Newish.

[MassiveEntropy]

I've had this game for about two days now, and i'm in love. But I also hate it, haha.

Thing's I've accomplished:

1. Crashed.

2. Forgot to throttle up before take off.

3. Made my own craft that continually fails.

4. Made it to the moon; crashed.

5. Put a satellite in orbit at 150km.

However, the satellite and moon were other peoples designs, and I feel like I could make my own, but I continually make mistakes I don't know i'm committing. Either way, this is a great game. Maybe someone could help me out by making a checklist of essential things for each flight? My next project will be making a space station!

[CCKinnison]

2 happens now and then. 3 Happens in cycles. Fail - analyze - sometimes rebuild - fail - analyze - etc...

Only sometimes rebuild because even the best rocket will sometimes randomly fail when the physics loads oddly... I've had things spontaneously fall off a design that had launched JUST FINE 3x in a row... Unless I see an obvious wrongness in a desgin, I usually launch it at least once more to see if it fails in the same way. (simulator runs, I call 'em)

[Captain Sierra]

Sucess is optional, failure is a constant. You will blow stuff up a LOT! Don't let that discourage you. After ending flight, look back and try to find out what broke first. Remember, SPACE TAPE FIXES EVERYTHING. Struts are your friend. People like me, who have gone for more ambitious stuff, call it space tape because it's about as good as duct tape. It can fix ANYTHING. Don't be afraid to use it liberally. I suggest going for the moon again rather than space station. Orbital rendezvous and docking are two of the hardest things in the game to do.

Here is a checklist if you want one.

Essential parts:

RCS thrusters & fuel (control in orbit)

Winglets/fins (control in atmosphere)

ASAS unit (essential to not spin)

fuel and motors (I can give a brief lesson on asparagus staging, but later)

Launching:

step 1: activate ASAS (T key by default)

Step 2: throttle up (shift)

Step 3: Ignite first stage (space)

Step 4: climb to ~10,000 meters, dropping empty stages

Step 5: turn to ~ 10* angle at either 90* or 270* heading for gravity turn

Step 6: continue to slowly lean over until you reach horozontal and your apoaps is above 75,000 meters. Recomended to get it over 100k.

Step 7: proceed to apoaps and burn prograde to circularize orbit.

Hope this helps you.

-Sierra

[MassiveEntropy]

So, as of today, and relaunched my satellite to orbit at 600km (601,180m Pe and 601,494 AP) and now i'm looking towards doing a space station, likely to mimic the ISS. I'm likely to use the stock space station core, cause it looks like it was designed very well, and i'm planning on 3 more flights to dock, two for just solar panels and another one for living quarters. Any suggestions on how to make the externals? Like, I know I need couplings and a unmanned probe thing, it's just I don't know exactly what to put on it.

[Scarecrow88]

Before launching your space station core, you might want to design a small, manoeuvrable craft, launch in to orbit and then launch a second one to practice doing a rendezvous and dock. A lot of people find this particular task to be one of the most difficult to master, and you would be better practicing with two craft that are quite manoeuvrable rather than trying for the first time with your space station and subsequent attachments..

[Capt'n Skunky]

Happy Launching!

Arrr!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager