Tips and tricks for a scrub

[polan]

Got KSP this Christmas. Played .90 a lot. Took a hiatus. 1.0 was announced to be released in a week. Played again. And now we're here.

I can make rockets and planes (I made a really good plane, but lost it) but my rockets aren't the best. I need em to look good. Planes, I'm rather confident with, but aerodynamicy tips would help.

Anyhoo, I want tips for making rockets. I know to be small, start from the top, blah blah blah... but that's basic. I heard LVNs aren't very amazing anymore, and I have no idea how to really do a Duna mission once I get there.

So I wanna now how to structure a rokkit, and how to make the aerodynamic gods happy. With my rocket. I also need to land on the Mun (I have in .90) and i'm terrible at landers. So give me your ideas from you playing KSP way more than I have. (Also, I recently got 1337 hours of ksp. It's important, I swear)

tootles

Edit: Another thing, tell me how to mine stuff good. I made a miney thing before just to test it, and I understand the basics. How do I make little drones to goto planets, get ore, go back to mothership and refuel it.

Edit2: I also have some mods. Not too many.

Edited May 10, 2015 by polan
ADDING THANGS

[Alshain]

Point the engine at the ground.

EDIT: Ok, really. Your starter rockets are pretty straight forward. Command module, fuel, engine, fins on the radial outside near the bottom (Center of Lift behind Center of Mass). If it doesn't leave the ground, you have too much mass for the engine. If it does leave the ground, slowly turn as you ascend making sure not to stray too far from the prograde marker (which will cause you to flip). Rockets are easy, planes are going to take a longer explanation.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Alshain

[polan]

Noted. Will make pictures of my endeavers soon!

I already made some basic rockets, which orbit fine. Orbited the moon and came back. Time to land!

[Tw1]

Things to keep in mind making a lander:

*Try to keep them sort of compact and roundish. The more spread out things on a spaceship are, the harder that spaceship is to turn.It's also good to make sure your lander has enough SAS and/or RCS able to rotate at a reasonable speed.

That said, sometimes you'll need to prioritise this second point:

-Give the lander a wide base, and a low centre of mass. This makes it harder for it to fall over upon landing.

Consideration of how heavy each part is, how the fuel's going to drain, and where the legs are going to go can be important here. Use the COM indicator to make sure.

-Double check your extended legs will stick out a fair but further than anything else. Avoid accidents.

However, it is possible to land on parts other than landing legs, if you're careful.

-Use lights. Very useful for dark landings, even in light ones, where you can get some idea of height from your shadow, it still can help.

-Make sure your hatch is clear, you ladder reaches the ground, and you kerbal can successfully navigate the ladder. If you're using career or science mode, it can be useful to keep your experiments and instruments somewhere where a kerbal can reach them.

-Cover all the basics. Make sure you've got enough fuel, thrust, power, etc.

When it comes to landing, this video describes a good technique:

Remember:

Falling too fast: turn your vessel more vertical.

Not slowing down enough: turn the vessel more horizontal.

[SkyRender]

Rockets are still not that hard in 1.0, actually! The main things to remember are that it should have a fairly sleek form (ie. no sudden flat or jutting bits hitting the airstream on your way up), and that you have to perform the gravity turn procedure gradually starting at launch now if you want it to go smoothly. Having an engine with good gimbal capabilities can help a bit with the trip up, and having fins can help even more (though be careful with that if you're using strap-on boosters: if you have a non-symmetrical distribution of boosters around your fins, it will make you start to turn in usually unwanted directions!).

Planes... well, they have a few basic rules. The first is, center of lift behind center of mass. (You can check it with the CoM/CoL indicators in the vehicle construction scene.) That's always been true, though, so you may well have known that. The next big point with planes is: have enough lift and control with your wings for the plane you've built. You can kind of cheese that right now by having absurdly high thrust for the size of your vehicle, but that's a bit cheat-y. Just like with rockets, keep the design so the part that's hitting the airstream (the front of the plane) has a needle-like profile for any and all surfaces. Or a ram air intake, which aren't particularly aerodynamic but are great for making jet engines actually work.

[polan]

Here's a Mun lander with heavy inspiration from a random pic I found:

Neat, aint it?

Now, here's a rocket that just didn't work, and I went for a smaller design; tell me what was wrong with it, for reasons!

It looks cool, but it doesn't fly cool.

[jarmund]

Here's a Mun lander with heavy inspiration from a random pic I found:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/716414774609559191/436298A17C77DB093657D3528003439057B68C1C/

Neat, aint it?

Now, here's a rocket that just didn't work, and I went for a smaller design; tell me what was wrong with it, for reasons!

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/716414774609565466/5E819BDBE74A5EB470E557BDBEC73E9E960C5862/

It looks cool, but it doesn't fly cool.

The lander looks great. Not sure if you need that large reaction wheel, tho. You've got the basics covered: Wide base, compact design, and enough delta V from the looks of it. Personally I try to avoid drop tanks and the like as I prefer my landers to be reusable, but that's a matter of taste, really.

As for the rocket, I'm thinking that you should remove the upper set of finns or stick a large set in stead of the lower ones. If the problem is flipping, this might be the fix, and I'm guessing that's exactly what is bothering your design, as all the lift will be in front of CoM once you drop the side tanks. If you really need finns on your upper stage, you can replace the lower set with delta wings and control surfaces instead, and place them where the SBRs are. That's what I do on my larger launch vehicles. SBRs can be placed on the tanks instead. If you haven't already done so, I recommend disabling gimballing on all but the center engines, as the gimbaling is a bit trigger-happy.

Some things I would do differently (not implying that my way is necessarily better):

- On the center rocket, I would combine the bottom two stages

- I would remove all RCS ports below the upper stage. You have the atmosphere to help you turn around anyway. If needed, large reaction wheels.

- Consider separatrons on the outer engines as well as SBRs to ensure clean separation.

- Launch clamps

- Move monoprop tanks to the upper stage, as it can interfere with the upper fin aerodynamics where they are now. Also, higher up allows you to use them longer.

[polan]

As many things were wrong with the rocket and redesigning would be hard, I just modified the Kerbal X a bit. Lazy solutions always work!

[jarmund]

As many things were wrong with the rocket and redesigning would be hard, I just modified the Kerbal X a bit. Lazy solutions always work!

I've never even loaded a stock craft. I take pride in designing them myself, even if they look like crap and doesn't fly

[polan]

Would you like me to log my journey to the mun, by chance?

EDIT: already landed... oops... i'll post pics later

Edited May 10, 2015 by polan