How noob can into space

[spaceplane69]

Hi,

This is my thread about my adventures in KSP. I may have not made it to the Mun, I may have made it to completely random orbits around the Sun, I may have blown Jeb and Bob into that orbit, but today has been the greatest achievement of all time.

It all started when I got KSP about a week ago. My brother challenged me to (I quote) "Dock a ship with another ship in the orbin of Kerbin"

Seems simple enough, right? Well, not for this idiot it isn't. Having built the tip of the rocket, I placed a decoupler above 2 of those jumbo fuel tanks and a "Skipper" under it, this was the back-up plan, or the plan to go fly off into space, whichever one you'd like to call it. "This is nearly not enough power" I had thought, before during simply sending stuff into orbit(and the Sun orbit), I had found out that 4 Skippers with 2 jumbos wouldn't boost the ship if the reserve wasn't working. I decided to go with the "Mainsail", for the boost for a nice orbit. Knowing the Mainsail only lasted so long, I had to get more power. 8 decouplers, 16 JTL(or whatever those are) tanks with Advanced Engines stuck under them. After initial tests(included the tests where I realized I needed struts) I realized something: the ship I had built had no capability to get a nice orbit(ended up with 281 - 290 on final) There was not enough power. You know the Solid Fuel Boosters? I added 24 decouplers, 3 per advanced engine setup, 24 of the largest Solid Fuel Boosters I found, strutted them, it was go time. Everything is going alright. Orbit is 110-111, mission accomplished. Or so I thought. I ran into problems... The cockpit had nothing to dock to, also a part of the challenge was to have a kerbal in the detached part of the ship, another problem was space-based propulsion...

Back at the launch facility, added a middle section with a bridge and a FALSE DOCKING PORT(fixed later), added many monoprop tanks, 2 monoprop engines, rcs control thingies. Go time. The monoprops were too strong, later I discovered the "Docking mode" which served me great(removed monoprop engines). My design plan was to ditch the "ass" of the ship and dock with it, so it counts as docking with another ship, both had flying capabilities.

After around 15 failed flights-attempts(excluding the initial tests), I could into space(I had a problem with the Mainsails exploding with the JTL tanks in space so that added around 4 attempts). Having detached the front, I proceed with tilting, I had put docking ports on the fuel tanks aswell, for it to be easier. After around 3 minutes of jiggling, I had docked. Trying to ditch an useless part of the ship, I ditched my control part(the one with the bridge), luckily I had attached monoprop tanks and RCS on it(to keep it from spinning while docking), this one looked more abstract to dock, but it was a lot easier, the first part had the port on the tip, this one on the side.

TL;DR Potatoes can into space. Now read the text. Or don't. I won't care. Problably.

Mods

B9 Aerospace

LackLusterLabs

Near Future Propulsion (and Electrics)

Thank you for spending your time with my useless text, I just had a feeling I had to share that I am not a complete moron :3

If any of you could suggest amazing mods and stuff, that'd be great(got my eyes towards Spitfire atm), also some tips on getting orbits to the Mun(Minmus, Duna, and other places too... I can only orbits(intentional) Kerbin... Also some tips on rocket design and efficient stuff...

Before you start talking that I am trash, take a moment and read the following. I know I am trash, I play for fun, I try too many silly stuff to be good. I don't want this thread to be for killing me for being new, I want this thread to, generally, be nice.

For anyone interested: the ship cost around 1060000 whatevers the money is counted in.(Kerbits?)

[Red Iron Crown]

Moving this over to Gameplay Questions.

[EtherDragon]

Congratulations @spaceplane69!

Yes, potatoes can space. Hey - here is a tutorial to help you expand your knowledge on how to potato orbit!

[michaelhester07]

Grab a data readout mod (Kerbal Engineer, MechJeb, etc) for DeltaV. Before you even do that though... getting to space 101:

Ship design: stages: (Left to right, stack top to bottom)

0:

MK-16 parachute, Mk1 pod,

1:

TR-18 stack decoupler (matches the size of the pod),

2:

FL-400 tank, 3x 100 size batteries, TR-30L Engine,

3:

Stack decoupler,

4:

3x FL-400, TR-30L engine

5:

Radial decoupler (pick any type)

6:

4x RT-10 SRB, Nose cone on front of those, Winglet on the outer edge of those.

When this is built right it will look like a normal rocket.

- Tweak the thrust on the SRBs to about 50%: Right click on any of the solid rocket boosters, click in the Green thrust bar and drag to the left to tweak the thrust.

- Move the TR-30L from stage 4 to Stage 6.

- Launch it. (I'll post pics once I get home to play with 1.0!)

Launching 100: how to launch

Many players vary their launches but there is a general way that it works. Here's how to launch this rocket.

0. Set throttle to max. Press Space bar to begin the flight. (count down if you want... it's not necessary).

1. Launch up till about 10km on full thrust. (I'll probably change this part with the new aerodynamics)

2. The SRBs will cut off around 6km up. Once they do space bar to cut them loose. Note the center engine will still be running.

3. Start angling your ship to the East on the navball (90 on it). Align with the small center ring on the 90 line.

4. burn to 20km, then angle to the next line east on the 90 degree line.

5. At 35km aim to the "45 degree altitude" line, the middle of the nav ball between the dot and the brown area, on the 90 degree line.

6. Your main engine will cut off somewhere around here. Set it loose, and activate the next stage.

7. Angle your ship toward the horizon on the 90 degree line once you pass 55km altitude.

8. Switch to map view, click the gray arrow on the bottom to bring back the nav ball.

9. Watch your orbit on the map for when the AP reads at the desired orbit you want. Shoot for 75km for this launch. Once the AP is at 75 km throttle to 0 ([x] key on most installs).

10. Let your ship coast until about t-10 seconds from AP. keep it aimed on the horizon. Once you're within 10 seconds of AP, throttle to max ([z] on most installs).

11. Burn here until you see the PE marker on the map. Tilt the ship toward the blue or brown to keep AP at 10 seconds out. Toward the blue pushes AP farther out, toward the brown pulls it in. If you pass the AP burn toward the blue.

12. When AP and PE switch positions cut the engines.

13. Double check that PE is above 70km. if it is you're now in orbit.

What you did is a "gravity turn". On Kerbin you have to burn above the bulk of the atmosphere before you do the turn. On Mun and planets without atmospheres you can burn straight into the gravity turn. Every ship you launch has to do a gravity turn. SSTO space planes don't really turn, they just get to high enough altitude where they can burn the engines to get orbit.

Having a data readout mod will make rocket design much easier. 1.0 should supposedly have one. You'll need around 5000 m/s dV (delta velocity, or deltaV) to get to orbit. I'll leave you to discover the rest.

Also read about a rendezvous tutorial for docking.

[TheXRuler]

Oh wow, 1 million? just to get into orbit? xD

Don't worry, people around here are generally very friendly, funny and (sometimes ) even helpful

I remember my first successful orbit using the most horrible launch profile and the craziest rocket I have ever built (admittedly this was back in 0.13 or something). I used something like 150 Solidrocket motors staged in a huge pyramid with the bottom circle consisting of ~50 SRBs alone. I went straight up for 80 km, rotated 90° and just fired all my engines. After that I was like WOOOOOO I am definetly buying this game (was using the demo version back then). Now I cringe and smile fondly at the same time whenever I think about it. ~660h later I am still learning things I never knew xD I recommend being active on the forums, this must be one of the best gaming communitie's of all, also welcome aboard

- - - Updated - - -

On the topic of rendevous and docking let me very arrogantly quote myself:

LN400 has the basics right however there are some ways to improve upon this technique.

RCS can be very usefull, however the low ISP makes it rather inefficient and the low thrust makes it incredibly tedious when flying very heavy ships. During the early phases of rendevous I would recommend using the thrust limiter (right click on the engine [you probably already know this]) to reduce maximum thrust to something like 10 or 20 percent and using RCS solely for attitude adjustment.

However all this comes after the launch and I would first explain how to set up an easy rendevous (target) orbit.

Launch as usual from KSC and aim for an apoapsis of roughly 250km. Try to keep your inclination as low as

possible and circularize at apoapsis as well as you can.

Now to launch your docking vessel:

Set it on the launch pad, set the vessel you want to rendevous with as your target and launch when the target is almost right above you on the navball. Now follow a standard launch procedure with gravity turn etc. and aim for an apoapsis that just meets your target orbit. Before your apoapsis hits the target orbit height you should switch to map view and kill your engines (hotkey x [you probably know this as well]) as soon as your orbit reaches the target orbit. At this point the game should give you either two or four closest approach markers. If there are only two, they should both be pinkish if there are four there should be one orange and one purple pair.

Let's first assume that you only intersect the target orbit at one point. This will provide you with a pinkish pair of closest approach markers. When you mouseover the approach markers they should be called "intersect 1" and "target position at intersect" (or something similar). Now if your target position at intersect is ahead of the intersect (this should be the case as it makes things a little easier) don't worry (be happy) but simply stick a manouvre node right behind the intersect (as close as you can get it without it being ahead of the intersect) and increase the prograde component of the manouvre until your orbit after the manouvre has a periapsis of at least 71km. Now the position of the two intersects should have changed a little. By further increasing the prograde component you should be able to move the target position at intersect around a little. This happens because as you change your periapsis you also change your orbital period (again you might know this, I just mentioned it for the sake of completeness). Try increasing your periapsis to the point where you are almost on a circular orbit and see whether or not you can get a very close approach by doing this. If not change the manouvre back to just raise your periapsis out of the atmosphere. After raising your periapsis out of the atmosphere you should place another manouvre node just behind the intersect.

Now you might or might not know (I found this out very late) that when you are editing a manouvre node you can rightclick on the node which will change the appearance of the node to a circle with an x at the top righthand side and two little circles at the bottom left and bottom right. Clicking these little circles tells the game that you want to execute the manouvre one orbit, for every click, later or earlier respectively. This can be very helpful during rendevous as it means that you can look ahead to what will happen in a few orbits time. As you now have an orbital period which is smaller than that of your target you will be continously catching up. Just keep skipping orbits ahead (using the manouvre node) until your target position at intersect goes past the actual intersect. Now start editing the manouvre node by adding to the prograde component you will increase your orbital period (bringing it closer to that of your target) and the target position at intersect should now be comming closer to the actual intersect. Keep playing around with the prograde/retrograde and the radial components to bring your apporach markers as close together as possible.

Once you have done all this (and assuming you had the patience to read the entire thing ) all you need to do is warp to the manouvre and execute it. Now you have yourself a nice close approach (yay :3) but you're still not quite done yet. But you're about halfway there. The next thing you will want to do is set up a manouvre right at the closest approach to match the target orbit. This will reduce your relative velocity to the target to a manageable number. And NOW you can start using RCS to finalize your docking.

From here on LN400 perrty much nailed it with his expanation so I will simply qoute him here

As you were having trouble with finding out which keys corrospond to which translational direction I reccomend using either C or V (I always get it mixed up) to switch the camera angle to chase, then use RMB to place the camera behind your vessel. This will make the controls more intuitive. Also check out the wiki page concering key bindings if you are unsure as to which keys to use for translation.

Edit: Just saw that the quote fo rLN400 didn't show up so here:

When the distance is between 1km and 500m, use RCS to glue the prograde marker to the target marker, and keep them glued together. You might want to initiate this by using the main engines if the prograde marker is more than 10* off the target marker but once the two match, and target speed is less than or at least not much greater than 10m/s, switch to RCS.

Keep the 2 markers glued to eachother and gradually slow down as you approach using RCS. Rule of thumb: Under 500m apart at around 50m/s, reduce target speed by 10m/s per 10m closing in. Don't allow the markers to separate. Be on it. 10 or so meters away, slow down to crawling speed and align the docking ports. Eyeballing works courtesy of the magnetic pull on the ports.

Again, there are many ways you can do it, but this is a way I found would work consistently. Plan ahead and don't do sudden improvisations to you plan unless it's part of the plan. Jazz is not what you want to play here.

Edited April 27, 2015 by TheXRuler

[Claw]

Getting to orbit with some good timing is the first step. You can watch some old videos, but with 1.0's new aerodynamics, you'll have to do some fiddling and testing to see what kinds of rockets work. I would say that you should be able to really trim down your rockets, for starters. If you find you're spending a lot of money or using huge parts just to get to orbit, try reducing your rocket size a bit and add some more staging. michaelhester07 listed some parts for a relatively small rocket that should be able to make orbit. You can also get away with stacking 8 or so FL-T200 tanks with a Mk1 capsule on top and an LV-T45 on bottom. Slap a couple fins on and start practicing getting to orbit.

I highly recommend watching a few videos about how to do the rendezvous in orbit. That's really a first big step to do when meeting up with another craft, and isn't necessarily obvious without some help. After that, docking is relatively straight forward but can require a bit of practice. The big key to meeting up and docking in orbit, is to be really really patient. If you get in a hurry, things can go bad really fast.

Cheers,

~Claw