Kerbal Space Program (in-dev retail game)

[Samuel Creshal]

Not too cute to send them on suicide missions.

[pjknibbs]

Not too cute to send them on suicide missions.

There's nothing cuter than the sight of a Kerbal's terror as their inevitable horrible fate begins to dawn on them...

[Chips]

I can't do that They really are too cute, I actually care about the Kerbals

However, the first was a disaster. I launched, no parachute - and to make matters worse I somehow ejected the pilot so he plummeted to his death

After that I started with tutorials to learn where I went wrong and what to do

[Warenwolf]

However, the first was a disaster. I launched, no parachute - and to make matters worse I somehow ejected the pilot so he plummeted to his death

Did the camera follow the poor guy all the way to the ground?

[Chips]

Yep, the camera is on him... not made that mistake again. However, there have been others. Like when the rocket goes a bit, erm, wrong - I tried to separate it without thinking to kill the thrust instead.

Meant I had the command capsule being pushed around by a fully firing max thrust rocket for the best part of 1 minute!

So far failed to get into orbit (when doing a manouvre to get into a stable orbit I ran out of juice - doh!), and had 3 rockets not even make it to space.

However, no Kerbal's killed since the very first outing (and I restarted after that disaster).

[OmegaKnight]

Chips: Was that a staging malfunction or did you accidentally hit spacebar?
Alt-L helps with the latter

Today, in a gap in the schedule,
Wilbo Kerman took the Speed Dreamer Mk.2 out for a quick lap round Kerbin,
Armed with one standard 150unit tank of jet fuel and eight Ram Intakes,
the Speed Dreamer Mk.2 has a high operating ceiling and a TWR of over 5.

After a few sub-orbital hops and high speed runs Wilbo
notched up a respectable but not record breaking 2247m/s
(Mach 6.6 or ~1.4 miles/sec)

However,
The final hop would see him soar up over 120km
but more interestingly it also had a perigee of ~40km.

So tantalisingly close to orbit Wilbo thought....
...too close for this Kerbal not to try...
as he broke free of the atmosphere at 69km
he torqued his craft towards the heaven’s
and went EVA!
The Kerbal pushed with all his might
until Victory!

and one delighted Kerbal

[Pirate hater]

Yep, the camera is on him... not made that mistake again. However, there have been others. Like when the rocket goes a bit, erm, wrong - I tried to separate it without thinking to kill the thrust instead.

Meant I had the command capsule being pushed around by a fully firing max thrust rocket for the best part of 1 minute!

So far failed to get into orbit (when doing a manouvre to get into a stable orbit I ran out of juice - doh!), and had 3 rockets not even make it to space.

However, no Kerbal's killed since the very first outing (and I restarted after that disaster).

My advice for when ever a rocket goes wrong...

Make sure you have a parachute on the capsule so the poor kerbals don't end up painting the surface of Kerbal.

My best advice is to make use of the 'abort' button. When building the ship you can set the engines to switch off, all separations to happen at once, and all parachutes to open. It will save your poor kerbals countless times.



I recently started playing again as the 0.22 update is due soon and should be adding the first step towards the career mode.

I forget how fun this game is. I had a successfully landing on the dark side of the Mun. The bad news is I landed on a slope and the resulting bouncing burns to find flat ground has burned nearly all my Kerbal return fuel. There is a good chance I may come crashing back to the Mun surface if I try a take off. Even if it works I think I will have a stranded ship orbiting Kerbal. So I am left with 2 choices:

1) Send a rescue ship to the Mun to collect the three stranded Kerbals.

2) Try to take off and risk the lives of the Kerbals. Plus there is the potential a rescue ship will be needed to get the kerbals if they get stranded on the lander with no fuel orbiting Kerbal.

On the bright side I jumped around the surface and planted a flag so the mission can be listed as a complete success.

[Aragosnat]

@Pirate hater: IT is Kerbin not Kerbal. As Kerbals are the green people.

Anyways. Had fun with my Kerbal Mass Driver on the Mün and on Minmus.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/109 ... DA39DE769/

With a little effort one can get a Kerbal in orbit around the Mün. But, sadly. I need a way to aim it when on Minmus. As that can make the Kerbal go orbital around the Kerbol / Sun.

Also when firing the Kerbal Mass Driver. It goes off like an artillery cannon.

[imperium3]

So tantalisingly close to orbit Wilbo thought....
...too close for this Kerbal not to try...
as he broke free of the atmosphere at 69km
he torqued his craft towards the heaven’s
and went EVA!
The Kerbal pushed with all his might
until Victory!

and one delighted Kerbal

You pushed a craft into orbit using only the jetpack RCS? That's pretty damned impressive.

[softweir]

@Pirate hater: IT is Kerbin not Kerbal. As Kerbals are the green people.

That's my understanding as well - if you check the map, the planet is Kerbin. Anything to do with the planet is Kerbal (just as anything to do with Britain is British) and the people are also Kerbal, though Harvester said a long while ago he originally wanted them to be the Kerbo.

[OmegaKnight]

You pushed a craft into orbit using only the jetpack RCS? That's pretty damned impressive.

Cheers,

Well the Turbojet did most of the hard work, getting Wilbo up to orbital speeds
coupled with a good shallow sub-orbital hop, which would take him half way round Kerbin,
giving Wilbo about 15min to do the rest.
iirc raising the Peri' from 40ish to 69ish wasn't a lot of dV
and at that point the plane only weighed about 3.5 tonnes,
so wasn't too much for the jetpack to push.

But seeing as Wilbo had ditched his landing gear at takeoff,
less parts: less drag; less weight (1 tonne) = more speed
it was either make it...
or try litho-breaking

[pjknibbs]

You pushed a craft into orbit using only the jetpack RCS? That's pretty damned impressive.

Impressive, but not surprising...not only does the jetpack have a fairly ridiculous delta-V capability (the Manned Manoeuvring Units built by NASA provided something like 12 m/s total delta-V, a Kerbal's pack has around 500) but you can instantly refuel it by getting into the capsule and back out again, so given enough time you could literally perform any manoeuvre you wanted using it!

[imperium3]

I guess you learn new things all the time. I stopped using the jetpack around the point one of my Kerbals ran out of fuel while carrying a lot of horizontal velocity on the Mun. (His colleagues are still stranded there, as I haven't yet designed a Mun lander with enough fuel to take off... landing itself can be pretty touch and go too...)

[Bishop149]

Uggg my Laythe base has issues.

Early tests on Kerbin seemed fine but it has developed at "Tear itself apart when chutes deploy" issue and one of the manned components has a "Hatch Obstructed!" issue. . . . I have no idea how they got IN.

A version with 3 Kerbals aboard is on route to Jool at the moment but I fear the mission will have to be aborted. I can probably return it to Kerbin orbit from where I can rescue the Kerbal in the cupola . . . the 2 in the hitchhiker can't get out so may have to take their chances with those chutes.

My first manned mission beyond Kerbins sphere of influence and I'm probably gonna lose 2 green guys!

Moral of the story: THOROUGHLY test your craft before sending them all the way out to the outer planets! Especially if they are manned!

[Bishop149]

Last night was quite an epic "Arrival at Laythe" moment. . . a whole heap of stuff I had on the way all arrived in Jool space within a game week or so.

All of it successfully transferred to Laythe Orbit, and I landed an unmanned space plane to scout for a place to set up base. So my first landing of a jet powered aircraft on the only other body where it will actually work, YAY!
Flew OK but angle of attack to maintain flight seems a lot steeper on Laythe?

My fail base also completed its burn back to Kerbin space. . . . wasn't sure I quite had enough deltaV left for orbit. I tried impacting it, got some silly G-forces which the Kerbals somehow survived and even with the remaining fuel burning to slow decent further than the semi-deployed chutes alone can achieve the catastrophic failure on full chute deployment problem persisted.

So approach B . . . areobrake.
After a few failed attempts either shooting back out with escape velocity or heading down to impact again, a periapsis of 30km turned out to be just right to slow down (from ~5500m/s) enough to get back just to orbit. . . . G-force not too silly either.

Base is now in an almost perfect 150km polar orbit.
Rescue mission time!
For the guy in the cupola at least. . . the other two are stuck.

[pjknibbs]

Flew OK but angle of attack to maintain flight seems a lot steeper on Laythe?

Laythe's atmosphere is thinner and shallower than Kerbin's, so you'd expect to struggle a bit more to stay aloft.

[Bishop149]

Indeed, but the gravity is also lower so I thought the two might balance out to Kerbin-like. But it certainly seems that flight on Laythe is harder in every respect, less lift, more fuel burned etc

I know nothing about the real world physics of such things so I don't know if this is realistic or not. I mean its all linked isn't it? The bodies gravity determines the thickness and depth of atmosphere it can hold, assuming same atmo compositions . . . thinner atmosphere = less lift but also = less gravity to overcome. . .

But I'm sure there must be a non-linear term to that equation so that it doesn't hold that it all evens out.

[pjknibbs]

I don't think comparisons to the real world will help you much anyway. Kerbin is 600km across--in order to have the surface gravity it's got, it must be made of materials more than 10 times denser than Earth is! That's not really within the bounds of reason as far as physics is concerned...

[Fallen-Angel]

I don't think comparisons to the real world will help you much anyway. Kerbin is 600km across--in order to have the surface gravity it's got, it must be made of materials more than 10 times denser than Earth is! That's not really within the bounds of reason as far as physics is concerned...

Well Kerbals are pretty short .. Maybe the devs really thought about it?

[brucewarren]

Short lived you mean. At least they are when I'm in charge