No charging cord, no redesign, no update. I did manage to get my little brother to play the demo, though. His first rocket was a bit amusing. One T800 attached to the thrust-215 engine with no gimbal, plus two pairs of radial decouplers on top of each other and two T400 fuel tanks on those. Staging blew one decoupler (and tank) off, then the other, then the inner two, then started the rocket flying. Straight up. He cut the thrust at 8000 meters and turned it off at 10k, then turned off thrust. He did a bit of a gravity turn, but I'm pretty sure that was an accident. Still, for a first launch, an apoapsis of just over 86,100 meters isn't bad. He splashed down hard just under seven minutes after launch due to not putting any parachutes on.
His next version involved adding fuel lines from the outer tanks ("auxiliary tanks," he called them. He also appeared to refer to either them or me as a "bitch". He then removed the exit ends of the lines and added two more engines and T400's on top of the auxiliary tanks, and two engines below. Next, he moved the two engines and tanks on top to the sides. After that, he added more T400's on top of the four pods around the sides. Penultimately, he added a fuel tank on top of the command pod; it would have been on its side if he hadn't wanted to add a reaction wheel to it. It got a fuel line leading to the big central tank. The spacecraft was finished with another fuel tank on top of the reaction wheel. He didn't change staging or use symmetry at any point, both of which would have helped. He thinks it'll get to the Mun. Kod help him.
He activates two of his engines and doesn't get five meters before he starts turning to the side. It manages five seconds before plowing into the ground and exploding. It was also wobbling a bit, I noticed. It could probably use some struts, but I don't tell him that.
My brother: "You're enjoying this too much, mister!"
At my suggestion, he restarted, with another command pod on another T800 and another 215-thrust engine. Four radial decouplers (symmetrical this time), four T400s, four engines. He commented on how much easier symmetry mode made it, and how much he loved it.
Takeoff was more stable and fast enough to make my brother note "Holy crud!" and then "I don't have any way to steer!" He turned off the engines at 1000 meters due to fear they would overheat, then turned them on again after I told him about the overheat bar. He turned them off again at 4000, about when he hit 200 m/s; I wondered if he was following some kind of strategy, but he almost instantly proved me wrong by blasting through the lower atmosphere in excess of 300 m/s. He lost a stage at 8000, and I walked him through staging as the empty stages whirled around. A bit past 30 kilometers and a bit under 1:30, he abandoned the flight, talking about how stupid the game is.
Next version saw the addition of four radial decouplers and the attempted addition of four T800s to the decouplers. He ended up adding them to the radial boosters, and putting rockets on them. He also adds a parachute to the command pod, stating that he is being cruel by giving them hope. The T800's got tri-couplers with more engines on the bottom added to them. He states that "Fuck yeah, this thing is awesome man!" (yes, those were his exact words).
The launch (which involves Bob, who somehow survived the last launch--perhaps since it was aborted) starts well, although the spacecraft starts spinning and tilting, and the ship does not have "autogyro" (SAS?). Some of the boosters run out of fuel, so he ejects the whole thing, causing a storm of debris which amazingly doesn't hit the ship. He deploys the parachute while activating the rockets, and decides to abort the launch. He then asks if he can put a decoupler on the command pod. He realizes that this is a good idea.
He restarts, adding a decoupler to the command pod. A radial decoupler (I don't think he noticed the inline one yet). This leads to a lot of hilarity when he tries to put a fuel tank on it, eventually putting it on the side.
He "launches". The command pod tips over on the fuel tank's side and, much to my brother's displeasure, does not explode.
He asks my help, and I introduce him to inline decouplers. He calls me, among other things, a "gorram son of a bitch". He added a fuel tank and almost went to the next stage before realizing he forgot an engine. One rocket, one decoupler, and one tri-coupler were added, followed by three solid rocket boosters, which were removed and replaced by more T400's with agimbolic rockets. Then, three solid boosters with radial decouplers. Finally, three more solid boosters on the outer edges of those boosters.
As the rocket takes off, he notes that the solid boosters are awesome, swiftly followed by noting that he had no "stabilizing stuff". He began hammering the staging key and wound up with his parachute out, stuck on the last stage, watching the solid rocket boosters explode above.
He removes the outer boosters and adds a reaction wheel to the top.
The launch goes okay. It begins to tilt, since he never turns SAS on. He heads to map view and sets the Mun as a target, even though I note that that isn't autopilot. The rocket boosters run out with 4 klicks of altitude, a horizontal direction, and an unphased brother. He doesn't seem to react until he demands to know why he's going down. I give a brief explanation, and he begins staging. Bob lands, drifting solemnly to the sound of all the other bits of his spaceship crashing into the ground and exploding.
Another flight, another fiddle. He adds monopropellant tanks to the command pod, fins and nose cones to the solid boosters, and winglets to the upper stage.
The launch starts. He sets the Mun as target, goes back, and comes back to see the rocket horizontal and spinning. (At under 600 meters.) He unsets the Mun, hammers the spacebar, and lands. "How is it unstable? I used symmetry!"
He removed the fins, winglets, and monopropellant, claiming they didn't do him any good. He also added a radial decoupler to the solid boosters, then gets distracted investigating the other parts, then three launch stability enhancers, then he moves them around before tossing them out and adding decouplers on the decouplers and boosters on those decouplers. And nose cones on the boosters.
I can see the solid boosters and such bending as he takes off, but it works. A couple hundred meters up, followed by the others at about 800 meters when SAS doesn't do anything, followed by dropping to the last stage for a bit and releasing the command pod. He complains that the game "doesn't [bleep] work," noting that everything is symmetrical but the craft isn't stable. I teach him the manual flight controls; he launches the same craft again, stating that this is his last launch.
The rocket slooowly slides off-center, with my brother trying to control it. A bit under 2000 meters, he releases the first boosters and lets them crash into each other just above the command pod. He reaches 4000 meters, releases the next set, and promptly discovers his craft spinning too much, overcompensating. He sets the Mun as a target and begins hammering the staging key again, circling up to 6,200 meters or so and back down to 6,000 and all around before the rocket his command pod was sitting on ran out of fuel.
And that was his last flight of the night.
Sorry about the lack of pictures. I was typing this on a borrowed netbook while he played on the desktop. I hope you understand, and that the text is enough.
This counts as tonight's update.
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Topic: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Conical Difficulties (Read 72106 times)