DoctorEvo

It was rendered in 3d, but only playable in two dimensions.

Or how about... [move]The?n[/move] *edit* GAH Stupid thing won't recognize greek letters... ?. ?????????. Mu. Hmph.

Yeah, a lot of it is by feel, and if you don't have a good picture of what the trajectory will look like, you're going to have trouble finding it. For instance, your '45 degrees at 25km' rule-of-thumb is nowhere near universal; it will vary from rocket to rocket and from orbit to orbit. Owing (presumably) to its lower vertical speed, my automatic orbiter preferred 45 degrees at about 30 km, and that was for a much LOWER orbit as well.

Careful, now... you can always (well, sometimes) throttle back and let the nose fall if you're too high, but catching up from below is much harder. NOTHING should feel forced. Important steps. IMO, half of your other steps can be pretty much ignored. Don't be afraid to use pause. You shouldn't need to use pitch (aside from staying inside the ball) as long as your timing and throttle management are reasonable.

Seems like you two've got it pretty well-covered, so I'll only add one thing: Just 'cause you're at the right altitude and speed doesn't mean your orbit is circular. You should also make sure your descent rate is zero (or close to it) at the end of your circularization burn, or else you'll end up with an elliptical orbit of the same semimajor axis as your target orbit, but higher (nonzero) eccentricity. (However, this is a lower priority than getting on-speed for your altitude, as its impact is less pronounced.)

Also, I imagine a fully-fuelled CSM with a mostly-fuelled S-IVB in tow had a pretty high ballistic coefficient. Not having solar panels helps a lot with that sort of thing. Yep. The shuttle put quite a few up there using a spin-stabilized Star-48 solid kick motor which fired to place the satellite in GTO, and then an apogee kick motor fixed to the satellite itself performed circularization. Yeah... you kinda gotta sneak up on it to get it to be remotely circular. Most of my direct-inserted orbits end up with about three to five km between perikee and apokee. Heh... http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=1695.msg17425#new 8)

Ah. Do you use the caps lock key? I try to turn it on as soon as I perform my final staging (and sometimes before). It's really helpful for when you're a bit heavy-handed. The shuttle used it... In fact, NASA uses it a lot for LEO. The only launches I've observed that DIDN'T use it were Orbital Sciences Minotaur launches (and Pegasus and Taurus use similar profiles). Did the Saturn rockets hold off on S-IVB ignition? None of the launch footage ever shows past S-II separation. And yes, it's partially an efficiency thing. My technique obviously diverges from the ideal gravity turn trajectory, and thus wastes a bit of propellant in steering the ship. Thus I've developed techniques to make a simple gravity turn work instead, but these are more difficult and require a lot of finesse on the throttle. The Space Shuttle, with it's low-thrust OMS providing the final orbit insertion, is well-suited for direct insertion into LEO, as the lower acceleration and throttleable thrust allow you to fine-tune the altitude and speed you will come out of the gravity turn at. I've found that for larger, harder-to-handle rockets, this gravity-turn/throttle manipulation is often an easier way to reach orbit than manually steering; if I find myself higher than my desired trajectory, I throttle back and allow gravity to pull the nose down; if I'm low, I throttle up and try to push higher before the nose drops. To do this, you need a stable rocket, and a good idea of what you want your ascent to look like, though. Higher orbits tend to require a two-burn ascent, though, as it's impractical to keep an engine running at such low-thrust levels through such a long ascent.

I've been there. Didn't like it.

Open the game windowed, at a higher resolution than your screen can fit. Move the window so that the bottom instruments are off the bottom of the screen, and then drag another window over the top instruments. TA DA! HUD hidden. ;D

In an ideal world, this would be the most efficient way to reenter. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of KSP's instrumentation, it isn't very precise. The way most players have achieved precise reentries is by reducing their altitude (a similar Hohmann transfer to about 35-37 km should do nicely), and then waiting until they can actually SEE the launch center coming over the horizon to actually deorbit. I've landed on the little peninsula just North of the pad using this method, and that was without maneuvering within the atmosphere (save a bit just seconds before landing). Being able to SEE the pad allows you to sorta gauge how much of a burn you should make in order to come down where you want to, rather than blindly hoping that your Hohmann transfer sets you down at the right spot halfway around the planet. And if you're that low, it won't be that long/far of a drop after deorbit before you actually begin reentry, which certainly helps with the timing. Just note that the harder you deorbit, the faster you're going to fall into the atmosphere and the shorter your reentry will be. In theory, if you had enough delta-V, you could deorbit by simply killing ALL your velocity right over the pad and then just dropping straight down.... but this is rarely the case.

Alright, now that we've cleared things up a bit, here's what we've established: -FoC400's theory (now that I understand what he was trying to say) is out. -Empirical testing shows that the turning moment seems most prominent at launch and diminishes quickly as acceleration subsides. -Neither one of us have any clue why it is happening. In any case, it seems the effect may not be aerodynamic, judging by how it goes away once you're up to speed. *edit* In other news, I'VE DONE IT!! After fiddling with my previous rocket design, I realized that a properly-timed engine ignition would in fact put my burnout point right at level flight at a low altitude, but unfortunately the extra drag from the relatively-flatter ascent meant I no longer had enough velocity to make a full orbit. This in mind, I shaved a bit of weight off my rocket (by replacing the nose-mounted LFT with an LFE) and began fishing for the optimal second-stage ignition point yet again. Eventually, after lighting my engine at a velocity of 67 m/s... You see, after ignition, my rocket would make a steady gravity turn through the upper atmosphere, but once above 34.5, it would often keep pointing upwards as there was no longer any force on the fins to prevent this. THIS time, it happened to keep rotating... past level, and back towards Kearth. The rocket stopped climbing at about 45 km and was gently pushed DOWN again with the last bit of fuel. This was FANTASTIC for me, as it meant that my perikee had been pushed IN FRONT of me, and I only had to wait a minute or two to cross it and determine whether my orbit was stable or not. As it so happened, my perikee WAS above the atmosphere, and since I didn't have enough velocity to escape, I think I can safely say that my automatic rocket has achieved a stable orbit!! Will I be able to reproduce it? Hard to say. With this setup, luck and timing both played a massive part. Thus, even if my rocket still constitutes an 'automatic' orbiter, it's certainly not a reliable one.

That works fine if you have the delta-V. Well, then I must be a sharper pilot than I thought... What I did the first few times I achieved orbit in KSP was the usual 'climb straight up to 10 km, then start arcing over' routine, and then once I crossed about 30 km, I just completely leveled my ship off and accelerated horizontally. When my velocity vector (the little yellow dohickey) finally reached zero, I lifted the nose to keep myself from falling down again. Eventually, as I neared orbital speeds, I found that I needed less effort to keep my velocity from dropping downwards again, so I gradually reduced attitude to maintain a level flight direction. When my attitude hit zero (signifying I didn't need to 'hold' myself up anymore), I throttled back and coasted through a full (elliptical) orbit. Then I went and looked up actual orbital speeds for Kearth, and now my orbits are much rounder. My present casual technique for achieving low orbits is largely the same, but now I have a target speed that I shoot for during the final phase (generally 2350something). But I never stop steering the ship to where I want it (i.e. flying level, at target-speed). Also, it makes it easier if you know how to handle a ship in a vacuum (i.e. start AND stop a rotation), and also the CommandPod's SAS (damping-only) is useful for learning this precision-steering. I actually DO NOT recommend putting SAS modules anywhere but in your first stage, as they tend to lock your heading in and you have to continuously toggle them on and off to turn (thus losing their damping effect). And lastly (and importantly), try not to overcontrol. Slooooow corrections is all you should need.

Perhaps. Radical reference-frame changes occur over the poles, though it has been resolved that it is ONLY the reference frame and not the ship itself. It does funny things to the camera, though. Ooh... interesting. I've pretty much given up on using chase cam because I always end up inadvertently click-dragging and then I can't get it back, but I may have to try that. Sweet. Guess that answers that.

Glad to help. Well, they're going to spin a little bit in whichever direction you're turning... Also, on the edge of the meatball, it's hard to judge motion, so if you're swinging back and forth a little bit you might not notice except for the flashing of the markers. To steady this, it's a good idea to watch your heading, and try to hold it fairly steady (remember to spin with the markers though as you go around the turn, or to split the difference like I do, or else your orbit-normal heading will slowly become a prograde heading!).

-in here? -in here? -in here?

*sigh* I don't understand why this is such a high priority for the userbase. You'd think having multiple orbital objects to rendezvous with would be the logical next step... Anyways, the standard way to get there is to boost into a low holding orbit and then perform a normal Hohmann Transfer to get there. That's not all, though... since you want to get there in one hop (rather than just get to the same altitude and then have to wait several agonizingly-long orbits to sync up), you have to time it right so that your apokee will be approximately where the moon will be when you get there. The first time I did a lunar transfer in Orbiter, I just sorta wung it in terms of timing, and surprisingly enough I found myself on a collision course with the moon. I still don't know how much of it I can attribute to skill or just dumb luck. 8) Anyways, if you manage to perform your burn at a reasonable moment, you will find yourself approaching the moon on a (relative) hyperbolic escape trajectory. Odds are, you'll need to make a mid-course correction so that your trajectory comes close to the moon without hitting it; this can be done by simply turning perpendicular to your (moon-relative) flight path and burning in that direction for the proper length of time. Orbiter has instrumentation that makes this easy; KSP does not at the moment. Thus, most of you will swing wide or crash until you get the hang of it (best to err on the side of swinging wide, unless you're just going for a direct descent). From there, you simply wait till perilune, then burn retrograde until you're in a nice, low lunar orbit. From there, I'll let you figure out the rest. If the moon lacks an atmosphere, expect landing to take a LOT of fuel (probably more than you brought with you).

True, each winglet produces a moment, but they SHOULD cancel out, regardless of their longitudinal offset. I'm starting to think that there may be a slight error in the radial position of the winglet when not using the symmetry tool, which would cause a small moment like the one Foamy's illustrating. Maybe. Yes... WHA- Go learn the difference between resultants and components; between coplanar, colinear and parallel; between lift and drag. Then MAYBE we can talk. Flipping through a glossary of physics terms and picking them at random does not constitute a cogent argument. Well, aren't you a gem....

You should orient yourself orbit-normal, or 90 degrees to your flight path. Sounds to me like you were less than that. An easy way to tell is by turning until the moment the little yellow velocity vector jumps from one (prograde) side to the other (retrograde), and holding it right where this transition occurs. What I did, since MY plane change was so huge, is I actually turned PAST it to about 120 degrees and then held my heading. This caused my velocity to dip, then rise again as I accelerated in the new direction. You don't NEED to do this, but it does save a bit of propellant. The answer is 'sometimes.' If your trajectory requires (or allows) you to be in a highly-elliptical orbit anyways without wasting excess propellant, then that's a good time to do it. If your target orbit is circular and there's no orbit-syncing to be done, then MAYBE it'd be better to do it down low (I haven't yet done the math to say for certain). Since I didn't care about the eccentricity of my orbit, I figured an elliptical one would be the easiest to get to within the terminator's plane, so I aimed high.

I managed to muscle my way into an orbit around Kearth's terminator, which as you probably know is NOT conveniently-located. To achieve this, I needed to make a near-90-degree plane change - no small task, mind you. I realized that to maximize my chances of success, I would need to build a rocket with a massive amount of delta-V, and then follow a somewhat unorthodox trajectory to make it without running out of fuel. The first step was easy; the rest was a bit harder. You see, a plane-change maneuver requires less delta-V when you're going slowly. Typically, the slowest point in your orbit is at apokee. A good procedure for rendezvousing with an orbital target, as I have learnt from playing Orbiter, is to launch at the right time so that your plane is nearly aligned, perform a prograde orbit-sync burn to let the target catch up to you, and while you're waiting, make the final plane-change correction at apogee. Seeing as Kearth doesn't rotate, waiting for a launch window was not an option for me - I had to fly there and make a HUGE dogleg one way or another. Thus, I considered which trajectory would leave me nice and slow when the time came to change planes. Obviously, launching into an orbit such that apokee was near the descending node (where my maneuver would occur) would be the way to go; but then I realized, since I'm making a 90-degree turn before I circle Kearth, I don't NEED my preliminary trajectory to be orbital, and a suborbital launch would both save fuel and leave me with less velocity at the descending node. I thus took off and launched into a steeply-climbing, high-altitude suborbital trajectory. After waiting for the opportune moment, I finally turned Northwest and made my plane-change maneuver just after Apokee. After I got my velocity pointed in the right heading (within the proper plane), I made a few quick corrections then burned the last of my fuel trying to circularize/stabilize my orbit so I wouldn't come crashing down. I made it, but just barely. Moral of the story: Massive plane-changes can be difficult.

Yes, specific impulse is always a good reality-check. Solid-fuel chemical engines shouldn't exceed about 290 s (230ish is more appropriate for a low-altitude booster); while liquids should be no more than 340 s in-vaccuum and 300 at sea level for dense fuels, or 370 SL/450 vac for hydrogen. As for liquid engines, thrust:weight ratio is another factor that should be checked. 70:1 is pretty typical for high-power engines; 100:1 is not unheard of. Low-thrust engines for orbital maneuvering may be much lower. Also, the mass ratio/empty weight of fuel tanks/solid motors should be checked, as in some cases it can have a profound impact on rocket performance.

I went to evil medical school for six frickin' years.

Orbits don't decay in KSP.

Wait, is the thing supposed to be able to glide hands-off, like with positive stability? Because I sorta made such a thing a long time ago; I had to wrestle it to about 5 km because it was extremely asymmetrical, but after I got it there I burnt off the rest of my fuel and let it glide by itself. It settled into extremely-tight circles as it gently glided back down to the launchpad area. VERY stable, but unfortunately still too fast to land survivably without power (I don't think it's even possible to manage a safe landing without power or a chute).

Drag is, BY DEFINITION, opposite to the direction of motion. There's no way for two drag vectors to be non-parallel without an (already-present) ridiculous rate of spin. I ought'a slap you...

Touché. Don't make me break out my A-game now...