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Who has abort proceedures?


sta7ic_matt

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Considering I'm using permadeath (with crew manifest) and have mission controller extended Kerbal insurance jacked up to 50k, yeah I really can't afford to be careless with my Kerbals.

So nearly every design I do I have some sort of abort procedure in place for launch>>atmospheric flight.

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My abort system is simple. It activates the second last decoupler and a sideways radial along with a normal rocket. As soon as I get clear of the debris, I either activate the landing gear and land manually or chute.

Yeah that's kinda how I do it. I think it's only common decency towards your Kerbals to have an escape. Unless the design has proven so reliable that nothing ever goes wrong. But in most cases I'll have a small tank underneath the capsule with those tiny radials attached for when things go boom. Or go wobble wobble wobble wew that was close WOBBLE COLLIDE OH **** boom.

Or my favorite: when a lower stage start moving through the stage above it. Good times! Experience has taught me to abort right then and there because things are not going to be any better.

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I usually put abort features into everything, escape towers and parachutes and all. I even use RP escape systems for interstellar vessels and space stations; both of them can break apart, module by module, and activate warning beacons for recovery. It's pretty cool. :D

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How do you program in abort procedures? ...

Just like normal action groups.

The Action Group menu has a separate entry for "Abort", which is activated when you push the "Abort"-Button in game, or the Backspace - Key.

Just put everything into the Abort-group which you want to get activated upon an abort.

In the case of my LES of 0.19, these were, for example, all of the Sepatrons of the escape tower, as well as the decoupler that separated the capsule from the rest of the rocket.

(with the separation of the empty sepatrons and the activation of the parachute being mapped to a different action group)

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I've added Acrturus Range Safety to all my probe bodies so unmanned launches just detonate on abort. On manned missions I always put a probe between the final decoupler and the stack so that my LES has chance to pull the capsule clear as ARS takes out the engines first.

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I find that having parachutes and a decoupler for the command module is usually enough for a safe abort sequence. The escape tower from the Apollo missions is indeed a great idea, but the impact tolerances in KSP are so high that you almost never have a situation where the lower part of the rocket bangs into the upper part and destroys it when a launch goes bad.

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All of my manned craft have an abort procedure, but what it is, exactly, varies. If the capsule is exposed, I put a jettisonnable launch escape tower on it, and the abort button shuts down all other engines. If the design is more complex, the entire last stage may separate and fire.

Haven't given abort systems for landers much thought yet, but I try to design them for easy recovery if bingo fuel is reached. Of course, the problem lies in figuring out just how much fuel that is :P

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Every manned vessel I make has an abort sequence. Partially because it's fun to design in that extra little complexity, partially for the satisfaction in knowing that the big red button at the top of the screen actually does something dramatic.

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My abort system is simple. It activates the second last decoupler and a sideways radial along with a normal rocket. As soon as I get clear of the debris, I either activate the landing gear and land manually or chute.

Pretty much like mine, in career I tended to make this the return module for interplanetary trips. the one man landing can as bridge of mothership and part of escape system, separator, hitchhiker container and the interplanetary transfer stage, lander on top. Abort kills all engines and separate lander and bride from the rest.

Only difference from the return landing would be that the bride was docked on the top of lander.

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I've been meaning to implement LES systems (redundancy is redundant) for a while now, but only since 0.22 career mode (and getting far enough along to unlock sepratrons) have I actually done it. So far it's just a simple modular girder segment with a ring of sepratrons attached to it, not even ejectable yet (haven't unlocked any tiny decouplers yet), and of course a decoupler beneath the capsule (well, beneath the Science Jr. beneath the capsule, now). My abort sequence simply decouples the CM (pod, Science Jr., two goo canisters, LES tower) and fires the sepratrons; I'm lazy and don't have it set to shut down the various engines, especially since I regularly swap out lifter rocket and don't want to re-rig each engine to the abort sequence. So I hit X to shut down the engines, then Backspace to abort.

You can see it here on the nose of my Andromeda II CSM, and the decoupler between the CM and SM:

screenshot20.png

The LES on my current workhorse Andromeda has saved Bill's life on 2 separate occasions! Once when a poorly-designed rocket began to tumble, and a second time when he ran out of fuel trying to return from my career mode's first orbit of Mun.

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...

This is brilliant! I've never accidentally aborted, but I love the idea of making accidental aborts harder, and requiring a little extra deliberate-ness to my aborts!

Coupled with the idea someone in another thread suggested of remapping the stage key to Pause/Break, I just might be able to put an end to accidental everythings! (Yeah right...)

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