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Hi all


CorvusCorax

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Hi,

I am a software developer, in my freetime I write flight control and guidance code for the OpenPilot open source project. Being a big fan of space travel, I looked into Kerbal Space Program playable demo yesterday, after I saw it mentioned in a Q&A webpage about spacex.

I had some issues getting the demo to work (first I had no fonts, I had to install some, then I ran into an issue with wrongly set $LANG / $LC_ALL environemnt variables causing the vehicle design tutorial to fail (you couldn't connect stuff)) luckily I found forum entries and fixes for both issues :)

Then I did my first suborbital flight using the Kerbal 1 template, and used the Kerbal 5 for some first rounds in orbit (I tried to land the rocket spacex style with retropropulsion after reentry with quite some propellant left. the capsule and some other debries even survived the explosion after I ran out of propellant hovering in around 10 m alt ;) )

I modified the rocket a little bit (larger tanks for more fuel) and tried to find out how the "set as target" feature works - I managed to sync orbits in a little bit over an hour flight time

rendevouz1.png

rendevouz2.png

rendevouz3.png

unfortunately I hadn't found out how to activate the manouvering thrusters - I thought they were attached wrong when all I would have needed to do was press R - well instead I did the rendevouz using low thrust on main engines, which took me almost as long as the actual orbit matching - and they kept drifting apart ;) - I exchanged their pilots, because I could ;)

rendevouz-orbit.png

That was about 4 hours after I first installed the game - So long story short, I got hooked in no time ;)

I got me the full version today - after I found out that people are actively working on a realistic N-body gravitational physics mod:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68502-WIP-Principia-N-Body-Gravitation-and-Better-Integrators-for-Kerbal-Space-Program

I'm really looking forward to make use of the interplanetary transport network : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network but that kind of low delta-v transitions aren't possible with the stock simplified physics, as you'd need to traverse highly unstable orbital paths through and around the lagrangian points of several celestial bodies... - damn, that feature really should be in the main game some day, but I think even as they are, KSP physics should already allow to make a swing-by manouver and leech some extra delta-v from Mun ;)

Let's see where this leads :)

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Congratulations on the hard work. Free-return lunar flights, planetary slingshots and gravity-assists are indeed possible in KSP but require you to enter the Sphere of Influence (SoI) of a body for any effect.

Now you have docking-ports so you can transfer fuel as well as crew ;-) The whole 2001 thing is an efficient way to do stuff - spaceplanes and SSTO rockets carry Kerbals and fuel to orbit, docking to a space-station to transfer them to never-landing space-vehicles for lunar/interplanetary transfer where they again transfer at a station, into reusable landers for whatever the destination body is.

We even have (non-functioning) monoliths and a murderous adversary - in the form of the Kraken (generally gets blamed for any bugs that destroy ships for no 'real' reason).

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a question regarding gameplay - is it possible to recover jetisoned (or otherwise lost) rocket parts/stages?

I did a 2 suborbital testflights in career mode - with a supposed to be recoverable rocket. First flight it landed on its "legs" (well, support struts, but they did the job) and got recovered completely - the second flight it splashed down in water --> it didn't stay upright and on going vertical, the vehicle lost hull integrity on its top most fuel tank so I ended up with the capsule floating next to the "rest of the rocket" - when I clicked "recover flight" - I only got the capsule and the parachute as recovered parts, not the also floating main part body of the vehicle (including engine) is this just because it was floating, or would any stage that got jetisoned/detached and landed separately end up lost even if intact?

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If you change the map setting to display debris pieces, you should be able to recover them with the button in the tracking center. (At least you could in previous versions. I haven't tried it in .90.) For debris in space, it's possible to grab the pieces with a claw and deorbit them, but of course it's a bit self-defeating economically to send a ship up to grab a debris part.

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thanks, I haven't found out how to do it from the map (have to try enabling display of debris and stuff) but I did find out I could right click those near the space center in the space center overview display (where you normally click on buildings) for nearby stuff recovery (lots of empty booster stages) - dont know if that works for stuff that came down on the other side of the planet ;)

but of course it's a bit self-defeating economically to send a ship up to grab a debris part.
heh, maybe if you overdo KSP too much it would become necessary to prevent a kessler syndrome (or at least to declutter the orbit map) ;) but for that to be truly meaningless they'd have to model impact effects of small (post explosion) space debris on other sattelites as well as tracking small size space junk - and of course on-rail not-loaded orbital collissions

even without they could at some point make your reputation go up when you go and remove your crap from orbit, thats realistic, and easy to implement without engine changes

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