Remember your first launches?

[Jouni]

In my first launch, nothing seemed to happen at first. Then I hit space again, and the rocket started climbing, while being slowed down by the parachute. Nobody had told me that the last stage is actually the first stage in KSP.

My first rocket that reached orbit was a giant inefficient monster with 8 Rockomax SRBs and two or three vertical stages.

[Flight]

Had to google why my rocket wouldn't launch, then I found out about pressing shift to increase throttle.

After many tries, I managed to go to the mun and back, without using SAS or maneuver nodes. Oh, those days.

[astropapi1]

Oh man, that was way back in .13 before I bought .17. I didn't know how solid boosters worked, so I just stacked lots of them and put giant engines underneath.

When I finally figured out how every part worked, I started reading more about space stuff and discovered the Kárman line. Watched a couple of tutorials, and began my quest to orbit.

Going to orbit for me generally consisted of burning straight up until the apoapsis reached 100km, and then burning sideways like there was no tomorrow. Needless to say, my rockets were huge!

Man, those were the times. Eyeballing transfers, no numbers to help you, no landing gear (remember how we had to use winglets and decouplers?), no EVAs, no plugins, no nothing.

Now get off mah lawn, ya punks!

[LABHOUSE]

I remember them, all boosters no decouplers and I didn't know about t and r improving control (considered cheating to use the wiki) I could only get to 12,000 m then.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Heh, now that I think of them, my first rockets would probably have made it to orbit if I had staged the excessive boosters to fire at the first stage... Oh well.

Now get off mah lawn, ya punks!

Alright, gramps, alright! Sheesh.

[worir4]

My first launches were SRB only. I got to orbit that way.

[Brotoro]

My first rocket launch was...less than successful. I meant it to be a simple suborbital lob...but I was under the faulty impression that parachutes were something that were built into capsules. Alas, poor Jeb.

[pauldbk99]

T-0: Launch!

T+1: Catastrophic failure!

[Dizzle]

My very first post after trying the old demo.

"VERY interesting, but it's going to take me a while to get the hang of it.

Test 1: Failed to launch.

Test 2: Went straight upward for 3 seconds, then immediately flipped over and killed everyone.

Test 3: Wriggled through the air a bit, then had to eject engine and deploy chute to avoid flipping over and killing everyone.

This game is fun.

Edit:

Test 4 had a shaky start, failed to release engine, deployed chute, but still flipped over and killed everyone. "

[Stratzenblitz75]

My first launch was with SRBs only because I couldn't figure out how to increase the throttle on the LFO engines. I can't remember anything else other than it probably exploded.

[John FX]

My first launches went fine but now I know they were not efficient because I launched in the right way (not the wrong way that is most efficient in stock). I joined the forum and took part in a challenge to land everywhere so I did that within a month of buying the game (hardly slept for about a week). This was before I realised that was all there was. You go places and land there.

So I got into mods and built huge interplanetary kethane mining craft that were totally self supporting and could fly around the system forever.

Then I got into building very very very small craft.

Then huge craft covered in small craft.

And so on.

[justidutch]

Firstly, welcome to KSP!

... I like to watch videos and all, but honestly, I prefer not to learn much at first... I want to go through the problems by myself first.

So much this. I have resisted the urge to find out things like how people manage to land on Mun or other planets, the best flight paths/profiles, optimal thrust-to-weight ratios, Delta-V requirements, etc. So much more fun to discover these on my own, exploding along the way.

As for my first launch, I started with version 0.23 when career mode began, and I started in career mode right away. Simple command module on top of small solid rocket booster. Launch. Cool, look at it go! Wait, that's all? Uh oh! Gravity is a ...... Mmmmm, pretty explosion!

And I remember the feeling I had when I got into orbit and the music changed. It was so serene!

[Javster]

Attached a liquid fuel engine onto a tank and a capsule. It didn't move. I hadn't discovered the throttle yet...

I somehow worked out that to orbit you need to go up and then when you're in space, sideways.

[Franklin]

Yeah, it's amazing how long it took for me to figure out which button launches, and which buttons throttle. After I had the controls figured out the rest was just trial & error.

First time watching my solar panels tear off in-atmos was pretty amusing.

[Werwolf]

[Xaiier]

I have but 3 screenshots of ye-olden days.

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[astroju]

Mine was all the way back in the 0.13 demo, it probably was just capsule with parachute over a decoupler and booster. Didn't even make it to space I think.

[sal_vager]

My first launch was a long time ago in 0.13.2, if I remember right it was with a squat craft of mostly SRB's, it didn't get far

[Kerano]

I still have all my craft files from 0.21.1 - the first version I ever played - so I sorted them by date and opened up a few of the oldest ones for a bit of entertainment. Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots of them in action, as it was quite a few days before I realised the existence of F1.

Here's the very first craft I ever saved. It made it to Kerbin orbit, but no further. This was before I realised that different fuel tanks contained different types of fuel, so I brought up a lot of liquid fuel and monopropellant that I couldn't ever use. Not sure what the purpose of the fuel lines was supposed to be, apparently I thought the monopropellant tanks needed some way to drain.

The second oldest craft file I have was apparently a test to see what happened when rockets were not built straight up and down. Needless to say it was not particularly efficient. Note the blocked door - at this point I didn't even know this was a problem, since I was always too afraid to EVA my Kerbals because I thought I'd never get them back to the ship. (This was before I knew about the existence of quicksave.)

The next 16 oldest craft files were all iterations of a project I called "Monster" class rockets. Basically I was trying to build something that would go beyond Kerbin orbit... maybe even to another planet! Apparently I thought the best way to do this was to stack orange tanks and mainsails on top of one another in a sort of crazy expanding pyramid. At this point I still didn't understand what SAS and ASAS were, so I had no way to steer - but that didn't concern me, as the rocket would just burn in a straight line until it ran out of fuel.

It wasn't a particularly efficient design, but it did its job of escaping Kerbin orbit, and before long I had many "Monster" class rockets in crazy orbits about the Sun. Of course I quickly realised that merely crossing a planet's orbit as viewed from above in no way implies an intercept. It was quite a few more attempts and redesigns before I got the fine art of plane change manoeuvres nailed down. (At this point in the game I still hadn't even managed to orbit the Mun.)

Here's the final iteration in my "Monster" series of rockets, before I abandoned the project and started on better designs.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Kerano

[Tangle]

My first few were forgotten in the depths of the 13.2 demo. However, I do remember mine from when I got the game again with the 18.3 demo- Trying to get the Kerbal 5 into orbit and subsequent booster-adding to get it to the Mun. I succeeded with 3 extra booster stages.

[Giggleplex777]

It took me two days before actually reached space. It was a challenge just to reach 30 000m. I remember trying to get to the Mun by flying straight up, and when I finally got in the Mun's SOI (there was not patched conics back then so it was mostly guesswork), I was traveling way too fast to slow down. It probably took me a month before I finally landed on the Mun, and, well, let's just say they didn't/couldn't get back. Took me another day to realize what the retrograde maker was for.

Fast forward to today: I just landed the third ship at my Mun base and I definitely didn't have to quickload because misjudged when I was supposed to fire the engines... Okay maybe I did.

I'm a wiz when it comes to orbital maneuvers, but not so much when it comes to landing.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Giggleplex777

[Whirligig Girl]

It was over two years ago that I tried out 0.13.3, half a month later I had purchased the full game (0.16). I vaugely remember that it had three RT-10s and a liquid fueled engine, but that was so long ago.

[samstarman5]

Youtube was what got me into the game, so I already had a sense of the basics. However, I did achieve Kerbol orbit before I managed Kerbin orbit. That was actually a kick to do, when I saw Kerbin and the Mun together in the same frame, like Voyager 1 did as it left on its mission. I still have the screenshot, too.

[bitbucket]

The horror....the horror....

It was back in the ancient days. No map, no timewarp, no planets, no moons, Kerbin didn't rotate, and landing on the permanently dark side would get your ship eaten by a grue.

Took me four tries to get to orbit, and once you got there, there wasn't much to do there but watch your ship slowly go around in circles.

[Bilfr3d]

Hmm... if I remember correctly it was something a little bit bizarre. I never even did the tutorials, I just went straight into the game. Built this huge contraption of SRBs. 1 SRB. 8x symmetry SRB. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Copy entire thing. 8x Symmetry. Command pod. Done. It went very well.