I cant Get into Orbit

[JNA Space Program]

I cant Get into Orbit when i tilt the rocket to get into earths orbit it just float up!

Help i never thought that this game is not only a game but real science

[Snark]

Gameplay question moved to Gameplay Questions.

There are, broadly speaking, two things that can get in the way when you want to go to orbit:

1. Problems with your rocket design

2. Problems with your piloting

...we kinda need more info from you to be able to give more specific advice.

Can you post a screenshot of your rocket, and describe specifically how you're flying it?

[JNA Space Program]

3 minutes ago, Snark said:

Gameplay question moved to Gameplay Questions.

There are, broadly speaking, two things that can get in the way when you want to go to orbit:

1. Problems with your rocket design

2. Problems with your piloting

...we kinda need more info from you to be able to give more specific advice.

Can you post a screenshot of your rocket, and describe specifically how you're flying it?

i dunno how to put the picture 

 

[Enorats]

Not sure what you mean by floating up. Orbit is basically falling forwards at the same speed (or faster) than the ground is falling away from you. To pull it off, go upwards until you're 10 to 15 km up and then start tilting the rocket towards the sea (keep it on the 90 degree line on the navball). Go slowly at first, maybe 10 degrees tilted. By 25 to 30 km you'll want to be around 45 degrees tilted. This is a gravity turn, you're basically letting the planet's gravity pull you downward as you fall halfway forward. Keep burning until your highest point (apoapsis) is around 75 km. 70 is the edge of the atmosphere. Kill the engines and drift to your apoapsis. Point prograde (forward, the direction you're going. It's on the navball too). Burn again until you start going fast enough forward to achieve orbit. Your lowest point (periapsis) will be on the other side of the planet, as you burn that'll raise higher and higher and eventually go higher than you are now.. that's how you raise your orbit higher. Lowering the orbit is the opposite, burn retrograde (backwards) to slow down, letting you fall closer to the ground. Drop into the atmosphere a bit and it'll slow you down.. get too deep too fast and you turn into a fireball.

It takes practice to understand which direction to burn and when, but once you get it down its not too hard. It's doing it accurately and efficiently that takes lots of math and precision. Mechjeb is a mod you can add to the game to autopilot the ship. Watch how it does things and it'll teach you how to fly.

[JNA Space Program]

2 minutes ago, Enorats said:

Not sure what you mean by floating up. Orbit is basically falling forwards at the same speed (or faster) than the ground is falling away from you. To pull it off, go upwards until you're 10 to 15 km up and then start tilting the rocket towards the sea (keep it on the 90 degree line on the navball). Go slowly at first, maybe 10 degrees tilted. By 25 to 30 km you'll want to be around 45 degrees tilted. This is a gravity turn, you're basically letting the planet's gravity pull you downward as you fall halfway forward. Keep burning until your highest point (apoapsis) is around 75 km. 70 is the edge of the atmosphere. Kill the engines and drift to your apoapsis. Point prograde (forward, the direction you're going. It's on the navball too). Burn again until you start going fast enough forward to achieve orbit. Your lowest point (periapsis) will be on the other side of the planet, as you burn that'll raise higher and higher and eventually go higher than you are now.. that's how you raise your orbit higher. Lowering the orbit is the opposite, burn retrograde (backwards) to slow down, letting you fall closer to the ground. Drop into the atmosphere a bit and it'll slow you down.. get too deep too fast and you turn into a fireball.

It takes practice to understand which direction to burn and when, but once you get it down its not too hard. It's doing it accurately and efficiently that takes lots of math and precision. Mechjeb is a mod you can add to the game to autopilot the ship. Watch how it does things and it'll teach you how to fly.

when im like 50-60k meters i tlit the rocket so i could go to orbit. instead i go to the orbit i just float up while my engine is on but i just keep going up instead of orbiting eart

[GoSlash27]

This is what we call a "gravity turn" launch. Start tipping it east a little after launch. You'll have to do it a few times to get the hang of it.

Best,
-Slashy

[Enorats]

Oh, I see. That's physics. You've given yourself a huge push upwards (too much actually, tilting that high is inefficient). That push made you go really fast, and it takes a long time for gravity to slow you down and then speed you up again in the other direction.. down.

Orbit requires getting rather high (at least 70 km on Kerbin) then going really fast SIDEWAYS. Thus, you need to do a circularization burn at your apoapsis (that point where you're not going up anymore and are instead falling down).

If your rocket accelerates slowly it can take awhile to get going fast enough to orbit. Sometimes too long. With some rockets that have a low thrust to weight ratio you burn almost nonstop, and sometimes even dip back into the atmosphere a bit.. which you really don't want to do.

[JNA Space Program]

2 minutes ago, Enorats said:

Oh, I see. That's physics. You've given yourself a huge push upwards (too much actually, tilting that high is inefficient). That push made you go really fast, and it takes a long time for gravity to slow you down and then speed you up again in the other direction.. down.

Orbit requires getting rather high (at least 70 km on Kerbin) then going really fast SIDEWAYS. Thus, you need to do a circularization burn at your apoapsis (that point where you're not going up anymore and are instead falling down).

If your rocket accelerates slowly it can take awhile to get going fast enough to orbit. Sometimes too long. With some rockets that have a low thrust to weight ratio you burn almost nonstop, and sometimes even dip back into the atmosphere a bit.. which you really don't want to do.

Oh mai God bro you really help me a lot. Thanks  

[HebaruSan]

(Nevermind, somehow missed notifications of the above more helpful responses.)

Edited April 9, 2016 by HebaruSan

[JNA Space Program]

11 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

This is what we call a "gravity turn" launch. Start tipping it east a little after launch. You'll have to do it a few times to get the hang of it.

Best,
-Slashy

oh. Because what i did is my rocket goes literary up just up and i tilt the rocket fast. 

[Enorats]

Going quite high, 40+ then tilting the full 90 degrees works too. It actually works better than the regular way for rockets that aren't quite well designed.. ones that tend to flip during a gravity turn might make it by going straight up then turning. It's inefficient to do it that way, but it can be done with extra fuel.

[GoSlash27]

JNA,

 You're not the first to make that mistake

KSP is rocket science, so there's a learning curve to it. Thankfully, there's a lot of helpful info available in the tutorial section.

Good luck and welcome aboard!
-Slashy

[JNA Space Program]

41 minutes ago, Enorats said:

Going quite high, 40+ then tilting the full 90 degrees works too. It actually works better than the regular way for rockets that aren't quite well designed.. ones that tend to flip during a gravity turn might make it by going straight up then turning. It's inefficient to do it that way, but it can be done with extra fuel.

Like my rocket flips when it gets high enough and hard to control. Or literary cannot be control  

40 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

JNA,

 You're not the first to make that mistake

KSP is rocket science, so there's a learning curve to it. Thankfully, there's a lot of helpful info available in the tutorial section.

Good luck and welcome aboard!
-Slashy

hahaha Thx! Judoy N Allena or JNA

[JNA Space Program]

1 hour ago, Enorats said:

Going quite high, 40+ then tilting the full 90 degrees works too. It actually works better than the regular way for rockets that aren't quite well designed.. ones that tend to flip during a gravity turn might make it by going straight up then turning. It's inefficient to do it that way, but it can be done with extra fuel.

hey bro it dint work. i was perfectly on the space like 75k and i engage my 2nd rocket for me to circle the orbit but i notice i dont accelerate. im decelerating and until 70k and i engage my 3rd rocket and i fall back to earth. 

[Enorats]

You probably didn't have enough of a thrust to weight ratio, so you took too long to get up to speed and fell back into the atmosphere. Either lighten the top parts of your rocket up, replace the engine with a stronger one (with more fuel if needed), or maybe start the circularization burn earlier. You may need to begin the burn when you hit 70k and continue burning for some time. With a lower TWR it can take several minutes to get up to speed. Sometimes you have to turn more radial as well later in the burn if you mess up and need to go "up" again. Really wasteful on fuel, but it's better than crashing if you've got extra fuel. Just turn back towards space (the blue part of the navball) until you're like at a 45 degree angle. Doesn't always save the day, but it can sometimes on a low TWR rocket.

Also - the "surface velocity" and "orbit velocity" on the nav ball are almost useless. Mods that add a proper HUD give lots more info, like vertical and horizontal velocity. For example, when you're going up into space it starts out with "surface velocity". That's actually a mixture of your up/down speed and your side to side speed. If you're going 300 m/s up and 50 m/s to the side it'll probably say 350 m/s. But that 350 m/s could just as easily be 50 m/s up and 300 m/s to the side. You don't know without a proper HUD.. it's annoying. Orbit velocity is similar - as you go up into space you're pushing yourself faster and faster upwards, and hopefully to the side as well. Your "surface velocity" will go up and up, reaching like 900 m/s in the upper atmosphere. Eventually it'll turn into "orbit velocity". This is similar, it's a combination of your speed in different directions at any one time. After you've killed you first stage ascent engines and you're drifting to your apoapsis (highest point in the arc), you're no longer accelerating in the side to side (or forward) direction. However, you are being pulled downwards by gravity.. which is why you're moving in an arc. As you move up the arc you'll lose speed because you're gradually being slowed by gravity (like throwing a ball straight up into the air.. it'll go to its highest point, then slow, stop, and fall back to the ground). Your rocket slows in the up/down direction, so your "orbit velocity" goes down. If you don't do anything it'll eventually start going up again as you start falling, you're speeding up in the "down direction".. which you don't really want. Somewhat counter intuitively "orbit velocity" also lowers when you speed up and move into a higher orbit. You sped up to get out there, but on the way out gravity saps all that speed away. When you do a circularization burn to raise your periapsis to a higher altitude it doesn't take much speed to circularize the orbit generally because gravity is weaker the farther out you go.. so higher orbits take lots of speed to reach, but are slow once you get there. 

One other thing to keep in mind - pay attention to which direction you're burning in. Say you launch, get up to your apoapsis to do your circularization burn, burn prograde (forward), and bring your periapsis up above the atmosphere. You're now in orbit. You time warp around to the other side of the planet and get to your periapsis.. now you're facing retrograde "backwards". Your rocket didn't rotate at all - but because of how you're moving it's now "falling" backwards.. warp around the planet again, back to the apoapsis.. and you're falling "forwards" again, facing prograde. 

Now that I think about it, and hopefully this isn't the case, but the other thing that can decelerate you is burning retrograde (backwards). Make sure you're burning prograde, not turning all the way around and burning backwards.

[Superfluous J]

Space is hard. Really hard. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly hard it is. I mean, you may think it's hard to beat the boss in some AAA 20-hour RPGfest, but that's just peanuts to space.

[Plusck]

Enorats is right about the "easy" way to space if you have trouble piloting, but I would think it's a bad habit to get into, and you really need to pack more fuel and much more engine to pull it off.

Most craft that do a very efficient gravity turn (about 85-80° vertical to the east at a speed of 100 m/s, down to 60° vertical at around 5-7km, down to 45° at 8-10km, and virtually circircularising at around 50km altitude) have a final stage which is well under a TWR of 1. However, that is impossible if you go too high vertically to start with, since you simply don't have time to get up to that 2300 m/s you need for orbit (2300 m/s divided by 9.81 m/s² = 3 minutes 54 seconds of constant burning with a TWR of 1...).

 

So rather than doing things the wrong way (which can help for very odd payloads but requires an excessive amount of engines to get going horizontally fast enough), I'd suggest practising the piloting and proper ascent trajectory.

You need a heavy streamlined top to the rocket, and you need fins at the bottom. You make your rocket as minimal as possible, and you practice your flying to keep the ship pointing exactly prograde all the way up out of the atmosphere. It's the initial gentle turn by 5-10° to the east at very low speed which will cause its path to drop to the horizon on its own.

If you make the start of that path right, and follow it carefully all the way, getting to space becomes very elegant. A bit hot and sparkly at times, but still elegant  ; )

[dangerhamster]

4 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Space is hard. Really hard. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly hard it is. I mean, you may think it's hard to beat the boss in some AAA 20-hour RPGfest, but that's just peanuts to space.

Luckily Douglas Adam's lawyers are a lot nicer than Disneys...... And keep at it JNA, when you get it right the first time it all becomes much easier. Well a bit. Sort of. Sometimes.

[GoSlash27]

2 hours ago, Plusck said:

rather than doing things the wrong way (which can help for very odd payloads but requires an excessive amount of engines to get going horizontally fast enough), I'd suggest practising the piloting and proper ascent trajectory.

I agree 100%. You'll do better in the long run if you don't develop bad habits early. The most efficient and effective way to get to orbit is by using a gravity turn, not "straight up and hang a right".

Best,
-Slashy

[JNA Space Program]

5 hours ago, Enorats said:

You probably didn't have enough of a thrust to weight ratio, so you took too long to get up to speed and fell back into the atmosphere. Either lighten the top parts of your rocket up, replace the engine with a stronger one (with more fuel if needed), or maybe start the circularization burn earlier. You may need to begin the burn when you hit 70k and continue burning for some time. With a lower TWR it can take several minutes to get up to speed. Sometimes you have to turn more radial as well later in the burn if you mess up and need to go "up" again. Really wasteful on fuel, but it's better than crashing if you've got extra fuel. Just turn back towards space (the blue part of the navball) until you're like at a 45 degree angle. Doesn't always save the day, but it can sometimes on a low TWR rocket.

Also - the "surface velocity" and "orbit velocity" on the nav ball are almost useless. Mods that add a proper HUD give lots more info, like vertical and horizontal velocity. For example, when you're going up into space it starts out with "surface velocity". That's actually a mixture of your up/down speed and your side to side speed. If you're going 300 m/s up and 50 m/s to the side it'll probably say 350 m/s. But that 350 m/s could just as easily be 50 m/s up and 300 m/s to the side. You don't know without a proper HUD.. it's annoying. Orbit velocity is similar - as you go up into space you're pushing yourself faster and faster upwards, and hopefully to the side as well. Your "surface velocity" will go up and up, reaching like 900 m/s in the upper atmosphere. Eventually it'll turn into "orbit velocity". This is similar, it's a combination of your speed in different directions at any one time. After you've killed you first stage ascent engines and you're drifting to your apoapsis (highest point in the arc), you're no longer accelerating in the side to side (or forward) direction. However, you are being pulled downwards by gravity.. which is why you're moving in an arc. As you move up the arc you'll lose speed because you're gradually being slowed by gravity (like throwing a ball straight up into the air.. it'll go to its highest point, then slow, stop, and fall back to the ground). Your rocket slows in the up/down direction, so your "orbit velocity" goes down. If you don't do anything it'll eventually start going up again as you start falling, you're speeding up in the "down direction".. which you don't really want. Somewhat counter intuitively "orbit velocity" also lowers when you speed up and move into a higher orbit. You sped up to get out there, but on the way out gravity saps all that speed away. When you do a circularization burn to raise your periapsis to a higher altitude it doesn't take much speed to circularize the orbit generally because gravity is weaker the farther out you go.. so higher orbits take lots of speed to reach, but are slow once you get there. 

One other thing to keep in mind - pay attention to which direction you're burning in. Say you launch, get up to your apoapsis to do your circularization burn, burn prograde (forward), and bring your periapsis up above the atmosphere. You're now in orbit. You time warp around to the other side of the planet and get to your periapsis.. now you're facing retrograde "backwards". Your rocket didn't rotate at all - but because of how you're moving it's now "falling" backwards.. warp around the planet again, back to the apoapsis.. and you're falling "forwards" again, facing prograde. 

Now that I think about it, and hopefully this isn't the case, but the other thing that can decelerate you is burning retrograde (backwards). Make sure you're burning prograde, not turning all the way around and burning backwards.

hey man. Thanks. All of you. Why? i got my first Space probe in the EARTHS ORBIT!!!!!! hahahahah Thanks guys!. Could t do it without you  The probe name is JNA Orbiter 1  

[Nich]

14 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

I agree 100%. You'll do better in the long run if you don't develop bad habits early. The most efficient and effective way to get to orbit is by using a gravity turn, not "straight up and hang a right".

Best,
-Slashy

hhmmm... I think I am going to have to disagree my obsession with the perfect gravity turn has wasted so many hours of my life when I could have just added 200 dv and done a bad gravity turn.

[GoSlash27]

51 minutes ago, Nich said:

hhmmm... I think I am going to have to disagree my obsession with the perfect gravity turn has wasted so many hours of my life when I could have just added 200 dv and done a bad gravity turn.

Nich,
 There's no reason to expect a "perfect" gravity turn. I do the same thing you do. My point is that even a bad gravity turn is better than flying straight up to establish Ap and then trying to circularize.

54 minutes ago, JNA Space Program said:

hey man. Thanks. All of you. Why? i got my first Space probe in the EARTHS ORBIT!!!!!! hahahahah Thanks guys!. Could t do it without you  The probe name is JNA Orbiter 1  

JNA,

 Congratulations!

 Next step: Get a Kerbal into orbit and recover him (or her) safely back on Kerbin!

Best,
-Slashy

[JNA Space Program]

1 minute ago, GoSlash27 said:

Nich,
 There's no reason to expect a "perfect" gravity turn. I do the same thing you do. My point is that even a bad gravity turn is better than flying straight up to establish Ap and then trying to circularize.

JNA,

 Congratulations!

 Next step: Get a Kerbal into orbit and recover him (or her) safely back on Kerbin!

Best,
-Slashy

Ehhhhhh. Its a probe. Sorry

[GoSlash27]

Oh, no need to be sorry about your first successful launch being a probe. That's actually the smart way to go about it if you're trying not to kill kerbals.

 But that is the way KSP works and it's how you develop your skillz... You just set simple goals, achieve them, and build on your success by establishing new goals.

Best,
-Slashy

 

[Plusck]

3 hours ago, Nich said:

hhmmm... I think I am going to have to disagree my obsession with the perfect gravity turn has wasted so many hours of my life when I could have just added 200 dv and done a bad gravity turn.

... i'm gonna have to disagree with your disagreement there too : D

I'm really not saying you have to get it perfect.

I mean, it's nice to get it perfect, like really really nice, like landing after a perfect low-level burn, or arriving inside Jool's SOI and finding you have zero correction burns to get captured by your destination orbit, or finishing your asteroid intercept burn as it comes screaming up to a stop 200m away.

But it's certainly not essential or worth wasting time on if it's a chore. An "OK" gravity turn is all you need to make sure that you get safely to orbit wihout too much risk of flipping and without wasting a ton of fuel.

And wasting so many hours of your life? If that's a real concern you should maybe not play KSP to start with ; )