Before I discovered and played KSP, I..

[Xaelath]

I thought that to get into orbit you just fly up.

I thought that rockets and spaceplanes can move like those crafts in Star Wars.

I also thought that to get to the Mun you just fly at it and you'll reach it in no time.

What about you guys? Share the things you've thought of before you discovered about KSP and played it.

[Robbii6]

Cant really remember that well but i do recall flying directly at the moon to get there haha!!

i also use to fly straight up till apogee was 70 then TW till i got there and then flew horizontally

[Dizzle]

Cant really remember that well but i do recall flying directly at the moon to get there haha!!

i also use to fly straight up till apogee was 70 then TW till i got there and then flew horizontally

Heh, I did both of these. I truly knew nothing about space when I started. A great teaching tool, this game.

[AmpsterMan]

It's interesting how much KSP has taught me about space. Beforehand, I could say I was in the 50th percentile when it comes to space related stuff. Now I can say i'm witin one cognitive step of the folks at NASA. It's interestinghow much a fictional game about little green men can teach us about the world.

[Dgr]

Honestly? Straight up til 80km, turn right, full power. I *thought* that I had an average knowledge of space. I probably do, owing to the thousands of people that know literally nothing, but I knew a lot less than I thought. Now, Its all I can do to restrain myself telling everyone else how it REALLY works.

[StrandedonEarth]

... was thinking Orbiter might be a little too complicated for me....

[bobcook]

I had to learn what a Hohmann transfer for planetary rendezvous is all about. I thought I knew how it worked. I was wildly wrong, because I didn't realize you had to wait for everything to be at the right angle. My first few attempts were a disaster, until I saw a video with someone talking about putting a protractor on the screen. I was like "huh? why does the angle matter?" and then of course it all clicked.

Now, Its all I can do to restrain myself telling everyone else how it REALLY works.

I know exactly what you mean. I really need to find some people IRL who play this game so I can stop annoying my dog by explaining the subtleties of docking techniques.

[Sokar408]

Cant really remember that well but i do recall flying directly at the moon to get there haha!!

i also use to fly straight up till apogee was 70 then TW till i got there and then flew horizontally

Ohhh man that is soo what I thought. What makes the game so great is exactly that you learn while playing. I'm sure there is more to it in real life, and its one thing to do stuff with maneuver nodes, and another to actually calculate, but still it gets you to understand things in a way that I'm sure would make learning actual calculating a lot easier.

[PetahSchwetah]

[deleted]

Edited January 14 by PetahSchwetah

[mythbusters844]

I thought that to get into orbit you just fly up.

I thought that rockets and spaceplanes can move like those crafts in Star Wars.

I also thought that to get to the Mun you just fly at it and you'll reach it in no time.

What about you guys? Share the things you've thought of before you discovered about KSP and played it.

Yeah, I thought those exact three too. I remember freaking out seeing a shuttle launch (not live), seeing it pitch over, and thinking that it was going off course lol.

[Iforgotthis]

I thought if you wanted to go anywhere up just flew straight at it. Even orbital rendezvous.

[KvickFlygarn87]

I thought that to get into orbit you just fly up.

I thought that rockets and spaceplanes can move like those crafts in Star Wars.

I also thought that to get to the Mun you just fly at it and you'll reach it in no time.

What about you guys? Share the things you've thought of before you discovered about KSP and played it.

Well. That.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

I also thought space travel was just "point towards moon, and go!" the whole changing orbits thing never occured to me

[cantab]

Before playing KSP I knew how orbital mechanics worked. After playing KSP, it feels virtually as natural and intuitive as mechanics here on Earth.

[Ascension Islander]

When I started orbiter for the first time, I hopped in a delta glider already in orbit and tried to reenter by burning straight down.

[tygoo7]

Heh I remember first playing KSP in 0.13 demo. Then before even getting close to orbit I bought it in 0.17. I always aimed directly right at the Mun then I would try slowing down at the very last second which didn't work. I would point straight down at Kerbin to land. I thought that if I shutdown my engine I just magically stop moving. Ahh, those were the days

[Stargate525]

The biggest one I think I had was that for rendezvous, you burned towards your target. It took me a long time to figure out that, no, in a lot of places you'll get there faster if you burn away from the target. It took even longer for that stuff to become intuitive.

[luizopiloto]

When I started playing KSP... First flight was a fail because I forgot to throtle up before lauching... Second flight I reached orbit and returned with a lot of fuel left... Used this same rocket to reach mun orbit and fly back...

[The Jedi Master]

How To Space, As Explained By Past Jedi Master

To go to space, one must simply get a flying vehicle and go up. It's that simple! To go to the moon, wait until it is right above your rocket and launch! To go to Mars, do the same thing! You can do this with anything! Want to come back down? Simply point at Earth and go! Also, spaceships fly like jet fighters. If you've flown a plane, you can fly a spaceship! Interstellar travel is also easy! To get there within your lifetime or your children's children's children's lifetime, just go really, really fast! THE FUN NEVER ENDS!

(also, I thought they actually said 'blast-off'.)

[FenrirWolf]

Before playing KSP I knew how orbital mechanics worked. After playing KSP, it feels virtually as natural and intuitive as mechanics here on Earth.

Same here. I'd done enough reading about things in the past to know that orbits were a thing, that you don't burn all the time in space, and things like that.

But even if you've read about orbits and the like, you still don't have an intuitive feel for them. You can read about how ships orbiting the earth are moving at 8km/s, but you don't really know what that means until you've tried putting a ship into orbit yourself (even if its around a mini planet with 1/4th that speed required) and you realize just how much of orbiting involves going sideways instead of up.

In a nutshell, that's what KSP does so utterly well. It brings the realities of space down to earth and lets the average joe wrap his brain around it.

[syfyguy64]

I remember when I got full version after playing demo for a year nad a half, that space stations just need a lifting body of a mainsail, orange tank, and a orbital stage of poodle and small tank.

[thunderstar]

knew nothing about orbital mechanics, i mean yes i knew that going to the moon took a lot of time, or that for achieveng orbit you would have to be going really really fast, but nothing about transfers, delta-v or gravity turns, also i thought that the proton rocket was fueled by actual protons

Edited April 20, 2014 by thunderstar

[Vaporized Steel]

I have been a space, astronomy enthusiast since a kid. So I knew pretty much how to do anything in this game as I started. In fact I actually landed on the mun without maneouvre nodes the third day I played ksp. Basically by guessing the intended orbital path by burning prograde at moonrise on the 90degrees equatorial orbital path. Then readjusting by burning normal and antinormal, pro and or retrograde and checking regulary on the blue lines orbit line in map view and retro burn at the muns periapsis and keep burning untill I land. With alot more Delta V then doing it with maneouvre nodes and mechjeb though.

My first 1-2 days were catastrophic into more or less learn the games interface and how to get a stable and efficient rocket. Many launch failures I can tell you as I didn't knew the staging system on first sight or to determine the center off mass etc I eventually found out in the VAB.

I actually played Orbiter space flight simulator prior to KSP. Although I didn't play it much I did get a hang of Orbiter quite much. But in Orbiter I was no better then orbiting and landing deltagliders or planes I got at AlteaAerospace at the moons brighton beach outpost.

Whenever I played Orbiter in the past I felt I drowned more of my time into modding the simulator (which wasn't Always easy to mod) then actually playing it.

[The Destroyer]

I thought 1 and 2. I always thought: Point to planet and you go there. It actually worked, but used a LOT OF DELTA-V

[problemecium]

...thought it was really hard to get to space.

Also that you could launch an object into orbit with a mass driver and no subsequent course corrections.