KSP Old-school memories

[Brofessional]

The first time I achieved a nice circular orbit. Was not as easy back then with no map view or time warp.

 

 

[RobertaME]

6 hours ago, KevinTMC said:

Always meant to give Orbiter a spin, especially since HarvesteR himself was into it and it helped inspire KSP.

Orbiter is to KSP what a professionally built model is to Legos. Using it right requires flight plans, a detailed understanding of the spacecraft, and not making a single mistake. While it can be a fantastic simulation, (I actually had to learn to use the DSKY!) KSP is much more fun. KSP almost rewards mistakes, while Orbiter actively punishes you for them. (like real life)

Honestly, I haven't touched Orbiter in over six years. Maybe the new version is better... but 2010 was brutal!

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Project Space Station looks rather like a precursor to Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space, which I've played a fair bit of (both the original and the 2013 remake, Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager). Might just have to see if I can get Project Space Station running in an emulator.

Project Space Station was more about program management than anything else. Launch Scheduling, crew selection, orbiter loading, experiment selection, component purchasing, managing satellite launches, etc.

Of course, the fun part was designing your station on the ground and then assembling your space station on-orbit! Getting the parts there meant dozens of successful launches. Launches were abstracted into a "fly through the boxes" minigame, followed by orbital operations, then another "boxes" minigame for re-entry, and lastly a horizontally scrolling landing sequence where you have to try and hit the numbers at the head of the runway before rolling out to a stop. Depending on how good you did in the launch game determined how far away you were from your station for part deployment and how good you did in the landing game determined how long your maintenance period was. (do too badly and an orbiter was out of circulation for months and not available for payload delivery... pushing back your schedule and costing more money)

It was fun and simplistic, but endorsed by NASA... so of course I spent thousands of hours playing the thing!

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As for your total-geek-girl historical expertise, I might have to pick your brain a bit about Apollo.

One KSP project that I've been tinkering with for a little while is an Apollo 11 replica mission. I've put together the most similar craft I can using stock parts; I hope I'm at least in the ballpark aesthetics-wise, but where I really want to nail the verisimilitude is in the actual flight plan. Have started to learn my way around kOS (okay, so now the craft is stock parts plus kOS units) so I can program flight sequences rather than fly them all by hand...this will make for a better simulation in many respects.

There are, however, a few details that have been hard to nail down, even after consulting some flight manuals and reports available online. For instance, I've gotten stuck trying to figure out the orientation of the craft (relative to direction of travel) during transposition-docking-extraction. I am also kinda sketchy on precisely what maneuvers the CSM/LM stack and S-IVB subsequently performed to establish a safe distance and then inject the latter onto a heliocentric trajectory.

Happy to oblige!

Orientation: This was mostly selected based on aspect to the Sun for thermal management, but also to minimize crew radiation exposure. During the outbound voyage, the CSM/LM stack was oriented "north celestial pole" facing (with the LM descent engine pointed toward the zenith and the SPS engine bell pointed toward the nadir) with a 0.3°/sec left roll rate about the plane of the ecliptic. This was done for thermal management and also to stabilize the stack through gyroscopic effect. Return trips were oriented to celestial nadir. (CM docking port pointed in the same general direction as the Earth's south pole)

During TDE, orientation was 40° right and 40° angled nadir of prograde for separation, so the S-IVb wouldn't block radio communication to Earth. Separation maneuvers were performed alternately with the RCS or SPS, depending on mission parameters. (Apollo 8 for example used RCS while 11 used the SPS) Most separation maneuvers were on the close order of 10 ft/sec, using either method.

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Anyhow, speaking of programming (and oh dear, this is where I'm really going to get self-indulgent, isn't it)...

The C-128 was sweet! We had one of those at the computer store too (new, not on consignment, so yet more solidly out of my price range than the SX-64).

Modest FPS or no, sounds like you got way beyond the few stabs I took at programming game-type substances. Knew my way around Applesoft BASIC (I had an Apple II+ that was later upgraded to a IIe), but never got far in machine language. Mostly I tinkered with and expanded games that I had typed in from some books and magazines that I picked up at the science museum. Wasn't too bad at that.

Once I tried creating a graphical game from scratch, a simple drop-ball-onto-target thing...boy did that turn out lame. There was not even the slightest approximation of physics; the ball just went on a pre-scripted trajectory based on when the player hit the space bar to drop the (moving) ball. At least it was a polite program--it began by asking for the player's name, then responded with PRINT N$;" IS A NICE NAME."

(I see some eyerolls out there...I was still in grade school, okay?)

More of a success was the program I wrote (as a high schooler) to create banners, which I printed out on continuous rolls of paper fed into my trusty Epson FX-80 dot matrix printer. (I remember spending a good long while mapping out the letter forms on millimeter graph paper.) Even earned a little pocket money making banners for the odd birthday or retirement party...until Brøderbund put me out of business by releasing The Print Shop.

Still not a patch on your lunar lander simulator I think (certainly not as fun surely)...but clearly I'm still proud enough of the project to blather about it here.

Very cool! Thanks, BTW, for your compliments at my insanely simplistic (and likely inefficient) efforts at writing real code. I was in middle school at the time and teaching myself calculus... not for grades but for programing! (my father taught me algebra when I was still in 5th grade to learn basic electronics; he tried to teach my sister as well, but I was the only one of his daughters to take an interest in "dad's work")

[razark]

On 8/13/2020 at 9:33 AM, razark said:

Any shots I have from the 0.13.3 demo are on a dead computer, awaiting retrieval right now.

New computer acquired, hard drive recovered.

My first KSP screenshot, 13 Jul 2012:

 

And another, from a month later:

[RobertaME]

2 minutes ago, razark said:

New computer acquired, hard drive recovered.

My first KSP screenshot, 13 Jul 2012:

And another, from a month later:

Now THAT is very Kerbal! I love it!