Pecan

Huh? The wiki (https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Orbit) does a good job of explaining orbital abbreviations (well done, whoever wrote it).

Better for what? MechJeb because it's an easy, customisable instrument panel. Oh, and apparently it can do some autopilot stuff as well, if you tell it to. My launch vehicles typically get around 40 trials tweaks before I consider them 'right'. If I can reliably fly it to orbit then it's good enough for me to use. If MJ can reliably fly it to orbit then it's good enough to make public.

No, I just wrote it in public, here and 'published' it as a PDF download. That's not available after all these years (more than 5) and would be completely out of date anyway but the thread is in tutorials: "providing and explaining more than 30 vehicles from a rover to interplanetary transfer and space-stations" as the intro said. The goal was to explain rocket-design, staging strategies and 'less is more' in a sensible progression and leading with probes before unmanned . It was very popular but redesigning ships for every new version of KSP made it too difficult to update. (it's over 100 pages so if you do have a look, I'd recommend just scrolling down to see the pictures). On the other hand, I will be writing similar guides for KSP 2.

Eve. Tylo does tend to trick people but if you're paying attention and designing by numbers, as I do, then you'll see it coming (hint: it's the big round thing approaching really quite quickly). I've still hardly ever been to Eve because it used to be impossible to make a reusable lander and I don't have sufficient incentive to go again now everything's easier.

Something before version 1. Because those were the days I built 3,000 of my 4,000-odd hours in KSP and wrote a book about it. Nothing against newer versions, but by the time they came out I was mostly over it. To be accurate - I'd decided if I ever wanted to play anything else ever I had better tear myself away.

How are you at rendezvous and docking? My thought would be to simply launch the ascent vehicle into the longest (time) sub-orbital trajectory you can then catch it with the CM. Simply launching straight up might give you hours before the thing falls back to its inevitable doom but who cares, as long as you have time to rescue the Kerbals with the CM? Without knowing how much dV you have the viability of this can't be determined but it's often a lot easier than you'd think.

House Rule 1: Every crewed launch needs an escape system, although the size of the 'proper' LES means it is not always suitable. In that case something similar with sepratrons may be used.

I am digging-out an old PDF of Exploring The System in order to show Private Division why they should licence me to write similar Official KSP 2 books.

All the hype, all the way. I'll be writing tomorrow to talk about writing a tutorial book. My only sadness is that it won't be Squad. I hope you all have great futures. Vaya con Dios, abrazos. And fly safe ... I have checked Scott Manley and Everyday Astronaut since this announcement yet. (Nothing from them yet) I've just let my friends know I'll see them in 2022.

One does not simply 'play' KSP. 'Players' should be renamed 'awesome, dedicated, rocket-simulators of unusual brilliance and attractiveness'. Although I may be biased.

Point well made. The perfect example is launching - if your engine isn't powerful enough to lift the vehicle in the first place you'll just burn all the fuel sitting on the pad and never go anywhere at all.

For a simple rocket - single stage, single engine - it's easy to calculate, as long as you have a spreadsheet programme or scientific calculator. The tricky bit an ordinary calculator wouldn't be able to do is the logarithm that's needed. All the figures you need are shown in the VAB on the parts list or as you assemble the complete rocket. I'll use a straightforward 'starter' rocket as an example: Mk16 Parachute Mk1 Command Pod TD-12 Decoupler FL-T800 Fuel Tank FL-T800 Fuel Tank (again) 4 x Basic Fin (around the base of the lower fuel tank) LV-T45 "Swivel" Liquid Fuel Engine a. Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation is: dV = (Isp * g) * LN(Mf / Me) or, in English, (dV =) the amount the rocket can accelerate is ... (Isp * g) the engine specific impulse (shown on the parts list in the VAB) multiplied by the gravitational constant (9.81 mss) (*) multiplied by (LN) the natural logarithm of (Mf / Me) the total mass of the rocket with all its fuel divided by the mass without the fuel Since the engine Isp (efficiency) and fuel mass are the important parts here this comes down to - you can do more if you have a better engine or more fuel - who'd have thought! Because of the logarithm function (LN) though you get diminishing returns so twice as much fuel won't give you twice as much dV, as fuel adds extra mass to be accelerated as well. b. So what you need to get from the VAB is; the engine Isp, the mass of the rocket full of fuel and the mass of the rocket without any fuel. Isp is shown in the VAB parts list 'ASL' (At Sea Level) and 'Vac.' (Vacuum, ie; in space) and they're usually different so the next question is which to use? This is because of how rocket engine's efficiency is affected by the surrounding atmospheric pressure. In practice we all tend to use the vacuum Isp for just about everything. It'll give you a slightly-high result when you're launching from Kerbin but the atmosphere starts to thin out pretty quickly as you gain altitude during the launch. Trying to get really accurate results for launch vehicles is much, much harder because that pressure is changing all the time plus exactly how you fly your launch trajectory affects it a lot (and is hard to do consistently by hand on a computer keyboard). Mouse-over the swivel engine in the parts list and right-click for extra info. "Engine Isp: 250 (ASL) - 320 (Vac.)"; we use 320 Mf, the mass of the rocket with all the fuel is easy - just mouse-over the 'Engineer's Report" at the bottom of the screen. "Mass: 11.520t" Me, mass without fuel, is a bit harder because you have to drain the tanks or use the delta-V calculator (in which case you might as well just use the results it gives you!). Either way you should get the result 3.520t. All that together gives us: dV = (Isp * g) * LN(Mf / Me) = (320 * 9.81) * LN(11.52 / 3.52) = 3139.2 * LN(3.2727) = 3139.2 * 1.1856 dV = 3721.9 m/s (vacuum) (If, instead, you use the ASL Isp you will get only 2907.74 m/s dV) c. More complicated rockets Extra stages just require you to calculate the dV for each stage separately. Cross-feeding fuel between stages can make that difficult, otherwise it should be as straightforward as here. Multiple engines are also easy, provided they have the same Isp. If they don't then you have to work out the ratios of each engine type and get a weighted average of the Isps from that. Hint: more trouble than it's worth unless you really love doing things by hand! NOTE: The command pod contains monopropellant but the rocket has no RCS thrusters that use it. Wasted Mass! Remove it and note the new dV ... 3746 m/s. The reduced mass results in a better 'fuel ratio' (Mf / Me) which results in better performance.

Delta-v is the amount by which you can change your velocity vector. 'Delta' (a triangle) is the symbol mathematicians use for 'change' and 'v' is just an abbreviation for velocity. Velocity being a 'vector' just means it's speed-plus-direction; you can't be going "at 80mph" without going at 80mph in a particular direction. All 'steering' in space is by accelerating in different directions, so changing the velocity. It's all because in space there's nothing to slow you down unless you 'accelerate' the opposite way. Standard example: Vehicle at rest. Accelerate 100mps (meters per second is the usual KSP measure of speed, not mph) North. Your speed is '100mps', your direction is North, your velocity-vector is 100mps North. Now accelerate 150mps South; your velocity is 50mps South (150mps South minus the previous 100 North). Accelerate 50mps West; v is now 70.71mps Southwest (the diagonal of 50 South and 50 West). If you want to stop, you will need to make a 70.71mps delta-v burn facing NE. dV (another way of abbreviating delta-v) is calculated using the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation) based on the efficiency of your engines and the amount of fuel available. Because it's so important though people have already worked out the delta-v you need for most trips from Kerbin. The community delta-v map ... ... is pretty indispensable. Enjoy :-)

Nope, all you need to do is open the menu for any two (or more) tanks on the same vehicle and you can pump to your heart's content. If you do select more than two and then click 'out' on the one you want to empty the fuel will go to all the others equally. Similarly, if you want to drain tanks evenly in the future, you can click 'in' on one and draw from all the others. Have fun.

If it's just a matter of *that* tank staying full - pump it to another tank (select two tanks and use the in/out options).

Trim and fine controls - alt-WASD and capslock on PC. If it flies, it can be trimmed to fly a stable path.

Be assured that docking is hard. It took NASA several attempts to learn how to do it (that Armstrong chap was the first again). As bewing suggests the navball is absolutely essential for this manoeuver, as is taking your time and making small corrections. Most importantly, as he again says, make sure the navball is in target mode so you get relative velocity information, not orbital (stopping your orbit means falling out of the sky!) Just as importantly though - you say you're new to KSP. Docking is very much an advanced art and there's a lot you can do without learning to dock. That includes moon-landings and interplanetary travel. Although you'll probably want to learn docking later for other reasons I'd recommend you get into the game proper and play around. Have some fun and make some amazing discoveries then come back to practice docking later. One example mission that doesn't require docking but will help you learn it: 1. Design and build a small drone vehicle consisting only of RCS tanks, thrusters and docking port. It will also need probe core to function and you may find some other equipment essential (finding out what is part of the fun). 2. Design and build a launch vehicle that can carry two such drones (you learnt how to save your original design as a sub-assembly, didn't you?) into 75km and 150km orbits respectively. 3. Launch them, leave them. When you feel like it come back and try to rendezvous them. If you're up to it try to dock them. 4. (Separate them and), return them to different orbits. Repeat as required. For the moment, stop worrying about it. Go and land on Mun.

A few 1.25m parts are all you need for everything but multi-crewed missions. For those you need 2.5m because that's the size of the capsule (and hitchhiker). Less than 65 tonnes on the launchpad will take a set of communication satellites anywhere in the system, for instance. It has often been said that in rocket science less is more and, yes, you often get better results by taking things off than putting more on.

Learning enough real science to despise every other 'space' game, film and TV programme. Except Orbiter, obviously.

The worst thing about KSP is either Unity or Squad's use of it.

Another thread with lots of people who don't know what SSTO means. Thanks Tyko and razark for a little sanity.

Squad was originally quite against having TWR/dV figures in the game because it might make it too much about chasing the numbers instead of experimenting and having fun. Quite a lot of us had enough failures without hiding the maths, so we used mods like MechJeb to show us the figures we were missing. Eventually, Squad relented and that's why you have the dV and TWR displays now - if you know what they're for :-) TWR: Thrust to Weight Ratio, how much your engines can push compared to how much the whole rocket weighs. If your launchpad TWR is below 1 the engines don't have enough power to lift the rocket at all and you aren't going to space today. Bigger, more powerful engines increase your TWR but everything else decreases it by making the rocket heavier. As others have said, a launch TWR of 2+ will be mostly wasted on Kerbin because you'll get so fast so quickly that your drag in the thick lower atmosphere will be like hitting a brick wall. A low initial TWR, building as the rocket gets higher and the atmosphere gets thinner works well. Conveniently, that's what happens as the engines burn fuel and so reduces total mass. Try launch TWRs in the 1.4 - 1.6 range and, ideally, end TWRs for the first stage of 2 - 2.5. Note that TWR is only important for launch and landing, orbital adjustments in space don't need much thrust but a TWR below 0.5 can lead to very long burn-times. There's a lot more to tuning your TWR in each stage but it's not the sort of thing you need to think about at the beginning (or at all unless you want to). dV: Delta-V (from maths, 'delta'=change) Change of velocity vector, how much you can change your speed and direction (since turning's just acceleration pointing a different way). May I interest you in Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation? Perhaps not, unless you like maths. Anyway, you don't have to work it out, since the figures are already in KSP for you. What it says, in plain English, is that the amount you can accelerate (change your velocity) is determined by how efficient your engines are and how much fuel they have. In other words, better engines and more fuel allow you to accelerate more, who would have thought! Now most spaceflight is about accelerating to adjust your speed to make a certain orbit - just around Kerbin or out to Mun, as examples - so if you know your initial speed and the target speed you know the difference is the amount you have to accelerate (backwards, possibly, if you're reducing your speed). When launching from Kerbin that's all made a little bit - actually a huge amount - more complicated because the atmosphere wants to trap you in the gravity well and drag keeps slowing you down. which is why we generally accept a minimum requirement of 3,400m/s but try to build-in more than that. In space it's all much more predictable and accurate - if you can fly right! Even more than TWR, dV is the reason to keep the rest of your rocket light. All mass reduces your dV so even extra engines make the performance worse, as long as they already meet TWR requirements. More fuel is good but, because it also adds mass, double the fuel doesn't mean double the dV (you might hear this called 'the tyranny of the rocket equation'). Everything else on your rocket is the enemy of dV, so try not to put on anything you don't really need.

Steam recognises files as "corrupt" if they are in any way different from its installation set. Loading the game writes date/time stuff to logs and in the course of things will update the persistent save file. That's enough to 'corrupt' them as far as Steam is concerned so if you're just seeing one file corrupt there is, actually, nothing wrong.

Fudge that is probably more trouble than it's worth but something else you can play around with :- Use an action group to activate/shutdown engine, then you can set and control the throttle as you wish without any actual burn, then 'blip' it on/off using the action group. The obvious problem with this is you're relying on disabling the engines ... which you're bound to forget, crank up the throttle because nothing's happening, then remember and woooosh! If you're anything like me, anyway.

I don't expepct to suffer any damage. Go ahead, I'll be fine thanks *grin*