Shep is going to love this little rocket game

[Enigma]

You know, though I toned down the figures I used in editing the LF engine, my ship somehow managed to exceed gee forces of 35 billion. That ship should have been suck light into it.

[xthetenth]

For staging controls? Yeah that'd be handy, although I'd prefer they make the staging a seperate window so you can really get into it instead of all the up and down scrolling.

I really want to be able to group parts and change their stage as one. Pair that with grouping radially symmetric parts and we have a winner.

[Scottish Ninja]

I made a Saturn V:



It doesn't work properly yet because the S-IVB and CSM are just dummy stages. Once we get hollow 1-2m and 2-3m decoupler shrouds...

[Crossroads Inc.]

For those seeking more parts, in the main KSP forums I found a very detailed downloaded set for those wanting even more additions.
http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/ind ... pic=1109.0


Been playing around with it seeing if it helps things out.
Spent the last week trying to get into SPAAAACE and back again with no luck.
Have a design that gets into space rather easily, but every time I add additional stages to get back it all goes to pot.
Gives me a lot of respect for Real rocket scientists

[Executor32]

Additional stages? HA! Parachute + CM + coupler + SAS + big round tank + liquid fuel engine = SSTO, and back for that matter.

[Vanas]

Those additional stages look far too professional for the Kerbals.

Still, given my appropriate enthusiasm and lack of aptitude, any additional way of lauching the kerbonauts into the lower stratosphere is a plus.

[Crossroads Inc.]

WELL! I finally got off my Lazy ass and started uploading some of the huge backlog of Rocket Screenshots I've got.
Starting off going to post the top designs I'm working on in order of oldest to newest.
Kee in mind ALL of these are with the sole purpose of getting a rocket into SPAAAACE with a single stage to then get them back home.

BEHOLD THE THOR MK ONE!

First Design I did after downloading the parts addon. I got a capsule into SPACE several times with this, and this version SHOULD have given the boost needed to launch the final stage with enough force for it to be able to get the capsule home. Sadly I never got it fully work. Inside the first stage are 4 large SRB. They are supposed to drop out form the inside when the run out of fuel. Sadly no matter how many times I've tried editing the launch stages, it always either jettisons the Liquid Fuel Rockets along with the Solids, or they don't jettison at all, and then the added weight means there is not enough speed to get into SPACE.

THE THOR MK TWO!!!

Once again, "almost'" a successful. Able to get a crew into SPACE without the final stage. After adding the final stage, It got to a height of 300,000 with only a speed of 2100mps. Not enough for escape velocity. Adding additional SRB packs to the outside got the curious error of the first stage going "too fast" and flying right up the second stages butt causing MASSIVE DAMAGE

Sadly abandoned.

THE THOR MK3!!!

So I got a bit crazy with this design, MORE MORE MORE!!!
I hounestly didn't think this thing would even get airborn, yet...

It didn't just lift off but is Amazingly stable. The duel stages provid a hell of a lot of lift, but sadly not too much speed. Despite all the extra huge rockets, the thing barely gets to 30,000 meteres at only 300mps before having to fire the final stage. Clearly more is not the answer.

I have a new design in the works I have high hopes for... We shall have to wait and see.

[Andras]

Very hard to turn over, but it goes like a bat...



It still has 2 fueled stages for maneuver and deorbit.



this one is also pretty successful


Something for Shep-



How many rockets are on that?!

[Executor32]

Really, trying to make a huge unwieldy rocket like that is overkill for just trying to get to orbit and back, Crossroads. Here is a demonstration of my aforementioned SSTO rocket:















It looks unwieldy as fuck, but it gets the job done. Please note that I wasn't trying to be particularly careful during the burn to orbit, so I had to do a lot of orbital corrections once I actually got there. I still had a third of a tank left when it came time for the reentry burn, though, which let me maneuver such that I landed within walking distance of the launch facility.

[Simon_Jester]

Crossroads, at a guess what's killing your uber-rockets is that the weight of the second and higher stage(s) is large compared to the weight of the first stage. That defeats the purpose of staging to an extent- if two thirds of the mass of the rocket is above the first stage, the first stage won't accomplish much before crapping out.

[Andras]

reposted since I changed the name of a folder on photobucket and I can't edit the links.

Very hard to turn over, but it goes like a bat...



It still has 2 fueled stages for maneuver and deorbit.



this one is also pretty successful


Something for Shep-



How many rockets are on that?!

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ok, well the approach "Less is more" has been tried and seems to be working.
The Thor Mk5


Huge First Stage, very small second, and min third stage. Also utilizing the low thrust light weight Liquid fuel engines as well.
Also using the small SRB since they do not seem to have the explosive problem the large ones do. Also cut back on extra "frills"
Caps, covers, fins, anything that adds weight without function.

Test flight of the Mk5 proved very good:

Final stage started at 1570mps and 95,000meters. Not enough to break orbit.
However, another test where I used 50% of the final stage DID beak past 2500mps which was enough to get into SPACE!!!

EDIT:
After some tweaking I have a new design, breaking with the Thor series and calling it simply "BOOMER"

More compact and taking a risk using big SRB again, but attaching them only to a single breakaway ring which shouldn't have
structural issues. Off to work for a bit so will have updates on it's flight later.

[Sephirius]

THREAD REVIVE:

The moon has been added.

[xthetenth]

There's also an ever so handy orbit monitor, which is just hugely useful. What I want to do is launch a mission to see if the sun is modelled.

[Nuts!]

The moon has been added.

We don't have any of those piddly "Lunar modules" on the Mac version of the game! We had to make do with stretching wingtips down really really far and pucker factoring the shit out of our lunar landings! And it was uphill both ways!


In all seriousness, though, does the Windows version of the latest build get the shiny LEM module? It would be nice to land without having to MacGyver some landing gear.

[Darmalus]

That's a terrible landing! Bill and Bob aren't the least bit freaked out!

Have they added a time accelerator/compressor? That would get me back in to the game, blowing up my little kerbalnauts.

[Vejut]

Re: Time compression. yes. They even limited it so you can't go into x100 time compression in atmosphere and miss your burn.

And last I checked, the windows version had to McGuyver landing gear as well. Probably a mod pack.

Also, I seem to recall the patch notes saying the sun was modeled for orbiting.

[Sephirius]

Yeah, it's an addon part, but even so the mechanics of landing remain the same.
which is awesome.

and hard.

[TimothyC]

Bumping this up because the latest experimental version (alas, paying customers only) includes persistence and animation - and a set of landing legs by default.

Also, if you are going to buy it, buy it soon because the cost is going to go up from $10 to $15.

[Marko Dash]

yay, this should allow for a whole bunch of new stuff from the community.

[TimothyC]

yay, this should allow for a whole bunch of new stuff from the community.

Oh, it gets even better - they are implementing a plugin structure. This allows new types of parts too be coded. There is already code in development for solar panels that fuel batteries that power electric engines. NovaSilisko is working on implementing sensor functionality to his Probodobodyne (pressure and temperature to start with) pack. The game is very much worth the money at this point.

[Marko Dash]

that, plus persistent satellites, maybe a docking plug-in and fuel transfer down the road. this increases the possibilities of the program tremendously and has finally convinced my to buy it.


the current experimental build has some bad bugs in the staging system that's preventing me from orbiting at the moment, but that should be worked out soon. the radial decouplers seem to work, but the stage separators are jumping from one to the next one without firing the engines in between.

[Kryten]

the current experimental build has some bad bugs in the staging system that's preventing me from orbiting at the moment, but that should be worked out soon. the radial decouplers seem to work, but the stage separators are jumping from one to the next one without firing the engines in between.

That only happens if the stage has only a decoupler/s in it; put a strut or fuel tank or something in the same stage, and it works fine.

[PeZook]

Personally I'm waiting for better navigational tools.

[MKSheppard]

Yes, I want something that I can just toggle on....something called an...Instrument Unit.