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How long until you learned to orbit?


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I orbited with my 3rd or 4th flight.

My first rockets were all named things like 50k in honour of how high they flew. After the fourth one reached orbit, that stopped making sense.

Mind you, I knew the basic principles of orbiting from Orbiter so it was just a matter of building the right rockets.

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It depends, what one calls an orbit.

Getting something out of atmosphere that then tumbles in an elliptical so-called "orbit" with random inclination? Some gaming hours.

Reaching an orbit, that deserves the name and is something like near that what I wanted it to be? A week of intense playing.

Planing it, reaching AE und PE as intended and the inclination I wanted to have with ressources left for further progress? Roughly 75% of the attempts right now after 300 hours of play.

The same here. Having an orbit in the right plan, round, took me around one month.

But I could perform some very interresting orbits in a few hours (interresting, read : with PE at 70km, AP at 1653km, inclination near 90°)

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First time in orbit? After a few hours I'd gues - surely on the first day I played KSP.

However, this was VERY crude, I would fly straight up, until my apoapsis would be ~150km and then I would wait until I reach it and would burn sideways.

But after a week or so I could perform a crude gravity turn...

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It was actually a few months for me, because I started KSP back around 0.8 or 0.9. During that time, the atmosphere always had the same pressure and ended at 40km. There was no orbital view, ASAS, or RCS.

Once the map view came out and people starting orbiting, though, it was a day or two.

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About 3 hours a night for about 2 weeks trial and error with no manovers nodes to get into a polarish elliptical orbit. I was soooo stoked. Still am. I really really like this game and feel that I have stolen from myself a bit of that feeling by watching and reading every thing I can about KSP, orbital machanics and space stuff. I feel I have learnt so much about these topics for the last 6 months. So cool thanks SQUAD. oh those Apollo guys. crazy very smart brave NUT CASES. I would give it a go if I could :D

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About a week for me, I could get rockets up into space, but it took me a while to revise you had to do a gravity turn! In fact, because I used to just continue burning straight up, I got a probe orbiting the sun before one was orbiting Kerbin. After my first successful orbit, I managed to get people to the Mun in a matter of days. But not back again, because I kept crashing them into the surface! :)

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3 minutes from loading the game to my first flight.

15 minutes from loading the game to my first flight over 10,000m.

45 minutes from first loading the game to my first orbit.

1 hour, 15 minutes from first loading the game to my first Munar landing

2 hours from loading the game to my first rendezvous.

2 weeks from first loading the game to my first Minmus and Duna landing

3 weeks from first loading the game to my first docking (last night! :D)

I started with very little knowledge of physics, no tutorials, and have never played another space game (except Starsector which is not realistic).

I used logic (turning at 15 km should make me go around the sphere) to get to orbit, and for my first two weeks.

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A couple hours. To circularise it took a half hour.

My first perfectly circular orbit... That was better than sex.

I think you might be doing it wrong. :-D

I'll grant KSP can be pretty darned rewarding sometimes though.

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Took about 2 days before I figured it out. That was before the map view and even time warp, so checking to see if you even got an orbit meant needing to go all the way around in real-time. Luckily, the atmosphere ended lower so orbits could be quicker.

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I stumbled upon Scott Manleys amazing videos before I even heard of KSP, after watching his absolute beginners guide a few times I bought the game and after mimicking his rocket and procedures it took me 3 amazing crashes before reaching orbit. So I did it in one day. Although Scott helped a lot, also being a private pilot helped understanding the navball

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