Why real world rocket science is so hard...

[Guest]

Speaking of, the Saturn V had a manual override IIRC. Some of the astronauts have said they probably wouldn't have aborted if a guidance failure had occurred, they'd much rather have flown that beast to orbit themselves.

Or flown it until an abort was absolutely required There's a reason MechJeb isn't allowed in my game.

[Deadweasel]

Nope. No (M)aps with orbital prediction or specific ship/trajectory data points here. Move along please. >_>

[espm400]

KSP parts are much stronger than real life. In KSP you can sit a rocket on its engines and be fine. And your rocket can wobble like a fish and stay together. Also you can dock at

0.2m/s and not have issues.

KSP parts may be stronger, but I would like to think real world rockets have a higher potential for rigidity (sans struts, that is). I would love to more than one connection between parts, it would reduce, if not eliminate the 'wobble like a fish' factor you mentioned. Also, we may be able to dock at a significantly higher velocity, but real life has docking cameras 'stock'(frankly I use the Lazor Docking Camera).

Also @DeadWeasel: Fantastic...

[Deadweasel]

Hmmm...

This explains a few things, actually..

[rpayne88]

I think real world rocket science is so hard because there is no room for error. I sometimes screw up 10 times on REALLY difficult stuff in KSP.

In REAL world rocket science, everything has to be right the very first try, or else you just wasted millions of dollars.

Not quite. There is still a small safety margin on most rockets. Also, if your talking about the actual flying, lets not forget the sims. I forget who, but a former NASA astronaut said he would be rich if he was paid a nickle for every time Mission Control got him killed in the sim.

Edited July 9, 2013 by rpayne88
fixed a typo

[Deadweasel]

Not quite. There is still a small safety margin on most rockets. Also, if your talking bout the actual flying, lets not forget the sims. I forget who, but a former NASA astronaut said he would be rich if he was paid a nickle for every time Mission Control got him killed in the sim.

And don't forget that for the Apollo missions at the very least (and probably more I can't speak to with certainty), each launch had a backup crew that trained in those sims just as hard and often as the primary one. The margin for error is slim on the actual mission, true, but margin of safety? Ask the crew of Apollo 13 what they thought about how "few" safety measures they had available.

[Joshington]

Wait until career mode is put into place. Of course it's still not the same being as that it's not real money, but still.

That sounds like a funny way for Squad to make money. Every time you crash, you have to pay 5 dollars to continue playing. Squad could make a fortune XD

[0jam3290]

That sounds like a funny way for Squad to make money. Every time you crash, you have to pay 5 dollars to continue playing. Squad could make a fortune XD

And alot of unhappy players.

[Arran]

Also real spaceflight have far more dangers visible and invisble, direct and indirect that has too be calculated in to flights, that arent simulated into KSP..

Plus the actual loss of real lifes if things goes wrong, and public perception when things go horrible go wrong.

[redteddy23]

I would think the main advantage our little green friends have over NASA is, aside from the superior quality Kerbal material science, the fact that Kerbal engines have awesome throttling and restart.

[Kodiak42]

Actually it's because of finances, You could easily calculate your periapsis and apoapsis; but building rockets is expensive, you don't have an infinite supply of money in the real world, so you want your rocket to be as cheap as possible.

[KSK]

Hmmm...

This explains a few things, actually..

Heh - my first thought when I saw your original image was 'that would be fairly easy to Photoshop some KSP in-game footage into

[Apollo1391]

well kerbal space program is like Rocket Science 101 and uses some of the same mechanics as real life

[Ekku Zakku]

I actually programmed a plugin once that calculated the apsides from only the velocity and altitude of the spacecraft, along with the physical properties of Kerbin (gravity and whatnot). It wasn't the most accurate thing in the world, but it helped me get into orbit several times in my IVA only space program lol (with no map view). Unfortunately I never bothered to fix it enough to go to the Mun with it, since that would have involved more programming to change the calculations to the Mun's properties when in the Mun's SOI. I might pick it back up in the future though, when the game is finally finished of course; that way I will have everything I need, and won't have to worry about saves breaking and having to do a ton of work all over again. One day I will visit every planet and moon in IVA only, with nothing but velocity, altitude, data (perhaps data that I find myself with probes perhaps) and calculations (done by myself or programed to be done by a computer) to guide me. That, barring all the other differences that KSP has from real life, will be as close to a real world space program and true astronaut experience as you could get I suppose. I think it would be very exciting to fly everywhere by hand, inside a crew capsule, not being able to leave it aside from EVA.

TL;DR: I'm insane and should be put in a mental hospital.

[Deadweasel]

I actually programmed a plugin once that calculated the apsides from only the velocity and altitude of the spacecraft, along with the physical properties of Kerbin (gravity and whatnot). It wasn't the most accurate thing in the world, but it helped me get into orbit several times in my IVA only space program lol (with no map view). Unfortunately I never bothered to fix it enough to go to the Mun with it, since that would have involved more programming to change the calculations to the Mun's properties when in the Mun's SOI. I might pick it back up in the future though, when the game is finally finished of course; that way I will have everything I need, and won't have to worry about saves breaking and having to do a ton of work all over again. One day I will visit every planet and moon in IVA only, with nothing but velocity, altitude, data (perhaps data that I find myself with probes perhaps) and calculations (done by myself or programed to be done by a computer) to guide me. That, barring all the other differences that KSP has from real life, will be as close to a real world space program and true astronaut experience as you could get I suppose. I think it would be very exciting to fly everywhere by hand, inside a crew capsule, not being able to leave it aside from EVA.

TL;DR: I'm insane and should be put in a mental hospital.

You know what would be really cool... I noticed the IVAs of the B9 cabins have interactive computer screens that let you toggle some functions that are already controlled through keyboard anyway, but what if they could show a miniature version of the map screen instead? I know that's likely more pain to implement than it's worth, but it seems like that would have been a more helpful display.