Once again, my best laid plans go to waste. I had a late start on my gaming last night. Watched Red 2 with the girl. I liked it, but it wasn't as good as the prequel. I logged into EVE, made some research and market order adjustments and then worked on some video's and made one for Space Engineer's as a sort of tutorial-guide. I looked at the clock and I thought it was wrong. It was time to hit the hay so that I could be fresh and ready to deal with the day's calamities at work. Glad I did. This morning was hellish. Now, with the release of the Diablo III expansion, I don't know when I will get back to KSP. Oh, poor KSP.
I haven't completely neglected it though. I have been blogging about it. I have thrown together a few Mod Highlights and detailed my plans for space conquest. The weekend might look a little brighter. I'm green with anticipation.
In one of my earlier video series, I managed to strand Kerbals on the Mun. It was okay though. That is what "rescue missions" are for. I did succeed and stranding more Kerbals on the Mun. Wait....That's not what I intended. Again, it's okay. That's what Kerbal Attachment System was for. I turned a route into a victory buy building my first Mun base. What I had intended was to gather science for my fledgling space program. What happened was nothing short of disaster. My capsule lander made it to the Mun, landed safely on the surface and proceeded to gather science. I did some crew reports, EVA's, samples and used various science equipment. Once I was finished, I lifted off for my return to Kerbin. I knew I was tight on fuel, but I didn't know that I didn't have enough to orbit the Mun and then transfer. I should have waited until my launch phase angle was right. I might have been able to salvage the mission. Instead, I pushed the issue, launched and then re-landed near a large crater.
Instead of losing one of my best Kerbalnaughts, I decided to launch an ad-hoc rescue mission with an empty capsule and probe body on a very simple rocket. I brought out extra life support because I was using TAC Life Support. The Kerbal was running out and I wanted to make sure we had enough life support to sustain the return voyage. If all went to shit, I would have enough life support to move the Kerbal over (assuming the rocket didn't explode) and cobble together another rescue mission.
Well...Things didn't quite go as planned. I was able to land the rocket within meters of the downed capsule but the rocket toppled over at the last second. Mission: Failed! I was able to enter the capsule, so I had another week of life support on top of the few days I had stored away in the 1st capsule. Time was of the essence. We needed to do something. Instead of sending rockets I made an executive decision and decided to make a Mun base.
Stay tuned for Part 2 and as always, fly safe-ish.
Have you ever missed a burn or shot past your Munar encounter due to using time acceleration? I am willing to bet you have. I know I have done it. It is frustrating at best. If you didn't quick save, you could be restarting your entire mission from Kerbal Space Command. If you were doing a tour of Jool and it's moons, you could have potentially wasted hours of careful planning, perfectly timed burns and a whole lot of luck. There is a solution however. In this Mod Highlight,
I bring you Kerbal Alarm Clock (KAC). With this handy mod, you can set up alarms for various rockets such as "time to maneuver node", "time to closest approach" or "time to sphere of influence change". You can also set alarms for transfer windows, periapsis, etc. Very handy indeed. You can set your time acceleration to max and KAC will automatically slow down time until you reach your desired warning time (default is 1 minute I think). I set mine to 10 seconds and if I have a particularly long burn, I set it to half of the burn time. As far as I am concerned, this is a must have. Besides, if you were flying a rocket in the real world, someone or something would be telling you when you needed to perform a burn. It's not even cheating! Your alarms are set per the rocket so you can launch your Duna rocket a year early, set up an alarm for the best transfer window and then go about launching other rockets. When your time comes up, KAC will ask you to transfer to the Duna rocket and then you can continue on mission. This mod is highly useful and versatile. That is why it is among my favorites.
KW Rocketry is a monster of a mod. There are 100's of parts and just about every one of them is effective, efficient, useful and better than any stock part of the same class. The fuel tanks and rocket engineers are leaps and bounds above vanilla KSP. This has to be one of my favorite mods. It will open up a new world of possibilities while still maintaining the challenge of proper rocket design. Some of the parts are more efficient (ISP) or carry a bit more fuel (but are still proportionately correct in volume and mass) than stock vanilla parts. Liquid fuel engines and tanks, damn fine solid rocket boosters, decouplers, RCS tanks and blocks, etc are just some of the parts in this package. The mod is also visually appealing. The designs on the tanks are simple but elegant. The engines have exhaust plumes and they have an overheating state where they turn more red as they get hotter. There isn't anything I can think of in game that I don't like about this mod as far as parts. That being said, it does take up a fair amount of memory and it takes a while to load when you first start KSP. I had some stability issues with the basic install and had to install the texture reduction pack (TRP) which usually comes with the download. Recently, I started with a fresh vanilla KSP install and added KWR back in and I am not having any stability issues without the texture reduction patch. If you have a lower end system, you might have some issues with larger rockets or stations. I would suggest installing the TRP if you are having serious FPS drops and/or crashes to the desktop.
Here is a quick video I made about KWR back when I first started using it.
This has a listing of all the good mods and it arranges them by function and also shows which version of KSP the mod has been tested for stability. Sometimes .22 mods might not be tested on .23 KSP, but they will still work. Others might break saves, be careful!
Over the next few days I will be discussing the mods that I find most enjoyable, challenging or enriching. I use such mods as KW Rocketry, Kerbal Attachment System and Kebal Alarm Clock.
If you have any favorites, please leave them in the comments. I would love to try them out and as always, fly safe-ish.
The thought just occurred to me. I am not a really good rocket designer. Yeah, they function, but they might not be as efficient as they should be. I can live with that. What I really lack design skills in is space planes. I have barely built two SSTO's. One of them was using a fusion engine from the Interstellar mod (which worked, but it killed my Kerbal (said there was too much radiation). Don't get me wrong, I have made planes that fly. They just suck. I'm working on it. The only thing that I am worse at than space plane design is landing the damn things. I have so many terrible memories of finally designing something that doesn't fly like a brick, only to find out that I haven't the skill to follow a glide slope that either doesn't go on for miles or straight into an explosion. Anyone else have these problems? Let me know and as always, fly safe-ish.
I love the Remote Tech (RT) mod. It adds a challenge to satellite design and it makes it much more difficult to just throw out probes for science. In RT, you will need a link to Kerbal Space Command (KSC). If you do not have one, your probe will become unresponsive. If you can't re-establish a connection to KSC, your probe just became a multi-million Kerbit monolith floating in space. The good thing is that it is relatively easy to make that KSC connection. You do not need to be directly connected to KSC. You can have your link run through as many satellites you want in your relay. You can technically set up a probe on Duna that links directly back to KSC and to a probe orbiting Kerbal (if you have 2 long range dishes). You just have to make sure that the probe at Duna is in line with KSC. The only things that limit you are range and line of site. The omni-directional (equally effective in any direction) and the directional-dishes (working on line of site).
The antenna each have their own max range (measured in meters).
km = 1,000 meters - MechJeb will put you in a 150km orbit by default
Mm = 1,000,000 meters - Geosynchronous orbit around 2.8Mm
Gm = 1,000,000,000 meters
Here are the distances (from Kerbin) of the major bodies (at closest approach). Some orbits are elliptical. Make sure you pick an antenna that will reach. You may need to piggyback off of other celestial arrays to get back to KSC. At that point, you would only have limited connectivity. You would have to time your burns so that they would be done AND completed while in contact with KSC. If not, you will lose control and possibly forfeit the mission and the satellite.
Mun - 12,000,000m (or 12Mm or 1.2Gm)
Minmus - 47,000,000m (or 47Mm or 4.7Gm)
Moho - 4,210,510,628 (or just over 4Gm)
Eve - 9,734,357,701m (or ~10Gm)
Duna - 19,699,121,365m (or ~20Gm)
Dres - 34,917,642,884m (or ~35Gm)
Jool - 65,334,882,253m (or ~66Gm)
Eeloo - 66,687,926,800m (or ~67Gm)
You can find the manual on the RemoteTech forum page which will link to the Spaceport for download. If you want a challenge (especially in career mode), this is the mod to do it with and as always, fly safe-ish.
I admit it. I was slacking last weekend. I did play some Space Engineers but I was busy on Saturday and caught up on TV shows from last week. Diablo 3's new patch is coming out tomorrow but I will try to gather some science tonight, I also have a few more videos to edit (including some Space Engineers stuff).
Maybe by next weekend I will be caught up. I have some lofty goals, but now that I have docking ports, I have opened up a few extra possibilities. I can refuel in space. This will make life much easier. Moving fuel from the surface of Kerbin to low Kerbin orbit is soooo wasteful. Regardless of what rocket you bring the fuel up on, there is still a large waste of energy. The best method is to keep the fuel in space and not plowing through Kerbin;'s atmo or gravity well. Ultimately, my goal is to have a refueling station on Minmus (that has the lowest gravity of the 3 orbital bodies (Kerbin, Mun, Minmus)), so it will make the best refueling hub for extra-planetary missions. This is where the Kethane mod and Kerbal Attachment System come into play. We will need life support, habitation and electricity to keep the fuel factory pumping out liters of liquid gold. I have some exploration missions to run with Kethane detectors, but that is the easy part. I just need to open up the tech node with more probe bodies. Stayputnik's don't work so well when you need to stack things on top and underneath. I hope to have this sorted by this weekend. Stay tuned and as always, fly safe-ish.
When I first started playing Kerbal Space Program, well before they implemented career mode, all there was to do was to play in the sandbox. That was perfectly fine and I spent days trying to build capable rockets. I had heard about asparagus staging, but I knew so little that I wasn't even at the level to comprehend and try another building style. You see, my rockets were shit. Some would say they still are, but they work for some reason. Asparagus staging works in KSP because it allows you to ditch more weight earlier in the launch.
Gravity is strongest and the atmosphere is thickest at sea level. So reducing weight and drag earlier is good and keeping thrust to weight higher is best.
There isn't really a limit to how many tanks your set up in asparagus staging. I have seen some pretty crazy designs that ditch tanks almost the entire flight up to low Kerbin orbit. It takes a large toll on your system though. Here is an basic example of how it works.
RemoteTech is an excellent mod. It is very challenging for a new player to use in sandbox mode. Career mode is a whole other animal. If you are't sure how to set up a functioning network, you can check out my video here.
One of the most important things is to make sure you have enough transmitters/antennas to make all the necessary connections. You want at least 3 dishes and 2 large solar panels (or a nuclear reactor from the Interstellar mod) in order to run the dishes. You want the main (call it GEO-1) to have a minimum of 3 dishes and I always throw an omni-directional antenna on for good measure. You need 3 dishes to make the following connections:
GEO-1 to Kerbal Space Command
GEO-1 to GEO-2
Geosynchronous Orbit
GEO-1 to GEO-3
Regardless of whether you go with a 4-satellite or a 3-satellite network, you will need 3 dishes on GEO-1 just for the network. If you wish to connect a satellite to another celestial body, like the Mun, Minmus or Duna, you will need 1 dish for that. You will also require 1 dish for an unmanned rocket you want to operate around Kerbin or transfer out to another body.
You can of course utilize other GEO-X satellites to run your Mun relay network or a particular craft. If you have a space station that you wish to connect up to the network, you will need another dish. If you want to keep the relays to the fewest amount of satellites, your GEO-1 could have a shit-ton of dishes. If it goes down, you could really screw yourself over, but that is unlikely. Hope the video and pictures help with your RemoteTech questions and as always, fly safe-ish.
I would really like to put some time into KSP. I still have a few video's left to edit. I filled up my 1TB HDD the other night with raw Fraps footage. It seems like I might need another hard drive if I continue to stack up footage before I batch edit. I really don't want to spend the money. Once I edit the monstrously sized Fraps videos, they take up a fraction of the space.
In episode three we learn that rockets can become space planes. While not efficient, safe or highly successful, they will still work. I am able to traverse a few biomes and get some of that ever-important science. Even though there are some control issues, we were eventually successful in getting a stayputnik to the mountainous area to the west of Kerbal Space Command.
In episode two, I am able to get a rocket to the mun and back with the Kerbal astronaut still alive. It was nice not to have to tell the family we lost their loved one because we forgot to load some extra Twinkies and spare oxygen. We gathered a bunch of science to further expand our space program.
It's been a while since I have played Kerbal Space Program & put up a new video. I started a new series called Hardmode Deluxe. I have some select realism mods installed and I continue to install them one at a time due to one of them having stability issues. So far so good. The first video of the new series is called..New Beginnings. Check it out and I hope you will continue to watch the series as I make videos.
Episode I is basically the first steps of my fledgling space program. A few tricks and tips to get quick science while you build up your knowledge to launch Munar & Minmus orbiter missions and manned landings.
Since I have been playing KSP, I have done some pretty cool things. Sometimes by hand the whole way. Sometimes using a mod like Kerbal Protractor or MechJeb. Even with MJ, you still have to do some piloting.
Anyway, I was thinking about all the places I have landed (both with a Keral crew and a lander or rover). I am narrowing it down to KSP with mods like TAC life support and Remote Tech. The farthest I have traveled with a Kerbal and returned was Minmus. Yes, I have been to Duna and Eve with Kerbals and returned from Duna (not Eve), but that wasn't with life support or deadly re-entry. I've flown a probe and landed on Eve. I have also landed on Ike and flown by Jool (and crashed into it) as well as a probe flyby of Tylo and Laythe.
Jool, a gas jiant in the Kerbol system
Each of those missions were exciting and I would like to do them again really soon in my new career. I still have to install Remote Tech and then get my satellite network up. Fun things for me. I am getting excited writing about them.
A few months ago, I was watching either the Science Channel or the History Channel and watched a program about the Soviet lunar rover program (and I wish I remembered more about the TV program). I was surprised to learn that the Soviets were on the Moon well before the United States successfully landed there during the Apollo Program. I wanted to do a video about the rovers I have made and tie that in with the Lunokhod ("Moonwalker") program, but two things have held me back. One: I have very few rover designs and Two: I really haven't had the time to edit the videos that I need to or the time to design more rovers. I do have a video with a rather clean and nice looking rover that I landed on Minmus. While the design didn't take Minmus's micro-gravity into consideration and it liked to roll, flip and otherwise "spazz" out while driving.
The Lunokhod program was genius. I don't really think anyone in America at the time thought that the Soviet's could design anything that could operate on the Moon. During the late 60's through the 70's, the Soviets and Americans were in a race to be the first into space and all sorts of other achievements. It was kind of like the Olympic games for scientists and engineers. It put the best and brightest of each nation against the other. Coincidently, out of the Cold War, this race was beneficial to mankind as it sped up the need for invention, technology and helped make the world what it is today. Your cell phone and computer are a direct result of the necessity to operate in space. While it had many military uses, I still believe that it fostered more civil benefits. The Lunokhod rovers were designed by Alexander Kermurdijan. He was relatively unknown to the world, but he was brought on as an advisor during the development of the Mars Pathfinder rover in 1997. If you want to learn more about the Lunokhod program, check out the "wiki page".
Lunokhod 1
What this all means? I just thought it was interesting and it got me thinking that I need to get back into the VAB and design some rovers to get more science points. Hopefully I can come up with some good designs that will survive the rigors of landing and roving. I hope this encourages you to develop a rover program yourself. Good luck and as always, fly safe-ish.
Over the weekend, I didn't get to play as much as I normally do. We had a family birthday event, and then we drank ourselves silly. I don't quite bounce back after a night of drinking like I used to. I was able to do a few unmanned missions (which was a good thing they were unmanned) on Friday and yesterday. I ended up losing two rockets due to not paying attention. One crashed into Minmus and the other into the Mun. Both avoidable. I was able to gather the science from the Mun rocket before it impacted the surface by transmission, but the Minmus rocket was a surprise.
I have also begun construction of a kethane surveyor. I tried launching it last night, but some strange effect is causing my rocket to vibrate and them completely explode. I believe I have traced the root back to the mod that makes the rockets structurally sound without the need for struts. I am not quite convinced I want to keep using it. It is a great idea though. My intent now is to get docking ports so I can start building space stations and refueling depots. I have the need for about 50 science points before I can get it. Once I have that, I will start putting bases on the Mun to drill for kethane. I have about three hours worth of video that I need to edit. I don't have any plans for the weekend, so maybe I will start to put them together. I did add a few more mods in yesterday. They seem to be working as intended. I will get an updated mod list at some point in the near future.
With Saint Partrick's day upon us, it is a time where everyone is Irish and all that entails. I just wanted to take a moment and mention that and wish everyone a Happy St Patty's day. Kerbals are already green, but I wonder if their beer is? Imbibe, but be careful. Enjoy, but remember. And as always, fly-ish
I started me new career mode last night. After sorting out some mods and a few reinstalls, I have the core mods I want to use installed.
I am using (click for forum post link). I will probably add a few more to this list a little later. I added a bunch all at once and I was having major stability issues and I was crashing back to the desktop. I narrowed down the list of offending mods, so it is just a matter of adding them back in one at a time.
What I plan to do over the next few weeks is set up a Station around Kebin, the Mun and Minmus. I have about 9 missions completed so far with the farthest /longest mission to date is to the Mun. Once I start posting video's for the early missions I will link them.
A while ago, I made a video about common terms used in orbital mechanics.
Now, I know...KSP is a game. Well, yeah, it is but.. It uses a physics engine and for the most part, your creations behave as they should. Newtonian physics, a basic aerodynamic profile as well as mass, gravity and atmospheric resistance. All these add up to a pretty realistic simulation. For all intents and purposes, let's just say KSP is real enough that all the little equations and conversions work in KSP just like in real life. Somethings are scaled for the sake of playability, but in essese, functional.
Moving right along, you will no doubt hear terms like apokee or perisapsis, Hohmann transfers, at. al.
Here is just a little guide as to what they mean so when you are watching a video you can understand what they are talking about.
(click to expand)
apokee / apoapsis - farthest point in an orbit from the central body in an elliptical orbit
ascending / descending node - point at which an object passes the north/south (or south/north) planes in an orbit
eccentricity (eccentric orbit) - a measure of how circular (or not) an orbital path is. 0 eccentricity is a circular orbit were 0-1 is a highly elliptical orbit and greater than 1 is a hyperbola
geostationary / Kerbalstationary - orbit at which the satellite orbits at the same phase as the planets rotation (meaning the satellite is always in the same spot in the sky from the ground)
Inclination - the angle of the orbit in relation to the equatorial plane of the central body
perigee / periapsis - closest point in an orbit
polar orbit - orbit with a 90 degree inclination and passes the south and north poles in 1 orbital phase
prograde - pointing in the direction of movement
prograde orbit - orbiting in the same direction as the orbital body
semi-major axis - distance from the apoapsis to the orbital body in an elliptical orbit
semi-minor axis - distance from the closest part of the orbit to the orbital body in an elliptical order
Hohmann transfer - a elliptical orbit used to transfer between two circular orbits in a the same orbital plane
Transfer - changing orbits from 1 orbital body to another e.g. Kerbin > Mun
Hope this helps someone and as always, fly safe-ish
When I started playing KSP, there was no career mode. Sure the majority of the modules were there, but no functionality. There were a few mods that added some sort of realism to the game but I didn't really care for them. I was content to hold out until Squad as able to implement a proper career mode.
I think it was [.22] when they implemented "career mode". Up until then, the only mode you had available was "sandbox mode". It was fine at the time (and it still provides an adequate challenge), but career mode renewed my love of the game. It had be waning due to over-excessive play time. I loved the challenge and to me, it was like playing the game for the first time again.
I found the career mode challenging, but not impossible. When it was first introduced, you could spam science and have missions with over 5k science points. Even in the early part of the career, once you could make it to the Mun or Minmus, you could gather a lot of points with one or two missions and then move on to Duna (it's moon, Ike) and Eve (and the moons in it's mini solar system).
Those were the good ole days. In the current build, you can only run experiments once on certain science modules. It added more challenge to the game. Some players had trouble with the base career mode [when first introduced] and with the new system, I would venture a guess that if I checked the forums, I would see some of the same posts. Fear not though, KSP career mode is possible even with vanilla KSP. You just have to plan out your missions carefully and be mindful and deliberate on how you spend your research points. I just started a new career mode last night and I was able to get a Munar flyby on the 4th or 5th mission. Coincidently, I have a few mods installed that caused me to lose my kerbalnaught. I was able to transmit all the science that the rocket had as the oxygen ran out. I didn't have any extra life support fitted and I took the long way around the Mun. My Kerbal died right around the apoapsis (highest / farthest point) of Kerbin orbit. It was a sad day, but the Kerbal that died was basically a red-shirt. Life goes on for everyone else.
It just reminds you that you can always make the challenge of KSP harder with mods. So as always, fly safe-ish.
I have been playing KSP in February of 2013. I happened to catch a glimpse of it on Steam and I fell in love with the idea and concept. When I went out on a limb and purchased it for (I think 14 bucks) there was instant gratification. Squad has done an excellent job and even though it is still an early release title, it was playable, stable and highly addictive. I spent literally 10-15 hours a day playing it. I was out for a few months due to a surgery, so KSP and EVE Online got me through the doldrums of sitting, locked away in my house all that time. Without it, I would have gone insane. You can only watch so much TV before your mind melts. At least with KSP, my mind was stimulated and I found the challenge of KSP both intensely frustrating and highly invigorating.
I remember the first hurdle was getting a craft into orbit. I didn't know how to make a circular elliptical orbit. It took me hours just to get a rocket into near Kerbin orbit. I'm no rocket scientist. I thought going straight up into space was the "best" way. I quickly found out that my ignorance of orbital mechanics was holding me back. I scoured the web and that is were I found Scott Manley. If you are a gamer or an amateur scientist I would highly recommend you check out his stuff.
The next hurdle was performing a rendezcvous in orbit. That one had me stumped for a long time. Again, Scott's video tutorials helped me out. They may not have elevated all my frustrations, but they did give me a good set of fundamentals. After the rendezvous, the next hurdle was docking. That was horrific. I played for hours and hours to try to dock. It was brutal. I fancy myself as a veteran player now, but even up until about 4 months ago, I was still docking the hard way. One of my YouTube views pointed it out to me and I thought "Of Course!". It was an ah-ha moment for sure.
If you are new to KSP, check out my YouTube channel as well as Scott's and it will give you hope. Yes, it can be done. Scott makes it look really easy of course. I'm a bit more of a laymen. Maybe that is a good thing.
I re-sinstalled KSP back to vanilla and I added a few mods back in. I will be redoing my career hard-mode as a continuous series. I am just waiting for the next update.
Greetings everyone. My name is Chris. I have an EVE Online blog as well as a YouTube channel. I enjoy Kerbal Space Command so much, that I figured I would try a blog about it. Hope you enjoy it.
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