Historical Progression - The many small steps that led to the giant leap

[MattBox]

Hey there guys!

This is my first time really sharing my KSP playing habits with others, in the past I liked to keep my explosions and failure to myself.

I'm now doing a series on YouTube documenting my missions from the birth of rocketry, to the first crewed spaceflight, to the moonshot missions and beyond to near-future missions. My inspiration was using the newest tech-trees for KSP but they never really felt right. The NotStartingManned mod seemed like a step in the right direction but to add flavour I wanted to use more Soviet looking parts, and that required some re-jigging of the mod.

Anyways, here we have the first two parts of my series, and they focus on the first satellite, and first lunar impactor. It is a series of Firsts - the first of each type of mission, but I'm including lots of extra information in-between of the opposing side in the space race who just missed out on each successive hurdle.

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More to come this week!

Edited May 22, 2014 by MattBox

[MattBox]

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  Part 3!
  

Hey everyone, another part today with another few coming over the weekend. This one was a beast to do - using RemoteTech I had to swing around the back of the Mun and take some photos - for the voyeuristic Kerbals back home. This mission profile followed that of Luna 3 (except I was equatorial, not polar) and the probe looked like Ranger 5.

I hope you like it =3

[MattBox]

Aaaaand part 4 is up already! What else do you do when the earthquake siren wakes you up at 2am? You play KSP to avoid confronting your terror inspired insomnia.

This mission is based on the Vostok 1 mission and due to that, I nerfed the abilities of my craft, no RCS, no SAS, just gimbles. Come watch Jebediah be the first Kerbal into space.

[MattBox]

Woo - another video! This one has been up for a while now but I only just realised that the forum was back up and running. At only 10 minutes it's my shortest one, but then again it was the least ambitious of my programmes so far.

This video is based on Alan Shepard's first suborbital flight for the US. The Kerbstone rocket is weak and underpowered but it would be a step to the Kerbless rocket launches which will be in the next video. Hope you enjoy.

[MattBox]

Here we go - this time another Amerikerbal will travel into space, this time to complete a full orbit. For that I had to change out my Kerbstone rocket (used for the suborbital flight) for my Kerbless (Atlas) rocket.

[MattBox]

Episode 7! This one looks at Mariner 2, atop an Atlas Agena rocket (or at least, a Kerbal take on it). I get a little bit ahead of myself with this one, while I get my launch window towards Eve sorted out perfectly, I forgot that so far in this campaign I have no long range communications set up - there were no communication sattelites at this point!! So I do an emergency mission quickly before I shoot too far away from Kerbin to loose control forever. Part 2 will be up soon

[MattBox]

Two new episodes this time!

This is part 2 of the previous episode, and in this one I get from interplanetary space for a close Eve flyby, using Remote tech and trying to get my window perfectly timed so that I can do experiments in the flyby and have line-of-sight to the Space Center.

This video is based on the X-15 missions. Why is this a first? The X-15 was flying from the time of Sputnik, so why am I doing a mission just after Mariner 2? Of all the X-15 missions, mission 90 and 91 were internationally recognised as having passed into space, and so therefore arguably back in 1959, the X-15 was the first space vehicle (even though it wouldnt be used as such for another 5 years) This mission makes a jetplane launch vehicle and I put a solid rocket plane on top.

It doesnt go well... not at all...

[MattBox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIoUXSKeGPI

Citizens of Kerbin, I bring you more missions, for science - and profit. Two more missions this time, condensed into a single episode. The first mission emulates Venera 3, which while an unsuccessful mission, did scatter its debris for the first time on another world - which in my mind is just as successful as the intentional lunar impactors. This required the building of a new Molnya rocket, and a probe body. The probe body came in useful for the second half of the video when I emulated Luna 9 - they used essentially the same body, save for some mission specific hardware and an altered probe shell.

Luna 9 is one of my favourite robotic missions and I was really happy to do this.