A basic tutorial for beginners-construction and basic flight

[EVA_Reentry]

Hey y'all! Saw the word 'tutorials' here, hope it's the right place

 

 

 

A Basic Tutorial of the VAB, SPH and Flying

 

For KSP 1.0.4 and up

By EVA_Reentry

 

 

 

 

Congratulations! You have joined the legions of would-be rocket scientists. You has Kerbal!

 

 

Part the First

 

Measurements

 

There are a lot of measurements in KSP. This will explain them.

 

-Weight: 

Weight is measured in metric tons

 

-Height/Width/Length:

Measured in meters and centimeters

 

-Thrust

Thrust is always measured in kN (kilonewtons). To lift ten metric tons, an engine capable of producing 99.6 kN of thrust is needed. A useful resource for calculating this is convertunits.com. Always round up to the nearest whole number of tons and round down to the nearest whole for thrust when calculating.

 

-Speed is measured in meters per second. When an engine says it produces X amount of thrust at a Mach number, use convertunits to calculate between Mach and m/s

 

-The measurement for amounts of fuel in a container is liters

 

-Height and Distance

Heights and Distances are measured in meters and kilometers

 

-Heat is measured in degrees kelvin

 

 

Part the Second

 

-COM, COL, and COT

 

-The COM, COL, and COT are very important for air/spacecraft design, assuming you want to fly and not just blow things up, which is, of course, totally acceptable.

 

-The COM

 

The COM is the center of mass. The center of mass is where the gravitational force of the vehicle is centred. Before launching an aircraft, make sure that it is in the latitudinal middle of the plane when viewed from the top, and that it is in between the landing gear. If building a rocket with an RCS system, put RCS blocks, flaps/winglets, or reaction wheels as close as possible to the COM. Also known as the Center of Gravity.

 

-The COL

 

The COL is the centre of lift. This where the lift force from the wings and canards are centred. Before launching an aircraft, make sure that the COL is behind the COM. Move the wings up and down the fuselage to adjust. The COL makes absolutely no difference in rockets, unless you are building a shuttle. It is a better idea to build the plane in the SPH and then load it in the VAB.

 

-The COT

 

The COT is the centre of thrust. It really doesn’t matter that much, but make sure that it is inline with and behind the COM and COL. If, somehow, it is lopsided, correct it by moving the engine around.

 

For a more detailed explanation of these, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/47818-basic-aircraft-design-explained-simply-with-pictures/

 

 

Part the Third

 

VAB/SPH Controls

 

Q: Roll part left 90°

W: Pitch part down 90°

E: Roll part down 90°

A: Yaw part left 90°

S: Pitch part up 90°

D: Yaw part right 90°

 

Any of the above + shift: Roll/Pitch/Yaw part 5° instead of 90°

 

X: Increase symmetry 1 

C: Angle Snap/Circular Snap

Shift+X: Decrease symmetry 1

 

 

Numpad Arrow UP: Circle camera up

 

Numpad Arrow L: Circle camera left

 

Numpad Arrow R: Circle camera right

 

Numpad Arrow DOWN: Circle camera down

 

Numpad +: Zoom in

 

Numpad -: Zoom out

 

Home: Scroll Staging Sequence Up

 

End: Scroll Staging Sequence down

 

PageUp: Move camera up

 

PageDown: Move camera down

 

Ctrl + Z: Undo last action

 

Esc: While building a fairing, this cancels it

 

Alt: Modifier key

 

Alt + F12: Cheats/debug menu

 

LMB: Left mouse button

 

RMB: Right mouse button

 

MMB: Middle mouse button

 

Alt + LMB: Hover over the root part of an assembly and press this to duplicate it

 

1: Place Mode. Use this to build

 

2: Offset mode. Use this to move parts up, down, left, and right on their attachment node(not rotate)

 

3: Rotate Mode. Use this to pitch, yaw, and roll parts

 

4: Root mode. Change the root part.

 

Part the Fourth

 

Sizes and Fuselages

 

Size 1 (Tiny): Smallest size

 

Size 2 (Small/Mk1/): Small size

 

Size 3 (Medium/Rockomax): Medium size

 

Size 4 (Large/Kerbodyne): Large size

 

Mk2: Slim fuselage, reminiscent of SR-71 fuselage

 

Mk3: Large Fuselage, reminiscent of Space Shuttle fuselage

 

Surface Attach: Radial Attachment

 

There are more mod fuselage types

 

Part the Fourth

 

Resources (Stock)

 

Liquid Fuel: Simple fuel, used for jet engines

 

Rocket Fuel: LF and Oxidizer, used for rocket engines

 

Oxidizer: Only found with RF

 

Xenon Gas: Highly efficient fuel, only one consumer

 

Ore: Result of mining

 

Intake Air: Replaces oxidizer in jet engines

 

Electric Charge: Used to power Science equipment, lights, wheels, SAS. Generated by solar panels, fuel cells, alternators, and RTGs, and stored in batteries.

 

Monopropellant: Used for RCS and one engine

 

Solid Fuel: Used for boosters and CES

 

Dirt: An ore that can be scanned from the Narrow-Band

 

Karbonite: An ore that can be scanned from the Narrow-Band

 

Uraninite: An ore that can be scanned from the Narrow-Band

 

Water: Do I really have to explain that?!

 

Substrate: Similar to dirt. Nothin’ special.

 

 

Part the Fifth

 

Engines and Methods of Propulsion

 

•Engine types

 

Jet Engine: Efficient LF and IA engine. Jool and Kerbin Only!

 

Rocket Engine: Most common engine, consumes LF and Ox. Capable of flight in all atmospheres

 

Hybrid Engine: Only one stock type, the R.A.P.I.E.R. Mode can be switched from Intake Air and LF to Ox and LF, making it capable of flight in all atmospheres

 

Xenon Engine: Only one type, very efficient, but weak. Recommended for space probes

 

Monopropellant Engine: One example, O-10 ‘Puff’. Efficient. 

 

Wheels: Rover wheels. Consume Electric Charge and can go up to about 25 m/s

 

Solid Rocket Engines: Consume Solid Rocket fuel. Used as boosters and for the Crew Escape System. Cannot be shut down!

 

A Brief Tutorial: Downloading Mods in Windows

 

Go to curse.com/ksp-mods/, or another mod website, and download them

Make a folder to put the mods in

Once the mods have been downloaded and put in the folder, right-click on them and select ‘Extract All’

Once all of the mods have been extracted, you can delete the zipped folder

Open Documents

Go to Local Disk (C:)

Open the ‘Kerbal Space Program’ file folder (there might be a ‘2’ after Program. Not KSP_win!)

Make sure your mods folder is open in the background

In the KSP folder, there is another folder called ‘GameData’. Open it.

There should be only one folder in GameData, called Squad. If this is true, you are in the correct folder.

Open your mods folder

Right click on the mods you want to implement and press ‘Copy’.

Open GameData again

Right click on the folder and select ‘Paste’

Repeat steps 11-14 for each mod

Make sure you do this while KSP is not open.

Now, close out of your folders

And run KSP

Congrats! You now have mods!

*Make sure the mods are compatible with your version of KSP

It will take a little longer to load the game, but it is always worth it.

 

Downloading Crafts

Go to preferred website

Press download

Save to: Local Disk (C:)>KerbalSpaceProgram>Saves>(Whatever game you want to save it to)>Ships>SPH/VAB

Congrats! (Yeah, it’s that simple)

 

Now, back to How Do I Rocket

 

Part the Sixth

 

Flight controls and the flight interface

 

•Basic Airplane Flight

 

Q: Roll left

W: Pitch down/ Dive

E: Roll right

A: Yaw(turn) left

S: Pitch up

D: Yaw right

R: Activate RCS

T: Activate SAS

F: Toggle SAS

Z: Full Throttle

X: Cut Throttle

G: Lower/Raise LG

U: Toggle Lights

B: Toggle Brakes

Ctrl: Lower Throttle

Shift: Raise Throttle

Backspace: Activate abort action group

1-9: Activate custom action groups

F1: Screenshot

F2: Toggle Display

F3: View flight log

F5: Quicksave

F10: Jump to a quicksave

Alt + F12: Open cheats/debug menu

Numpad arrows: Move camera 

Numpad .: 

Numpad +: Zoom in

Numpad -: Zoom out

Space: Stage

CapsLock: Softer Controls (Not recommended for flight)

[: Cycle through active ships-forwards

]:Cycle through active ships-backwards

Esc: Pause menu

Delete: Docking Controls

M: Map view

C: Toggle IVA view

V: Toggle camera mode

 

•Takeoff routine

 

Once you have built your aircraft, press launch. The screen will go blank and then give you a view of your plane in the runway.

 

Press the brakes right away

Throttle up

Press space

Let your engines power up for a bit

Once you think everything is ready, press ‘B’

Let your plane taxi down the runway for a bit

Now hold down on the ‘S’ key

When or if your plane takes off, wait a few seconds, press ‘T’ and let go of ‘S’

Congrats! You may or may not be in stable flight.

If you want to do tricks, let go of T, turn on RCS if you want, and use the QWEASD keys to maneuver

Banking is an irritating endeavour. If you only use the A and D keys to turn, the plane will pitch down and revert to it’s original heading. Use the Q and E keys to roll onto the plane’s side, and then use S and W to turn. Once the turn is completed, press the roll key that you did not use to turn to level out.

 

Now for landings. Landing are a very unusual event, at least for beginners, and stable landings are even rarer. But, if you do get to that stage, here is a basic tutorial.

 

•For landing over land

Lower your throttle to half

Open your landing gear

Turn on your brakes

Gently press the ‘W’ key to lower your nose. Stay in a gentle dive

Lower your throttle even further

Keep doing steps 1-5 until you are ready to land

If you have LG lights, or lights in general, turn them in to see how close you are to land.

If you have parachutes, get ready to open them

The instant your wheel touches the ground, cut your throttle

Open your chutes

If there is no explosion, go to step 15. If there is an explosion, wait until you are going 5 m/s or slower and then:

Activate the abort action group if you have one

Hover over the kerbonaut’s image

Press EVA, spacebar, R, and hold down shift, in that order

If you did it right your kerbonaut will be out of the plane and should land safely. Should.

But if you don’t need to bail out, then simply let your plane bleed off speed. Success!

 

Now for water landings. In 1.0.4, you could splashdown, but not take off. In 1.0.5, water has been given physics and amphibious landings and takeoffs are now possible. If you want your plane to land in water, see Building Tips

 

Lower your throttle to half

Keep your LG closed

Keep tapping your air brakes if you have any, but don’t lock them open

Keep your aircraft pointed just below the blue of the artificial horizon, not any deeper

If you are currently above 200 metres, go to step 12. If not, go to 6

Bring up your throttle a bit. Assuming a weight of ~30 tonnes, you should be going about 85 m/s.

Steepen your dive but prepare to even out and brake

Continue step 7 until 400 metres

If your aircraft is amphibious, even out a bit but stay in the orange. If not, open any parachutes, slow to ~60 m/s, and keep your navball just in the orange. Make sure you are descending.

Open your brakes

Steepen just a bit

You should now be at about 200 metres. 

If you have any chutes open and find yourself tipping nose-down, cut them

If you are going faster, at this point, than 50 m/s, pull a sharp left yaw, keeping your nose as even as possible. This will bleed off speed.

Cut your throttle totally

Volplane to the surface

At +20 metres,

Straighten out so you are descending but as straight as possible. At 20 metres and below, ground effect will take over, so just keep it level

Touchdown!

 

Part the Seventh

 

Building Tips

 

-Planes

•Seaplanes

 

Keep your wings high up, with your engines on top of the wings

Put pontoons in your wings

The pontoons should be a Mk2 fuselage, as the have the highest crash resistance

Always keep your engines above any possible waterline

Struts!

The K.A.X. Aerospace mod and FantomWorks KAX+ mod has a size 3 fuselage cockpit. This mod is recommended for seaplanes.

Twin tails are good, too

MasterTech Aerospace has a fuselage with a 120 m/s crash resistance. This is recommended for pontoons

Keep wings straight and supported

Put a parachute or two on the centre of mass for a nearly guaranteed landing

 

SSTOs

The Mk2 and 3 fuselages are the best for these

Have lots of cargo bays

Make sure there are parachutes

Unmanned has less risks, of course, but what’s the fun in that?

Make sure it has heavy LG and is capable of amphibious landings

Use a combination of rocket and jet engines for propulsion

Use lots of RCS ports

Put on lights, space is dark[citation needed]

The heat shield tile mod provides a radially attachable heat shield tile. Coat the bottom with this.

Make sure it can generate electricity

 

Jet Fighters and Stunt Planes

The best stock engines are either the J-404 Afterburning Turbofan or the JX4.

I generally use a Mk1 Inline Cockpit and transition to a Mk2 fuselage

TweakScale mod allows you to resize parts, making available new and interesting nose cones

Use swept wing with control surfaces in the wing-to understand this concept, look at the Gull stock plane

Have an action group to toggle afterburners

Use the CH-3J SAS nosecone

Lots of control surfaces!

Have an action group for afterburners

 

Crew Modules

Generally, the Mk. 1-2 capsule is the best

Use offset to tuck the chutes in

If you have tweakscale, don’t use the 2.5m heatshield. Instead, use the Mk. 1 heatshield and increase it’s size to 2.5m. This will give you 1600 units of ablator, more than the standard 2.5m.

Attach the LES tower to a docking port, not a decoupler, so that you can attach a lander or complete a docking mission.

Use a separator, not a decoupler to attach the CM to the SM.

For the service module, be sure to have a good supply of LF and OX.

Also include batteries, RTGs, data transmitters, science experiments, RCS ports, flywheels, and solar panels in the Service Module. Generally, the SM is used to complete the orbital burn, as well as returning from other planets. Never, ever, detach the SM before degrading your orbit enough to reenter.

Make sure you can detach the LES tower before reentry, or your capsule will flip over.

Attach structural girders (not the tiny one) to the bottom of the CM. They have a crash resistance of 80 m/s, and will probably save your capsule if your parachutes fail.

Fuel load is important; make sure there is enough to get you wherever your destination is.

If you have Tweakscale, increase the size of the Oscar-B tank as well as the Spark engine. The Oscar-B is smaller but holds more fuel than the medium 2.5m tank, and the Spark will consume only 15 units per second while generating 512 kN in an atmosphere.

 

Landers

Put a docking port in top for Apollo-style missions

Use monopropellant engines for ascent engines; it is better to have one standardized fuel system.

Use any engine you like, though, for descent; that stage won’t be coming back anyways.

Don’t be stoopid; no parachutes unless you are landing on Jool or plan to reenter with the ascent stage

Use RTGs, not solar panels, for electricity

Make sure you have a ladder and lights

 

Recommended Mods:

KAX Aerospace and all related KAX mods

MasterTech Aerospace

SSTU

MechJeb

Tweakscale

B9 Aerospace

Generic Inline Cockpits

SpaceY Heavy Lifters

Near Future Series

Heat Shield Tile

Modular Rocket Systems

 

KerbalX.com is a website where you can download crafts

beta.kerbalstuff.com has a ton of mods

 

Types of Crafts

 

SSTO

Cargo

Jet fighter

VTOL

Shuttle

Station

Base

Probe

Lander

Orbiter

Rocket

 

Part The Eighth

 

A basic explanation of the physics behind flyte in KSP.

What is this ‘Lift’ you speak of?

Answer: Planes work by moving forwards with enough speed to trap air under it’s wings, holding it aloft. If your wings are too small, too little air will be trapped for it to rise. Different wing types have different results and advantages. 

     2.   What is thrust?

Answer: Thrust is the amount of pressure that the exhaust of an engine put out. Hopefully, your engines are facing pointing behind your plane. When they generate this pressure, the aircraft will move forwards. Thrust will affect mass; if your plane weighs seven tons and your engine generates eight tons of thrust, the plane will technically be massless, with one ton of thrust pushing it forwards. This would be like flying in space, but there is still an atmosphere and you have lift-generating surfaces. Therefore, you have thrust and lift but not mass, meaning you will move forwards and take off. However, say your shuttle is reentering with it’s nose down; if you burn your engines, this will actually add to mass, meaning the spacecraft will speed up. Generally, one should re-enter with their nose up. To understand this, watch a video of a space shuttle reentering. Assuming you have engines and they are on, the plane will always move in the retrograde direction of the engine unless it a) outweighs the thrust generated, or, b) is on an angle steep enough for gravity to counteract engine thrust. 

     3. What is gimbal? Why does it work/not work?

Answer: Gimbal is when an engine vectors, or points, it’s nozzle or wherever the thrust emits from. If you read this tutorial carefully, you will have a basic understanding of the CoT. If your engines can gimbal, here’s what would happen when you press ‘S’. The nozzles would point upwards, directing the thrust to point up. You’d think this would send the plane into a dive, but remember: only the engines are moving. The thrust will push down on only the center of thrust, which is generally close to the back of the plane. Because the back is pushed down, the plane turns into a giant lever, with the center of mass as the fulcrum. From the CoM and forwards, the plane will pivot upwards, while the engines will revert to normal upon the release of the ‘S’ key and the plane will remain with the nose up and the engines now pushing away from the plane. Ta Da! The same thing will happen, but flipped, when ‘W’ is pressed. 

     4. Explain me control surfaces.

Answer: Control surfaces include winglets, rudders, elevators, ailerons, tailplanes, and flaps. They work much like an engine gimbal, vectoring the air sweeping over them instead of thrust. We’ll use the ‘S’ key example again to explain it. First, the wings. Your wing should not ever be one giant control surface; you will stall. When ‘S’ is pressed, the flap will point upwards, vectoring the airflow over it upwards. Now that the air flowing over is generating lift, it will act as thrust. However, instead of pushing down on the CoT, it will do so with the CoL.  Now onto vertical stabilizers, tailplanes, ailerons, rudders, etc. The main problem with these is that they are placed on or near the CoT to assist with vectoring (if you have wing mounted engines, this might be different). They are far from both the CoL and CoM, which means that although it will certainly vector airflow, it will push the nose down and will have great difficulty keeping the CoM and CoL from reverting to their original position. Not much can be done about this, aside from totally messing up the plane’s aesthetics and putting the tail dead center. :-(