Any Fellow Kerbonauts?

My latest.
Enterkerb 1

It has two landers, the mother ship is controlled from the cupola.
Power by enhanced thrust nuclear engines, it is currently on a rescue mission.
My first Mun landing attempt met with disaster for the lander leaving a lone kerb stranded in orbit with no way down.
The plan is to rescut the stranded kerb in Kearth orbit then proceed to the Mun, and land.
Then proceed to Mars (I cant remember what they call it), then return all six kerbonauts safely to Kearth.

jazzviper1 said:

Power by enhanced thrust nuclear engines

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Hmm.... "enhanced thrust"? :no:

bavspaceprogram said:

Hmm.... "enhanced thrust"? :no:

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Mods are fine by me. I run several.
Besides, the nuclear engines do have a great ISP in deep space, and are fairly efficient. They stink in high gravity well areas (planets) but between planets, they rock!

I love KSP. Been playing since March of 2012. The game has changed a LOT since then. There are still a few planets and moons I haven't visited, but I have learned so much about rockets and orbital mechanics it's mind blowing. I love that the creator, HarvesteR, named the game after the tin foil figures he called Kerbals as a child. He used to put them inside bottle rockets after removing the explosives. Not the safest introduction to rocketry.

been playing KSP since 0.8.x
I'm intermittently active on the forums there too, same handle.

Great game, and the best tool ever for gaining an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics. I've been everywhere, and dropped colonies nearly everywhere... including Jool.

Moho always takes more delta-V than I think it will though...

KSP is one of the best games I ever played (see my signature).

I actually have a YouTube channel containing plenty of KSP adventures. Plenty of unusual designs, all stock parts.

https://www.youtube.com/user/BagelRabbit

I feel that installing mods, particularly those that make the game easier, is like cheating. Generally, you can do everything in KSP without the mods, it's just more of a challenge. I'm a big fan of taking on challenges.

I know this is an old thread, but I have now finally bought the game and had quite a lot of fun losing my Kerbals in space or a bad re-entry. So I guess I'm now a fellow Kerbonaut.


TA

I've never tried this program. So you can build your own spacecraft?

A buddy came over last weekend for a get together. We were talking about this and both figured out we left some Kerb's in orbit last year !!!!

Yup, this game consumes waaay too much of my "spare" time.

gerbs4me said:

I've never tried this program. So you can build your own spacecraft?

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You could say that.


TA

I must admit I really love this game as well. It was a really cool way to learn how orbit mechanics work I'm currently trying to learn docking without much success as I want to build a tug and lander to keep up in space and just send tankers up.

Docked with my first lander from the surface of Minmus, after the 30th try but I think I have the hang of it now. I transferred Jebediah to the command module and made a perfect re-entry, got almost 400 science from that one mission. I think I will pass on the landers that need to dock for a while though to much of a pain. I might just launch some unmanned orbiters to practice with.

I have a ton more to learn on fuel efficiency for now to be worrying about docking plus I still have to go save Bob from the Mun used up to much fuel on the landing to get him home.


TA

thobin said:

Docked with my first lander from the surface of Minmus, after the 30th try but I think I have the hang of it now. I transferred Jebediah to the command module and made a perfect re-entry, got almost 400 science from that one mission. I think I will pass on the landers that need to dock for a while though to much of a pain. I might just launch some unmanned orbiters to practice with.

I have a ton more to learn on fuel efficiency for now to be worrying about docking plus I still have to go save Bob from the Mun used up to much fuel on the landing to get him home.


TA

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Haha sounds like you're having just as much fun as me with docking.... I'm really tempted to go download an autopilot mod to do it for me. The interface is so bad, it gets really confusing trying to work out which key to press to get the right thruster to fire

I currently have three space stations that are orbiting Kerbin that I regularly dock to.

ziminar said:

Haha sounds like you're having just as much fun as me with docking.... I'm really tempted to go download an autopilot mod to do it for me. The interface is so bad, it gets really confusing trying to work out which key to press to get the right thruster to fire

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Keep your ball 90 degrees to the right, it's what I have to do, or I fly off into the sunset. Humm a autopilot mod... I'm going to build a refueling station soon but not till I get a handle on this docking thing.


TA

rocketjet787 said:

I currently have three space stations that are orbiting Kerbin that I regularly dock to.

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Meh you're just showin off

thobin said:

Keep your ball 90 degrees to the right, it's what I have to do, or I fly off into the sunset. Humm a autopilot mod... I'm going to build a refueling station soon but not till I get a handle on this docking thing.


TA

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Not sure what you mean? As in so it looks like the line goes down the center with the blue on the left and the brown on the right?

Been playing since version 0.8

It's fantastic. There's not much I haven't done.

ziminar said:

Not sure what you mean? As in so it looks like the line goes down the center with the blue on the left and the brown on the right?

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IF you are looking at your NAV ball just before launch you want to keep the 90 deg line to the right the same in space no matter you direction if the 90 deg is on the right hand side of the NAV ball you will steer the way you think, as long as the rocket is pointed away from you. When it is facing you its the opposite life flying a RC plane.


TA

I'm going to do one big station in Geosinc orbit around 200k to refuel out going landers.


TA

I've played on and off since .7 and enjoy it quite a bit. Like others above, I've done most of what is possible, with some exceptions like manned lift-offs from Eve, mostly because I'm not a masochist. It's a heck of a fun game with a reasonably steep learning curve. Just keep trying and check out other tutorials online.

A few quick tips for docking (not a how-to):
You can right click the docking port on your vessel and choose "control from here" to reorient your nav-to align with the port.
You can right click the docking port on your target vessel to set the docking port itself as the target
Change the camera to 'chase' mode to align the camera to the ship so that all your controls stay easy to grok.
Change your displayed speed to 'target' and use the combination of that and the target icon on your navball to align/close in.

thobin said:

I'm going to do one big station in Geosinc orbit around 200k to refuel out going landers.


TA

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good luck mate, the docking trick about the navball definitely helped me. I managed to get a tanker up there, then dock my lander with it and refuel. Then brought a large tug up and docked the lander to it after disconnecting from the fuel station. I was all systems go to try for duna and set full power on the tug.... docking clamp on the tug to lander didn't hold and the whole lot exploded So I now need to work out how u re-inforce the docking clamp things

ziminar said:

good luck mate, the docking trick about the navball definitely helped me. I managed to get a tanker up there, then dock my lander with it and refuel. Then brought a large tug up and docked the lander to it after disconnecting from the fuel station. I was all systems go to try for duna and set full power on the tug.... docking clamp on the tug to lander didn't hold and the whole lot exploded So I now need to work out how u re-inforce the docking clamp things

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As far as I know for now you cant go full throttle with a docking clamp or you kersplode. I did it once on my way back from Minmus, caught in the nick of time and throttled down just before it snapped in half.

My new rocket design with a fuel tank above the capsule I have to put 6 struts to make it launch capable, after that in space when its been un-docked and re-docked I cant go full speed or I breaks in half even if I creep up on it.

They need to let the engineer reattach struts.


TA

thobin said:

As far as I know for now you cant go full throttle with a docking clamp or you kersplode. I did it once on my way back from Minmus, caught in the nick of time and throttled down just before it snapped in half.

My new rocket design with a fuel tank above the capsule I have to put 6 struts to make it launch capable, after that in space when its been un-docked and re-docked I cant go full speed or I breaks in half even if I creep up on it.

They need to let the engineer reattach struts.


TA

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ya that would be pretty cool, like how engineers can re-pack chutes. I got it working though, I think where I went wrong was I didn't turn off the thursters and reaction wheels on the lander once it was joined up. The lander probly has more thrust than the tug so it snapped back and crashed into the tug I think... I might need to rethink my design though as its a 14 min burn on the tug for kerban escape

There is a mod that lets engineers build struts in space, along other things. Look up kerbal attachment system. And for whoever mentioned an autopilot look up mechjeb.

This sounds like a really cool program, I may to get it.

Sorry to post in a old thread, but yep. I play KSP.

Been doing it since 0.13.4.

EDIT. This thread is so old I forgot I posted October 20th, 2013. Sorry about that.

Still play KSP. 1.2.2 is great!