Kerbal Space Program is an indie game where you build rockets (or spaceplanes) and launch them from the planet Kerbin. From there, you can try to land on one of Kerbin's two moons, or try to orbit the star Kerbol, or just launch yourself out of the system entirely. If you're feeling particularly generous, you may even let your poor crew survive the landing back on Kerbin. Or not

Despite being in the early Alpha stages, this game is ridiculously fun and addicting. In addition, the game is pretty easy to mod, and the official forums have a section on doing so. There are many, many more features that are planned to be included, and considering the amount of time I've already sunk into this game, this has the potential (I think/hope) of becoming the next Minecraft.

You don't have to be a physics guy to really get into the game; it's pretty self-explanatory, and the people on the official forums are pretty helpful if you have questions. There's a free demo available from the site, and the full game currently costs $15. Like Minecraft, once you've got the game, you're covered for future updates.

Frankly, I'm surprised that this hasn't made it's way to DLP yet. Granted, I am kinda geared towards this game given my love for astronomy, but it seems to be growing in popularity pretty quickly. I found it via a video by kurtjmac (YouTube Mincraft player), a guy who shares my love for astronomy, and I've been playing it constantly since early March. I'd say give the demo a try, at the very least.

Here's the official site.

 

I love this game, even though - like most games - I suck at it. I haven't been able to break 10km. Heh.

 

Huh, forgot to reinstall this when I got my new computer. Hey aspiring Kerbalnauts: fuck making a rocket stable. Just slap an ASAS and some wings and maybe even a ring of thrusters and let the machine keep it pointing where you tell it to point. Can't remember the button to turn ASAS on but it should be easy to find.

Futz about with rocket configurations and, yah, spend like three hours strapping a billion rockets to each other and cacking yourself laughing as it horribly fragments and sends ballistic engines roaring across the landscape. But once you're ready to serious the fuck up, turn on ASAS and max burn (if you're not using boosters you can control the amount of thrust being used, keep it at max until you're out of atmosphere, only turning it down if your engines start overheating because you're an idiot and stacked them too close to each other).

Once you leave the atmosphere - about 50k up I think, there's an indicator on the screen - shut off your engines (if you've still got booster to burn let them run until they die off) then drift into apoapsis, the point just before you start heading back down. Then turn sideways and burn parallel to the ground. Keep doing that until your periapsis rises above ~50k above sea level and bam, you're in a stable orbit. You're the Yuri Gagarin of Kerbin.

Then you can work on tricky shit like achieving lunar orbit, actually making a moon landing, escaping Kerbin's gravity well, and even escaping Kerbol itself (with some sort of slingshot maneuver unless you're a complete nutter).

 

And 0.16 is out! It's pretty sweet, I've already played around with it some. Good luck getting it at the moment, though... The servers are overloaded.

 

Jesus Christ, Kerbalnauts, would it kill you to use a fucking tether to spacewalk, you lunatic bastards?

Landing munbases just got more awesome since you can have your Kerbalnauts (or Kerbalnaut, singular, if you're a pussy) climb out and clamber all over it, assuming you placed strategic fold-out ladders in the right places. You can even escape Minmus using the jetpack - not all the way into orbit, but high enough to rendezvous with a craft in orbit. Oh, and the jetpack isn't strong enough to make a survivable landing on Kerbin.

Current version has a bug that makes using low burn ridiculously efficient, to the point that it's practically cheating. If you want to escape Kerbin's orbit on easy mode, or even that of Kerbol, now's the time to do it.

 

N-n-necropost: It's on Steam, bitches.

 

I have it. How hard is rocket science anyways?

 

I had wondered if this had made it to DLP, glad to see it here even i the thread is dead.

Mercenary: Apparently not as hard as it used to be if people like me can do it from the comfort of our homes. (Then again I am an engineer so that really doesn't say much does it?)

 

Honestly the biggest problem for me is not getting into Orbit or docking. I can manage both just fine(the first better than the latter)

Its the part where I'm in orbit and I dont have any fucking fuel to go anywhere!

 

I know exactly what you mean Merc. I haven't been able to get to orbit with enough fuel to go anywhere, sometimes even to deorbit! What I want to see in the game which would be cool is the option to add a space hanger to an orbital station so that we can launch directly to space

 

Thats actually one of the things I've been trying to do. Build up an Station. Attach fuel tanks.

Tadah. Refueling station in orbit.

The problem is A. Getting Fuel UP there.

or B. Installing Kethene mod and then refining and moving the Kethene to the station.

 

The first difficulty hump is getting into orbit. The second is getting into orbit efficiently.

 

Most important fuel lesson you can learn:

Nuclear engines are your friends. They offer virtually nothing when first taking off, but once in space they burn through virtually no fuel and can keep your ship going for ages. You'll be in orbit around the outermost planet before you know it.

 

Your best friend for precise orbits is MechJeb. If you feel like it is cheating remember, NASA uses computers to do stuff for them too...

On another note, yes getting a station into orbit is a bitch. especially if it isn't a small one.
I don't even want to think about a mid system refueling station, though it would be better if they had programmed the engine to model Lagrange points as well. Solar station anyone?

 

Mechjeb just got rebuilt from the ground up!

Now it uses maneuver nodes. Apparently you can now alter Ascent on the fly and it'll compensate, perform interplanetary injects from Kerbin and so much more!

Hell supposedly you'll be able to set up your nodes and it'll follow it!

Nuclear Engines OP as fuck in Vacuum.

Useless in atmosphere.

Ascent Stage = Mainsail Engines

Interplanetary movements = Nuclear Engines

 

So I bought this game and have been trying to learn the ropes of it over the past week. I think I've done alright, having just completely my first successful orbit of Kerbin, with plenty of fuel to spare for de-orbiting.



It's a bit elliptical for my tastes at the moment, but I'll fix that up in the morning then get Bill Kerman back on solid ground (poor guy has been screaming for a couple of days straight now).

After that I think I'll try putting a satellite in orbit, then a geo-synchronous one the time after.

Gotta say though, rocket science really is difficult, even simplified as this is. I'm having to build a spreadsheet as I go along to make sure I've got enough thrust to keep my rocket going up past the first stage of solid fuel boosters.

---------- Post automerged 05-04-2013 at 07:58 PM ---------- Previous post was 04-04-2013 at 08:51 PM ----------

So yeah, that didn't go well. I tried the usual method of lowering your altitude (burn directly towards the planet at the apogee) and turned out to not have enough fuel for it and to de-orbit, so I decided to just bring Bill back home. Except there may have been a small staging error that was overlooked before the mission.

Instead of having the parachute as the last stage by itself, I'd lumped it in with the final de-coupler. This may have had the unfortunate consequence of activating the parachute at about 70,000m. So instead of slowing my command pod down to a reasonable level before impact into the sea west of Kafrica, it kinda snapped off entirely and the pod sank to the bottom of the ocean.

RIP Bill Kerbin. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.

 

Sounds like an really promising game. Worth buying now or is it smarter to wait till it is finished and I can use all its functions? Because I have the tendency to play betas and then lose interest when the finished game comes out.

 

It's pretty functional as is, though maybe a bit basic. There's no real 'point' to the game yet since anything you put up in orbit is just there for aesthetic purposes. There are mods that change that, but the vanilla game at the moment is essentially just 'put things in space for kicks'.

Still fun, but you might want to wait for the beta to end if you're not one who sets his own challenges and the likes. Getting to the outermost planet and back is a real challenge, for instance.

---------- Post automerged at 11:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:44 PM ----------

So I gave orbiting another go. I got it well enough for a second attempt (Apogee at 234,000m and Perigee at 149,500m). Only problem was that I didn't put enough fuel in to get back home, or maybe wasted too much getting into a decent orbit. Now Bob Kerbin, brave astronaut that he was, is stuck in a pod in orbit.

RIP Bob Kerbin.

 

1. ... Why would you burn directly to the planet at Apoasis? I have never heard of that method to deorbit. In fact that sounds like an inefficient use of fuel.

Shouldn't you burn retrograde to lower your perapsis for deorbit?

2. Your parachute should not have activated at 70km up. Mine activates at 30km or so.

Thats weird bro.

 

1) Damn it, knew I was doing something wrong. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

2) It was an accident. Forgot to set the staging properly so my parachute went off when I dumped my last decoupler. At 70,000m.