Kerbal Space Program thread

Kebab Spack Progrum
Now that the game is "released" (aka squad got bored of making it so they shat it out in a basic unfinished state so they could get a load of cash and move on to tequila parties) and I no longer have any expectations of the developers, I really enjoy it.

We used to have a consistent thread about this game before release. That was a lot of fun. Let's have another.

If you're having crashes with the current version (1260 1.1.2) involved with the VAB/SPB, install the following hotfix made by a squad employee: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/140001-bust-11x-crashes-your-help-requested/&page=6#comment-2630027 | It worked very well for me. I also no longer have any random crashes during decoupling and staging.
There's also another issue with this version where only aerodynamic parts produce lift, meaning that fuel tanks and other such bits don't help to lift the plane like they usually do. A fix for this is the combination of Stock Bug Fix Modules + Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, which I both consider to be must-have mods. SBFM fixes the issue, but makes all parts slightly weaker I think, but KJR balances that out and makes the kraken's job much harder overall.

Jeb got fucked by a random hilarious bug at the start of my game, where the cockpit he was in floated away from the rest of the vessel in a crash, eventually shooting at lightspeed well past the orbit of Jool, so Valentina takes his place as default test dummy.

Other urls found in this thread:

ksp.olex.biz/
wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Planned_features)
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I hope you didn't pay for that version. I did. Feels bad man.

Will there ever be a dev who takes the same idea and puta it into a proper engine?

I must have played this game for well over 200 hours and I never made it to other planets.

This helped me understand why going to Mars is so fucking hard IRL.

I paid for the game and I have to say it was definitely worth it. A couple hundred hours of enjoyment for $10 is a great return on my investment. I backed it in version 0.13 and while it's far from perfect, I can't say I'm not satisfied.


I'm fully capable of going to planets, and have been to all except Dres at some point in development, but I almost never actually do.
I don't like warping for a year at a time to get to the best transfer window; it feels like I'm wasting time and should be doing something constructive in the meantime. So I end up planning out a large moonbase or orbital fuel depot, building half of it, then getting bored because I didn't want to build a station in the first place and would rather go to planets.

I wish the Alternis Kerbol mod had been kept up to date. Having Kerbin as a Joolian moon made for fun and interesting exploration.

I dunno… I made a stock spaceplane with no clipping issues.

Worked pretty well.

It's possible to get to mars with chemical propellant…

And we have, like, Ion engines now.

It's just that very few people are willing to sit through an un-time-accelerated 4 hour burn to find out how efficient they can be.

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I have been playing since 0.11 and while I get the disappointment over what happened to development after 0.18 I have still got better value for money out of this game than any other.
ATM I'm fucking around with realism overhaul and having fun while I try to get to the moon.


The game is deliberately 1/10th as hard as reality.

You gotta build a rocket with enough delta-v, which is the amount it can change it's velocity which is usually measured in meters. With this, you gotta learn planetary transfer windows and phase and ejection angles. ksp.olex.biz/ is a good calculator for all the latter parts, but you should check out the wiki for guides and shit. I've yet to exit the orbit of Duna in my career modes.

I LOVE the Interstellar Pack… it's so bad.

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Use the kerbal construction time or whatever it is mod with 5x longer time than it comes with. You'll naturally drift through many transfer windows as you push through your career, and it also forces you to coordinate more on multiple-launch missions

I got a ISRU planethopping probe…

I used it to gather most of the science in the game with one mission.

Narva boost to Minimus to refuel, NERVA boost to jool, refuel at pol (lol), gather science from every biome in the orbit of the Green Jovian Giant.

*NERVA

Hey, do you guys think that an orbital fuel depot, fueled from a lunar ice excavator, would be useful for boosting satellites from LEO to GEO?

GEO isn't high enough to be worth the effort but for interplanetary trips a moonbase capable of producing fuel would be useful.
IRL project Orion was our best hope for exploring the solar system but because we expected ~2 deaths related to each launch the project was dropped.

I hope it comes back one day but it won't be any time soon with the current political climate.

Try the New Horizons mod. I can't play it because for some reason whenever I face the camera towards the other moons in the system I get a second of no frames, which I know will make me really angry over the long term.

If you do try it and you get that issue, maybe try Distant Object Enhancement. maybe the lag is caused by the hacky method of making kerbin a moon. I don't care enough to try it though.

Anyways, pic is first time landing on the mun since I gave up on the game around .24. Bill accidentally touches one of the EVA science packages, so of course physics says it must have a conniption and spin fast enough to cause a dark hole to appear, hitting the ground, thereby propelling itself at many meters per second towards a hillside.

Idk… ameliorized over succesive launches, a lunar fuel station supplying LEO to GEO boost propellant/payload could facilitate a substantial savings over current full Terran propellant/fuel boost with payload.

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By the time you lift that fuel from the moon and get it into LEO you have used a heap of it. While aero-braking could allow fuel savings you would need a non-ablative heat shield so you didn't need a launch replacements from earth all the time.

I just can't see it being worth all that effort for 1.63km/s delta-v.

And never have to ever again… slowpoke.

Aluminum oxide solid rocket boosters for lunar liftoff, because a great deal of lunar regolith is aluminum.

Solar Thermal powered magnetic acceleration tracks.

BITCHES!

I bet the Lunar bedrock makes one hell of a heatsink!

I suppose you would have to find some way of equalizing the angular velocity addition to the moon by constant railgun launches… (2 in opposite direction should work) but I believe the tidal forces of the moons angular gravitational lock should be several orders of magnitude greater than mere multi-thousand metric ton launches could even approach for equivalence.

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*correction, 6km/s. I still stand by my statement.


I don't understand, are you saying you make a huge tanker that fills at the moon then moves to LEO where it refuels multiple craft over years?
That relies on high chemical stability of your propellants and has huge setup costs.


And what is your oxidizer? If you are shipping gaseous oxygen from the moon your craft is huge and carries fuck all propellant or you process it to LOX and only have a couple of days to use it before boiloff becomes a major issue.
If you want to process it to LOX in LEO you still need to transport gas from the moon and need a heap of power to liquidize it in LEO.


That actually doe offer a decent, reliable and cheap way of getting from the moon to LEO with minimal maneuvering burns.

I feel you user. The only place I ever got to was the Mun. Orbital calculations are hard yo.

Water is stable, electrolyzed it becomes hydrogen and oxygen.

Both require cryocooling to be effective, and I figure in space or on the moon (especially the dark side) that would be a great deal easier.

If stability is more your game, you could add some carbon and make it into methane and LOX, a great deal more stable, if you are worried about monoatomic hydrogen permeation of the containment vessel, or even high temperature pressure release related boiloff of the fuel/propellant mixture.

Interesting item of note….

Liquid cryo shit usually doesn't require a pressure release valve if it's actively cryocooled…

Just sayin.

All you gotta do is fuck around with maneuver nodes.

Install Kerbal Engineer and Kerbal Alarm Clock. They'll tell you all the ship characteristics and transfer window information you'll need to go anywhere and back.

Active cooling is an option but far from easy in the sun and there isn't an orbit that will keep you in the dark. All cooling methods rely on ejecting heat and when IR is the only way of removing it shit goes slow.

I'm not saying any of this is impossible but I don't think it's practical from LEO / GEO boosting. If however we made a habit of going to Mars suddenly being able to refuel in LEO becomes much more useful and worth more setup cost.

What is unfinished about the game right now? I remember a bit of a shitstorm with 1.0 being pushed too early, but 1.1 seems to be finished. Haven't played it since 0.25, though.


Isn't it something like 1/6?

Give it a go, 1.1.2 is bretty good and the only think that could be considered "unfinished" is the simplified resource system instead of what they were showing around 0.21.
As for the scale it's kind of in-between, distances are reduced by 1/10th but atmospheres are ~1/2 so it's somewhere between.

I made it to the Mun exactly once, but it took all of my fuel to do it so there was none left for the return trip

honestly though I don't feel like the game is finished, (look at the "planned features" wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Planned_features) but at least it's not minecraft's level of incompletion.

There is DLC? I got it for $10

That's why you ISRU, son.

Imagine how much more equipment you could have delivered to the moon, if you didn't have to worry about the trip back.

Eventually, I guess.

Did you launch a rescue mission?

I remember, On my stock game, I had multiple SSTO's, some were nuclear powered lifters (+4 tons), and fuel depots around mun, kerbin, and minimus.

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Jesus fuck dude, we have a five image limit.

Eve is the shittiest planet.

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(Check)
((The))
(((Delta)))
[V]

Stay the fuck away from Eve, I did a return mission once just to prove that I could and I have never been back.

192K/s

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did NOBODY hear about the Wii U release?

nobody heard about Wii U release?

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nobody heard about wii u release?

if youre like me and have no shame in life,
press ctrl, alt, f12. check unlimeted fuel
you now only have to worry about correct construction and piloting.

I just started playing this game again for the first time in months. The 64-bit support and the updated Unity version has really helped out, I can actually make a nice full size space station now without my frame-rate committing sudoku. I've made a science base on Minmus, too, which is fun since ground bases were always laggy as shit before. Jetpacking around the place to biomes, getting soil samples, then coming back to base for a beer is pretty comfy.

The career mode is interesting, but I honestly just prefer the science only mode because having to grind up cash to upgrade shit gets tedious.

All that effort and I just end up rocket jumping from spot to spot.

The only use for rovers are to put RCS jets on them and send them to low grav places and take them off sweet jumps.

What kind of ground base? Separate modules, or docking components together with airlocks and wheels?
Minmus is perfect for a connected base, because the low gravity makes it possible to fix slight misalignments. I tried to do one on the Mun a few versions back but the gravity was just a little too much for the docking ports to overcome without much fiddling and luck.

I had to do it spaced out because I hadn't unlocked rover wheels on the tech tree yet when I built it. I eventually connected them with KAS stuff which makes it all technically one craft. The place is kind of on skeleton crew now since I finished getting pretty much all data on Minmus, so theres just two scientists working their ass off and an engineer to fix shit, like how I forgot to put an antenna on the science module and had to rip one off of a probe.

Guess I'm going to plan a similar mission to the Mun now, and I've got wheels now, so I'll try to connect them.

gotta love kebab space program

When is it coming out for the WiiU anyway? I want to get it for my cousins as well. Is KSP kid friendly? I mean, is it too difficult for children?

They might have fun building and crashing shit. Whether or not they can go to space and land on the moons and stuff depends on their age and attention span. It takes a lot of patience and planning, I couldn't have done it when I was a kid, but I was a little dumbass.