Is MechJeb Real?

[ezequielandrush]

Hi all. I am new to KSP. (bought it a week ago)

I am still learning about some game mechanics and heavily modding...

I have some question for you all veteran space explorers. Is some kind of autopilot like MechJeb used in real life?

I feel like using it is some kind of cheating. I am not trying to start a discussion about it.

I ask this because I found very dificult to make some manouvers (specially precision landings in misions over minmus and mun)

How do REAL astronauts do it?

Thanks to all in advance and forgive my english

Adiós

Zeke

[Red Iron Crown]

Very little piloting is done by hand in modern spaceflight, most maneuvers are handled by computer control. Historically it's been a bit different, early US spaceflight was fairly pilot-focused and much was done by hand; the Soviets tended to use more automated systems where possible. So yeah, an autopilot is realistic.

That said, much of KSP's core gameplay is piloting, I would recommend that you try flying by hand and see if you enjoy it before switching to autopilot. If you don't care for it or wish to automate some tasks, by all means use autopilot (some of the players whom I greatly respect are heavy MechJeb users).

[pandaman]

Hi Zeke. And welcome to KSC.

I don't know details, but autopilots are certainly used in real life. Especially to help with ascents etc.

Do what feels best or right for you. What matters is your enjoyment. I would recommend learning to do stuff manually anyway sooner or later as it helps with your understanding.

personally I don't use mechjeb as I prefer to do it all manually. And yes it is hard to learn (rendezvous and docking is particularly challenging at first), but it feels great when you do it for the first time and it gets easier with practice.

[Voidryder]

Agree with what Red Iron Crown said.

Prior to 1.0.2 Aero I started using MecJeb for the launch phase because launching the same launch vehicles over and over got boring. (Launch to 10K then 45 degree turn again and again.) Plus I liked the customization I could do on the various displays. But since 1.0.2 Aero I've been flying whole missions by hand. Maybe not realistic, but definitely more fun. But in all likelihood once I've flown the same LV so many times until I can do it without thinking I'll probably go realistic again and let the flight computer (MechJeb) do the heavy lifting. I'll still do the glamour piloting - docking and landings - manually. Hey, Bob deserves some glory too.

(And what Pandaman said.)

Enjoy learning this fantastic game.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Voidryder
Manners

[regex]

I feel like using it is some kind of cheating.

MechJeb is definitely cheating, it takes all sense of accomplishment away from me.

[Hannu]

It is interesting to learn to calculate burns and execute them manually. It also teaches about orbital mechanics. But basic maneuvers are quite repetitive and laborious tasks. Some things are almost impossible with information KSP gives (for example pinpoint landing to large planets with atmosphere). In some point you know exactly what to do and when and then you may find that it is good thing to give routine stuff to autopilot and concentrate to more engineering stuff than piloting.

Real space programs use very complicated flight software. MechJeb is simple part of videogame compared to automation of spacecrafts. They model thousands of orbits and what if scenarios per every maneuver. They said that the flight control software of the Space Shuttle was the largest and most complicated computer program in the world when it was introduced.

[Wesreidau]

Its real, and even if it doesn't fit aboard your capsule, Ground Control has a hundred guys with slide rules and a 40-gallon coffee pot.

[SkyRender]

From what I've seen with how others use it, MechJeb has a good chance of robbing you of any sort of desire to actually fly ships on your own. This may seem like a good thing, but given that it removes basically the single most interesting part of the actual game part of KSP from the equation, it will also devalue the experience considerably and leave you more likely to stop playing the game sooner than if you'd buckled down and handled those flights yourself. If all you're really looking for is the info that MJ provides (and that info IS very useful), there's another non-intrusive mod called Kerbal Engineer Redux that gives you the same sort of data read-outs without the autopilot temptations.

[Korizan]

KSP uses a visual representation for what is essentially math and a ton of it.

The game basically does it all for you with the exception of some key elements.

Mechjeb runs a simulation and hands you back a result (sometimes not the best).

Just about anything with any size (including planes) have autopilots.

There are some planes out there that are not stable on purpose and can not be flown without computer control.

Cheating, depends on how you look at it.

Sometimes I let mechjeb take full control (assents generally but I still watch and decide if something needs to be tweaked).

A lot of the time I bounce what mechjeb considers to best and what I have done (never hurts to have more then one opinion)

Doing it by hand really comes down to how good is your hand eye coordination, the better you are the easier the flights will be.

So someone who spends a lot of time with FPS's will tend to do better then someone who spends their days on a 3rd person strategy game.

Or you could say that a pilot would have an easier time flying the rocket then the engineer who designed it.

Does that mean the engineer should be forced to fly the rocket manually, I think not.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Korizan

[Wesreidau]

I've had the opposite experience. I used to be a purist, but after doing it all by hand got boring I'd put the game down until the next alpha. This release I launched a six-part space station in my Career. I never would have bothered with all that without the aids.

[gom jabbarwocky]

MechJeb is real, but I would say that as a new player, resist the temptation! I, too, once thought as you did, ezequielandrush, but persevere and you will learn the ins and outs without sacrificing your agency to our robot overlords!

MechJeb is definitely cheating, it takes all sense of accomplishment away from me.

I kind of have to agree with regex here - not that I would chastise someone as being a cheater for using MechJeb, but that in using MechJeb you are cheating yourself out of learning to do this stuff yourself. Yeah, it's hard, but when you figure it out you'll feel like a space wizard.

[Bedwyr]

Mechjeb is a very realistic way to fly your rockets. I recommend flying them by hand at first so that you learn what is happening, why, and what good and bad responses are before turning on Mechjeb. If you are playing in career mode, it should be less of a problem because you will have to figure out how to fly before unlocking more advanced features.

That said, as a pilot, engineer, and especially as a low tech stick-and-rudder glider pilot I'll personally defy anyone claiming that it's cheating or look down on people who do. They're flat out wrong. They're socially wrong for getting a bug up their behind, trying to micromanage someone else's game. They're also technically wrong as most advanced flight is conducted under some level of autopilot control, especially space flight. There is a time and a place for manual control and there is a time and place for automatic control. Especially in airplane training there will be lots of manual flying before you're allowed to use an autopilot, hence my suggestions above. But it's there for many good reasons.

The proper response when it comes to KSP is to be self referential. If someone wants the challenge of hand flying rocket launches, great! If someone else wants to use Mechjeb just for attitude control to free up brain space to do other tasks, awesome! (And that's a big part of what aircraft autopilots are for in real life: to free the pilot up from task saturation.) And if someone is bored after the 150th launch or simply doesn't want to bother with the whole "flying" thing and spend more time designing and building rockets, marvelous!

So, recap:

- It's your game, not someone else's. They don't like what you're doing in yours, tough. Go jump in a lake.

- Real life uses just as much and often more automation.

- In real life pilots learn manual control first, but commonly fly auto far more often later.

[Mister Spock]

I've never used MechJeb. I've seen videos of it, and my reaction is that it would take much of the sense of accomplishment away for me.

I do admit that I get a little bored of doing the same launch from Kerbin over and over; those first five minutes are often the same exact thing. But the rest of piloting is fun and rewarding, especially making orbit, rendez-vous, docking, creating maneuver nodes, planning and executing interplanetary transfers, and landing. I can't imagine ever offloading any of that to the computer.

[sal_vager]

No matter the feelings people have about Mechjeb, you have to admit it's a pretty amazing bit of code, it doesn't just hold you on a course like a real world autopilot(or react to beacons/satnav co-ords), it actually tries to fly your vessel as if it were at the WASD controls.

Edited May 23, 2015 by sal_vager

[KerikBalm]

Even normal airliners are pretty much not flown by hand.

Rosetta, the mars rover missions.... well I could go on: anything beyond the moon, was obviously not flown by hand.

That said: I think it takes the fun out of it.

Your understanding of what you are doing is much greater without MJ.

You have to think if the maneuver should be planned at apoapsis, perapsis, an AN/DN - which way you should burn... etc. etc.

Flying airplanes is generally fun... why would you relegate yourself to sitting in a chair and monitoring a computer doing the flying? (ok, most people here don't actually do any real life flying themselves either, but just imagine).

Its a single player sandbox game: its hard to call anything cheating, unless you are cheating yourself out of something good.

It makes things easier and less challenging - if that would be rewarding to you, you're cheating yourself.

If you'd rather just focus on the building of your missions, and overall planning, then leave the flying to MJ.

I've never downloaded it, but before I started playing KSP, I thought I was going to have to because... its rocket science and all... but.. actually its not so bad.

Take away map view and maneuver nodes... and then I'd need to use it (I could probably make orbit, and get a Mun intercept... maybe even a landing and return... using a lot more fuel than normal.... but minmus? interplanetary? forget about it.

[lincourtl]

Just to add some perspective to another tedious Mechjeb debate, it should be noted that the Sperry Corporation developed the first simple gyroscopic autopilot in 1912.

[Alshain]

Autopilots are definitely real, but take away from the game in my opinion. The whole point of a game is to do it yourself, unlike the real world where automation is desired.

If you must automate, something like Kerbal Operating System would be a better choice because then you still have that sense of accomplishment, it's just in a different place. Instead of "Yay I piloted a ship to orbit.", it's "Yay, I figured out how to write a script to pilot a ship to orbit!".

MechJeb on the other hand is pretty much a "do it for me" button. I refuse to use it. However, It is your game and what interests you about this game is entirely your business, so if you want to use it, then use it.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Alshain

[sal_vager]

Nope, the point of the game is to have fun, if you want to do that stock that's fine, if you want to use addons that's fine too, so use Mechjeb if you want, don't if you don't.

And don't worry about how other people play

[Alshain]

Nope, the point of the game is to have fun, if you want to do that stock that's fine, if you want to use addons that's fine too, so use Mechjeb if you want, don't if you don't.

And don't worry about how other people play

Well, the point of a game is to do it yourself, otherwise it isn't called a game, it is called a screensaver.

[Charzy]

Whether or not Mechjeb is fun for you is dependent on what type of game you think KSP is.

If you think it's a game about flying rockets to other planets, then you probably shouldn't use it very much because it'll get rid of a lot of the fun stuff.

If you think it's a game about engineering rockets to fly to other planets, then you'll probably find that Mechjeb gets rid of a lot of the boring stuff.

I personally prefer the engineering side of the game, so I'll use Mechjeb to avoid having to, for example, turn to a maneuver node and burn, because I think that's boring. Landing, docking and atmospheric flight is actually interesting, though, so I tend to do that on my own.

[sal_vager]

Well, the point of a game is to do it yourself, otherwise it isn't called a game, it is called a screensaver.

No, it's not stated anywhere that you have to do it yourself, please show where in the KSP or Squad TOS, EULA, or anywhere in-game where this is so.

Actually don't as you will be dragging this thread further off-topic, I suggest you drop this line of discussion Alshain

[Canopus]

I don't get how some people say it takes away from the fun of the game. "Flying" in Ksp is 80% percent of the time little more than staring at the navball and keeping the nose of your rocket on the maneuver node indicator. And this isn't really fun or exiting once you have missions past Duna that use the LV-N, or even worse, the Ion engine. So why shouldn't i use an autopilot for that? For all the rest (flying planes, Landing on planets or docking), the exciting parts of playing the game, Mechjeb isn't that useful anyway. Still if you are new to the game i suggest to wait before you install the mod so you can actually learn to fly for yourself.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Canopus

[MarvinKitFox]

Is some kind of autopilot like MechJeb used in real life?

No, they use MUCH more advanced automation in real life.

Something like MechJeb belongs in the 1960's era.

[Brotoro]

Realistic? Certainly. Anybody who favors realism in KSP would be hard-pressed to argue that using MechJeb is not closer to real spaceflight than eyeballing things by the seat of your pants (now THERE's a weird expression).

BUT...the point of the game is to have fun. And your fun may or may not be maximized by having MechJeb do certain things for you. Once I did certain things by hand several times, I often find that MechJeb taking care of that relieves the tedium and increases the fun.

[Linear]

Autopilots are definitely real, but take away from the game in my opinion. The whole point of a game is to do it yourself, unlike the real world where automation is desired.

If you must automate, something like Kerbal Operating System would be a better choice because then you still have that sense of accomplishment, it's just in a different place. Instead of "Yay I piloted a ship to orbit.", it's "Yay, I figured out how to write a script to pilot a ship to orbit!".

MechJeb on the other hand is pretty much a "do it for me" button. I refuse to use it. However, It is your game and what interests you about this game is entirely your business, so if you want to use it, then use it.

You post some drivel sometimes. A game isn't defined by that, and if someone enjoys building a ship while letting an autopilot do the hard/monotonous bits - then it's hard to argue they're not enjoying playing a game.