Why I find Ascents Boring

[gloowa]

If something hasn't gone wrong, then you're clearly not playing with magma enough. A safe fort is a sad fort, a magma-ridden burning hellhole infested with the undead and elf corpses, on the other hand, is a Fun fort

Boatmurdered...

Also, magma is so last year. Well educated Urist's use Atom Smashers and/or Thermonuclear Catsplosions

[DngrMse]

that's why mechjeb is here

(mechjeb auto ascend is the only autopiloting it's good at... all other auto thingy doesnt work as you would expect most of the time.)

Once I got the whole getting into orbit thing down, I started using mechjeb for ascents. I will frequently use Smart A.S.S. for s/c orientation prior to burns. Oh, and I did use it a couple times to land on the Mun.

Thinking back on it....getting into orbit the first time was much harder than getting to the Mun and landing.

[Panzerbeard]

Boatmurdered...

Also, magma is so last year. Well educated Urist's use Atom Smashers and/or Thermonuclear Catsplosions

Oh, Boatmurded. Truly the dwarven capital of the universe.

[Lazro]

I usually use Ascent Autopilot with tried and tested designs, but I most always fly a new lifter or rocket by hand before I let MJ take over. While flying essentially the same design over and over again can be and often is tedious, flying something untested can be exciting!

[DChurchill]

I'm with the OP in that I don't need to fly another ascent manually. And I think I'm on the other side of the world from Whackjob. I'm really not interested in those crazy contraptions.

I play KSP like a sim. The idea that you manually fly an ascent is absurd, therefore I let MJ do it for me. I CAN do it, but I don't want to do it. To me the design and that it fly the same profile so I can compare designs is far more important. I've flown flight sims (including Orbiter) since I got my first computer (which was a Sinclair ZX-81). I think I got it figured out.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

I still find ascents exciting, don't exactly know why... I just like seeing the rockets fly up, speeding up, and wondering if they are going to blow up again...

[annallia]

I usually use Ascent Autopilot with tried and tested designs, but I most always fly a new lifter or rocket by hand before I let MJ take over. While flying essentially the same design over and over again can be and often is tedious, flying something untested can be exciting!

I know precisely what you mean. This for example was a new one for me, started out with an idea of a sky crane that could land a huge rover on Duna, decided to say to hell with figuring out how to launch my rover, dock with the skycrane, and then have a tug send it to Duna, lets build something that can do it all!

I could have just let MechJeb do it, and I likely will when I fit the other 4 trucks and put them in orbit but for the first time, as a proof of concept it is always done manually for me.

Granted it needs a refueling once it reaches orbit but I Think it has enough fuel to reach Duna and land, may add chutes later just to be on the safe side.

[esinohio]

Personally I'm kind of agreeing with the OP's post with the caveat that when career mode finally hits I'm wondering how stats on the Kerbals will impact the fly-ability of our rockets. Having odd ball pilots at the helm with low stats, not sure how that is going to work, might make for some interesting ascents don't you think?

[AlternNocturn]

Oh my gosh I thought I was the only one. Every mission I've planned and rocket I've designed, I've dreaded the eventuality where I will have to wiggle this thing into orbit. The first few times you master it it's fun, but after doing it for the thousandth time, it just drives me bonkers. This is why I've taken to using MechJeb for ascents. The motion is ingrained into my muscle memory so I won't have to worry about forgetting.

[Ittiz]

I also try to raise the bets a bit by going non-asparagus or main-column only, this only makes it even more exciting to watch those big, tall dild- rockets take off.

I never do asparagus rockets, at least not with more than one layer. The way I see it that fact that asparagus rockets work in the game is a bug, in reality they would be slow and unstable. Eventually they will fix it. I must say though mechjeb doesn't work well with massive multistaged rockets, it usually sends them into a curly-cue spiral after a couple thousand feet. So I pretty much have to drive all my rockets to orbit by hand. The most fun is getting those asymmetrical parts into orbit.

[Tiron]

That said I also agree with Whackjob. At times I build something that is just absurd and throw it against the wall hoping it sticks. Then again the building aspect of the game is what I enjoy the most. It may not always be pretty, it may not even look overly complicated (like whackjobs impressive creations...) but somehow it does the job even though you think it shouldnt.

Reminds me of my attempts at making a fuel hauler. I did some crazy stuff with it, with absurd amounts of tanks. They all lagged so badly I *couldn't* have launched them manually. Mechjeb doesn't mind a slideshow, and we didn't have physics delta time yet. It's actually one of the principle advantages of the ascent AP: It can launch insane contraptions you'd never be able to control because of the lag they induce.

I once tried to cut down on the number of struts I needed by using a box made out of trusses as the primary structural element, with the tanks hanging off it. It kinda worked. The core of it made it to orbit just fine, with no fuel. When I started hanging tanks off the outer layer, and added more engines, it turned out the joints between the trusses were fairly wobbly. So I started adding struts. And ended up right back in lagville with it still not working, even though it had less fuel.

The basic principle did have SOME merit though: Using one set of engines (five mainsails in a Quincunx formation, which looks really, really good for some reason...*coughS1Ccough*) for the entire ascent, and ejecting just the fuel tanks as they emptied two by two...was REALLY efficient.

I haven't yet tried to re-use a slightly more sane version of it yet, however. Maybe I should...

[karolus10]

I like ascents, I often launch some simple/exaggerated/unstable crafts just for sake of launching it into orbit, especially if You don't had too much time to play.

[Guest]

I never do asparagus rockets, at least not with more than one layer. The way I see it that fact that asparagus rockets work in the game is a bug, in reality they would be slow and unstable. Eventually they will fix it.

Agreed. Pretty much all my launch vehicles are a single onion stage with a core being fed from the outer tanks and useless (for now) aerodynamic parts. Asparagus staging and pancake launchers disgust me. I admit I also play pretty conservatively because I have a lap-heater (which, incidentally, plays the game better than the other computer in the house that I used to call my "gaming box"), so monstrous vehicles totaling more than 500 parts are pretty much out for me.

[DChurchill]

Asparagus staging and pancake launchers disgust me.

What are pancake launchers? I assume we're not talking about flingers of breakfast foods.

[Guest]

What are pancake launchers? I assume we're not talking about flingers of breakfast foods.

Those massive, wide asparagus launchers with tons of stages that are completely flat on the top except for the payload which might be sticking out or might be buried deep in the middle of all that fuel.

[annallia]

What are pancake launchers? I assume we're not talking about flingers of breakfast foods.

I am not entirely sure myself. I am assuming he means people who slip in the X200-8 fuel tank (fat but short nicknamed pancake) under the Jumbo 64 to keep engines from overheating.

Edit- I stand corrected, that would have been my second guess.

[Hannu]

Go build a huge thing of many, many tanks and see if your ascent is more fun. It is for me.

I agree this. If you want to some interest in ascents, make an Eve trip with one launch. I guarantee, that you need tens of tries before 2000 t 1000 parts rocket's ascent from Kerbin or about 100 t lander's ascent from Eve is boring routine. It is quite frustrating to notice that lander's maneuverability is not enough in Eve's atmosphere. Then it is time for rescue flight.

[annallia]

I never do asparagus rockets, at least not with more than one layer. The way I see it that fact that asparagus rockets work in the game is a bug, in reality they would be slow and unstable. Eventually they will fix it. I must say though mechjeb doesn't work well with massive multistaged rockets, it usually sends them into a curly-cue spiral after a couple thousand feet. So I pretty much have to drive all my rockets to orbit by hand. The most fun is getting those asymmetrical parts into orbit.

That depends on how far you take the asparagus staging. Going massive with 6, 7, 8 stages just to get into orbit... Yeah that is out of touch with reality. There are however real rockets that use asparagus staging in their launches.

NASA was developing one, I forget the name.

Falcon 9 I believe uses it.

Russians built one...

They are used but the benefit to using them is less than it is in KSP. The reason for that being the TWR of the rockets themselves in KSP. Real world rockets providing similar thrusts to KSP's weigh far less than they would in KSP.

[Flixxbeatz]

The only problem I find with ascents is that it tends to be time-consuming (5-6 minutes if you're doing it right, 10 minutes and above if you screw up your trajectory at any point), but I learned how to love and get used to it, given that I was a manual flyer ever since I started playing KSP.

And why in the world there are asparagus staging discussions here?

Edited August 12, 2013 by Flixxbeatz

[Guest]

And why in the world there are asparagus staging discussions here?

It followed the natural flow of conversation, it being about ascent.

[DChurchill]

Those massive, wide asparagus launchers with tons of stages that are completely flat on the top except for the payload which might be sticking out or might be buried deep in the middle of all that fuel.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, I don't build those either. I don't have the patience to build one. But that's the beauty of this game. Whatever floats your boat.

Except for the subject of your sig, however.

[Guest]

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, I don't build those either. I don't have the patience to build one. But that's the beauty of this game. Whatever floats your boat.

Off-topic: It truly amazes just how many ways there are to play this game, even purely stock. Adding a mod API this early in the game was genius.

[DChurchill]

Off-topic: It truly amazes just how many ways there are to play this game, even purely stock. Adding a mod API this early in the game was genius.

I honestly can't fathom why anyone would publish a game these days without an API.

[Tiron]

Asparagus staging COULD work IRL, it isn't used because of the sheer complexity involved in doing it. Basic Crossfeeding on the other hand HAS been used...but it's not nearly as difficult. The complexity of all those fuel pumps and the size of the pipes that would needed is the chief issue: the whole 'it would make the whole rocket rotate' argument doesn't hold water, however.

The rotary movement of the fuel is stopped at some point while still in the rocket in order to move it in another direction, either inward or down. Changing the direction of the movement is considered an acceleration, even if the velocity doesn't change afterward, and this kind of situation is part of why it's still an acceleration. The force exerted by the moving fuel on the rocket as it changes direction would cancel out the rotary motion imparted by the pumps starting the fuel moving in the first place.

Scott Manley did a vid near Gilly where he talks about this effect, while demonstrating an exploit that can be used to accelerate a craft without using fuel. It works because you can move the Center of Gravity of the craft to a different point in space by transferring fuel. In reality, the recoil from moving the fuel would start a motion in the opposite direction, which would be stopped when the fuel came to rest in the other tank. The result would be the craft sliding slightly in the opposite direction, in such a way that the center of gravity ends up at the same point it was at before you moved the fuel.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Tiron

[Anton P. Nym]

IIRC the main reason asparagus isn't used in the real world as it is in KSP is that drag isn't modeled properly in KSP. Rockets tend to be tall and skinny IRL because drag is mainly the result of cross-sectional area, so the narrower the rocket the less drag it'll encounter in the atmosphere. Asparagus expands the cross-sectional area rather substantially, rapidly reaching the point of diminishing returns. Throw in the added weight of the pumps and the complexity of managing fuel management and it ends up much less useful than in KSP.

-- Steve