Sivert3

I've made a reference sheet for the default keyboard bindings and where they work. This includes all the keys that can be rebound and some of the keys that can't. I have not tested every button in every possible place, only the most useful places. The reference is divided into three sections: Engineer Controls Pilot Controls Pilot Axis (You can also download the Open Document sources). Note: The footnote about the rotation controls in Docking UI is not entirely correct as it only applies when SAS is on. Se the bugreports I've posted for more information on this and some of the other notes.

I too heard of it from XKCD which made references to it numerous times. The final straw came with the Little Planet what if. Where a super massive tiny planet would make elongated objects orbits around it a caotic and unstable fashion, which was refered to as "This is KSP on nightmare mode". I investigated and tried the demo which sold me right of the bat.

@numerobis: *looks in a dictionary*, ehe. Oops. I've always had problems when the same letter is repeated in a word. Thanks for pointing it out, I've fixed all the "sounds" in my posts to tonnes. Also you're not blind as I have not yet shared the script. Regarding the script. There are a lot of issues with it, which is the reason I have not posted it yet. It depends on mathplotlib, which took me over half an hour just to set up on my computer. It uses lots of hardcoded values. It only calculates staging for 2 stage rocket with a pure solid bottom stage and a liquid upper stage. It doesn't support anything else, i.e no aspargous staging, mixed solid and liquid stages or more than 2 stages. And the calculations are all based on isp at sea level. Until I can fix at least half of these issues it's not going to be very useful.

@sal_vager: Oh, thanks. I guess I'll have to keep up the work. @Ruedii: If you've read the thread I've shown calculation using a pure solid fuel lower stage. However, as numerobis points out, if you have a liquid engine on board and you're not fireing it, that is wasting funds as the liquid fuel is cheaper than solid fuel. Calculating the best configuration of a mixed solid liquid stage through atmosphere is something I haven't tackled yet. But it's definetively on the plan. Liquid Boosters Dropping liquid engines in a stage on the way to orbit will never be cost effective as long as it can't be recovered. The cost of the engines alone will be more than the total cost of getting the payload to orbit on the efficient rockets presented here. Dropping fuel tanks on the way to orbit is not any better. For the FL-T200, dropping it costs 425 funds while bringing it back again costs about 91 funds. That over 335 funds for a gain of having 0.125 tonne less weight to bring up. With a cost efficency of 4.5 the cost of bring up 0.125 tonnes to orbit is 125 funds, so dropping it is 200 funds down the drain. Efficency of various crafts people have posted Please use comparable numbers when you post your craft. It's worth nothing to say that the rocket is pretty cost effective or state a number in combined oxygen fuel units to funds when the other guy uses funds to tonnes. The most sensible unit for cost efficency for lifting a payload to orbit is tonnes payload per unit funds. The most sensible unit for costs is funds per tonne of payload. There are of course many variation to this. The only advantage my unit has in this is that the resulting number is usually in the range 2-10 for a typical rocket. Slugy less than 1000 funds/tonne = Cost Efficency of above 4.5 Thanny SRB assisted: 10.5 funds/liquid fuel = Cost Efficiency of 4.3 SSTO rocket: 11.9 funds/liquid fuel = Cost Efficiency of 3.8 Norcalplanner SSTO plane: 0.6 funds/units of fuel = Cost Efficiency of 37.5 Wanderfound SSTO plane: ~7900 units of fuel / 6000 funds = Cost Efficiency of 29.6 LKO payload conversion table Conversion table from various units to to my Cost Efficency unit. See the first post in this thread for an explanation of the Cost Efficiency unit. Note that all of these are for a craft taking a payload to low Kerbin orbit using about 4500 delta v. [TABLE=width: 500] [TR] [TD]From[/TD] [TD]To[/TD] [TD]Formula[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]funds/unit of fuel[1], [2][/TD] [TD]Cost Efficency[/TD] [TD]22.5 / (funds/unit of fuel)[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]funds/liquid fuel[1][/TD] [TD]Cost Efficency[/TD] [TD]46 / (funds/liquid fuel)[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]funds/tonne[/TD] [TD]Cost Efficency[/TD] [TD]4500 / (funds/tonne)[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]tonnes/funds[/TD] [TD]Cost Efficency[/TD] [TD]4500 * tonnes/funds[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Cost Efficency[/TD] [TD]funds/tonne[/TD] [TD]4500 / (Cost Efficency)[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Cost Efficency[/TD] [TD]tonnes/funds[/TD] [TD](Cost Efficency) / 4500[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Notes Only valid if the ratio between liquid fuel and oxygen is 110/90. The weight of the fuel tank is counted as part of the payload. Units of fuel is the sum of liquid fuel units and liquid oxygen units added together.

For a medium payload example I put in the numbers for a 50 tonnes to orbit rocket in my python script with the Rockomax Mainsail engine in the upper stage and the SRB-KD25k solid rocket in the lower stage. Resulting in a suggested 126 tonnes of fuel, 2 mainsails and 12 KD25k rockets with a calculated efficiency of 6.8. And at this point it should come as no suprise that it indeed reaches orbit with 50 tonnes of cargo. Payload delivery cost = 126 * 81.9 + 12 KD25k + 24 struts + 24 sepratron = 34,128 Efficiency = 4500 / 34 128 * 50 = 6.6 This is assuming you recover 100% of the upper stage. For a more beefy rocket I put in the numbers for a 500 tonne payload with the S3 KS-25x4 Engine Cluster instead of the mainsail. The suggested configuration is 1401 tonnes of fuel, 10 engine clusters and 98 KD25k solid rockets. With an efficiency of 7.3. The interesting thing here is that when I calculated the efficiency of the equivalent SSTO it's around 6-7. Efficiency of merendel's rockets To get a more comparable numbers I've calculated the actual cost efficiencies of the two rockets. SRB Rocket Payload: 36 tonnes At Launch cost: 77,008 Payload cost: 12,800. Recovered funds: 40,755 Efficiency: 4500 / 23,453 * 36 = 6.9 SSTO Rocket Payload: 36 tonnes At Launch cost: 156,956 Payload cost: 12,800 Recovered funds: 116,549 Efficiency: 4500 / 27,607 * 36 = 5.9 I must say these are rather impressive results. Nice work. SSTO vs SRB assisted rockets What we can learn from these results is that SSTO and SRB assisted rockets are more or less equal in costs. The SRB has one advantage over the SSTO, the up front investment is around half. Which also halfes the cost of a total failure. But this is also the weaknes of the SRB. I spent around 10 complete rockets assemblies, and a few launch pads trying to get the SRBs from colliding into the core. The most troubleling being the Sepratrons destroying the core fuel tank. Ouch! Proper design and a bit of experience mitigates these risks greatly. Scaleability of rockets The rocket equation is normaly regarded as tyrant and exponential. But the truth is that it has two sides in KSP, one tyrant and one lenient one. The tyrant is met when you try to increase the delta v of a rocket, especially when met with the requirement of being able to take off the ground. More fuel needs more engines to lift it. And the size and costs increases exponentially. The lenient side (at least in KSP) is when you try to increase the payload of a rocket that can already reach orbit. Doubeling the payload is as simple as doubeling the fuel and engines in each stage. Which net aproximantly double the costs. But since the rocket is bigger, it's possible to take advantage of bigger engines with better efficiencies. Which makes the rocket slightly cheaper per tonne of payload. There is also the demonic side of the equation. Namely when you try to increase the delta v of a single stage where you have a thrust to weight ratio that must be met. Which is the case for an SSTO rocket. When you increase the delta v of such a rocket you meet a brick wall where the amount of fuel and engines needed explode into infinity. This is the reason why a SSTO using only solid rockets isn't possible. Thus depending on how you're trying to scale your rocket the size and costs will either scale proportionally, exponentially or be hyperbolic.

@Spatzimaus: I don't think making a single stage to orbit rocket using liquid rocket engines is going to be cost effective. I don't have a proof for this, but I do have an example. Let's say we want to push 5 tonnes into orbit, for sake of simplicity I'm going to limit myself the LV-T30 liquid engine, it's stats are not the best for this purpose but lies somewhere in the middle. By doing a bit of math I have calculated that I need 74 tonnes of fuel and 7 rocket engines to pull it off in one stage. I build an SSTO from those figures and sure enough the math checks out. How cost effective is it? If I land the whole thing on the launch pad the only expense would be the fuel. Which is 77 tonnes * 91.8 funds/tonne = 7068 funds. The efficiency is thus 4500 dv / 7068 funds * 5 tonnes = 3.18. (Note that the 2 stage liquid rocket efficiency calculations in my previous post did not take account to recoverd costs in the upper stage, so you can't really compare this to the 1.2 figure derived there) After making a few modifications to my python script I've made it calculate the cost efficiency of a 2 stage rocket with the LV-T30 in the upper stage and the RT-10 solid rocket engine in the bottom stage. The resulting graph of upper stage fuel to cost efficency is thus. Which promises 5 tonnes to orbit at an efficiency of 5.65 using a dual engine upper stage with 19 tonnes of fuel and 7 solid rocket engines in the lower stage. Of course these numbers are useless if they can't be demonstrated to hold in practice. To make the construction simpler I chose a different set from the same graph: dual LV-T30 with 18 tonnes of fuel in the upper stage and 8 RT-10 Solid rocket engines in the bottom with a calculated efficiency of about 5.41. And sure enough these numbers do check out. The cost of this rocket if recovered on the launch pad is the cost of 18 tonnes of fuel and the whole lower stage. Which is 18 * 91.8 + 8 RT-10 + 8 Struts + 2 stack sepparators = 5388 funds. And the efficiency is 4500 / 5388 * 5 = 4.17. Which is about 30% off from the calculated value. There are multiple sources of error present, wich accounts for the inaccurate result. But all in all it's about 24% cheaper than the SSTO. Which proves that a rocket using a stage of solid rocket engines can be cheaper. I did not experience a stage of Solid Rockets as being hard to get right. I made a wild guess of thrust at 50% and it followed an accent that was slightly to slow in the start of the burn and a bit to fast near the end of the burn. Because the thrust is constant you're bound to have this kind of behaviour with solid rockets, but doesn't make them unusable. Just slightly less optimal.

With the career mode being bounded by costs, it is obviously very beneicial to be sending up rockets that give the heaviest payload for the least amount of funds into orbit. I realize this doesn't really fit well into the game as the gameplay isn't balanced for this kind of optimizing rocketry. The first hurdle is to define what is cost efficient, and after a bit of testing I've ended up with a definition of cost efficiency of delta v * payload / cost and I think that is a reasonable metric. It gives a number that compares well for large and small rockets. Onward to the point. I've been cooking up a python script for calculating the most cost efficient configuration of a two stage rocket where both stages use the same type of engine, for a set target delta v, payload and TWR. It's not usable for designing rockets as two stages of the same engine type isn't efficient for getting to orbit. But anyway here are two examples. Two stages with LV-T30 engines lifting a command pod to orbit: This diagram shows how much fuel the lower stage (red line) of a two stage rocket with a given fuel in the upper stages needs to have in order to yield 4500 delta v. The payload carried is 0.84 t (a command pod), the TWR is at least 1.5 for both stages, and the engine used is the LV-T30. The cost efficiency of each particular configuration is the green line. From the graph the peek efficiency is obtained by using 4 tonnes of fuel in the upper stage and 6 tonnes of fuel in the lower stage. Resulting in a cost efficiency of 0.65 and a total cost of about 4500 * 0.84 / 0.65 = 5815 funds. This is off from the real cost due to few error sources and it's only based on the engine, fuel and fuel tank costs. Two stages with LV-T30 engines lifting 5 tonnes to orbit: All the parameters for this is the same as the previous graph except for payload which is 5 tonnes. Peek efficiency is reached with 7 tonnes of fuel in the upper stage and 25 tonnes of fuel in the lower stage. Since a single LV-T30 can't lift all that, the bottom stage has 5 of them. The efficiency is about 1.26 which is almost twice that of the previous example, meaning that if you lift up 5 tonnes to orbit with the previous rocket (requiring 6 launches) it will cost almost twice as much as one launch with this. I'm thinking about looking further into this and particularly comming up with ways to compute cost effective configuration for different kinds of stagings and engines. I'm not aiming for an optimal solution to this, as I don't think that is feasable (or sensible). Maybe throw up a webservice at one point future. What do you think?

Thank you so much for the response, I'm completely overwhelmed. It certainly comes to prove that you greet newcomers with a helping hand, keep up with it. To all of you that have come with suggestions regarding things such as the pod surviving when my initial rockets exploded, how to do a recovery of a space craft and getting into orbit. Thanks, but as I said in the original post, I managed to figure out how to do. The journey past those initial troubles have been a lot more rewarding and fun. After the success of the Orbiter I, I made the Orbiter II, which I made a flyby of the Mun (or is it Mün? I keep seeing both in use). I overshot, took an extra obit, messed up the return, but got safely back to Kerbal again without even using the final stage (which I calculated to have 1475 m/s delta V). With the science and experience I gained from it I made the Mun Lander I. Which did this: It was an absolutely thrilling journey. The landing was the most nerve wrecking, I didn't know about the Quick save/restore feature when I did it so I genuinely believed that it was a land or bust operation. I didn't explode when I hit the surface, but my lander tipped over. Thanks to the magic angular power of the pod I managed to roll it upright again. At which point the fuel gauge said "just enough" to get back to Kerbal. The fuel left on the lander when I entered the atmosphere of Kerbal was about 5%. All in all the game is very well made. The thing that would have to be greatly improved however is how the game introduces itself to new players. Most notably the science part is not trivial to understand, but it turns out that this is already in the progress of being sorted out. All that would be missing then is some basic instructions of how to conduct science, how transmitting the results work and how you recover a space craft with the results. I don't feel like the game should give out instructions down to every mouse click. Part of the fun is trying and figuring it out for yourself. But no instructions will leave players dumbfounded. Having to find out how the science point system works just leads to frustration. Especially when you realize after having spent hours on trying to get science that you can get some 50 point without even launching a rocket. A list of science wanted such as "conduct an EVA on Kerbal" or "Report from the upper atmosphere" could improve this. Especially in helping new players set goals that they can realistically make with the parts they have available. Is this the training section? Or is there a hidden part of the game I don't know about? Ah, yes. My Orbiter III launched, traveled to the Minimun and collected science with the Science Jr. Went back again, entered the atmosphere of Kerbal. And halfway in the decent I discovered that the last decoupler dropped the Science Jr module. Oops there goes that science. Then at about 2000 meters I discovered that I had forgotten to mount a parachute on the pod. AAAAAAaaaaaaaa, *gasps*, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, *bang*, "Jebediah Kerman died", Nuuuuu! I reverted the save, but the ship was already in orbit around Kerbal at that point, so I preceded to land without a parachute.

On my first attempt, second time I travel to the Mun and third day of playing this game. I made it to the Mun and back again using my Orbiter II, the second rocket I got out into orbit, in career mode. I still can't believe I made it. When I entered the atmosphere of Kerbol there was about 10 seconds worth of fuel left. The thought that stroked me most reading through this thread was "Wait, there is a quick save button?". Alright, I know, I know. Traveling to the Mun and back again successfully in one go on the first ever attempt isn't really that impressive. But for me, it was one hell of a ride. When I had landed on the moon (I tipped over, but managed to save the situation) the amount of fuel left for the return was scary low. Lunar Lander I mounted on the Orbiter II On the Mun And back again safely

I'm not quite sure where to put this one. It's a description of how a first time player reacts to the game when playing it. With the player being me. I found this game in a reference in Xkcd's What If #68. It describes how a planet the size of Little Prince with 1 G gravity would behave. In particular, the very small orbit would cause strong tidal forces that would send bodies spinning in all sorts of weird ways. This was describes as "This is KSP on nightmare mode". It caught my interest, and soon enough I had the demo running on my computer. I looked for "tutorial", as it was my impression that this was the kind of game that would be brutal to anyone who did not have a decent understanding of the mechanics. Calling it training confused me a bit. But soon enough I had completed all four training missions. It gave me some directions as to how to control orbits with prograde and retrograde burns at the apoapsis and periapsis. It had some basic rocket designing too. But it left me clueless as to how to get a rocket into orbit. I bought the game shortly after, and the leap from the demo to v.22 was a pleasant surprise. And with the availability of career mode, I figured it would be a good place to start. Only the parts that matter for a basic spacecraft would be available, and I could learn the game progressively as new stuff would be available. And there would be a clear defined goal, with good directions as to what I was supposed to do. Or so I thought. What presented me was a few beautifully modeled buildings, with functions that was self explanatory. I looked at the Research and Development, and saw 2 nodes. One of which I could research using 5 Science points. Okay, so I need Science points to get better stuff. Makes sense, there was however no indications as to how one could get science points. So I carried on. The first thing I tried to do was to launch a rocket. The logic being that since the demo had some pre-built rockets, the career has too. Nope. To the Vehicle Assembly Building then. And whoa, you start with only 7 parts. There isn't even an decoupler ring in there. I built my first rocket, the V-Explorer 1 (V is for Vertical). Consisting of a command module, a parachute, a fuel tank, a rocket engine, and an antenna. I had no clue what the antenna was for, but guessed that it could be used for science. I launched it. It flew a bit up in the atmosphere. I clicked around of the craft and found out that you could do a crew report by right clicking on the command module. The fuel ran out and I deployed the parachute, and watched in horror as the engine and fuel tank exploded as soon as it touched the ground. How am I supposed to recover the rocket when it explodes as soon as it touches the ground? I don't have a link decoupler, so I can't drop the engine. I thought the solid fuel rocket would be stronger, and proceeded to make V-Explorer 2 with a solid fuel rocket instead of a liquid one. "LaunchPad not clear. V-Explorer 1 is already on the LaunchPad". Huh? My previous rocket exploded, I'll clear the launch pad then (at this point, the process of recovering of a rocket was an unknown to me). I launched my V-Explorer 2, it descended and Bang! Same result. I was dumbfounded. I could make landing struts with the Modular Girder Segment, but I had a parachute to slow down the decent. Making linkages that break to simulate a decoupler would be more of creative bypass of the rules given. (I don't fancy abusing the game physics to achieve something that you don't have the tools to do. It's career after all) I launched yet another V-Explorer 1, and watched as it exploded when it hit the ground. Wait, the command module actually survived. Cool. But still pretty silly. Okay, I then pressed Esc and clicked on Space Center. My two crew reports had given me enough Science points to get Basic Rocketry. And with it a stack decoupler and science part. Yes! Finally some progress to be done. And thus V-Explorer 3, with 2 stages, Mystery Goo containers and a decoupler on the command module to make for a landing without explosions. Launch! It flies high up, I do some crew reports, study the mystery goo and sends the result with the antenna. But the scientific returns was abysmal. The Keep report option confused me, as it appeared to do nothing. At around V-Explorer 5 I managed to add two and two together. You could send the results with an antenna or recover the craft and the goo container to get the science points from the studies. Recovering of the space craft was both logical and intuitive, yet I had no clue how to actually do it. In the tracking station I found 3 of my former rockets listed up as in progress. And there was button called Recover. Bingo! The most important way of getting science points, some 10 rockets launches into the game. More so I figured that there had to be a way to recover a vehicle while controlling it. I found it pretty quickly. Hovering the mouse over the center top UI element and a button with recover vessel appeared. How the heck was I supposed to find that? With this in mind I created V-Explorer 6. With the goo module attached to the command module, so that it could be recovered. It flew high up, but I couldn't get it to orbit. It was not a goal, but it did not even come close. It went straight up and then straight down. But worse still, the Science points gained by it was even more abysmal. The diminishing returns of experiments prevented me from getting anything more out of it. Worse still I had no idea what kind of experiments and reports that I had done, or what reports and experiments that I could do. It was clear that in order to progress I would have to make a vessel capable of orbit. And I would have to figure out how to pilot to orbit as well. And thus the O-Explorer series was born. (O for Orbit). The first, O-Explorer 1 carried a whooping 4.5 t of dead weight. Needless to say, it did not reach orbit. But with the discovery of EVA, surface samples and crew reports on the ground of Kerbal having great scientific value I managed to get enough points to get a radial decoupler and a large solid fuel booster rockets. Two of 'em and a simple 2 stage rocket should be sufficient? I still had no clue how to pilot a rocket into orbit. I flew straight up until I reached about 10.000 meters and rotated gradually towards the horizon. When I was out of fuel the trajectory was an parabola going almost straight up, and the straight down again. When I doubt, more boosters. Eight of them. O-Explorer 3 was bound to have enough power to reach orbit. It flew straight up and then fell straight down. I was already browsing up several pages to find some explanation of what I was doing wrong when I realized that my parabolic orbit was actually elliptic. The part that stuck down into Kerbal would actually go around the center of the planet had there not been a planet in the way, and the periapisis would be there as well. I remembered form the tutorial that the best way to raise the periapisis is a prograde burn at the apoapisis. So I did just that in the next Launch. Traveled some 5,000 meters up in the air and started turning. I waited until I got to the apoapisis at 10,000 meters and did a full throttle. Success! My orbit was circular at 10,000 meters. A few drops of fuel left and, eh oh, red flames from air compression on my rocket. I looked at the atmosphere indicator. Half way to frictionless vacuum. Ouch! I watched helplessly as the rocket dropped back into the atmosphere. Watching the Kerbal Rocket School I learned about booster configurations, calculating delta V and a lot of other useful things. With the knowledge I designed the Orbiter I to reach an orbit around Kerbel with the Science Jr. It achieved that goal with 1500 m/s delta V to spare. That might have been enough to get to the Mun and back again, but just to be sure I made the Orbiter II to do the job. It made the trip with a few overshots and mises, getting back to Kerbal with a full stage worth of thrust to spare. So to sum up my experience as a first time player: The rocket I made with tier 1 parts exploded upon touching the ground. Career mode gave absolutely no directions for what to do. And has no goals other than collecting science points for conducting research. The science point system works great, when you know how it works. Which you don't. The diminishing returns explained nowhere (through somewhat logical) and indicated nowhere results in frustration. The game know what science experiments you have conducted, but sinisterly keeps it hidden from you. The training section does not cover piloting a rocket to orbit. The actions required are unintuitive for anyone that is not a rocket scientist.