Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LoSboccacc]

If air resistance was negligible and the planet was perfectly spherical, you could orbit 1 foot off the ground if you were going fast enough (and your vehicle/body wouldn't melt under the forces involved, but lets not belabor the point).

no I'm not a physicist.  Let's assume the cow is a perfect cube.

on mun it works. you just have to dodge muntains

[JWNoctis]

Assuming you get and keep the momentum from the planet's spin as you launch, you could theoretically launch straight up into a geosynchronous orbit or a similar but slightly eccentric orbit since you probably couldn't get it perfect.

That would not be possible and you are confusing angular velocity with linear velocity. You need to move faster than the ground moves linearly to achieve geosynchronous orbit.

Any launch straight up will either auger in at some time(perigee below the surface), or achieve escape velocity. At least when assuming instantous acceleration, no outside influence and spherical cow.

[ank]

EZ way to get into orbit around Kerbin:

1: Fly straight up until you are out of the atmosphere.(you can see the thickness of the atmosphere right below the height counter.)

2: timewarp until you are at the top of your trajectory.(just before you hit the apoapsis)

3: use the navball to point the craft at your direction of travel. this is the yellow circle on the navball. alternatively if you take too much time and are falling back to earth, point the craft at the horizon.

4: Burn fuel until you get into orbit.

TIPS and TRICKS:
You can control the craft from the map view if you press the little arrow in the bottom of the screen.

NAVBALL: i took a long time to learn how to use the navball, and spacetravel is impossible without it!
You can fly your craft by only looking at the navball. Press D and the pointer goes right on the navball. Press W and the pointer goes down and so forth.

The navball has 2 dots on it: the yellow dot and the purple dot:
the yellow dot(circle) is the direction your craft is travelling, and the yellow circle with a cross in it, is where you are coming from: this is extremely useful
the purple circle indicates the launchpad, and is good for finding back to earth(if you land on the far side of the moon for instance)

so if you want to make your orbit bigger, you burn in the direction of the yellow circle, and if you want to slow down, and make the orbit smaller, you aim for the yellow circle with a cross in it.

[Sordid]

That is an extremely inefficient way of getting into orbit.

[RulerOfNothing]

Yeah, you should start going towards horizontal at around 10-12 km up. Don't go fully horizontal until you are about 40-50km up though.

[Sordid]

Eh, depends on how fast you're ascending. Some of my more insane rockets go completely horizontal as low as 30 km up, since the momentum from the massive amount of SRBs is enough to fling the thing high enough. Switch to map view, mouse over your apoapsis. Ideally you should go horizontal when your apoapsis is 70 km to get into the lowest stable orbit possible.

[ank]

My guide was for the easiest way to get into orbit, not the most efficient.
and if you are only going for orbit you'll have plenty of fuel to do it.
also, i landed on the Mun and made it back using this method, so extremely inefficient might not be the right word.
and i even took out a lot of power, coz it was unneeded to get to the Mun and back.

slowly slanting the rocket to get an orbit is a lot harder for a beginner.
my inefficient method has the advantage of only requiring 2 burns, both in a fixed direction.

[vaaern]

Okay, I was just doing something wrong then :p

[Rift]

KSP 0.15 released:
...Spaceplanes.

New:

* The Spaceplane Hangar Facility, allows you to build vehicles horizontally, and launch them from a Runway
* The Runway Facility, to launch from and land your spaceplanes at.
* A new Part Creation Toolset, allowing for animated models, with normal and emmissive maps.
* A deployable Landing Gear part
* A new AtmosphericEngine part type, and two new air-breathing engines.
* A Patched Conics trajectory projection system, shows your map trajectory as it enters and leaves the SOI of planets and moons.
* Parts now can have a context menu where you can view data and perform actions. (Atmo engines already implement this)
* Parts now visually display their temperatures through a dynamic emmissive heat map.
* It is now possible to manually rotate parts on the VAB and Spaceplane Hangar prior to placement (using the WSADQE keys, Shift, Space to Reset)
* It is now possible to trim the roll, pitch and yaw inputs by holding Alt and pressing the roll, pitch and yaw keys (Alt+X to reset).
* Added a small, far-flung second moon around Kerbin, called Minmus.


Bug Fixes and Tweaks:

* Fixed a security flaw with the updater tool.
* The flight log will no longer show the terrain tile IDs when crashing things into them. It will show the correct "crashed into terrain" message.
* Corrected the level of the ocean quadtree, so that it matches visually with the simulated water level.
* (Possibly) increased performance on the flight scenes (from the terrain tweak also)
* Found and fixed the true cause of the orbit NaN bug. (see last note on this page)
* Corrected the aileron action on ControlSurface parts. Now aileron input is determined based on part orientation instead of symmetry counterparts.
* Fixed an issue with joystick throttle when focusing/unfocusing the game.
* Fixed a problem with fuel lines and struts becoming attached to non-existent parts when reloaded.
* Fixed the behaviour of the Alt key when Alt-Tabbing out of the game.
* It is no longer possible to enter time warp or save the game if the ship is landed or splashed, but still moving.
* Several improvements to the scene lighting in the Spaceplane Hangar and Vehicle Assembly Building.
* Fixed Fuel Lines and Struts not reconnecting once reattached to the ship at the VAB and SPH
* Improved the part dragging on the editor scenes
* After a crash, the end flight dialog will only come up by clicking the left mouse button, hitting Esc or the Space Bar.

[Rex_Nex]

Glad I bought the game

[Aklyon]

Glad I bought the game

[Kanil]

About to buy the game. 

[Sirus]

Much as I want to buy this game, I'm saving for something else. Curse you, restraint!

[JWNoctis]

Glad I bought the game

KSP 0.15 AND DF 34.09 almost on the same day...Well, this just made my day.

[MarcAFK]

Interesting updates, i'll think about getting this now, now while i'm here i've been reading about orbital physics and stuff an i think i can now sucussfully perform a holman transfer to the moon, once i get to grips with Pitch/yaw/roll.
Is there some way of recentering teh camera so the pitch/yaw controls once again line up with the direction of the screen; or something similar?
Also i've been trying to make the largest most unstable rockets i can, most of the time they require very precise adjustments during launch to prevent losing control, oddly enough SAS seems to lose control fairly often.