So far I can't even figure out how to get Bill back into the capsule :P How would I go about setting up a rescue?
You should be able to jump to up to the ladder of your capsule, For the rescue: Build a rocket with a 3-man capsule, and let one Kerbonaut do an EVA at the ramp. Then fly to the Mun, use advanced navigation and landing to land near Bill and walk him over. The Let's Play linked earlier has an episode dedicated to exactly that scenario, rescuing a single Kerbonaut who got stranded on the Mun. =>Youtube Link
Woooo! I did it! I landed safely and brought my kerbonaut back safe! Bill Kerman...first kerb to land on Mun! I'm particularly proud of my multi-stage rocket...it took a lot of trial and error to get a good design. I call it the Trident Mark 5. Here's the second stage...the six SRBs have already been discarded and the main engine and the secondary engines are at full throttle. Main tank almost empty. Here's after stage 2 separation.
Here's the money shot! Those three tanks were almost empty but I landed with them anyway because I wasn't sure how much fuel I was going to need to get back. As soon as they ran dry I ejected them to the Munar surface. And my successful return orbit! On the way to a safe landing. Wooo!
Well done! By the way - recent tweet from the devs: "KSP Will increase in price again soon! Get it at 18.00USD while you still can!"
Man, my gamer-OCD rules for Kerbin make this thing HARD! As recounted in my recent LP entry I really need to rework my rocket - well, at least ensure each part has a full remote-tech command module, not just the little aerial - the module gives SAS and ASAS and controlling things without those is hard. No wonder steering the Kerbin-Munar bus was slow going. On top of that the complexity the RemoteTech plugin adds makes things even more interesting. Landings have to be timed to ensure you have a comms path home of it's GG. So addictive.
OK, I splurged. Yesterday I fired up the demo again but it feels like I've already exhausted all you can do with it. The paid version looks a hell of a lot more fun.
Took some space station bits into orbit and then undocked them, moved a bit, and redocked! Pretty choice. My gaming OCD prevents me from launching big, gangly structures into orbit - piece by piece is all I will be permitted (for arms with panels, etc). This should be fun! Electrical consumption and generation is in, but little uses electricity right now (a new science plugin that graphs data from sensors is encouraging, however!). I look forward to the inevitable life support plugins. Still have no idea how to use the maneuver tools. There are lines and colours and handles to grab... But I need a detailed walkthrough.
My space plane has crashed 5 times now, one time the crew module survived and rolled off the runway, Bill was safe! I now recall how horrible I was at his game last year when it was still like 7$ and I didn't get it.
Woo! Version .18 was released...they've added a lot of cool features...waiting to update now :D http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/post/36932696547/ksp-0-18-is-out-now-and-kerbal-spaceport-and
Just a warning...they've changed quite a bit of stuff. The UI is easier to use and the features they've added sound cool but I'm actually finding the new version a bit trickier. With only stock parts I'm struggling to get stuff into orbit. I also had trouble using the "update" option in the new installer. What I'd suggest is leave your .17 install alone, put the .18 installer in a new folder and do a fresh install. The new installer borks all installed mods and I doubt they're compatible anyway.
The full version is great fun! I've mostly toyed with airplanes so far. After seeing this video of someone's Blackbird lookalike and after remaking the plane in the video by eye, I decided to recreate some more historic planes and see what they could do. So far my double decker doesn't fly very well. It has the shortest take off ever, but then pretty much goes nose up and out of control.
It turns out the Blackbird (SR-71) ish designs work very well! Regardless of which jet engine or control method you use, they're great for stability and maneuverability. Then I tried to make something that vaguely resembles the X-15. However, using a rocket engine on an airplane creates nothing more than a quick way to launch kerbals into the ocean. Also, in order to have a plane with both a top and bottom canard for steering I tried this: It works better than I expected, however when detaching the trolley obviously the bottom canard hits it and disintegrates, making it a futile excercise.
Ok, I have a pretty simple spacegoing (and safe descent) vehicle set up. Now how the heck do I achieve orbit? I'm flying stock .18, all manual atm. The moment I jettison my main lifters I start spinning and even if I manage to straighten out I have no idea which direction I should be going and end up splashing back down.
Go up (don't spin), at 10k, if your ship will survive the move (some get very hard to control when moving around in low altitude) then you want to slowly angle over between 90 and 0 degrees between about 10k and 50k. You tilt to the East using the D key. Stabilize at each tilt "step" using T. Watch your orbit stats - you'll get up to near-orbit speeds before clearing the atmosphere, with luck, making the final push easy enough.
Of special note is the terminal velocity table. Going too fast too early wastes fuel. http://xenolith.ws/?page=post&id=17
Kerbal is a really interesting balancing act between goofy fun and science. On the one hand, you can get pretty far and do some really fun things without even understanding what the heck you're doing. On the other hand you can get much better results when you understand the basics and even better results when you look at things like the table Therlun linked. One thing I've noticed is that the mods I've installed tend to move the game away from the goofy direction and farther into the science zone. The better tanks and engines in the NovaPunch remix pack along with the cool farings and satellites and remote control gizmos make it a lot easier to design cool ships quickly without the longer launch/laugh/cry cycle I was experiencing before. When I went to .18 briefly and played without mods for a while to see what had changed I was actually a little annoyed at going back to the absurd stacks of small tanks and boosters that seem to characterize the pure Kerbal designs. I'm not sure what to conclude yet about all this. The goofiness is extremely endearing but I honestly like the more refined designs a whole lot more than the goofier ones.
Might be great if in the future you get to unlock those better tanks and modules when you have success with the standard parts.
What does the "watch your orbit stats" part refer to? I actually made it yesterday but yeah, I need to start understanding what I did in order to turn that from a fluke into a regular thing. :)
Sorry - go to the M-map view and look at your climbing apoapsis. If you are aiming for a 150k orbit then when your apoapsis hits that number cut throttle and last until you are about 30 seconds away. Then, go horizontal (navball line on the horizon) and go max thrust towards 90 degrees until, in Map view, the periapsis climbs out of the other side of the planet.
So this is frustrating. I decided to rescue bill Kerman from the mun. I didn't have the advanced navigation mod so I just got this close as I could Which turned out to be about 15 km. i don't know exactly how fast the kerbs walk but it took about two hours. I used a brush and a Chapstick to hold the W key down. I got to within about 200 m of the ship and suddenly the display shifted and I was 1.5 km away. I'm sure it's just some kind of weird bug but it was pretty frustrating having to walk that one half kilometers again. Now I'm at 1 km again I just hope the bug doesn't happen this time.
Ok well this was not the ending I expected. As I approached the lander again it SUDDENLY EXPLODED FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER! It was kinda awesome. I think it was glitched out in the terrain somehow. Anyway, I'm gonna try again with another ship.
So I want you all to know that unlike Nixon, I am not content to let Bill Kerman to his fate on the Mun. My engineers are working from late in the early evening to early in the mid evening and lots and lots on the weekends (they have day jobs unfortunately) to find a way to get Bill back home. Here's what has been tried so far: 1) Sending a crew of three with a Crewtank module (fuel first, kerbs later) to land and pick Bill up. These two attempts resulted in six dead rescuers (at least, we lost count) 2) Barely acceptable losses of rescuers led to a more high tech approach: remote controlled lifeboats! 3) The first lifeboat made it safely to the Mun but our pesky satellites moved out of range just as the landing procedure was beginning and the lander crashed helplessly to the surface. 4) We increased our satellite count to try to make it more likely that this wouldn't happen again. We even put a satellite in orbit around the Mun. This resulted in at least two more crashes. Clearly Kerbostationary satellites were needed so we put up three! Bill has been very patient through this process. It's not clear where he's finding the air needed to breathe but we assume that he is buying some on the interstellar black market through the use of shady contacts in North Kerbea. 5) We landed a lifeboat on the Mun but there were two problems with it. First, it was 38 kilometers away and Bill refused to walk that far. Second, it only had 40 liters of fuel left. Probably not enough to make it back to Kerbin. 6) We landed another lifeboat on the Mun that was only 15 km away, had plenty of fuel, and was really nicely decorated. Unfortunately this lander exploded just as Bill was about to reach it. Bill seemed to take this in stride. It's certainly better for it to explode before he gets into it. Tonight's mission: Try, try again!
Anyone have any reliable designs for heavy launch vehicles? I am having a very tough time getting space station parts into orbit. My current launch vehicle will do the job but tends to do a comedy cartwheel at 15k to keep me on my toes.
I've struggled with that too. I'll try to take a look at my inventory of ships tonight. My satellite launcher the William Satfire Mk 3 is pretty beefy. (Built using NovaPunch Remix parts, it's part rocket part literary commentator.)
Can anybody recommend any free recording software? My only current option would be to iPhone the screen.
The free Fraps works, but if you want to edit, you'll need something else. If you don't know anything about video editing software I believe Microsoft Movie Maker that's available for Win7+ might be a good place to start. maybe?
That's right it does. I don't think there's anything preventing you doing consecutive 30 second clips though.
Ok here's the beefiest thing I've created. The William Satfire Mk 5. It can boost entire publishing houses into orbit. I believe this only requires NovaPunch Remix and RemoteTech but I also have the Payload Pack the Truss Pack.
Ahh - need v18 version! Can you provide a picture? I can visually copy it. Friend has a "platform" of jet engines he puts rockets on. It goes up to 20k, and then he fires his rocket off it. I just can't be such a munchkin! I like proper looking rockets!
There are lots of issues upgrading to .18. Best way to avoid problems seems to be to run the updater in an empty folder and then copy over your saves/ships. Those are my two heavy lifters ( .17 unmodded game): The Explorer Mk3 can get the long range space ship (one nuclear engine and 14 fuel tanks, enough to get anywhere in the system and back twice, but not land/start) into orbit with one large fuel tank left. 7 Rockomax engines with Asparagus. Easy to build from scratch too if the need arises. The many SASs and winglets are mostly for optics/symmetry. Two SASs and four winglets in total is sufficient to make it stable and easy to handle. I think simpler is often better. Many rocket designs suffer from over-design. Case in point: The Explorer Mk6 The overblown, more than you'll ever need in .17 version. Surprisingly stable and easy to handle. The outer layer has a simplified asparagus (dropping them individually was too risky collision-wise). More of a proof of concept as in .17 there was nothing that heavy to get into orbit for any reason. Haven't tried .18 much so far. Also visible: the noticeably faster accelerating explorer ship with three nuclear engines instead of one.
The saga of Bill Kerman will have to wait another day. By my calculations this is a 40 minute W key hold :D
