The two training missions already start in space - when you launch them both, the guy right at the beginning says: "You should have finished the tutorials before doing this mission". But nowhere do I see a tutorial or mission that teaches you how to build a rocket.
A rocket building tutorial would have been amazing and would have helped a lot. I guess they took it out of the game for now? Bastards.
Wow that's stupid, yeah they must have removed them. Or maybe they were only in the demo?
In any case, yeah I apologize again for all the confusion. You aren't really missing much though, you have already learned about all that they will teach you.
I have been watching youtube videos though and all that you have written has really helped.. so thanks!
No problem!
The SAS thing I figured out (thanks to what you wrote about where it lights up).. I was expecting something to light on on the left hand side of the screen, as it was in a youtube video I was following. I guess they moved the indicator from the left to where it is now - which is what I wasn't noticing and did not think that SAS was on - so I kept thinking that my rocket design was off in some way.
Yeah figuring out how A/SAS works is a major breakthrough because it's not documented well. The whole game suffers from lack of documentation, even though it's in alpha a little bit of documentation would go a looooooong way to help new players.
The issue I am trying to figure out now is how to get my 2nd stage into orbit. My first stage gets me to about 10-12k, at which point I turn off SAS and reorient my rocket to a 45 degree angle (you can do this in any direction, right?).. but it doesn't seem like my 2nd stage has enough thrust, because even though at that point I am still gaining altitude, following the yellow dot on the spindle thingy becomes impossible - it eventually disappears behind the horizon.. and I start falling towards the ground, even though I am still burning at a 30-45 degree angle. I'm not quite sure if it's a question of not having enough trust or maybe me doing something incorrectly otherwise.
Can you take a screenshot of your rocket in the VAB or on the pad? That would help diagnose the problem.
As for the 45 degree angle thing, yes, you can orient to any cardinal direction at 45 degrees. However, for purposes of getting a basic orbit, always lean over on the 90 degree line. This is because as you lift off of Kerbin, the rotation of the planet tends to 'throw' your rocket along the 90 degree line. If you turn this way and burn, you get all the extra energy from the planet's rotation. Burning at any other direction means you are going to actually have to
cancel out that extra energy, which wastes fuel.
As for following the yellow 'dot', I take it you mean the yellow circle that marks prograde? Yeah, don't follow that during launch. All it does is show you which direction your rocket is heading in. Even when you are burning straight up, it will begin to move toward the horizon because you have that extra sideways momentum from the planets rotation that will make your craft move in an arc rather than straight up.
Here's how the launch phase *should* work and why it works:
1) Turn on your A/SAS.
2)Throttle up to max and launch.
3)After you have cleared the pad, throttle back to a setting where you are still accelerating, but not particularly fast.
Explanation: When you lift off, you are in the dense lower atmosphere, so the faster you go, the bigger your drag penalty will be. If you throttle up to the max while in the lower atmosphere, then you will waste a ton of fuel trying to push through your own drag. Keeping the throttle low really conserves a lot of fuel that you can later use to accelerate without drag. Really, in the lower atmosphere/first phase of flight, you just want to gain altitude and not worry too much about speed (as long as you are still accelerating upward). Also, there is a point called Max Q (different point for every rocket) where your rocket faces the maximum stress from aerodynamic, drag and thrust forces. This usually happens at a point in the dense lower atmosphere and if you are burning full out at that point, you are putting a lot of stress on the rocket. This causes many mid-launch explosions/breakups.
4) 10km is an arbitrary 'roll over' point, but it works very well for most designs. At 10km, you are through the thickest part of the atmosphere and you should have picked up enough speed that your apoapsis will be around 20km or so. At this point, rollover to 45 degrees (on the 90 degree heading line) and throttle up. [If you have side boosters, you need to make your rollover either before or after you have jetisoned any empty stages. Turning while jetisoning any stages usually results in a collision between stages] Watch your apoapsis rise on the map screen [if you click the little tab at the bottom of the map screen, this pulls up your navball, which lets you control the rocket while in the map view] until it's around ~30km or so.
5) When you have raised your apoapsis to around 30km [give or take, play around with these numbers to see what works best for your design], then roll over completely to 90 degrees (you should be lined up with the horizon on the 90 degree heading line) and burn full out. Your apoapsis will rise even though you aren't pointing up. That is because faster speed = higher orbit.
6) Keep burning until your apoapsis gets to at least 70km, this will put it above the atmosphere. I would shoot for closer to 100km though. Once it hits 70 or 100 or whatever altitude you want, cut the engines and coast up to your apoapsis. Be careful, because if you have raised your apoapsis to the desired altitude while you are still below 70km, then when you cut the engines you will face some drag that will lower your apoapsis after engine cut-off. If this happens, just burn again to make up the difference.
7) At your apoapsis, now you want to be aligned with the yellow circle (the prograde marker - should be more or less on the horizon on the 90 degree heading line) and burn. This will raise your peroapsis on the other side of the planet. Don't worry if your orbit doesn't have a peroapsis at first, as you burn it will appear on the other side of the planet. Keep burning until your peroapsis is at least to 70km.
8) Now you have an orbit. You can keep buring at the apoapsis to raise your peroapsis until it's at the same height as your apoapsis. When they come close to the same altitude, the apoapsis/peroapsis points will begin moving. Don't worry about it, just burn till they are at points you want them to be at. If you want to correct one sider, remember to wait till you are at the opposite side of your orbit and then burn prograde to raise the side you want to correct or retrograde to lower it.
9) To go back home, just burn in the retrograde direction until your orbit decays and brings you on a collision point with Kerbin. Make sure that after you have burned retro that you jetison everything below your capsule (unless you are attempting a powered landing - not advised for basic orbital work) and deploy chutes around 2km. They will deploy as drogues until 500m at which point they will fully open. Remember that if you are above land, the altitude marker is set to sea level, so don't wait until 500m to deploy chutes or you may crash. 2km should give you plenty of time
And your done!
Before I figured out SAS, I was able to get rockets into almost near orbit.. My "blue orbit", whatever that's called, was half outside the planet, and half inside.. that felt like a pretty sweet accomplishment, and I thought that orbit wouldn't be too far away, but.. nope
Yup, you were close. Just follow the steps above to get it right.
A set of my rocket designs would blow up right on the launch pad, too, and Im' not quite sure why. The top (the capsule & co) would collapse down onto the modules below. This would happen over and over and over.. almost as if the top stage's engine was collapsing under the weight. Am I supposed to reinforce that part in any way? THe engine I use is not the heavy lifting one, so it is a bit smaller. So, that part of my spacecraft is a big skinny and looks a bit odd. And that's the part that kept collapsing under the weight (or so it seemed). Should I be using another engine? The heavy lifting one? I didn't see any other engines that size, but maybe I didn't look close enough.
It probably did collapse under it's own weight. Use lots of struts to help with this. Also, use the launch gantry system. Under the structural tab, there is a girder looking structure. Use this (with the symmetry button) to attach around your rocket. Make sure the gantry is holding your rocket up off the ground so the weight isn't on your nozzles. Make sure the gantry is also placed in the first stage with your engines. This way, when you press space bar, the engines will ignite while the gantry simultaneously releases. This shoud keep your rocket together on the pad.
I would have to see a picture to diagnose any problems with respect to the engine type. However, it's likely that there was just too much weight resting on the engine, so use the gantries to hold it up. Engine size won't change much with respect to how much weight the nozzles can hold up.
So yeah, right now I've been doing lots of trial and error rocket building and trying to get it into orbit. I guess I'm going try using a heavy lifting engine for my upper stage now, but that doesn't seem right.
Don't use a heavy lifting engine for upper stages. The rule of thumb is that each stage should be smaller and use a less powerful engine than the one below it. If you alter this, you begin to create inefficiencies in your design.
Also, once you are out of the atmosphere, you don't need a lot of thrust or a big, fuel hungy engine.
If you have designed your rocket so that the final stage is above the atmosphere, I suggest using a nuclear engine. The thrust is low, but without drag or gravity to fight it doesn't matter. What does matter is the very high fuel efficiency of the engine (as measured by ISP - specific impulse - how you rate efficiency of a rocket). So it can burn for a very long time on the same amount of fuel. It loses a lot of efficiency in the atmosphere, so it's really only useful for outer space or planets with thin atmospheres like Duna.
This seems a bit too advanced for me right now, but it's good to know. I am not even sure how to install and deploy solar panels yet.. I'll figure it out once I manage to get into orbit
You just attach the panels to the side of the rocket and right click on them to bring up a tab that you then click to deploy. Alternatively, you can use action groups to make them all deploy by pressing one button, but I'd worry about getting to orbit first as you say.
If you want me to re-explain anything at a later point, don't hesitate to ask.
I do remember SAS working while I was floating in space, after all my fuel ran out. How is that possible? The indicator was on, and I wasn't able to reorient my spacecraft, until I turned it off.
Hmm I don't know. Did you have a battery installed? I think there is some built in power reserves that you can draw on, but after a short while they will run out. In any case, always have a power source, be it panels+ batteries or RTG's.
All of the fins and fin-like objects at my disposal will be sas controlled? Or only certain ones?
Can you see the fins I have attached to the orange tanks on my space station? They look like Saturn V fins...those ones will work with SAS, not sure about the rest.
Here's how you check though:
Attach a fin to the rocket, then go to launch the rocket. Before you press spacebar, hit T to turn on A/SAS (if you have the ASAS module installed). If the fins start to wiggle like crazy, then they are being controlled by the ASAS system. If they don't move and you have ASAS installed and turned on, then they aren't movable. It might also tell you in the description in the VAB whether or not they are ASAS controllable but I'm not sure.
It does. The apo/peroapsis stuff made sense to me right away, after I looked up a diagram of what they are. I'm a math guy, so that made sense right away. I'm still not quite clear on some of the details regarding prograde & retrograde, but conceptually apo/peroapsis makes perfect sense.
Prograde = direction you are flying, marked by yellow circle on the navball. Retrograde = opposite to direction you are flying, marked by yellow circle with an X through it on the navball.
Burn in the prograde dirction (line your indicator on the navball up with the prograde marker) to raise your orbit by increasing speed. Burn retrograde to lower your orbit by lowering your speed.
Oh, I wish they kept track of a death toll, cause mine is pretty high
My Kerbonaut corps calls me hobbs the terrible, or they did till I killed them all.
I see those space stations you guys are building and I am both jealous and eager to get myself to that level of play.
I've been playing maybe a month. After you get to orbit and have done your first Mun landing, it all get easier. Once you have don't your first docking, you pretty much have all the skills you need. There is a lot of frustration at first, then things just click and you can do lots of fun stuff.
I just wonder how easy it is to reach a space station? I mean, you have to reach its exact orbit AND arrive at the right time. Seems like you'd have to do a lot of planning for that sort of mission and I haven't seen any tools yet that would help you with that.
Planning? Hahahahaha
Hahahahahahaha
hahahaha
Dude, no. I just throw stuff into space and hope it works.
Seriously though, it isn't that tough to reach a station once you know how it works. I can explain it all in a later post for you. Docking itself, as opposed to just getting to the station, is a bit tricky, but again it gets easier when you have done it once. I suggest, before trying to build a big station, just send up two orbiters with docking clamps and practice docking with them Gemini/Aegena style. That way, if you screw up royally you have only killed a few Kerbals and whatnot. It will save you frustration when you start putting together big huge pieces.
As for the tools, there is actually this awesome new manuever node thingamabob that does 95% of the work for you. It's awesome and I'll happily explain that too you as well when you're ready. (It would be too confusing to tell you about it until you can get to orbit)
Just let me know!
hobbsyoyo
(And for the record, I'm just talking about simple go-and-return missions, nothing fancy like specified landing areas)
