Introduction Kerbal Space Program is an indie game currently in development by Mexican company Squad. KSP is a sandbox space simulator game where you, at present, build ships, landers, rovers, and so on, and put them into orbit or send them off to explore the solar system around the home-world Kerbin (Voyager style map below). At present the game is a true sandbox without any structure, in the future the game will have a strategy/economy element around doing missions, making money and buying parts. The game developers are following the Minecraft model where you can buy it now for $18, or more later on. There's a free demo (which does take some part mods, by the way!) which is really fun and worth trying. This Let's Play My goal in this Let's Play is to develop a space program worthy of the little Kerbals who will be flying to their almost-certain doom. Using mods and plugins (more on that at the end) I will be making life a little harder for myself while also adding more options. For example, I'm going to want to map planets and moons and also worry about setting up a communications relay network so that my remote probes and landers can be commanded from Kerbin (complete with time delays!). Before we get stuck in, some logos! The name for this operation comes from my handle just about everywhere else on the internet but here. Thanks to Therlun and tylertoo. The following is a list of mods I'm using (as many as I recall, the key ones for sure). KSP is a very "open" system and it's easy for people to make new parts and texture them. The game is also available to moders who create plugins which alter the game. These plugins usually "live" inside objects you attach to rockets and are only active while the object exists on an object you are controlling. This openess and flexibility is a lot of fun as it is easy to find lots of fun toys to play with any time you visit kerbal.net or other mod websites! I'm chucking details in spoiler tags as there are lots of them and they aren't necessary to understand in order to follow the LP. I'm going to add actual LP content tomorrow. This took ages to get set up!
This should be very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what wonderful fiery deathtraps perfectly safe and serviceable rockets we'll be constructing.
I will take mission and ship names by private message. Please submit your ideas and I will include them as I play/build!
Tonight I spent a huge amount of time trying to put a stable ship into a stable orbit. Now, I have done this many times before, but this time I wanted to build a heavy lifting vehicle that would serve as a base for my satellite deployment program and also as a base unit for going to the Mun (Kerbal's moon) and beyond. Let's just say the official record of the number of variants on our first launcher, the Spear, number 5, but the unofficial test runs number upwards of a dozen. But in the end a stable orbit at 200k was achieved with plenty of fuel to spare for complex orbital manoeuvres (or just brute-forcing change, if required). I can conclude we have a good platform for our program! Pictures in spoiler tags below.
Mapping Satellite Time! Before we go anywhere it might be best to map the homeworld in order to aid our understanding of the cosmos. To this end I plan to place a mapping satellite in orbit about 150km up. This will keep the orbits nice and quick while providing good, detailed swaths of the ground underneath. We might even spot some anomalies! The low orbit and light payload makes sending the Spear V to do this job somewhat of an overkill. The Spear VI is designed and built instead - a lighter, smaller launcher with great flexibility and the handy quality of sending all spent boosters to earth. Pictures, etc, below. The goal is to get the mapping satellite - strapped to the top of the Spear VI, into polar orbit (that is, orbiting North-South rather than West-East). This will mean that as the earth turns, and the satellite spins over it, we'll get a good map of the unfold. The launch goes well and the separation of the first three boosters (three boosters drain their fuel into the other three, who then drain their fuel into the main body, a "lite" version of "Asparagus" design). At 55k above the planet the orbital unit leaves the final boosting unit behind and powers its way into a circular orbit at 150k. Getting a precise orbit is a really fun challenge in KSP. I don't quite make it with this unit, but 150-148k is a pretty fine circle if you ask me! It all comes down to burning precisely at the apoapsis and periapsis (high and low points) to adjust the orbit by very small degrees. The satellite has begun its mapping job before I've even decoupled from it. However, my communications information panel informs me I am not in radio range of our ground station. At this altitude I'm only ever in radio contact when I'm passing directly overhead meaning that once I decouple from the mapping satellite if I want to control it in any way I will only have a few minutes a day with which to give it orders. That being said, it isn't affecting the mapping and the satellite will happily burst down data when it has a signal. Solar panels are deployed and the satellite detached from the orbiter. Switched views to the polar map. With no comms, the sat is on its own! ....at least until we build a geostationary communications satellite network!
Before we build a communications network I think it would be handy to boost the capabilities of the earth station at Kerbal Command. To this end I've taken a lander truck and attached communication sat dishes to them to provide longer range communications, if required. Here's the truck on the move! Dishes and solar panels deployed. I will provide some demonstration of how this impacts communications next time.
you should try to build the most ridiculous rocket you can and then make it completely functional. its fun. my boyfriend and i do it all the time, except most ours just explode. XD
I decided it was necessary to redesign the launcher unit (ok, I simply can't resist) in order to provide the power to put a satellite into keostationary orbit - I wanted to not only deploy the comsat itself, but also to return it to Kerbin - no need to litter up space! 200k is my designated junk orbit, not keostationary orbits. Neither unit is piloted, they rely on a communications link to the ComsTruck on Kerbin. Fall out of range or mess up an orbit and I lose control! Below I give you the ComSat I. I made a video below showing the full flight (heavily cut!) from launch to deploying the StarFlower ComSat unit. The launcher employees asparagus design. The boosters are daisy-chained together meaning the first two boosters drain very quickly and are dropped, and so on. Makes for an efficient launcher. Enjoy! It is possible to very neatly arrange sats in keostationary orbit, but I really don't want to fiddle with the numbers right now. This works! Each sat is daisy chained back to the first, which is linked to the coms truck. Sometimes the sats will relay their signal through the MapSat, which then fires the signal to the first keostationary satellite and on to the ground station - all depends on which is the shortest route. Kinda cool. I think we're ready for some exploration of the Mun!
12 stages, 170 parts. That has been the progress to date. But sometimes one can dream too big. This is certainly the case with the Mun Explorer rocket! At the top of it is a small but really effective lander unit I designed. You can see a video of it in action here: After that a section for a polar-orbit mapping satellite that we'll drag to the Mun. We may even send it slingshotting back around Kerbin to give it an easy transition to a polar orbit from the equatorial we will start in. Then there is the "to the Mun" part of the craft, which is mostly fuel and engine. After that, the main body. You can see it here. As you can see I'm having real trouble controlling this craft - even MechJeb struggles. I suspect I need to somewhat reduce the number of parts and maybe also reduce the overall launcher body size. Three metre tanks jst seem doomed and my To the Mun bit is a 1.75m tank which makes the whole "top" of the rocket heavy when in atmosphere and very hard to control in orbit. I also need to increase rigidity, which will mean losing the fairings, I fear. I will probably add a "plate" to the top of my stack and connect everything to it. Thank god for the Soyuz mod, which ha some very forgiving "latice work" type space-tape to glue things together (rather than the normal grey space tape).
I've put together a successful Munar Explorer launcher unit! The great revelation is that MechJeb's "SmartSAS" is the perfect guide when even traditional MechJeb causes massive rocket failure. A well-balanced rocket can easily make orbit using MechJeb, but when you're carrying 16 tons at the top of your rocket... well.. you get a wobble when gravity turning in an atmosphere. Using the SmartSAS features I can make a more gentle gravity turn and keep my rocket from falling to bits! Here's a little video showing you the launcher deploying the Munar Explorer unit and its attached modules - the lander and rover, the mapping satellite and the main body geostationary comsat.
So this picture pretty much explains how everything went tonight. I managed to intercept the Mun just fine and was well prepared to engage in all necessary orbital manoeuvres to set up the mapping satellite and deploy the robot lander until during stage separation between the orbiter and the MapSat and lander went kinda badly wrong. It turns out I somehow messed up my staging and my rover was left stuck to the MapSat! From left to right - the Kerbin-Munar unit, the MapSat with rover stuck on the top, and the lander. Boo! I then discovered a big problem - the MapSat has no SAS module - a RemoteTech control module would have been a good idea - and so I have no stability control other than bursting the engines and then hitting T when in roughly the right direction (yes, that still made it hold a bearing - I've got no idea why). Even so, I managed to plot a de-orbit course and dump the rover before getting back into orbit. I don't manage a polar orbit, but I get something of a mapping orbit going. Meanwhile, I try to RCS the rover down to the surface. One bounce... ...and an explosion later proves that this isn't really a viable strategy! I also brought the lander down but failed to control my sideways motion enough - causing a total structural failure. In good news all elements survived so I do have the potential for yet another comms relay on the surface! After all this fail I took the Kerbin-Munar unit and moved it into a non-equatorial orbit between the Mun and Kerbin. It will act as a comms relay buoy for times when the Mun, for example, might block direct Line of Sight to Kerbin. At least, that's my plan. I'm going to have to re-work my lander and mapping units slightly and try again!
Fuck yes I love this game. I'm a fan of the Viking Space Program and I've played the demo a bit. Mr. Alligator tried to buy it but somehow the payment thing got buggered up so... maybe some time in the future we'll own the full version? I haven't even touched any custom content yet though... what do you recommend as 'essential' mods for newbs?
Hmm. All the ones in the spoiler at the start. Install them one at a time and play with the bits. The plugins may require a bit of extra reading of forums, etc, and some parts do require plugins... take it slow, read, experiment, have fun!
So the story of my second mission to the Mun goes like this: I modified my launcher somewhat and then zoomed off to the Mun. Full stage separation went well with all pieces in the right place. I'm still lacking any decent control over my polar satellite, despite modifications. It almost seems buggy. Oh well. Even though I lack a decent Mun map I still had some awareness of anomalies there. I ended up putting my lander in a course over the top of one and so burned to land near it. Thank goodness for remembering to put a GPS (from the RemoteTech plugin) on the lander module. I managed to get very close and had quite a controlled descent but STILL managed to not stop my horizontal movement enough and ended up smashing the lander on landing. It was like watching a lego car hit the tiles and explode into bits. BUT, the rover was upright! Woo! I HAVE LANDED (IN BITS, OK). But then I took a corner too fast.. and.. well... At that point I was kind of stuck. The lander would not budge! RCS still worked on one side, but it seemed the mission was over. At least, it was until I got all !!SCIENCE!! on this problem. First, I let the two engines glued to the rover fire until they were out of fuel, this made it substantially lighter. I then used RCS to push the upside down rover along the ground until it hit a bump, lifted a little, and then a squirt of RCS and I was right-side up! SUCCESS! ...Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this. Version .18 of KSP has just been released and introduces significant changes and so I can't continue with this save. If folks want, I'll start a new LP with version .18.
