your engines, coast to Ap and circularize. ========================================================================================== General Notes on Gravity Turn You all probably know by this point that to get into orbit you need to go up, above the atmosphere, but you also need to go sideways (i.e. horizontally) very fast. To do this, we could launch straight up until we're out of the atmosphere, then point sideways and accelerate to orbital speed. But that would be very inefficient. We want to launch in a way that we gradually turn sideways while we ascend. This is called a gravity turn. The best way is to do a real gravity turn; that is, a turn caused by gravity and aerodynamic forces, rather than one achieved by actively turning the rocket. It is important to keep this in mind. Design Items Before even launching, you need to take these design items into consideration when building your rocket: TWR: Your thrust-to-weight ratio (TWR) at launch should be relatively low, around 1.5. A higher TWR at the beginning of the launch makes it harder for your rocket to turn naturally, as gravity will have less influence on its trajectory, making it fly straight and screwing up your gravity turn. Keep in mind that drag losses are almost negligible in the new aero, unless your rocket is shaped like a brick or you are going extremely fast in the lower atmosphere. Thus, a slightly higher TWR of around ~2.0 in theory is more efficient, but only if the launch profile is flown correctly. The drawback is it makes your rocket less forgiving in terms of control during ascent, and it shortnes your widnow to make a pitch-over maneuver. What usually ends up happening is that you have to force the gravity turn manually, which does generate significant drag (because you expose the sides of your rocket to the airstream anytime you deviate from your prograde vector), and causes steering losses (Dv wasted on changing direction rather than gaining velocity). This reduces overall efficiency and defeats the purpose of having a higher TWR to begin with. A higher TWR also causes increased stress to the craft, inducing wobble and risking a RUD, especially when trying to maneuver. You may experience heating issues too. For these reasons, in my experience, a TWR of ~1.5 is a good sweet spot between efficiency and controllability of the rocket. Smaller and lighter rockets handle higher TWR's better than big and heavy ones and each craft will have its own sweet spot; you are encouraged to experiment. If you find your TWR at launch is too high, either use a smaller engine or just throttle down, and vice versa. As a final note, all rockets will have their TWR go up as the launch progresses due to shedding weight by burning fuel. This is normal and you should manage by reducing throttle throughout the ascent as needed (more on this below). You can check your TWR with the Kerbal Engineering Redux mod (KER) or with MechJeb, or if you're running a stock game, the G Force meter roughly doubles as a TWR meter (if the G Force meter is pointing at 1 your TWR is roughly 1, and so on). Aerodynamic Stability: You want your rocket to be aerodynamically stable. That means that it will have a natural tendency to fly straight, instead of, say, sideways. Any object that flies through the atmosphere will naturally orient itself with its center of mass (COM) facing forwards relative to its trajectory and its center of drag (COD) facing backwards. You can see this in darts, arrows, badminton cocks, etc. Similarly, you will want to have your rocket's COM in front of your COD. To ensure this, add 3 or 4 winglets or wing surfaces with radial symmetry at the base of the rocket, and if possible cover your payload in a fairing to make it more streamlined. If your rocket insists on flipping, you need to add more/larger wings at the bottom. If that still doesn't fix it, it means your COM is shifting back too much as fuel is burnt. The heaviest part of a rocket in KSP is usually the main ascent engine(s), so the COM will tend to move back as fuel is spent. The easiest way to fix this is to add a small fuel tank at the top of the stage that's experiencing the problem and lock the tank in the VAB (right click on the tank and select the green arrows for both fuel and oxidizer). This fuel tank will act as ballast keeping your COM forward. You can unlock it manually in flight when the rest of the stage's fuel is gone so as to not waste it, and then stage as normal. Ascent Profile Once you've implemented the above design items, follow these steps for your ascent: 1. Turn on SAS and set your throttle to whatever will give you a TWR of ~1.5. 2. Launch! 2. As soon as your speed hits 50 m/s, perform a pitch-over maneuver to begin your gravity turn. To do this, tip your rocket towards the East slightly, until it is pointing between 5° to 10°. Don't start pitching over before your speed is ~50 m/s, otherwise you will likely find yourself horizontal within a few seconds, as your winglets won't be biting into the air hard enough to provide stability. The higher your thrust, the more you need to pitch over initially, because higher thrust makes the rocket want to go straight. If you're using a TWR higher than 1.5, your pitch-over should be to at least 10°. 3. As soon as your SAS stabilizes (i.e. the control input arrows on the bottom left are all centered) turn off the SAS. Watch closely for this moment, as you will have only a small window of a few seconds at most before the SAS starts trying to resist the gravity turn. Turning SAS off while it's trying to steer will cause your rocket to become unstable and lose its heading or possibly break up. You should be done with your pitch-over maneuver and have your SAS turned off by the time your velocity is around 100m/s. If you take too long and your rocket is going too fast by the time you're done, it won't want to continue turning (fast rockets like to go straight, remember?) and you'll have to force the turn manually, which is inefficient and causes stress on your craft. As mentioned above, a gravity turn should happen on its own and not as a result of control input. For particularly unwieldy rockets, you can lock SAS to prograde instead of turning it off during this phase. However, stock SAS is far from perfect and it's best to let gravity and aerodynamic forces do the steering for you. If you do use SAS, be sure to disable it before you hit 35 km to avoid you craft from jolting down suddenly when the navball automatically switches to orbit mode, which happens at around 35 km. 4. Enjoy the view while your prograde marker gradually sinks towards the horizon; your rocket will follow on its own thanks to gravity and aerodynamic forces. Try to avoid control inputs during this phase (i.e. no AWSD), just let it fly. If you need to make adjustments, use throttle. Remember, lower thrust means the rocket turns more, higher thrust makes it want to go straight. At about 10 km altitude, you should be pointing roughly to 45° and your speed should be around 500 m/s. If at 10 km altitude you're still pointing above 45°, your TWR was too high and you went too fast and/or your pitch-over maneuver was too gentle. Next time throttle down more or make a more aggressive pitch-over maneuver. On the other hand, if you're pointing below 45° at 10 km, you went too slow and/or your pitch-over maneuver was too aggressive. Next time use higher thrust or do a gentler pitch-over maneuver. If your rocket flips on its end at any point, it's not aerodynamically stable enough. See above under "Aerodynamic Stability" for possible solutions. 5. At around 40 km altitude, turn SAS back on and start steering manually; use pitch and throttle to keep your Ap around 45 seconds in front of you. Any time you're burning above the horizon, you're wasting part of your thrust to gravity instead of gaining horizontal speed; this is called gravity losses or gravity drag. In the initial stages of the launch, you can't help incurring gravity loses because you need to gain vertical speed to get out of the atmosphere. The atmosphere also means you can't steer away from the prograde vector without inducing aerodynamic drag, steering losses and/or destabilizing your rocket. However, by the time you get to ~ 40 km, you'll have enough vertical speed and the atmosphere will become negligible. Thus, at this point you want to begin gradually pitching down towards the horizon. During this phase, you will also start adjusting your time to Ap. It's most efficient to perform your orbital insertion burn right at Ap, so you want to keep it "hovering" only a few seconds in front of you. Of course, you don't want to it to get too close either, otherwise you risk passing it and falling back down into the atmosphere. A time to Ap of ~45 seconds is a good rule of thumb to balance safety and efficiency. To control your time to Ap, use pitch and throttle. If your time to Ap is more than 45 sec, throttle down a bit and point more horizontal, and vice versa. Avoid pitching below the horizon. Continue adjusting pitch and throttle until your Ap reaches your desired altitude, at which point you can cut your engines, coast to Ap and circularize. Note that as you approach orbital speed, there will be a point when your Ap will begin shooting away even if pointing straight at the horizon and no matter how much you throttle down (unless you cut the engines of course). If you reach this point, just let it go until engine cutoff; any efficiency gains from keeping your Ap near you will be negligible by then. Advanced Mode Try doing the ascent and orbital insertion in a continuous burn. This is the most efficient profile (citation needed) and it's extremely satisfying. Easier said than done, though. To pull it off, you need to allow your time to Ap to creep closer and closer during steps 4 and 5, while not allowing it to get higher than your intended orbital altitude. You do this by reducing throttle and lowering your pitch in a more aggressive manner. The closer you are to orbital velocity, the closer you can allow yourself to get to your Ap. You want to hit orbital velocity exactly at Ap. There will be much trial and error and the exact procedure will vary from rocket to rocket, but give it a try!

This is a development thread for the re-release of "'Mass Accelerator" parts. These parts originally come from the Stanford Torus Mod, which reached version 0.6.1 for KSP 0.90 on Curse on February 20th, 2015 before apparently having its development dis-continued (you can find the old forum thread here). I thought it was *excellent* work with a lot of potential, and worth re-releasing to continue the parts' legacy (Stanford Torus' updates were already coming less and less frequently by the time I created this) and make them available to more players. The mod was released under a CDDL-1 license, which allows anyone to "use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute" the content with or without author permission. The license requires that I credit the original author, and re-release the original source code: which is provided below... However, this isn't just a cut-and-paste re-release. While the Mass Accelerator parts do achieve a purpose never realized before in KSP (a functional, part-based Mass Driver), they aren't very realistically balanced... The original parts can only accelerate a 2.5 meter 12.5-ton rocket at roughly 2 g's, whereas the Mass Driver designs for the real-life Star Tram proposal could accelerate a 40-ton 2 meter wide, 13 meter long rocket at 30 g's... The original parts are also darn expensive, heavy (30 tons/piece), and have weak attachments to each other which tend to cause Mass Accelerator stacks to break apart under the acceleration they create... Thus, from the first day I got my hands on the Mass Accelerator part, I went into the config and started making some modifications to make it more realistic. ORIGINALLY: - I increased the acceleration to 11760 kN/s (30 g's on a 40-ton rocket), and increased electricity consumption proportionally (this still needs some re-balancing: the original author states in config-file comments that he aimed for 1 MW per 100 kN/s- which equates to 10% efficiency, but it actually came out to 1 kW per 250 kN/s, if 1 EC = 1 kW). This performance is based on the real-life StarTram gen-1 designs... - I decreased part cost to a more reasonable+realistic level (12,500 funds per part instead of 185,000 funds per part- the new cost equates to the still astronomical figure of $92.74 million/section in 2015 dollars, using the convention of 1 Fund = $1000 1965 US dollars), and reduced the part mass to 10 tons/ring (reasonably accurate for real-life aluminum-based Mass Driver coils). - I also increased the toughness of a stack of Mass Accelerators in various ways (such as by increasing the node size from 2 to 3- as the rings are roughly 3.75 meters in outer diameter, raising the Crash Tolerance from 7 to 9, and tripling BreakingForce/Torque values...) The part-balancing has changes somewhat since (I'm sure you can find the math errors I made above if you look carefully), but anyways, the result is this: a functional Mass Driver part, that, while it still has a few bugs/quirks, works realistically in KSP. Version 1.3.2 is now LIVE. Changes from 1.3.0 include the addition of a readme, NEW SIZES of the Mass Driver part (with internal diameters sized for crafts from 0.625 to 5 meters!), and adjustment of tech node assignments (moved back in the tech tree). https://spacedock.info/mod/1227/Netherdyne Mass Driver Mod [Official] I would like players to let me know how the mod works for them. Let me know if you have any issues- I am still in the process of tweaking this version before "release". Like the Stanford Torus mod this comes from, these parts are released under a CDDL-1 license: so there's nothing stopping you from modifying them and re-releasing them yourself as desired. And, here are some more images of a mission I launched using the Mass Accelerators a while ago... NIGHT LAUNCH in 0.25: (For the curious- the rocket pictured above also utilized a parachute-assisted Space-X style recovery of the launch stage, and travels all the way to the Mun with its payload... The engines produce less than 1 g of acceleration at max throttle when the fuel tanks are full- hence why the rocket has gained barely 3 m/s of speed after climbing more than 3 km...) Regards, Northstar

Now with a Push Button : Bored of yelling the launch countdown yourself ? Do you find the launch sequence a little ... lifeless ? So here comes an enhancement for your launch clamps : an authentical launch countdown brought to you by Athlonic Electronics. Installation : - You just have to install the "LaunchCountDown" folder and the "ModuleManager.dll" file in your KSP "GameData" folder. It will upgrade your KSP stock TT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer (aka launch clamp) with a countdown feature. No additional parts needed thanks to the excellent "ModuleManager" plugin (included) from Ialdabaoth/Sarbian. ( credits and updates here : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55219-Module-Manager-1-5-%28Nov-11%29 ) How it works ? When building your rockets, you can assign actions (Start Countdown and Abort Launch) shortcut key/button for launch clamps in the action group editor tab. or/and When on the launch pad, just Push dah "Go Flight !" Button. Put your in-game engines volume around 25% for the best launch sequence experience Be aware that it will auto-activate the launch stage once the countdown reach "Ignition" so plan your stage accordingly : -> First stage : Engines AND launch clamps, -> and do NOT wait ignition to put some generous throttle... Mechjeb's autopilot users : Setup your ascension profile, Engage MJ autopilot, Start the countdown, Sit back and relax ^^ When using "Apollo Style" launch sequence : You can set your first stage with liquid fuel engines, and your second stage with launch clamps and SRB. This way you can spool up your main engines (at around 10% thrust) by activating your first stage when "engine ignition start" is announced at T-8 seconds. Gently put generous throttle when "All engines running" is announced at T-1 second. And wait for the release of the clamps and Lift-off ! Known issues : - countdown sequence pause every seconds in KSP x64 (32bit is fine) - you may spend too much time on the launch pad now ^^ - let me know if you find some more... Changelog : v1.8.0 [23 Oct 2019] - Fixed errors (due to Refs .dll split & Net 4.x target) - Recompiled for KSP v1.8.0.2686 v1.7.9 [28 May 2017] - Recompiled for KSP v1.3.0 (b1804) - Bundled Modulemanager v2.8.0 v1.7.8 [12 Oct 2016] - Recompiled for KSP v1.2.0 (b1586) - Removed KSPUtil reference - Removed "using Linq" as advised by Squad - Bundled Modulemanager v2.7.1 Older changelogs : To do list : - auto-detect if no engines are on the current stage to avoid wounds, - add a KSP ApplicationLauncher button - polish the GUI - add a (better) Kerbalish countdown, Chatterer style, - add an advanced mode with detailed launch procedures (checks, engine ignition, ...), - learn to code properly and optimize methods... Download from SpaceDock : Download from Curse thingy : This mod includes version checking using MiniAVC. If you opt-in, it will use the internet to check whether there is a new version available. Data is only read from the internet and no personal information is sent. For a more comprehensive version checking experience, please download the KSP-AVC Plugin. __________________________________________________ https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html Source code : https://github.com/Athlonic/LaunchCountDown