Remember that sensation of triumph as you got into orbit for the first time?

[syfyguy64]

It was 13.3 for me, and I was watching a bunch of videos, so my first hour was less than fun, unlike others.

But they crashed, it's just that they where small all liquid fuel rockets, no solid boosters.

The first time I got in orbit was in a far too complex rocket. It had 3 fuel tanks, another stage had 3, then another had 9.

Here's a picture, of the Mun version (I just added wings as landing gear, and another stage).

[rasheed]

I never got to orbit in 13.3

I got realllllyyy close, didnt know orbital physics back then.

As for the mun i burned pointed to it, missed always

[Felsmak]

I had already experienced it in Orbiter, so it wasn't really a big deal to me. It was more like a satisfaction with having figured out how to control the rocket painlessly.

[Aphox]

I don't exactly remember the sensation of orbiting, but I do remember the sensation of my first Mun landing.

Funny how things feel like such accomplishments as you do them, but later become just another thing you do that you can't believe you couldn't do before.

[fatfluffycat]

I remember getting into orbit in the demo, I don't know what version it was,(it was during the summer in 2012). But I did it by watching some videos on YouTube.

[Superfluous J]

I don't It was in the demo, because I wouldn't buy the game until I successfully got a crew to Mun and back to really see what the game could do. So it was with a 1-man capsule with a fairly limited set of parts.

[magnemoe]

Me to remember getting into orbit with the old demo, first shots was mostly to figure out the power requirements, then some tries to get an gravity turn.

Bought 0.18 before I went into Mun orbit, probe, all the science instruments and on small flat solar panel, this ended up in shadow so I lost control of craft.

[lajoswinkler]

I still have the screenshot. It was a great feeling. I don't know what kind of rocket pushed the capsule, but I think it was a two stage vehicle, no boosters.

I think it was demo.

[Monger]

For me it was in 0.08 something. Back in the days, where there was no other celestial Body except kerbin, and therefore not much to do except practicing orbits and breaking speed records.

[Specialist290]

I still remember a lot of firsts -- first orbit, first docking, first Mun landing -- and how I felt when achieving them. Like Aphox mentioned, it's amazing how things that were once titanic hurdles to be cleared are now more-or-less routine.

On the other hand, there are still plenty of things I haven't done in the game, so I still feel a little bit of that same sense of triumph whenever I do something new for the first time.

[Meithan]

Funny how things feel like such accomplishments as you do them, but later become just another thing you do that you can't believe you couldn't do before.

I get the exact same feeling. I remember my first rendezvous and docking. Man, I was super tense for the whole approach, and then screamed out loud (literally) when the docking rings finally engaged. Now it's just totally second nature.

[Lazro]

Definitely. I made a massive rocket, burned straight up, and turned sideways at 70km

[FITorion]

13.1 for me.

Also made it into Mun orbit but didn't land. There wasn't an orbital map... so everything was guess work. You didn't know if you were in orbit until you did a full rotation. Going to the Mun I pointed where I thought the Mun would be and then when I got close burned to slow back down, again not knowing if I was burning too much or not enough.

[Aqua667]

I was playing on my friend'ss copy of KSP. For some reason, we both thought if you went high enough you would achieve orbit. Also, I always used the Mk.1 cockpit instead of the command pod for some reason. Then I started using probe cores because they were lighter. Eventually I built a rocket with enough delta V to reach orbit, but instead i launched straight up. I ended up in solar orbit (luckily no Kerbal was stranded). I was like O M G. However I didn't figure out how to achieve Kerbin orbit until I watched Mechjeb do it .

[oggylt]

I remember first time i left Kerbin atmosphere, and that calming song space (reminded me Mass Effect) it was so.. great , i went on eva (I started playing from 0.18) and then I fell down to Kerbin again, but the feeling was great. mmmm...

[Tankbuster32]

i just flew straight up until i got a decent apoapsis and then burned to the side, it was horredously inefficent but BOY was it fun!

[Wayfare]

Funny how things feel like such accomplishments as you do them, but later become just another thing you do that you can't believe you couldn't do before.

This. Your first orbit, your first return, your first Mun landing, your first rendezvous, your first docking, your first interplanetary transfer... Though honestly out of all the firsts I only really remember my first Mun landing. Sadly the screenshot has been lost in the sands of time. I just remember the lander (a big chute, ASAS, 3-man pod, decoupler, what we called a "full tank" in 0.15 and a poodle, along with legs and ladders) and the adrenalin rush of setting it down on the surface intact. Very few games have ever given me a physical rush. The previous one was EVE Online, when I killed my first carebear as a ninja, and before that I have to dig all the way to escaping off the Arcada in Space Quest. If a game can make your hands tremble you know you have a winner

[Sovek]

In my case it wasnt so much a matter of achieving orbit. That was easy. It was docking two spacecraft together. I still remember the frustration I went through to get docking down, and was esctatic when I finally did it. Took watching a few videos on youtube and good couple of hours trying to figure it out.

[iBeej]

I started in .18, played the demo for 15 minutes and said "screw this... I'm BUYING it." A day later I made orbit, albeit extremely elliptical, but it wasn't until I put in serious effort in to an entire Mun Lander+Rover with return, that I became beyond obsessed with KSP. Like others, I think the first and most memorable experience was that first Mun Landing. And it was "terribly executed" by my standards today. It was so difficult and messy and it's very routine and easy for me to do now. I can build an entire craft+return in 15 minutes and setup a launch window with orbits, landing perfectly and coming home without any failures. It's just crazy to realize how far you evolve in this game!!!

[Unistrut]

My first orbit was back in the non-rotating Kerbin days, so there wasn't really an "Ah ha!" moment, just a lot of checking orbital velocity charts and watching my altitude to see if I was going to drop back into the atmosphere followed by the slowly dawning realization that I was actually going to stay up here!

The jumping and shouting came with the first successful Mun landing. This was back in the days when you did your transfer burn by waiting until the Mun just came over the horizon and then accelerated to 3000m/s(I think) and hoped for the best. Had to land on winglets since they hadn't invented landing legs yet. Very Buck Rogers.

[syfyguy64]

My first orbit was back in the non-rotating Kerbin days, so there wasn't really an "Ah ha!" moment, just a lot of checking orbital velocity charts and watching my altitude to see if I was going to drop back into the atmosphere followed by the slowly dawning realization that I was actually going to stay up here!

The jumping and shouting came with the first successful Mun landing. This was back in the days when you did your transfer burn by waiting until the Mun just came over the horizon and then accelerated to 3000m/s(I think) and hoped for the best. Had to land on winglets since they hadn't invented landing legs yet. Very Buck Rogers.

A lot like my first mun landing, except I broke the wings, decouplers, and asas. Everything except the capsule and parachute.

Then I said "Nut's to this," and got nova punch for 13.3.

I made a launcher out of 3 parts, and a lander of 8-9.

[Brofessional]

It was in 0.8.4, back before there was a map view or time warp or a Mun, and when the atmosphere cut off at like 35km.

Edited September 29, 2013 by Brofessional

[Kulebron]

I don't remember getting the first time to Kerbin orbit, because I already did this a few times in X-Plane to Earth orbit, back in 2006. There was a custom plane that added external tanks to Shuttle, and after a dozen of tries and drawing on paper, I got there and did some orbits around without reentering, then reentered on purpose.

Earth orbit takes much more time. That was hard.

So in KSP it was only a matter of building a proper rocket. I think any background matters: I read a lot on Apollo program technical details, and have no trouble with rendezvous. The only trouble was that the first time I approached it turned out my ships had different docking ports.

What is really hard, and where no reading saves you from chores and a lot of trying is interplanetary travel to another planet's moon (Laythe) and back. To save weight and have enough fuel you need to just try, try and try different maneuver parameters. And there's no direct solution to use.

Edited September 29, 2013 by Kulebron

[Bioman222]

I remeber my earliest days of KSP. My brother and I (He's a few years older than me) were having a space race to see who could get into orbit first. Little did we know that we had to turn and burn for orbit. So, in .13.3(the old demo) we would build ginormus rockets to see who could get to orbit. He won when he made such a big ship he got into Kerbol orbit.

Evenutally, I looked into it and found a video on how to do it, and made it to orbit.

When I bought the game, I built the Humana-3, which was very orbit capable and super reliable.

[thunderstar]

oh yes i remember my first orbit, but my first orbit wans't around kerbin it was around the sun!, so yeah it was version 0.13 i was really new to the game so my rockets always ended: on suborbital trajectories, or crashing at launchpad or in solar orbit, i dind't really knew anything about orbital mehcanics at the time and i thought i dind't have enough delta-v,or how i liked to call it back then "power", so i builded bigger rockets that got escape velocity from kerbin,sadly i never got a kerbin orbit until some later version

TL;DR: my first orbit was in 0.13 but was around the sun, never orbited kerbin in that version