Before I discovered and played KSP, I..

[Javster]

I sort of knew that the Shuttle turned, but I though it was something to do with being in a space position: good for the cargo bay etc.

[Javster]

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

I always though the Shuttle docked to the ISS by flying straight up at the right time...

[Tortoise]

I never heard of orbital mechanics and thought everything was simple.

[zarakon]

It had never occurred to me that shooting something into the sun is actually incredibly difficult

[FenrirWolf]

It had never occurred to me that shooting something into the sun is actually incredibly difficult

Yup, this is something that I never supposed as well. The common thought is that since its the biggest, heaviest thing around, that it would be easy to just fall into the darned thing.

[Captain_Party]

I thought I was a big man when I started playing KSP, and thought I could probably do it for a job in real-life. Then I installed FAR. Oh. Then, I installed RealSolarSystem.

oh.

[Merinsan]

It had never occurred to me that shooting something into the sun is actually incredibly difficult

I thought it was easy. Especially after watching Superman 4 as a kid, and watching him just toss nuclear weapons into the sun.

I had an understanding of orbits and kind of was able to get to orbit fairly fast, though I was very inefficient, turning much too late.

I had a good understanding of landing right from the start, but was bad at it.

I was bad at rendezvous at first, I had a simple understanding, but not enough to close the final gap.

[Hans Dorn]

Shooting something into the sun is pretty easy.

Launch at sunset, burn until Kerbin escape. Wait for SOI change, burn retrograde.

/tongue-in-cheek

I found playing around with orbits easier than expected.

Landing in a vacuum on the other hand...

Edited April 20, 2014 by Hans Dorn

[Superfluous J]

The only misconception I can remember having is that I thought it was more efficient to burn straight up the whole way than it was to gravity turn, if you weren't trying to orbit the planet you were lifting off of. Like, to get to the ISS it makes sense to orbit first, but to get to the Moon I thought that orbiting first was wasting fuel.

I thought that until I tested it in game, and THEN I started reading up on why I was wrong.

[Nuke]

before i played ksp all i had was orbiter. i was already doing jupiter runs.

[Xaelath]

Then I played the game for the very first time. All in my mind was "Why am I not in orbit yet? Why is it so hard to get to the Mun? How do I even science or orbital mechanics?!"

I kept pointing myself to the Mun and kept burning.

This led Bill, Jeb, Bob to a Kerbin escape.

[The Destroyer]

before i played ksp all i had was orbiter. i was already doing jupiter runs.

I played orbiter and used the warp drive.

[Kruleworld]

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.

yeah, it's counter-intuitive to me that you speed up for another craft to catch you.

[Captain Sierra]

I Legitimately thought you could transfer to another planet by burning to the radial (relative to the sun) when at closest approach.

That is probably because I was unaware that straight lines in orbital physics are pretty much impossible (until you break the laws of physics and surpass the speed of light).

[mellojoe]

It had never occurred to me that shooting something into the sun is actually incredibly difficult

I'll be honest, I also thought throwing things into the sun would be much easier. I'm a space geek. I've been in love with all things NASA since I was a kid. I understood orbits, and a few little things here and there. But it never occurred to me how difficult it would be to crash something into the sun. I always thought a solution to space trash would simple be to have these transfer stages fling themselves into the sun after they drop something in Geostationary orbit. How WRONG WRONG WRONG I was.

[qromodynmc]

Make a plane,Turn its nose to mun,and fly.

I must really thank to ksp for what it thought to me..

[Zero266]

I used to think up means orbit and

a strait line means get where your going

[earth]

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

A an engineer, I must say : THIS. EXACTLY.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

yeah I had the whole problem of not understanding orbital mechanics and not realizing that just burning at something doesn't work. My first rendezvous attempts all failed miserably b/c I was just constantly burning at my target and being like "why aren't I getting closer???"

[quietsamurai98]

Before I bought KSP, I went outside.

[RidingTheFlow]

Played Orbiter a lot before I went to KSP, so weren't a stranger to any orbital manoeuvres and such.

KSP was nice change of pace, with construction & spacecraft engineering added.

[velve]

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

Ah I still do this haha, to get nice controlled height orbits.

[PlonioFludrasco]

Before KSP, I played minecraft.

Before knowing enough about Hohmann transfers, I put kerbisinchronous satellites above KSC just flying up and correcting to mantain 0 m/s surface lateral speed. It worked!!

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

I did lots and lots of things before playing KSP, but from the OP I know that's not quite what was being asked!

I've played lots of space games over the years, and a fair few flight sims too, so now I've had some practice I can both fly my spaceplanes and get them into orbit!

Of course, most older space games start you off already in space, and flight sims are pretty much all in-atmosphere affairs, working out ascension was the first hurdle I managed to get round, both with rockets and SSTO planes...

Then the next hurdle to get over was landing, no matter what I thought, I needed to practice a bit to get it right the planes weren't too bad, as they land similarly to RL planes (tail wheels first...) but landing with rockets was totally new to me...

[Guest]

Well, KSP helped me visualize the basics of orbital mechanics and aerodynamics. To actually learn about how flying a rocket works, though, Real Solar System/Realism Overhaul is a must. For all the basics it teaches you, certain KSP mechanics are fundamentally wrong, and a lot of stuff has little in common with actual spacecraft engineering. RSS fixes this. KSP might've taught me how to dock, but RSS shown me just how though it is IRL.