Author Topic: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"  (Read 372712 times)

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Offline watsisname

Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
BEST ROCKET DESIGN EVER

how does it work i don't even
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Swallowed by the seductive night.

 

Offline Thaeris

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
That is full of win. That is all.
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Everyone else takes normal damage.
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
I do believe he just won KSP
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
I like this related video myself.  Look at that thing.

 

Offline watsisname

Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
In my world of sleepers, everything will be erased.
I'll be your religion, your only endless ideal.
Slowly we crawl in the dark.
Swallowed by the seductive night.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
Flap your wings and soar, my little pigeon rocket

Is it just me, or does even Jeb appear to freaking out on that flight?
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

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Offline Iss Mneur

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
Flap your wings and soar, my little pigeon rocket

Is it just me, or does even Jeb appear to freaking out on that flight?
Not just you.  You know something is wrong when Jeb starts freaking out before Bob.
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Offline Enzo03

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
Uh... I can't access the site.

I have it, and just tried it, but I wanted to share it to some friends.

But when I go to the main web page, all I get is a screen that says "It Works!" ...??

They were moving the server, apparently.

I hate you for making me play this game.

Because my stomach hurts now.

From laughter.

I'm sorry, this game has made me discover I am a horrible sadist. :)
« Last Edit: August 03, 2011, 12:48:32 am by Enzo03 »
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Offline Patriot

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
I can't seem to find the link to the mods, was hoping there'd be some new ones D:

 

Offline pecenipicek

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
I can't seem to find the link to the mods, was hoping there'd be some new ones D:
i got my stuff from here. also, beware of the steampunk set, it overrides some default things... http://www.kerbalspaceprogram.net/kerbal-space-program-mods
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Offline Bob-san

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
There's the Repository but also check the forums for threads. http://www.kerbalspacerepository.com/

I've been running the pre-release software and I can tell you this: 0.9 will be damn useful! Struts between parts are really useful, especially when you're using that tri-couple. The new staging mechanism is a godsend. When you're downloading mods, don't forget KSP Calculator; it's incredibly useful to calculate your orbits and orbital transfers. I'm using it at the moment to do a Hohmann Transfer from 288km to 1,000km. It also tells you escape velocities at various points. I've been getting into the habit of forcing myself into reasonable orbits. If you don't start aiming early, you can aim your craft at the horizon and start accelerating. Once you hit orbital velocity (and you'll continue rising), you're basically winging a Hohmann transfer into a stable orbit. At the apogee, you can accelerate to a stable orbit or accelerate past to transfer to a higher apogee (and accelerate again to make that orbit stable).
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Offline Nuke

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
There's the Repository but also check the forums for threads. http://www.kerbalspacerepository.com/

I've been running the pre-release software and I can tell you this: 0.9 will be damn useful! Struts between parts are really useful, especially when you're using that tri-couple. The new staging mechanism is a godsend. When you're downloading mods, don't forget KSP Calculator; it's incredibly useful to calculate your orbits and orbital transfers. I'm using it at the moment to do a Hohmann Transfer from 288km to 1,000km. It also tells you escape velocities at various points. I've been getting into the habit of forcing myself into reasonable orbits. If you don't start aiming early, you can aim your craft at the horizon and start accelerating. Once you hit orbital velocity (and you'll continue rising), you're basically winging a Hohmann transfer into a stable orbit. At the apogee, you can accelerate to a stable orbit or accelerate past to transfer to a higher apogee (and accelerate again to make that orbit stable).

no joystick support yet? the ridiculous thing is when i designed a game engine i wrote 5 minute joystick code that works great. why do other developers have such a hard time with input code? other than that little rant, i like all the new staging features, though i do wish there was some way to disable fuel sharing between some stages.
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Offline Iss Mneur

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
no joystick support yet? the ridiculous thing is when i designed a game engine i wrote 5 minute joystick code that works great. why do other developers have such a hard time with input code? other than that little rant, i like all the new staging features, though i do wish there was some way to disable fuel sharing between some stages.

He probably doesn't have a joystick.
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Offline Nuke

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
no joystick support yet? the ridiculous thing is when i designed a game engine i wrote 5 minute joystick code that works great. why do other developers have such a hard time with input code? other than that little rant, i like all the new staging features, though i do wish there was some way to disable fuel sharing between some stages.

He probably doesn't have a joystick.

it is possible to emulate joystick hardware in software with various utilities. ppjoy+glovepie, for example, can turn keyboard and mouse info into joystick info. surely the documentation for whatever input api is sufficient to understand the raw data coming out of it. something preliminary may be written and given to the userbase to experiment on and give feedback. at least with some of my arduino development i had coded for hardware that i had not received yet, and by the time the part had arrived in the mail i had working code for it, and im hardly a skilled programmer. my complaint isnt just aimed at this one developer, ive see so many "modern" games, even commercial titles, with really poor joystick code. 1-bit resolution axes are so 80s :D
« Last Edit: August 11, 2011, 02:04:44 am by Nuke »
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

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Offline MR_T3D

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
no joystick support yet? the ridiculous thing is when i designed a game engine i wrote 5 minute joystick code that works great. why do other developers have such a hard time with input code? other than that little rant, i like all the new staging features, though i do wish there was some way to disable fuel sharing between some stages.

He probably doesn't have a joystick.

it is possible to emulate joystick hardware in software with various utilities. ppjoy+glovepie, for example, can turn keyboard and mouse info into joystick info. surely the documentation for whatever input api is sufficient to understand the raw data coming out of it. something preliminary may be written and given to the userbase to experiment on and give feedback. at least with some of my arduino development i had coded for hardware that i had not received yet, and by the time the part had arrived in the mail i had working code for it, and im hardly a skilled programmer. my complaint isnt just aimed at this one developer, ive see so many "modern" games, even commercial titles, with really poor joystick code. 1-bit resolution axes are so 80s :D
No one has really requested joystick support be working, using the keyboard and flying off instruments is working "well enough" for most of us.
He does have groundwork there, and I'm sure later on, with spaceplanes, the stick support will be worth getting running.

 

Offline Shade

  • 211
Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
Final 0.9 version is out, and the new and improved staging options offer room for quite a bit of improvement on previous efforts :D

Here's the results of a straight vertical launch of an embiggened and yet somewhat simplified - except from the initial boost stage at any rate - version of the previous Il Tempo Gigante (craft file attached, by the way):



That's right, over 9500m/s on a vertical launch. I'm guessing this thing could probably break 10k m/s on an oblique launch*, though this thing is heavy as hell to steer so I'd hate to actually try it. It's made even worse by the fact that this packs exactly zero SAS modules once the boost stage is gone - It is stable enough (well... barely) in a vertical launch, presumable due to the length of it, but if you get even a bit outside the desired flight path it just doesn't have the steering torque necessary to recover. As before, this is stock parts only.

Oh yeah, and a lunch pad shot to show the scale of the thing:



The stuff at the top is actually part of the first stage, to help get it clear of the tower, and are what I refer to as the boost stage. Couldn't put them on one of the 'legs' because that causes bad spinning that eventually tears the rocket apart, but right at the top they're actually far enough above the lower parts that they can fire without damaging anything. The whole assembly there is gone before the rocket hits 3000m altitude.

* The old version went from 7500m/s to 8200m/s when going for an oblique flight path, but gain would likely be less from this as the higher speeds take gravity mostly out of the equation for a greater part of the run. Around 500m/s seems a reasonable expectation though.

[attachment deleted by ninja]
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Offline Bob-san

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
I dun see no struts on that baby. Give her some struts and she'll sturdy-up. Here's my baby:








If you insert into orbit, it's actually more efficient to escape. Your top speed will be lower but you'll escape with far more velocity.
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Offline Shade

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
Struts add weight and drag, however little. If you can otherwise keep it stable, a strutless rocket will go faster than a strutted one. Additionally, struts seem to induce the rocket to tilt in my experience, forcing the use of SAS modules and further adding to weight. So I avoid them if possible when building for serious speed, even if they're very handy for less specialized designs.

Anyway, I tried adding another two engines to the final stage, bringing the total to eight, and launching it on an oblique trajectory (which proved less hairy than I'd feared). It... makes a difference. Specifically, this much of a difference:



Another 400m/s and I'll have reached my goal of getting to Earth's escape velocity. So close, yet so far away...

Craft file attached.



[attachment deleted by ninja]
Report FS_Open bugs with Mantis  |  Find the latest FS_Open builds Here  |  Interested in FRED? Check out the Wiki's FRED Portal | Diaspora: Website / Forums
"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh ****ing great. 2200 references to entry->index and no idea which is the one that ****ed up" - Karajorma
"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct." - Niels Bohr
<Cobra|> You play this mission too intelligently.

 

Offline MR_T3D

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
the struts sure allow a lot more creativity when it comes to designs.

amazingly , it seems that the kerbals can survive 66G of acceleration from a stupid  huge number of boosters going off together.

will post some silly ships and their short flight logs tomorrow
.

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Kerbal Space Program or "Rocket science is harder than it looks"
i really do like the struts, you can add some serious beef to weak parts of the ship with them. ive been doing a lot of work where i use struts on lateral decouplers to shore up large clusters of boosters attatched to other lateral decouplers in the same group. this seems to prevent the phenomena of the lateral decoupler breaking when attatched to more than one booster. also is it just me or do stabilizer fins have more effect than they used to? theyve turned at least one ludicrous design from veers off course like it has an elephant taped to the side of it to flys like a dream. sometimes large numbers of boosters can also induce some roll, and simply cross strutting them to eachother cancels this out by providing a mechanism where any of axxis tilting of one engin e will cause an inverse tilting in an adjacent set of boosters thus leveling out the spin. works kinda well.

also it seems using a lot of boosters can be ineffitient. i had one design where the rest of the stack was heavy for the current set of boosters to lift, the rocket eventually lost all momentum, hovered around 0 for awhile and started to pick up speed as it ran out of fuel. other boosters seem to provide enough thrust to gain altitude, but dont affect the velocity all that much. so ive come to the conclusion that lighter rockets are better for orbital insertion, where velocity matters. while huge bulky behemoths make good altitude records, but are very poor at attaining orbital velocity.

kinda wish the game came with some sort of orbital gauge, snowing you the shape of the orbit. not too different from the one in orbiter, but perhaps simplified a little.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2011, 12:16:22 am by Nuke »
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Nuke's Scripting SVN