Yet Another Kerbicidal Maniac

[Spektyr]

Okay, not really Kerbicidal, but I do seem to come really, really close more often than I care to admit.

Sometimes deliberately. Like, "I wonder what happens if I angle my tail fins so the rocket spins" deliberately. Followed by "well that wasn't very much fun... let's angle them more" and then "let's add more fins, angled more". It's not like I'm a monster, I did have a very effective abort stage and not one Kerbal died in testing of the Vomit Comet. Four KSP janitors quit on the spot saying, "to hell with this, I'm not cleaning another cockpit no matter what you're paying," but no one died. In that rocket testing series.

So, how did I start out...

I shot my first rocket way, way up. It fell back down but had parachutes. Over a series of refinements I got out of the atmosphere, then fell right back in. Figured out (looked it up) that I needed a gravity turn, and promptly made orbit. An ugly, ugly orbit, but orbit. Scaled up looking to get enough delta-v into orbit to have a decent shot at a Mun orbit. Took some tweaking to figure out the right balance between going big and going home, but finally got a Munar orbit. Again, not a super-pretty one, but this one was decently circular. A bit drunken inclination, but circular. Kinda hosed the return transfer and wound up with an apoapsis around Minmus' neighborhood, and not much fuel left, but a quick toot retrograde at apoapsis got my periapsis into aerobraking territory and over the course of several annoyingly long orbits, I finally got them back out of orbit and Kerbin-bound. Then I had it accelerated when the chutes opened, ripped them right off, and killed all 3 Kerbonauts. Ended up doing the whole thing over, and not much better, but got everyone back alive.

Redesigned to build myself a simple lander, packed on some more delta-v, and got to, onto, back up from, and back home from the Mun. I got myself some mods (ISA Map-sat) and sent out mapping probes to nice little polar orbits around Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, and even Duna. Tried an ion drive solar probe. Decided I do not like multi-hour burns. At all. Launched a two-piece station, wrecked a LOT of landers trying them out on Kerbin (seriously, can we get some anti-lock brakes in the space program?) and I've crashed ever so slightly fewer space planes than I've launched. I've gotten some into orbit, and I've landed some, but I've never done both with the same plane. Typically just before I get them close to the ground after re-entry, they go all "leaf in the wind" on me and not in the "watch how I soar" way - more like the "define interesting" way. Ejection seats probably wouldn't be a bad investment for the KSP, either.

Current goal is to put an insanely over-sized fuel depot into orbit, attach a modest little station module to it, and then put a fairly over-built docking ring onto that. Using that as my LKO staging point, I plan to build smaller "mobile stations" with multi-nuke-engine drive sections to move them to the Mun, Minmus, and parts beyond. Ideally, one per celestial body. So like a zillion frikkin' launches, especially considering I need several probes, a lander, rover, space plane, base equipment, and the resources to run all that to go along for the ride or otherwise make the journey as well (preferably in the same window so I'm not waiting forever for the next one.) I like the idea of an "all-in-one" station/ship. It probably won't work, I'll probably either lose it to the Kraken or just not be able to push that much weight, but that's what I'd like to build.

[Capt'n Skunky]

Happy Launching!

Arrr!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[musicpenguin]

Welcome newcomer! I hope you enjoy this as much as I do! Have fun on the forums!