Looking for help...

[Guest Forge_]

I am new to kerbel space program and i am looking for someone to help me understand a lot of the tricks to getting in to orbit, or building a good/decent rocket. and eventually i want to build an entire giant space station. i mean like to be capable of docking 10 ships at once. just a crazy dream, but right now i am looking for help because i haven't even gotten into orbit yet and everything i build is too heavy or not enough thrust, or something.. anyone willing to help?

steam ID:isupersixfour

nickname: "forge"

http://steamcommunity.com/id/forge-/

[roosterr]

Try youtube, there has got to be several out there to see.

BUT, in a nutshell, build an efficient 2-3 stage rocket (you will have to toy with it a little to figure out a simple and efficient design), a single stage to orbit (SSTO) is very difficult for a novice.

THEN, launch to about 10k altitude, kick the rocket over to about 45 degrees nice and slow like, lock your heading using T key, then go to map view (m key) and look at your apoapsis while it is growing. When it hits about 100k, hit the x button to kill your thrust. Wait until your rocket coasts to just under 100k, lay it on its side point right at the horizon, then go full throttle. If you have enough fuel at this point, you will get into orbit at about 2350 m/s speed. Go to map view and as soon as your apoapsis altitude and periapsis altitude are close to equal, kill your thrust and you will have a nice circular orbit

Edited November 24, 2014 by roosterr

[katateochi]

Welcome aboard!

Watching vids is a good place to start, also look in the Gameplay-Questions-and-Tutorials part of the forum.

You can reach orbit with a surprisingly small rocket and to start with I recommend going small. The temptations is to add more to a rocket that's not working, but that can be a curse as you're now having to lift extra weight too.

Vanamonde has made a couple of tutorials with craft to go with them to help get folk started;

How to reach orbit

illustrated moon mission walkthrough for new pilots

Good Luck!

oh and if you want to share what you've made or browse and download other's people's, then checkout http://KerbalX.com

[Reactordrone]

Above all, learn how to read and interpret the navball. It's your primary flight instrument so take the time to study it.

[TheFlyingPigs]

I really advise lurking around the KSP Wiki and Forums to get the idea and terminology. To be honest, I didn't know what an SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) was till I played KSP. Also, it takes AGES to learn how to dock (took me ages) so don't expect succes first time. It took me a month to learn how the moon moves, then 5 Flybys, then 8 time warp related crashes, then my first landing. I literally shouted Eureka! I then went to minmus (Moon No.2) in under a week, and Duna (Mars) in under 2 weeks. I then wanted to learn how to dock. 1 month of trying to dock. I did, eventually, but the point I'm trying to make is KSP is really try to learn from your mistakes. My first rocket was a command pod and a engine, then I realised "I need fuel!" after it wouldn't launch.

TL;DR

KSP is about learning from your mistakes. You need fuel, don't overuse time warp, and don't trust Jeb to be patient while docking. Seriously, he is so impatient.

[SRV Ron]

You can reach orbit with a surprisingly small rocket and to start with I recommend going small. The temptations is to add more to a rocket that's not working, but that can be a curse as you're now having to lift extra weight too.

A early career design for orbit;

For a 100,000 orbit. Go straight up on the SRBs, stage and start the orbital turn gradually using the NavBall to guide you. You should be nearly horizontal at about 60,000 meters when apogee hits 100,000. Cut power. Aim for the horizon. At about 15 to 20 seconds before apogee, start burning again. You will need to stage and use a short burn to reach orbital speed. It will have more then enough fuel left to go to Mun or Minmus orbit and return.

Fly this one property and it will go into orbit without staging.

Edited November 24, 2014 by SRV Ron

[prophet_01]

Good old days^^ on my first attempts to the mun I managed to run out of fuel using nukes

on topic. Google scot manley. He made many very helpful tutorials from basic stuff to advanced topics. Try to build as small as possible in the begining and do things step by step. Try to get a small pod into orbit a couple of times, until you roughly understand how to do that. From that point on you are halfway to anywhere. After that I recommend a munar flyby (just try to get close to the thing and back). The next thing would be orbit around the mun and once you managed to do that you can try to land. I did my first mun landing/return (apollo style) at roughly 50 hours (never knew about quicksaves ). apollo style includes docking and to be clear: don't do that, if you don't want to; it's amazingly difficult for starters.

There are YouTube tutorials on most stuff, they rly help with getting started and far beyond that

[Pecan]

The best place to find tutorials is The Drawing Board, and the rest of the tutorials section of the forum, including mine (link in signature) which is all about mission and ship design from orbital satellites to an interplanetary spacestation infrastructure.

[capi3101]

I used the wiki pretty extensively in my early days of the game (ca. 0.18). Try Senshi's Basic Rocket Design tutorial followed by the Intermediate Rocket Design tutorial (this one mainly for guidelines). After that I'd suggest going through the Real Life Missions tutorials (except for ISS and Mars One) in order. Those are a few versions old now but the only real tweak I'd suggest is to add a pair or a quad of OX-STAT panels up by the command modules.

Lots of useful info on the wiki - I still refer to the Stock Parts page regularly.

[Battlesloth]

Hey Mate, Look I was also new to this not long ago and now really love it. So firstly I would get you to download the following two "MODS" for the game which are free and you just extract to game data folders. MECHJEB : http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220221-mechjeb So this will place you into orbit automatically in space, meet objects etc. Only drawback it only affect the current orbiting object not good for interplanetary yet. All you need to do is hit space bar and type orbit height. This will show you wants need to orbit like speed and direction etc. I don't need this now but still use full with all the other sections. (BTW to use it you need to attach the mechjeb box under "Control"Section to the actual ship "Pod" ) I also think you may have next one by sounds of it, B9 Aerospace http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/223932-b9-aerospace-5-2-6 This is all the massive rocket up to 5M Dia, these can can anything into orbit. Many new toys etc Then you are up to my but now but still looking into forum before i post about building in space and landing whilst I have done it before soo hard need auto pilot.