Mission Control Room

[Abhishek Adhikari]

I want a Mission Control room for launching spacecrafts like as in Houston Control Room. People are waiting for this for a long time. Hope Squad starts working in this thing. We want the Control room to be something like this.

 

If anybody can help please do so.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Abhishek Adhikari

[GrugInAus]

How would it work?

Are you controlling a single console at a time, or do you have different keys mapped for different consoles? What does each console control? Currently all that is needed in game is to set your throttle and trigger your first stage.

Also, how would you control the rocket? Do you do throttle controls through a single console and yaw, pitch and roll at a different console?

In real-life control rooms like that are simply for analysing the data coming back from the rocket (fuel levels, temperatures, engine performance, etc). Rockets are pre-programmed and not flown manually although when they are (something goes wrong) they are flown by people on the rocket, not by anyone in the control centre.

If you could explain how you think it should work and what it should do, that would be helpful.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I could see this being used for launch replays. Real life launch pads have cameras and video recorders all around them watching the craft take off.

So once you get your rocket safely up in space you can switch back to the KSC and watch a replay of your take off from multiple view angles in the Mission Control Room.

You could even use a lot of the info from the tracking station to do some display monitors in the background, maybe randomly switching to different crafts you have in orbit...just to look cool.

[Tex]

3 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

You could even use a lot of the info from the tracking station to do some display monitors in the background, maybe randomly switching to different crafts you have in orbit...just to look cool.

Aha, that's an interesting idea. Use the mission control display that the OP imagines as the tracking station window. It could be a big screen with some Kerbals walking around doing little office-type animations like drinking coffee, maybe playing Solitaire until the boss comes walking by. Come to think of it, it would be cool to see some off-duty Kerbals in the Astronaut Complex scene as well to fit the audio that already plays.

[LorenLuke]

5 hours ago, GrugInAus said:

How would it work?

Are you controlling a single console at a time, or do you have different keys mapped for different consoles? What does each console control? Currently all that is needed in game is to set your throttle and trigger your first stage.

Also, how would you control the rocket? Do you do throttle controls through a single console and yaw, pitch and roll at a different console?

In real-life control rooms like that are simply for analysing the data coming back from the rocket (fuel levels, temperatures, engine performance, etc). Rockets are pre-programmed and not flown manually although when they are (something goes wrong) they are flown by people on the rocket, not by anyone in the control centre.

If you could explain how you think it should work and what it should do, that would be helpful.

I've suggested something in this vein (to no replies) here.

I'd say have the ability to preplan missions from this mission control, as well as being a potential spot for a version of multiplayer.

[MK3424]

There is a mod that does this for probes: 

 

[tater]

Of course the building KSP calls "Mission Control" is not in fact mission control. The Tracking Station is really mission control. The MC building in KSP is some sort of contract office, it has nothing to do with controlling missions in flight (which is what mission control is.

[razark]

Just now, tater said:

Of course the building KSP calls "Mission Control" is not in fact mission control. The Tracking Station is really mission control. The MC building in KSP is some sort of contract office, it has nothing to do with controlling missions in flight (which is what mission control is.

I've always viewed the "Tracking Station" as the Big Board in MCC.  The "Mission Control" I usually think of as the Administration Building or Project Planning Office.

I think they should be renamed, and add some more details to the Big Board, to give better status on ships and timers/alarms.  Addition of mission planning capabilities should also be considered, so you can plan out exactly how much delta-v you need, and then go guess if your ship has enough.

[StarManta]

A few features you would do in Mission Control if I were the one designing it:

1) Plan your mission - (whether a new launch or a new mission for an existing craft) Most of this would be setting up a bunch of maneuver nodes; the main difference between this and doing it in the flight is that this would not require the craft to already be built and launched (so you can build one with the right amount of ΔV). This would require some improvements to the maneuver node system, most notably the ability to make a maneuver node from being landed. Using this, you would be able to approximate the amount of ΔV you need to budget for. (Hopefully, this feature would go hand in hand with 

2) View your overall timeline. This would be a pretty good place for something like this feature to live. By default, it includes all the maneuver nodes you've placed. After upgrading the building once, it includes things like SOI transfers and impact times with the surface. After another upgrade, it could include transfer windows.

3) Basic information on a large number of ships simultaneously. One display would list all of your active flights; in each flight, you could go into a menu and choose which information you want to appear. The amount of electricity on your probe? The amount of Ore in the tank of your miner? The amount of Science processed by that research lab? The height over terrain of that one ship you have in an unnervingly tight orbit around Minmus? The distance between ship A and ship D? All viewable on one big display, so you can keep watch over all the missions that matter most to you. With an upgrade of the building, any of this information that's represented by a number (including all the examples up there I could think of), can be recorded and graphed over time. With another upgrade to the building, maybe this window can be pulled up during flight.

4) Sending remote commands to probes that support it. No direct control of the vessel - that'd be redundant - but if your probe supports the advanced SAS modes, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to send it the command "aim prograde, burn for 2 minutes".

[tater]

^^^ Nice post. People should note that no one's idea of what one would do in "Mission Control" is "accept contracts." Maybe it's a language problem? Seriously, Squad using "Mission Control" for what it is in game would be like calling the Launch Pad the "parking lot." Their choice of that label is bizarre.

Edited March 3, 2016 by tater

[LorenLuke]

4 hours ago, StarManta said:

4) Sending remote commands to probes that support it. No direct control of the vessel - that'd be redundant - but if your probe supports the advanced SAS modes, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to send it the command "aim prograde, burn for 2 minutes".

The lovely RemoteTech mod does this already, unless you're arguing for it being in stock, in which case there's probe core planning for stock (basically RT Lite).

[StarManta]

2 hours ago, tater said:

^^^ Nice post. People should note that no one's idea of what one would do in "Mission Control" is "accept contracts." Maybe it's a language problem? Seriously, Squad using "Mission Control" for what it is in game would be like calling the Launch Pad the "parking lot." Their choice of that label is bizarre.

I think the thought process was:

1) "Mission control" is a cool word associated with realistic space travel, and we should have a building called that.

2) We need a place so someone can accept contracts

3) Missions and contracts are kind of the same thing

[tater]

Yeah, but they could have used "mission control" for the tracking station, and it would actually be... Mission Control.

[Abhishek Adhikari]

16 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I could see this being used for launch replays. Real life launch pads have cameras and video recorders all around them watching the craft take off.

So once you get your rocket safely up in space you can switch back to the KSC and watch a replay of your take off from multiple view angles in the Mission Control Room.

You could even use a lot of the info from the tracking station to do some display monitors in the background, maybe randomly switching to different crafts you have in orbit...just to look cool.

This idea is nice. Also if KSP has some way to program flightpath of spacecrafts will be nice. We can track our vehicles in real-time and see there downlink telemetry and videos from onboard cameras and if something goes wrong. Press a button in one of the consoles of Mission Control Room to self-destruct the vessel.

How's the idea?

[tater]

A cool feature for mission control to make coming home properly more important would be to have a real mission control able to set a few places on the globe for recovery. KSC, all the time obviously (a radius of 50km, or something), then perhaps a number of places scaled to how many times it's been upgraded. You start with KSC, and one 50km radius circle you can place on the globe (if you move a recovery area, you click the new spot, and it moves to the new spot at 15 km/h (so you can't move the recovery area at the last second). Each upgrade adds another recovery circle you can move.

Failure to land in the recovery zone would give you some hits on rep, funds recovery, etc. Also, perhaps recovery only happens when your zone is there. So you land on the other side of the planet from your recovery zone, and it's gonna take distance/15 hours for you to have access to your crew, craft, science recovery, etc.

Edited March 4, 2016 by tater

[Blaarkies]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Failure to land in the recovery zone would give you some hits on rep, funds recovery, etc. Also, perhaps recovery only happens when your zone is there. So you land on the other side of the planet from your recovery zone, and it's gonna take distance/15 hours for you to have access to your crew, craft, science recovery, etc.

This is good. As long as those circles are persistent(don't want to set them every time I de-orbit).
But taking "distance/15 hours for you to have access to your crew, craft" is not going to help...remember the time warp buttons? In KSP time really has no value(small contracts have +4year deadlines, crew don't need life support)...only a Jool->Eelo slingshot is a very rare timed event