Ivan Ivanovich

To make it easier, here\'s a rocket that should get you into orbit fairly reliably. It\'s also rock solid stable, so you should not have to touch the controls during the first critical moments of ascend, the SAS and the fins can steer it just fine. Just remember to jettison the boosters as they burn out and let the rocket climb, try to keep the speed at about 200m/s while you\'re in the denser areas of the atmosphere, then increase gradually to about 350m/s. At about 35,000 meters, start banking towards the direction you want to take your orbit. Take your time, you have plenty thereof. Now you can also start increasing your speed since a good deal thereof will go horizontally and we\'ll need about 2300m/s in the end. Around 45-50k altitude, you will probably have reached an upwards momentum that should take you to an apogee of about 80,000m (check the map if you\'re unsure). Turn off your engine and wait until you\'re almost at the apogee, then fire your rockets prograde (i.e. in the direction of the green direction marker), pedal to the metal, until you are fast enough for an orbit (said 2300m/s). You\'ll fall a little, don\'t worry, that\'s to be expected, and it also allows a much easier, almost circular orbit. You might be at the second liquid stage by now, which is fine. LKO is easily possible with this rocket, circular orbits up to about 500k should be doable. I also used it for the elliptical challenge (i.e. elliptical orbits with perigee of 70k and apogee of ... well, whatever the escape velocity ALMOST is) are very possible with it. You\'ll notice that it has no liquid engine in its last stage. This is because the RCS is very capable of getting you back onto Kerbal. The easiest way to accomplish this is to fire your RCS retrograde at apogee until your perigee dips to about 40k. From then on, the atmosphere is doing the rest.

Generally, I have no problem with g-forces during reentry. If anything, the 15g experienced for a split second when the parachute opens could be what kills my poor guys. Or they burn up during the ~half orbit that they spend in the atmosphere.

New mark Perigee: 77,123 Apogee: 1,814,647,950 Didn\'t manage to land that, though, the game crashed as I approached Apogee.

Peri: ~40k meters Apo: ~229m meters. I admit, I took the pics during my return phase, before that Peri was about 120k meters. If that\'s a cause for disqualification, I\'ll do it again and repost. Ship\'s built from vanilla parts, actually it\'s my 'docking tester' with RCS third stage (still packaged, second stage got me there fine).

Assembler is a great language, very powerful and very easy to grasp. Just like chess, there\'s only so many moves you need to know, but it takes a lifetime to master the game. The trouble most people seem to have with it is that you have to be certain you know what you want, because the computer will execute whatever you tell it to, there\'s very little going on in the sense of sanity checks.

Holy sh...! What a friggin\' huge rocket for such a low orbit! My guess is that you\'re lifting way too much dead weight to make it efficient. Try this: 1 Parachute 1 Capsule 1 Decoupler 4 liquid tanks 1 liquid engine 6 boosters around the bottom. Fire boosters and liquid engine at the same time and jettison the boosters as soon as they\'re running dry. That should easily be good for a circular orbit around 80-100k.

If we already had a persistent world, just use the problem our real space program is running into to your advantage: Launch enough junk to litter the equatorial orbit enough that you almost HAVE to hit something when you get there.

Ffffft. Sorry to butt in with reality in a game that\'s supposed to be a simulation... I tend to take my sims rather serious, and while I do not have a degree in astrophysics so far, the game really makes me ponder getting one. Then again, who has the time? And yes, I\'d enjoy very much to be unable to reach light speed in the game, and the game behaving in sync with what we consider real physics. For me, part of the fun is to calculate trajectories and fuel consumption, to plan and prepare missions and then enjoy watching them unfold and go according to plan. Yeah, I\'ll never be Jebs love child, especially since 'more boosters' isn\'t my solution to everything (more often than not it\'s 'less weight') but that\'s how I like it.

That\'s actually not the problem. The problem is more that I cannot get my rocket to 'remain still'. It always turns, no matter how much I try to adjust and align it, if ever so slightly. Of course, you don\'t see it \'til you wait a while, but less than 10 degrees per minute is simply an impossibility to achieve.

...aaaaand include an RCS fuel tank?

You also might want to take a look at http://www.kerbalspaceprogram.net/kerbal-space-program-mods and download some of the mod packs. they contain a lot of nice and powerful addons that make orbiting easier than the stock parts alone do. Be advised, though, the more you use, the longer the game needs to initially load up.

Building on top of the previous posting: [li]Try to put as much thrust into the first stage (the 'takeoff' stage) as possible. Any rocket you lift into orbit that doesn\'t fire right from the start is dead weight until it fires. Usually, it\'s useless to carry boosters on upper stages, since they are dead weight until they start to burn. 6 boosters in first stage are better than 3 in first and 3 in second.[/li] [li]SAS will try to keep your rocket pointed in the direction it is going when SAS is turned on. EVEN AGAINST YOU. If you want to start banking, turn SAS off first or it will try to compensate your maneuvers. Also, SAS tends to be slow, if your rocket sways slowly, SAS can well aggravate the problem rather than solve it.[/li] [li]The taller your rocket is, the harder it is to bank and pitch. Also, tall, thin rockets are prone to slow oscillation. Even breaking in the middle from hard maneuvers isn\'t unheard of. Think of a javelin being thrown. Ever seen it at the olympics? This is your rocket wobbling like crazy. Put a thruster in the back and it\'s sure to break off.[/li] [li]The 'sweet spot' of stacking stock liquid fuel tanks on stock liquid engines is about 3-4 for first stage. More tanks means just more weight to be lifted, you climb slower and burn more fuel to achieve the same. Essentially, adding more tanks means you get less, not more out of them.[/li] [li]A good stock rocket consists of: Capsule, coupler, 1 liquid tank, liquid engine, coupler, tri-coupler, 3x4 liquid fuel tanks, 3xliquid fuel engines, 2xboosters on each of the three \'legs\', firing together with the 3 liquid engines[/li] [li]If your designs sways and wobbles, use struts. The three liquid 'legs' mentioned above should be strutted. At the bottom, for maximum impact. Watch for movement on your rocket, if your boosters 'cave' in towards your rocket, strut them.[/li]

First of all, you will NEVER enter orbit by just going straight up. The idea behind an orbit is to go to the side, not to go up. Ideally, you could orbit simply by going at a certain speed at ground level. Since air resistance will slow you down, this doesn\'t work out. It would in vacuum, though. For Kerbal, at ground level you\'d have to go about 2425m/s to be in an 'orbit'. But, as stated, air drag disallows that. The atmosphere stops at pretty much 68km height, as has been stated. It stops being a huge drag at about 35km height, where it REALLY slows you down if you\'re not flying with your rocket burning. Above 35km, as long as you have thrust air drag is getting less and less as you approach 68k height. To reach an orbit, you have to balance two needs. First, to get out of that blasted atmosphere as quickly as you can, which is logically the case if you go vertical to its plane. I.e. straight up. Second, to build up horizontal speed to get an orbit going. In general, this is usually easiest achieved by these steps: 1. Go straight up to about 15-20k height, depending on how much vertical speed your rocket builds up during that time. You want to have as many boosters on your rocket as it can handle without subjecting your astronauts to like a bazillion G and without getting completely uncontrollable. You don\'t need THAT much control as long as you\'re boosted, all you have to be able to do is to keep your rocket pointing UP. 2. At about 15-20k height, start banking towards the direction you wish to go. Or, in Kerbal terms, just look where the rocket wants to go and go with the flow. 3. Bank slowly. You shouldn\'t be banked past 30 degrees off vertical before you hit about 20-25k height. Watch your actual direction marker (the circle), it should be a hint below the way your rocket points, but ONLY a hint! Don\'t adjust your banking to match the circle, if it drops too fast, you\'re banking too fast or flying too slowly. 4. At about 40k height, your direction marker should point about 20 degree above the horizon and you should have about 1000-1500 m/s speed on your clock. You can start to level out by now if these parameters are met, else, keep the direction at about 30 degrees above horizon. 5. Try to level out no later than 60k. Usually you have about 10-20k vertical distance to go simply by virtue of horizontal speed. Keep the thrust up to get the speed to about 2200m/s, then wait for your rocket to reach its apogee and match the speed to stay in orbit. Congratulations, you\'ve reached an orbit. It might not be circular, but as long as perigee is above 70k (hit M to check the apogee/perigee readings) you\'ll stay in space as long as you wish. With time, you\'ll get the hang of it and you\'ll be able to adjust your thrust and banking to hit the orbital heights you\'re aiming at fairly reliably.

I have a bit of a problem getting my docking targets 'stable'. They usually rotate out of the way, even if I take my time to steady my rocket before jettisoning them, but in general it\'s simply impossible to get the rocket perfectly level before staging. Not to mention that I noticed some odd behaviour with time warping, like the rocket banking upwards at three times warp speed but left at four times, without changing a thing in between. Does anyone know a good way to steady a docking target before jettisoning it so it doesn\'t spin like crazy and make docking pretty much an impossibility?

In the name of symmetry, it would be great if not only the first anchoring point could be made to 'snap to grid' but also the second one.

What I can recommend are Silisko\'s pack and the Challenger pack from http://www.kerbalspaceprogram.net/kerbal-space-program-mods#packs

Whether that\'s possible at all depends on whether the game implements physics in which the Lorentz transformation, more specific, the Lorentz factor, plays a role. If yes, it\'s not possible. Basically it\'s g=c/sqrt(c^2-v^2) With g being the Factor, c being light speed and v being the speed of the object (in fractions of the speed of light as the unit). It also causes other effects such as time dilation or length contraction, which isn\'t really the topic now. In relation to mass (relativistic mass) we put it into the formula of m1=m*g, with m being the mass at rest, g being the Lorentz factor and m1 being the actual mass we have to accelerate. As you can see, at very low speeds, g would equal c/sqrt(c^2-0)=c/sqrt(c^2)=c/c=1, or in short, the accelerated mass would be identical to the mass at rest. As we approach light speed, and hence get a denominator that approaches zero, the Lorentz factor grows rapidly, increasing the mass to accelerate likewise. At light speed, we\'d have to accelerate an infinitely heavy mass, needing infinite amounts of energy to do so. And infinite energy isn\'t available in this universe, or any that I know of.

A rocket consisting of stock parts aside of the space station parts of Astrobug found in http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=2707.0. Orbits of 100k are quite possible, with a stage on top for the return trip. Comments and improvements welcome!

15 years of C++, roughly 10 years of x86 assembler and 2 years of AVR assembler here. Most of it in security, not game development, though. Last time I brushed shoulders with coordinate transformation was during my university years. Currently I\'m creating a ECG, but it\'s hardly topical.

It\'s likely that the game doesn\'t calculate that yet, 215G would turn any living organism into goo. Likewise, the reentry heat isn\'t in yet, which would make you burn up like a snowball if you reentered at this speed.

I have noticed the same effect on very long rockets, and I can reassure you it\'s not SAS trying to point somewhere. Either that or SAS chooses a lot of points during this procedure, since the rocket does spin a full circle... and not just one. Actually, the issue is a more intriguing one. I try to align my rocket with a certain plane so it only spins left/right or up/down, and I try to correct it, with no success whatsoever. Turning SAS on actually remedies the problem eventually... but only as long as I keep SAS on, else the rocket resumes its spinning. For no good reason, I might add, since I have long left the atmosphere and every kind of propulsion is turned off.

Orbit erreichen ist eigentlich nicht schwer, wenn man\'s mal raus hat. Mal \'n paar Definitionen: 1. Was ist \'n Orbit? Einen 'Orbit' hast Du erreicht, wenn Du ohne Schub (ohne, ganz ohne, Rakete aus!) um den Planeten rumfliegst. Wenn Du dabei immer die gleiche Höhe hast, nennt man\'s einen kreisförmigen Orbit. Geht\'s dabei rauf und runter isses immer noch ein Orbit (solang Du halt auch wieder rauf gehst wenn Du mal runter gingst), ist dann eben ein Elliptischer Orbit. Du 'eierst' mehr oder weniger um den Planeten rum. Kreisförmige Orbits sind so wie man sich Orbits halt immer vorstellt, man hat immer den gleichen Abstand zum Planeten und kreist drum rum. Bei einem elliptischen Orbit steigst Du den halben Orbit lang, bist dann auf einer Seite oben, dort ist dann die Geschwindigkeit so niedrig dass Du wieder sinkst, dabei wirst wieder schneller und wennst ganz unten im Orbit bist steigst wieder. Das ist so ähnlich wie die meisten Kometen durch unser Sonnensystem fliegen. Das sieht dann in etwa aus wie das hier: http://www.weka.de/datenschutz/images/lexikon/figures/702580.gif. Zu beachten ist, dass das durchaus auch ein stabiler Orbit ist. Zumindest solang das untere Ende des Orbits nicht die Planetenoberfläche (bzw. die Atmosphäre) schneidet... 2. Was ist Apogäum (apogee) und Perigäum (perigee)? Ist ein Orbit elliptisch, gibt\'s zwei interessante Punkte: Dort, wo man ganz unten im Orbit ist und wieder steigt, und dort wo man ganz oben ist und wieder sinkt. Ersteres nennt sich Perigäum, zweiteres Apogäum. Sind beide gleich, ist\'s logischerweise ein kreisförmiger Orbit. 3. Was meinen die Typen mit 'Delta-v' und 'delta-t'? 'Delta' bedeutet üblicherweise 'Änderung' oder 'Unterschied'. 'Delta-t', mit t für time, bedeutet entsprechend einen Zeitunterschied, 'delta-v' mit v für velocity, einen Geschwindkeitsunterschied. Schreibt also wer dass zwischen Perigäum und Apogäum ein delta-t von 21m besteht, heißt das, dass 21 Minuten vergehen von dem Punkt, wo man im Orbit am höchsten Punkt ist zu dem Moment wo man am untersten Punkt des Orbits ist. Redet wer von einem Delta-v von 500m/s bedeutet das, dass zwischen der ersten und dem zweiten genannten Geschwindikeit 500m/s Unterschied bestehen. 4. Wie kommt man am einfachsten in einen Orbit? Nun, am einfachsten ist sicher 'mal Vollgas bis man bei so ca. 60000 meter ist, dann um 90 Grad schwenken, warten bis der Aufwärtsschub halbwegs abgebaut ist, und dann Vollgas voraus um die Orbitalgeschwindigkeit zu erreichen'. Spriteffizient isses allerdings nicht. Vergegenwärtigen wir uns mal folgendes: Wäre die Atmosphäre nicht, wäre der sinnvollste, spritsparendste Weg zum Erreichen des Orbits die horizontale Beschleunigung. Warum? Weil der Höhengewinn ein automatischer Nebeneffekt wäre, wenn wir schneller beschleunigen als die Gravitation uns nach unten zieht, da der Planet nunmal rund ist, wir aber in eine Richtung beschleunigen. Das ist so nebenbei auch der Grund warum\'s weniger Sprit braucht in Rotationsrichtung des Planeten zu starten, weil wir die Grundbeschleunigung des Planeten 'mitbekommen'. Da sich Kerbal aktuell noch nicht dreht ist das vorläufig mal egal, ist aber der Grund warum hier auf unserem Planeten alles nach Osten startet und die Raumschiffe alle nach Osten um den Planeten eiern. Wir müssen allerdings durch eine rund 70km dicke Atmosphäre durch. Unser Ziel wäre demnach, möglichst schnell auf etwa 70km Höhe zu kommen, gleichzeitig aber trotzdem möglichst viel Horizontalgeschwindigkeit aufzubauen. Die TL;DR Version davon: Steig mal auf ca. 15000 Meter, dann neig die Rakete in die Richtung in die\'s danach um den Planeten gehen soll. Langsam. SEHR langsam. Bei ca. 30.000 Meter sollte die Rakete auf ca. 45 Grad zeigen, dann vorsichtig weiter neigen und bei ca. 50.000 Meter sollte der Vektor (das runde Zeichen auf\'m künstlichen Horizont) auf etwa 10 Grad zeigen während man mit etwa 1500-2000m/s fliegt. Je nach Rakete, Masse und Schub, natürlich. Bischen rumprobieren bis man \'nen guten Weg hat um in einen halbwegs stabilen Orbit zu steigen. 5. Wie wechselt man Orbits? Dazu gibt\'s mehrere Wege. Die beiden spritsparendsten (und darum geht\'s üblicherweise im Weltall immer) sind der Hohmann-Transfer Orbit und der Bi-Elliptische Transfer Orbit. Die Ausführung beider ist recht einfach, die Schwierigkeit ist die Berechnung. Glücklicherweise hat jemand sich die Arbeit angetan und ein Programm dafür entwickelt: http://code.google.com/p/ksp-calculator/. Das Ding kann außerdem noch die korrekten Geschwindigkeiten für kreisförmige und elliptische Orbits ausrechnen. Die Ausführung ist dann recht einfach: Man nimmt die berechnete Geschwindigkeit und beschleunigt in die Richtung in die man fliegt um zu steigen, bzw. bremst (durch Beschleunigung gegen die Flugrichtung) um zu sinken, dann wartet man (je nach Höhe des Orbits 15-45 Minuten) und bechleunigt/bremst erneut um in den Orbit einzuschwenken. Den Bi-Elliptischen kann man vorläufig getrost weglassen, energieeffizienter wird der erst bei ERHEBLICHEN Höhenänderungen. 6. Return to Kerbal! Irgendwann will man auch wieder runter. Die Rakete nach unten ausrichten und vollgas geben ist allerdings NICHT die beste Methode dafür. Auch wenn man aktuell noch nicht verglühen kann wäre das nicht nur das voraussichtliche Resultat davon, es ist auch nicht grad spriteffizient. Stattdessen empfehle ich einen Hohmann-Transfer mit dem Ziel von ca. 20.000 Meter. Ab da sorgt dann die Atmosphäre für den Rest.

Disci... disci... what is that word you\'re talking about? I tried to find it in our dictionary but it doesn\'t exist, could you explain what it means?

Quite easy to accomplish: 1. Build a rocket that is VERY bottom heavy, all rockets in a single stage. 2. Build a second stage on top of it. 3. Make sure the rocket has to stand on one single very fragile engine that WILL instantly break the moment you put it on the pad. 4. LAUNCH! 5. Get to second stage IMMEDIATELY and watch your crew and your escape rocket escape the carnage below.

What\'s a payload cap? Actually, I tried putting the sats behind and ahead of the capsule, with a shroud around them (well, as good as it\'s possible), neither worked too well. I guess they\'re just too fragile on their own.