All Stations are Go.

Consider this part 2 for Kerbal Space Program.

Having spent a few more hours 'playing' today, happily went about setting a space station into orbit.  This game's tag line should be "It really does take a rocket scientist."  Strapping a bigger rocket onto your ship and hoping "This time, it'll have enough power!" it wishful thinking at best.  Rather than glide into an easy orbit, you're likely to spin uncontrollably until your rockets collide mid-air and blow up both your Kerbals and what little ego you may have left.

Consider Exhibit A: The Launching of my space station.

"Err, perhaps we should have listened in Aerodynamics Class."

"It's just a little module, two rockets should be good enough, right?"

It seemed like an easy enough endeavor. I took the "Basic Station" stock parts, and strapped some rockets to the side -- 10 minute job, tops! Okay, so maybe literally strapping two rockets onto the sides is not the best design.  As evidenced below, this may cause sudden implosive tendencies, and astronauts (even Kerbal ones) are not fond of burning up in the atmosphere.

That's not staging.  That's just bad Rocketry.

Does it count as a success if you burn up in reentry?

My problem before was asymmetry, right?  I'll just keep adding MOAR rockets.

Luckily for me, I did some research and checked how other people stage their rockets.  It turns out, if you're going to use liquid rockets, people recommend exploiting the bad physics in KSP and using "Asparagus Rockets."  In the picture on the right, you can see orange fuel lines leading from one rocket to the next.

The idea with asparagus rockets is that you drain off rockets opposite each other, and then decouple them to drop the weight.  because your rockets are symmetric, it does not affect the center of gravity or thrust.  Very convenient method of staging.  So, armed with this knowledge, I gracefully sent a space station into orbit.

What?  You don't believe me?  Okay, so perhaps it took me more than a few tries, but I did manage to pull it off, after battling with the wicked spin created by jettisoning these rockets.

Deploy the Solar Panels! They'll be useful to us... sometime.

Decouple the engine!  We don't need no liquid here.

Proof that it's actually in orbit.

I'm just going to chill out here in space.  Don't worry, I have a jetpack.

So, in conclusion, rocket science is hard. Apparently there's more to it than strapping really large rockets to things you want in space.  Also, support struts can be important, since you really don't want hundreds of tons of fuel accidentally exploding in mid-air (it's bad for the insurance policies).


Ten hours in and I'm still quite pleased with this purchase.  Also, if you're willing to put the time in to calculating things, there's plenty of mathematics which can go into building these ships.  Someday, I may try my hand at that, but for now I'll just leave you with a picture of my first Kerbal in Space.

Kerbal "Space Program"

Welcome to my little corner of the internet.  I enjoy blogging and I enjoy video games, so I thought I would start a crappy video game view blog.  "I hope you hate it" - Five Iron Frenzy

It's July, and a as any PC gamer knows, July means Steam Summer Sales.  Every summer we gather around our monitors at work as the daily deals are announced.  We eagerly anticipate what games may be part of a flash deal.  We vote for particular games in the community events.  "We" absolutely love it.

While in past sales I have walked away with dozens of games (much to my wife's chagrin), this year I proudly proclaimed to my wife that I wasn't going to spend every waking moment checking the sales.  We are moving soon, so it's best not to spend all of our money on frivolous purchases.  "Well, maybe one purchase wouldn't break the budget." Thus, Kerbal Space Program.


Before purchasing this 'game', I knew very little about it.  It had been popping up on my Steam Friends' profiles for months, so I was very surprised to see that it is still in alpha.  After stumbling through the very basic and very incomplete tutorials, I was left to my own devices.  Not wanting to start too big, I set about building my very first Satellite.

While the picture to the right is not that first satellite (aptly named "Failed Satelite #1" (yes, ironic misspelling)), it gives you the general picture of what it looked like after having been launched a few dozen times -- broken into a million pieces (sometimes still on the launchpad).

I apologize for the crappy lighting in these pictures.  The Kerballian Alliance decided it was best that my works not see the light of day.



Much of the time in this game is spent in the vehicle assembly bay.  Piece by piece, you assemble your ships (and stage by stage too).  Five hours in, I finally managed to launch a satellite into a proper orbit.  "Failed Satelite #2" proudly circles Kerbal, providing long range communication and scientific data.

With my new Space Mastery, I set about building my very first Space Station.  Pictured below is the very stable and completely OSHA approved "Space 'Station #1.'"  I was very proud of the assembly, and it didn't even blow up on the platform the very first time I tried sending it into orbit.

I look so cute and innocent when I'm sitting on a launch pad.

Taking Jeb Kerbal's advice, I attached two large Liquid Fuel lifting rockets to the station, and attached a secondary engine to navigate the station into a stable orbit once it was there.  Once in orbit, minor adjustments are provided by an ION system, fueled by xenon gas and solar energy.  Below are two pictures summarizing how successful this mission was:

 

Good thing this was unmanned.  Oh, wait..

First attempt and I even made it into space!

Okay, so perhaps it was not the most successful mission, and perhaps it cost a few Kerbals their lives, but Science always comes at a price, right? Maybe next time.

 Lest you think that my sole aim is to torture poor Kerbals and depopulate the earth, below are pictures of one of my other designs.  I call it: Flying Fortress.

All this work to launch that tiny ball at the top.  Yup, that's it.

Look at that sleek aerodynamic design!  The orange boosters are liquid rockets, while the outside four are solid boosters.  The orange liquid boosters also fuel two smaller central rockets for a total of 8 separate engines blasting at once!

Once the solid boosters have been depleted, smaller solid booster rockets are activate while the rockets are decoupled so they blast away from the remaining rocket.

It's a true modern engineering miracle.

While I have managed to get this design to work as intended, it would only through some trial and error.  Certain structures required modification (support struts added and removed from various locations, timing sequences recalibrated, and a host of other issues).  Lest you think that I actually know what I'm doing, below are a few pictures of a typical flight.

500ft up, and we've already lost two rockets.

I've had enough of this 'flying up' thing.

So, 8 hours into my experience with the game, it is easily one of the most unique, charming, and infuriating games I have ever played.  If you're not fan of Sandbox games, you should steer clear of this one.  If you can't set your own agenda, you should steer clear of this one.  If you're actually fond of steering, you should probably steer clear of this one; rockets are neigh impossible to control.  However, if you enjoy building things, watching them explode, and then refining those plans until they work, then this might be the game for you.

Now, excuse me while I head back to space camp.