Kerbal Space Program

[tjts1]

This ended well 2 seconds later.

[cale]

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=647.0

Escape velocities and orbit velocities for specific altitudes.

If you want to achieve orbit, keep it simple. Capsule, decoupler, 3 tanks, liquid fuel rocket with 6 solid fuel boosters attached to the exterior. This will get you into orbit easily.

Make sure you don't detach your last rocket either....because by the looks of things bill, bob and jebediah are going to spend the remainder of their lives in orbit -_-

[delfin]

I managed to scare Jebediah:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKO8BqJqVSQ

[cale]

They're going for their first overnight mission, lets see if they're still orbiting in the morning. TRYING to maintain 42.5km at 2342 m/s, a perfectly circular orbit is going to be nearly impossible manually but a slightly eccentric orbit maintaining an altitude +/- 1km should be doable. If you want to achieve orbit, keep the rocket simple. I'm able to achieve the altitude I want every time with a 2 stage rocket of 4tanks/1engine with 6 solid boosters to get the initial velocity I want.



Anyone else find success in orbiting?

[mrsleeve]

nope every time I try and orbit, I just send them out into oblivion.

[cale]

Biggest thing about achieving orbit is the right velocity, ideally you want just enough to maintain a certain altitude at which time you'll orbit infinitely...but again, nearly impossible manually. Look at that table I've posted, it gives you orbit velocities for each altitude. For about the first 15km, you want to go straight up to get out of the atmosphere. Then you can start adding some pitch, I like to slowly go to around 45 degrees until I'm at 30km up. At 30km up I then try to level out the craft to achieve as much horizontal velocity as possible. You'll continue climbing for quite some time so don't worry too much about getting your altitude, it will come. Get to around 100m/s less than your target orbit velocity and then fine tune your altitude. Once you're just creeping up on the target altitude fine tune the velocity and voila, orbit. You'll notice the altitude will fluctuate but as you descend, you'll pick up speed thus propelling yourself further out into space only to be sucked back in by gravity and repeat the cycle over and over again. Achieving the least amount of fluctuation is the hard part!

[cale]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RvVjysJKB4

This should help, I'm using a nearly identical rocket.

[5Toes]

Im starting this when I wake up.

[devon.818]

How do you get the add ons? Something I didn't download or what?

[CabbE30]

[delfin]

I quickly learned that this is too much fuel:



But this is a fine piece of technology:

[Dozyproductions]

how does your rocket look like that? I don't think I have those components and I just downloaded this thing like 3 days ago.

[tjts1]

867,622m & 5300m/s. I might have overshot by a bit.

[cale]

Game crashed last night around 4am :( was about 3.5 hours into a successful orbit, booo-urns.

[mrsleeve]

I kinda got them to orbit. I went to stabilize my velocity, and I think that put me into a sling shot like elliptical orbit. Becuase it was good and fairly stable till it was 1/2 through the 2ed orbit. they just kept going last time I saw it the were 1.2m meters away a still going.