Misadventures of a Budding Space Program (Realism Overhaul)

[Omicron314]

So, after aggregating and installing most of the Realism Overhaul mods, I decided to restart the game yet again. RSS and other mods make the game much harder, and I figured I would post my successes and failures here for your amusement.

If you haven't tried Realism Overhaul yet I really recommend it. NovaSilisko was right when he said KSP gives you a sense that space travel is easy: after a few hours of this you can appreciate the work the space programs of the world do to a much greater extent.

Anyway, real-sized space program!

I - Soviet Krussia and the Dawn of Satellites

II - Project Zapad and the Beginning of Manned Exploration

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Soviet Krussia and the Dawn of Satellites

I decided I was not going to bother with sub-orbital rockets in this save. We are a space program, not fascist Germany!

Naturally, the first thing you send into space is a Sputnik analogue. Please put your hands together for Stayputnik-1!

... That was much less climatic than I thought it would be. But the satellite is nice and simple.

Now, a launcher...

By the way, this is totally not a Sputnik-PS rip-off.

But let's put any potential copyright infringement aside. It is time to into space!

Yeah, no.

Attempt two is a little more successful:

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I took some liberties in the design of Stayputnik-2. Here it is in the VAB:

I am almost moderately confident there is no dog in there.

The launch of this satellite was nearly identical to that of its predecessor, so I won't post the images. However, here is a nice shot of the separation of the core stage:

And here is the satellite in orbit:

Laika, you're not coming home.

And before you ask, yes, I did change the design of the satellite after I took that first screenshot. It was ugly.

And such ended a historic day in Kerbal history. But, on the other side of the ocean, engineers were frantically scrambling together plans to build a rocket. The people of whatever-you-call-the-USA-analogue-in-this-game could not allow their enemy such a victory They had to build a bigger, better satellite, and for that, they needed a bigger, better booster.

After "careful deliberation," the greatest minds of this as-of-yet unnamed superpower presented their idea, the Exploder-1 satellite, to the head of the national space program.

And the booster they used to launch it was most certainly not based on the Jupiter-C rocket.

Because it wasn't. That booster never reached space. It had problems. So many problems.

So I made this booster:

Which looks very similar, but is smaller and uses better engines (yay FASA!).

And so, the launch.

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Not too many pictures in this one, unfortunately. I was so fed up with all of the time-consuming failures of the first booster I forgot to take more pictures.

Anyway, the Exploder-2 craft was later sent up to remedy the fact that the Exploder-1 lacked any means of power generation. Careful deliberation indeed.

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So, that's all I have for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this!

Edited February 23, 2014 by Omicron314

[Geschosskopf]

Enjoy the frustrations that come with realism .

I played Orbiter for many long years. If you discover you actually enjoy the frustrations of realistic spaceflight, you should definitely give it a try. First, it's free. 2nd, being designed as a realistic simulator from the get-go instead of as a beer-and-pretzels game, Orbiter does a better job of realism than heavily modded KSP.

I myself don't enjoy such frustrations because they're so disillusioning. Orbiter destroyed my dreams of humanity ever doing anything meaningful in space, at least until we can reverse-engineer a UFO. But it was still fun to fly around in the real Solar System, so I kept doing it for years. However, I kicked it to the curb the moment I discovered KSP. Sure, KSP isn't at all realistic, but it's a lot more fun, at least IMHO .

But anyway, I'm enjoying your story so far. Keep it up.

EDIT: Here's how to embed albums:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/36010-Introducing-the-Ability-to-Embed-Imgur-Albums%21?highlight=imgur

Edited February 18, 2014 by Geschosskopf

[Omicron314]

Project Zapad and the Beginning of Manned Exploration

So, after the launchings of the first satellites, the Kerbal Space Program decided it was time to turn its attention to launching a Kerbal into space. They named the project "Zapad," which supposedly means "West" in an obscure alien tongue. It did not take long for them to design a booster:

That's not to say there weren't problems. There were.

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But after all those kinks were worked out, the rocket was very successful. Here are pictures from one of the launches:

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There were 6 launches in total. Jebediah, Bill, Bob, Kering, Samman, and some other guy each went into orbit and performed a spacewalk. One even rendezvoused with a satellite:

It is a powerful rocket. I got my apoapsis up pretty high and only spent a fourth of the fuel in the final stage.

You know, this would make a really good one-person crew transport. It is practically flawless!

Well then, I stand corrected.

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Once again, thank you for reading!