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.