Learning the theory

[Wice]

I've been watching a lot of videos lately by people like Scott Manley and what I've noticed is that those people know their fair share of rocket science (Both the physics aspect of it, as well as what's going on in current day space technology) and I was wondering, since KSP has really sparked my enthousiasm for anything space related, what would be a good way to expand my knowledge on this subject. Which books should I read, which websites should I follow, which documentaries should I watch, which kinds of theory should I study to broaden my knowledge on the subject?

I understand most of the instructions that tutorial videos give me but a lot of the time, I can't help but wonder "Yes, but why?"

[K^2]

It all depends on where you are starting from. Do you know the basic mechanics? Forces, Newton's Laws? How do you feel about Trigonometry? Geometry? Linear Algebra? Any Calculus? There is nothing wrong with starting completely from scratch, but we need to know to make any recommendations.

[Wice]

I'm familiar with things like Newtons law from my physics class in High school but seeing as that's been a while, starting from scratch to refresh my memory would probably be the smartest thing to do.

[K^2]

I'd start with review of introductory mechanics, then. Udacity has a course that might work for that. First four lessons cover the things you need to know before you get into orbital mechanics. You can also see if your local library has a textbook on introductory mechanics and see if you can follow that. After that, you should be able to follow most of the Wikipedia's article on orbital mechanics. It doesn't replace a proper course, but it should at least answer some questions, and maybe give you a better idea of what else you need to understand. Typically, more serious topics on orbital mechanics are covered in the course on Classical Mechanics, but that tends to involve far more serious math because you typically step away from Newtonian Mechanics and start dealing with Lagrangian Mechanics. You don't, strictly speaking, need to know any of that if you don't want to deal with N-body problems, though. So you might be able to find a textbook on orbital mechanics that's done entirely from perspective of Newtonian Mechanics. I just don't really know what to recommend for that.

[NovaSilisko]

On the space technology side, I recommend http://www.astronautix.com/, and Atomic Rockets has a lot of info on a variety of subjects of rocket science http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

[Wice]

I'd start with review of introductory mechanics, then. Udacity has a course that might work for that. First four lessons cover the things you need to know before you get into orbital mechanics. You can also see if your local library has a textbook on introductory mechanics and see if you can follow that. After that, you should be able to follow most of the Wikipedia's article on orbital mechanics. It doesn't replace a proper course, but it should at least answer some questions, and maybe give you a better idea of what else you need to understand. Typically, more serious topics on orbital mechanics are covered in the course on Classical Mechanics, but that tends to involve far more serious math because you typically step away from Newtonian Mechanics and start dealing with Lagrangian Mechanics. You don't, strictly speaking, need to know any of that if you don't want to deal with N-body problems, though. So you might be able to find a textbook on orbital mechanics that's done entirely from perspective of Newtonian Mechanics. I just don't really know what to recommend for that.

On the space technology side, I recommend http://www.astronautix.com/, and Atomic Rockets has a lot of info on a variety of subjects of rocket science http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

Thanks, I'll take a look at these!