Who has abort proceedures?

[sta7ic_matt]

Pfffft... Abort procedures... aren't those where the Kerbalnaut becomes a green spot on the ground?

How many people set up abort procedures for your ships? It's something I've only added for my most recent design (adding about 0.68t on a 27t-with-16t-fuel payload), and sure enough, Edan hit the 'next stage' lever while reaching for some snacks.

The 'jeez so heavy' escape plan is 'kill the engines', 'decouple the docking jr rings between the Service Module and the Command Module', 'fire seperatrons', and 'deploy landing gear'. 4x RCS for maneuvering away from the exploding rocket pieces, and to decelerate, dock with a rescue vehicle, etc. Oh, and 'deploy the parachute when it's safe to'.

But yeah. Traditional asparagus layout, 'next stage' was hit too early, the boosters slam into the unmanned probes on either side of the payload, resulting in the shower of debris in the lower-right. Kill the engines, hit 'abort', watch the seperatrons are doing their job perfectly, RCS away, and parachute down somewhere safer than next to several tons of exploding fuel.

Edan is also being re-trained on proper launch procedures, and which side of the ship the snacks are on.

Again: how many people actually have abort procedures?

[Johnno]

I don't use the abort sequence function itself, but I do build in escape functionality into a lot of crafts. My airplanes / spaceplanes pretty much always have one, whileas manned spacecraft modules don't always. Usually I feel that it's enough without, sometimes I'm just lazy and use revert flight to iron out issues.

I've yet to play a 100% serious straight off the pad save, if I were to then everything would get escape systems that were tested by unmanned systems until they worked flawlessly. Which actually sounds like a fun thing to do (the testing/designing aspect), think I'll start on that later today.

[Kialar]

I do it the klingon way: Abort procedures are for the weak! You have to fight the wobble! Explosions are the way of the warrior!

Seriously, sometimes I remember to plan and use abort functions. But most of the time I just fire the thrusters and hope for the best.

[oggylt]

well i actually set up at least basic abort procedure if i am too lazy for abort tower and i have never lost a Kerbal

[CalculusWarrior]

Utilizing the Procedural Fairings mod and subassemblies, I have constructed an escape tower that goes on top of all my rockets now. Here it is on top of my Orion/SLS lookalike:

And here's a shot of it in action, after my super-heavy Nova launcher suffered a...rapid unplanned disassembly...

[Motokid600]

Im using MCE so every Kerbal costs me 5,000k until they land. So yes I use LES extensively. I eject the traditional way. Blow fairing, activate launch tower. Though lately Bobcat's Soyuz has been my workhorse and that LES is brilliant. I almost WANT something to go wrong just so I can use it.

[Spanier]

Utilizing the Procedural Fairings mod and subassemblies, I have constructed an escape tower that goes on top of all my rockets now. Here it is on top of my Orion/SLS lookalike:

And here's a shot of it in action, after my super-heavy Nova launcher suffered a...rapid unplanned disassembly...

Can you offer a download on this?

[1greywind]

My piloting skills sucks, so I started to put midair escape system to my planes:

It makes me feel better, becouse I can save my fellow kerbal pilot even if I crush again and again while trying to perform island airport landing or fly through R&D building tunnel.

[1D-1()T]

The Eve return craft I'm making has a rather unique abort system.

It was on top of the launcher, which fell to pieces, I staged to try and get clear, and ended up getting down to my last two stages. This was all under 500 meters, by the way. Instead of risk attempting to land I just went up into orbit. You've got to love it when you have OVER 9000 delta-v with just the lander.

[Seanner]

By the way minor tip: if you rebind it to a multi-key combo e.g. shift-backspace instead of backspace, you can avoid canceling a perfectly good launch. Now if only there was some auto-turn-on-staging-again functionality for when I'm about to land...

[annallia]

Can you offer a download on this?

Nova Punch has escape towers already built in, though I don't use them myself they usually get trimmed with a lot of the stuff I don't use.

That said I don't really build abort features into my designs, I do however tend to add a lot of chutes to command modules so all I really have to do is stage until they deploy. By that point I am just the CM and any payload that was intended to come back with it.

Spaceplanes or any plane really however I have been adding abort procedures to. I used to just add a decoupler to the cockpit and some radial chutes but now that I have a mod that allows EVA parachutes and an eject function I just use that.

[Unistrut]

With the new career mode I've started adding abort procedures. Usually something along the lines of "kill all engines, decouple the final stage and activate it's engine" which usually gives me enough power to get clear of the explosion and hammer the space bar until the parachutes decide to join the fun.

I also make ejectable cockpits for my planes since I can't land worth a damn.

[allmhuran]

My abort procedure goes like this:

1) *snap*

2)"Structural failure between X and Y"

3) What?

4) No!

5) Oh *bleep* why don't you just work

6) *more bleep*

7) Escape

8) Revert flight

Edited November 25, 2013 by Johnno
Language edit

[FlamedSteak]

Absolutely I add the abort function, as far as I'm concerned your engineering feats are bathed in green blood and clothed in the funky odour of death if you don't have an abort sequence.

Basically you're the Kerbal equivalent of Hitler, the brave souls who ride your hell stallions of doom deserve better.

[AntonioAJC]

Pfff, abort procedures? What's that?

[CalculusWarrior]

Can you offer a download on this?

Your wish is my command! I realized I had created two versions; one is a replica of the Apollo LES, the other is a more modern (albeit lower TWR) version based on the Space Launch System's escape tower:

Apollo LES

Escape Tower

Just pop these in your Subassemblies folder under your save game, and you're good to go!

Edited November 25, 2013 by CalculusWarrior

[Don Quixote]

I always use escape towers on my rockets. More than a few kerbal lives have been saved this way...

The only problem is when jettisoning escape towers - usually at a high altitude with little or no athmosphere - I've repeatedly crashed into the spent escape tower. NOT pleasant. I've solved that problem by adding a Sepatron that fires sideways to the nose of the tower.

[Wallace]

Abort procedure? You mean press space really fast till the last stage, wobble the capsule off the top, deploy parachute seconds before kerbal pancake, then when the kerbal is saved, revert anyway to avoid clearing up all the mess of debris all over the KSC.

[Whirligig Girl]

Yes. tenchar

[S4qFBxkFFg]

For the 3-kerbal capsule, I have 6 sepratrons attached to it, and the abort command does all of the following:

fire sepratrons

shutdown all liquid fuelled rockets

activate all decouplers

It's seen plenty of use, with no fatalities, on one occasion having the capsule land on the roof of the "mystery" KSC building.

For aircraft, I give them escape capsules by having the cockpit attached to one section of structural fuselage which is connected by a decoupler to the rest of the aircraft.

The "extra" bit of fuselage is where a few solar panels, science instruments, and a comms antenna go; it's also got two medium landing legs at the back.

As the cockpit has a nosewheel, this is enough for the capsule to have a soft landing using two radial chutes mounted just behind the canopy.

[Godot]

Yep, I implement launch escape systems since separation boosters and action buttons make them feasible.

Only rarely a manned rocket goes withoiut one (well, with 0.22 career mode, they go without one until I have reached the necessary tech level for separation boosters, which usually doesn´t take too long, however).

Here an example of one of my LES in KSP 0.19 in action:

http://imgur.com/a/OZHUb#0

[peadar1987]

I usually jettison the escape tower when I leave Kerbin's atmosphere. By a strange quirk, it has just about enough delta-V on its own to reach Duna's orbit, and occasionally get a rendezvous. For a few glorious moments, I once thought my escape tower was going to get a gravity assist from Ike which would drop it into an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet (Instead, it missed Ike's SOI, got a gravity assist from Duna and ended out going on an adventure towards Dres.

Meanwhile, I was so caught up in the Adventures of the Escape Tower that I forgot to pay attention to the actual mission in progress, and it looped once around Kerbin and smashed into a mountain.

[FellipeC]

I do for rockets. But don't for space shuttles.

[Umlüx]

i use the KSPX escape tower on my dragon/orion ripoff. this craft is the only manned launcher i use, everything else is launched unmanned. so it is the only one with such a system.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Whenever I launch a newly build and untested manned rocket, I use a fail-safe system. I don't use the in game abort function though. I'm used to map it under 0 (custom10).