Prime Junta
Guest
Turns out Eve prefers a gentle caress rather than diving straight in -- while things got a bit hot for a moment, this time she welcomed me into her warm embrace.
-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
Kerbal Space Program
- Thread starter DarkUnderlord
- Start date
Prime Junta
Guest
Started design and planning for an Eve return mission -- something I've never done as a matter of fact.
Since I like planes, I want it to be a plane.
Since I know Eve SSTOs are ... incredibly hard, I'm not going to try that. Maybe eventually once we know each other better.
So, I'm making something that flies to orbit from Kerbin like a rocket, enters Eve's atmosphere, glides, and lands like a plane, refuels itself with its on-board ISRU, then makes a violent transition into a rocket again, shedding pieces of itself as it ascends. Meet Morningstar. It's almost completed preliminary trials, the only remaining glitch is with cooling the ISRU unit -- no big deal on Kerbin but vital on Eve.
In case you're wondering about that huge tailplane, it's necessary because the ISRU unit sits at the back; it plus the heavy engines would pull the CoM way behind the CoL which would make it jump somersaults. The entire tail section will be decoupled before take-off from Eve, and with Eve, hauling stuff down is no problemo.
Since I like planes, I want it to be a plane.
Since I know Eve SSTOs are ... incredibly hard, I'm not going to try that. Maybe eventually once we know each other better.
So, I'm making something that flies to orbit from Kerbin like a rocket, enters Eve's atmosphere, glides, and lands like a plane, refuels itself with its on-board ISRU, then makes a violent transition into a rocket again, shedding pieces of itself as it ascends. Meet Morningstar. It's almost completed preliminary trials, the only remaining glitch is with cooling the ISRU unit -- no big deal on Kerbin but vital on Eve.
- Take-off and orbit from Kerbin - SUCCESS
- Re-entry to Kerbin - OUTSTANDING SUCCESS (it's passively stable -- settles into a 60-degree pitch until it hits thick air at which point it transitions to level flight, with no control input from the pilot whatsoever)
- Flight and landing -- SUCCESS (it's a leetle bit twitchier than I'd ideally like but fine if flown with a modicum of care; glideslope is most shallow and touchdown speed on Kerbin is ca 45 m/s, ought to be in the low 30s on Eve)
- Refueling -- PARTIAL FAILURE (those ISRU cooling issues and a fairing interfering with a radiator; don't think it's anything drastically difficult to resolve)
- Take-off after completing mission -- SUCCESS
- Reorbit -- SUCCESS
In case you're wondering about that huge tailplane, it's necessary because the ISRU unit sits at the back; it plus the heavy engines would pull the CoM way behind the CoL which would make it jump somersaults. The entire tail section will be decoupled before take-off from Eve, and with Eve, hauling stuff down is no problemo.
Prime Junta
Guest
Meanwhile, a routine mission on Laythe -- a visit to the North Pole, with a sample-gathering splashdown in Sagen Sea on the way back to the Kosmodrome.
Back at the Kosmodrome, transferring results to Lakeside Mansions for further study and transmission back to Kerbin.
Back at the Kosmodrome, transferring results to Lakeside Mansions for further study and transmission back to Kerbin.
Impressive Prime Junta.
I've been doing progress myself, slow since I haven't been playing much, but last week I took the game again and after refreshing my knowledge I started going forward again, I am currently building an Space Station to store fuel and kerbals as a preparation for missions out of Kerbal's gravity well, building the station is progressing adequately, in fact while I have to increase the fuel capacity it's actually operational atm, but I have realized that if I am going to be sending fuel up with rockets it's going to be on the expensive side of things and that's not really the point, is it? So I could use a reusable space plane, in that field of expertise I am pretty green, I can design atmospheric planes that fly reasonable well, I have also designed rocket propelled planes that fly, but I am having big problems finding the right engines and payloads to actually make it to orbit, so far my best model achieves a parabolic flight to around 90K height and then falls back to kerbin out of fuel and in order to do that I actually had to add some solid boosters which kind of defeats the purpose to begin with. So I would appreciate some tips in regard to engines to use and fuel quantities.
My tech level so far is: completed the rockomax series of fuel/engines and advancing into rhino series.
I've been doing progress myself, slow since I haven't been playing much, but last week I took the game again and after refreshing my knowledge I started going forward again, I am currently building an Space Station to store fuel and kerbals as a preparation for missions out of Kerbal's gravity well, building the station is progressing adequately, in fact while I have to increase the fuel capacity it's actually operational atm, but I have realized that if I am going to be sending fuel up with rockets it's going to be on the expensive side of things and that's not really the point, is it? So I could use a reusable space plane, in that field of expertise I am pretty green, I can design atmospheric planes that fly reasonable well, I have also designed rocket propelled planes that fly, but I am having big problems finding the right engines and payloads to actually make it to orbit, so far my best model achieves a parabolic flight to around 90K height and then falls back to kerbin out of fuel and in order to do that I actually had to add some solid boosters which kind of defeats the purpose to begin with. So I would appreciate some tips in regard to engines to use and fuel quantities.
My tech level so far is: completed the rockomax series of fuel/engines and advancing into rhino series.
Prime Junta
Guest
Tips? Okay, here's what I think is the easiest path to space by plane.
To start with, forget about jet engines. Make a rocket plane. They're easier to fly, easier to design, and you don't have to faff around with fuel mixes. Once you've got that going, start swapping out engines and tanks and tuning the fuel mix to see how much more efficiency you can squeeze out of your basic design.
Second, start small. For your first SSTO, forget about building a tanker. Build a sports car: something that'll take Jeb to orbit and bring him back safe. Once you've got the hang of that, start figuring out how to make it big enough and efficient enough to be of some practical use.
FWIW in my current career I've been going with almost all spaceplanes -- only now that I'm giving Eve a serious attempt am I even using the VAB. And until pretty late in the game, my planes were all rocket-powered.
More specific tips regarding engines and fuel. At your tech level, start by making a plane that flies on two Skippers. Install Kerbal Engineer Redux if you haven't already, and build a plane around those two Skippers. Pay attention to dV and TWR. You need a minimum of 3400 m/s to make orbit, so give your plane comfortably more than that -- 4000 is nice. And you'll want about 1.2 TWR (atmospheric) fully loaded. (Once you've got this flying, you can shave down the TWR a fair bit; I've gotten reasonably nice rocket planes with as low as 0.85; this buys a quite a lot of efficiency as the added mass is all payload or dV.)
Within these parameters, just build it like you would build any other plane.
To fly it to orbit is easy, since it's a rocket plane: you take off, point it at the sky at around 45 degrees, and when you hit 10k at around 500 m/s, follow prograde, then circularise. (This is a good deal more straightforward than nailing a gravity turn in conventional rockets IMO.)
To re-enter, set your Pe a bit higher than you would for a conventional return module -- I use 45-50k for LKO returns. When entering the atmosphere, pitch up steeply -- from 45 degrees all the way to 90 (surface radial/out), depending on your design. Pump fuel forward and back if necessary to put the CoM where you want it so it doesn't flip out. Once it's safely in the atmosphere, fly normally. It takes a bit of practice to hit the KSC every time when returning from orbit, and the re-entry profile is different for every plane and changes drastically depending on how you fly it -- for example, I accidentally invented supercruising when a big, light plane ended up just kind of skimming the upper atmosphere; I ended up flying all around the globe at 1200 m/s and around 20 km altitude, barely using any fuel.
Other notes on engines: the Skipper is the workhorse, as I said. I've gotten to a 40 ton payload with that, without too much trouble. The Reliant is workable for SSTOs but you do have to know what you're doing; you need about four of those to loft even a light satellite launch. The Dart is excellent but maybe you don't have it yet? And once you get the RAPIER, that's what you'll be using all the time; there's simply no beating the efficiency of a single engine that can switch between air breathing and closed cycle. If you find that sort of thing fun, you can also build very efficient designs combining Whiplashes with Darts or Reliants, but they take a lot of tuning get to work, and also often have pretty funky launch profiles.
For the really heavy lifters though there's no way around needing airbreathing engines, unfortunately. Good news is, you can push payloads really high when you do have the RAPIER. Heaviest I've done is about 300 tons, and I've no doubt it could go even higher; main issue at that point is that my computer wants to catch fire because there are so many parts and so much physics going on.
Edit: oh, by the way, in case you were wondering what's up with Morningstar
We won't let a little setback like that deter us, though. Here is its successor, as yet unnamed but codenamed MS2:
I just took it past Minmus orbit then hit the atmosphere with a Pe of 25. It was a probe mission, and it just so happened that ALL of my Kerbin system relays were on the other side of the planet so I lost contact with it just as things were heating up...
... and it re-entered and transitioned to coordinated flight all by itself. After gliding several hundred kilometers it got back in range. So that's a success. I don't know exactly how violent that was compared to an Eve entry, but I have a feeling it's in the ballpark.
To start with, forget about jet engines. Make a rocket plane. They're easier to fly, easier to design, and you don't have to faff around with fuel mixes. Once you've got that going, start swapping out engines and tanks and tuning the fuel mix to see how much more efficiency you can squeeze out of your basic design.
Second, start small. For your first SSTO, forget about building a tanker. Build a sports car: something that'll take Jeb to orbit and bring him back safe. Once you've got the hang of that, start figuring out how to make it big enough and efficient enough to be of some practical use.
FWIW in my current career I've been going with almost all spaceplanes -- only now that I'm giving Eve a serious attempt am I even using the VAB. And until pretty late in the game, my planes were all rocket-powered.
More specific tips regarding engines and fuel. At your tech level, start by making a plane that flies on two Skippers. Install Kerbal Engineer Redux if you haven't already, and build a plane around those two Skippers. Pay attention to dV and TWR. You need a minimum of 3400 m/s to make orbit, so give your plane comfortably more than that -- 4000 is nice. And you'll want about 1.2 TWR (atmospheric) fully loaded. (Once you've got this flying, you can shave down the TWR a fair bit; I've gotten reasonably nice rocket planes with as low as 0.85; this buys a quite a lot of efficiency as the added mass is all payload or dV.)
Within these parameters, just build it like you would build any other plane.
To fly it to orbit is easy, since it's a rocket plane: you take off, point it at the sky at around 45 degrees, and when you hit 10k at around 500 m/s, follow prograde, then circularise. (This is a good deal more straightforward than nailing a gravity turn in conventional rockets IMO.)
To re-enter, set your Pe a bit higher than you would for a conventional return module -- I use 45-50k for LKO returns. When entering the atmosphere, pitch up steeply -- from 45 degrees all the way to 90 (surface radial/out), depending on your design. Pump fuel forward and back if necessary to put the CoM where you want it so it doesn't flip out. Once it's safely in the atmosphere, fly normally. It takes a bit of practice to hit the KSC every time when returning from orbit, and the re-entry profile is different for every plane and changes drastically depending on how you fly it -- for example, I accidentally invented supercruising when a big, light plane ended up just kind of skimming the upper atmosphere; I ended up flying all around the globe at 1200 m/s and around 20 km altitude, barely using any fuel.
Other notes on engines: the Skipper is the workhorse, as I said. I've gotten to a 40 ton payload with that, without too much trouble. The Reliant is workable for SSTOs but you do have to know what you're doing; you need about four of those to loft even a light satellite launch. The Dart is excellent but maybe you don't have it yet? And once you get the RAPIER, that's what you'll be using all the time; there's simply no beating the efficiency of a single engine that can switch between air breathing and closed cycle. If you find that sort of thing fun, you can also build very efficient designs combining Whiplashes with Darts or Reliants, but they take a lot of tuning get to work, and also often have pretty funky launch profiles.
For the really heavy lifters though there's no way around needing airbreathing engines, unfortunately. Good news is, you can push payloads really high when you do have the RAPIER. Heaviest I've done is about 300 tons, and I've no doubt it could go even higher; main issue at that point is that my computer wants to catch fire because there are so many parts and so much physics going on.
Edit: oh, by the way, in case you were wondering what's up with Morningstar
We won't let a little setback like that deter us, though. Here is its successor, as yet unnamed but codenamed MS2:
I just took it past Minmus orbit then hit the atmosphere with a Pe of 25. It was a probe mission, and it just so happened that ALL of my Kerbin system relays were on the other side of the planet so I lost contact with it just as things were heating up...
... and it re-entered and transitioned to coordinated flight all by itself. After gliding several hundred kilometers it got back in range. So that's a success. I don't know exactly how violent that was compared to an Eve entry, but I have a feeling it's in the ballpark.
I remember doing the EVE land and return mission on stock game. Boy it was hard but satisfying. I wouldn't try this on the hardest mode in career with hard saves -that would be an abysmal slog. The mission is 100x times easier if you can get mod with a propeller engines, air augmented rockets, or pressurized ammonia rocket engines[compress the ammonia from the eve atmosphere and add oxidizer]. I know about propeller mods, dont know about others.
Prime Junta
Guest
It is!
I just had another failure, but this one was sooo close. It's the craft in the above picture -- I dubbed it Abaddon -- and this time the problem was with hypersonic aerodynamics. The flat nose is producing too much lift at very high speeds, which causes the craft to become unstable and flip into reverse. When that happened and it hit thick air, rather a lot of pieces came off. As a consolation prize I was able to bring what was left under sufficient control that when it splashed down nothing else exploded although it did come apart a bit more. The payload survived and is happily beeping on the surface, although it can't do much as the science module was one of the bits that came off.
I just had another failure, but this one was sooo close. It's the craft in the above picture -- I dubbed it Abaddon -- and this time the problem was with hypersonic aerodynamics. The flat nose is producing too much lift at very high speeds, which causes the craft to become unstable and flip into reverse. When that happened and it hit thick air, rather a lot of pieces came off. As a consolation prize I was able to bring what was left under sufficient control that when it splashed down nothing else exploded although it did come apart a bit more. The payload survived and is happily beeping on the surface, although it can't do much as the science module was one of the bits that came off.
Prime Junta
Guest
ooooh yeaaah baby
That's Orpheus. He made it to Hades. Pretty soon now we'll know if he'll make it back out.
Anyhoo, I needed to redesign the return module and do some aero tweaking to definitively kill this machine's tendency to do backflips. The new return module isn't nearly as lifty; however I added some wing strakes to keep the overall lift about the same so it glides reasonably well. (It doesn't, not really, on Kerbin, but on Eve it was like a little baby, touched down at about 32 m/s.) I have to reserve a small tank of fuel for ballast (360 kg); I keep the fuel in the nose tank and the oxidiser in one of the aft ones, which gives the craft an absolutely perfect balance for re-entry; I can control the attitude all through.
Eve doesn't make it easy though. It can make it with a perfectly non-propulsive re-entry -- I, er, tried, but stupidly I picked a moment when my relays were eclipsed and I had to watch helplessly as it plowed into the sea -- but since I had fuel to burn, when I reloaded I burned the extra retrograde to make things a little gentler. And it wasn't; I got a right proper shaking up when I hit thick air but all the pieces stayed on and nothing burned up either. From there on down it was smooth and sweet as treacle on butter.
But yeah. Once it's all fueled up we'll see if it can get back up. The return module anyway that is. It ought to: all the engines are atmosphere-capable, it's pret-ty streamlined, it has about 9400 computed dV, and I happened to land on a peak at nearly 3000 m altitude. Even if it can't I'm super-thrilled to have come this far.
Also I'm surprised at how well the ISRU is working. I didn't know how much cooling it would need on Eve so I stuck on those six radiator panels, and they seem to have no trouble keeping it at optimum temperature, not even stressed. I'll have to twiddle them a bit to see how many I can leave off next time. Always nice to save a little weight, although in this case it's not such a big deal as it won't be coming back up.
Edit: more pictures of the Eve program here: https://imgur.com/a/5jIxr
That's Orpheus. He made it to Hades. Pretty soon now we'll know if he'll make it back out.
Anyhoo, I needed to redesign the return module and do some aero tweaking to definitively kill this machine's tendency to do backflips. The new return module isn't nearly as lifty; however I added some wing strakes to keep the overall lift about the same so it glides reasonably well. (It doesn't, not really, on Kerbin, but on Eve it was like a little baby, touched down at about 32 m/s.) I have to reserve a small tank of fuel for ballast (360 kg); I keep the fuel in the nose tank and the oxidiser in one of the aft ones, which gives the craft an absolutely perfect balance for re-entry; I can control the attitude all through.
Eve doesn't make it easy though. It can make it with a perfectly non-propulsive re-entry -- I, er, tried, but stupidly I picked a moment when my relays were eclipsed and I had to watch helplessly as it plowed into the sea -- but since I had fuel to burn, when I reloaded I burned the extra retrograde to make things a little gentler. And it wasn't; I got a right proper shaking up when I hit thick air but all the pieces stayed on and nothing burned up either. From there on down it was smooth and sweet as treacle on butter.
But yeah. Once it's all fueled up we'll see if it can get back up. The return module anyway that is. It ought to: all the engines are atmosphere-capable, it's pret-ty streamlined, it has about 9400 computed dV, and I happened to land on a peak at nearly 3000 m altitude. Even if it can't I'm super-thrilled to have come this far.
Also I'm surprised at how well the ISRU is working. I didn't know how much cooling it would need on Eve so I stuck on those six radiator panels, and they seem to have no trouble keeping it at optimum temperature, not even stressed. I'll have to twiddle them a bit to see how many I can leave off next time. Always nice to save a little weight, although in this case it's not such a big deal as it won't be coming back up.
Edit: more pictures of the Eve program here: https://imgur.com/a/5jIxr
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for the tips after a few tries I managed to fly an Space Plane to low orbit and back, the kerbodrom no less!!. The plane is so far useless since only like 50 units of liquid fuel (+ oxi) made it back and it's not without quirks and instabilities, but it flew well enough to do the trip from the track to orbit and back again, to be honest I was quite lucky to get the plane on the track, I would have been happy with just splashing it close to it.
Here it is:
Quirks I found while flying it:
Note to self: requires moar batteries, I had to power up engines to marginal strength at times during descent to keep batteries from running out.
Here it is:
Quirks I found while flying it:
- Trouble clearing the track for take off: as it speeds up it becomes unstable on the track, easy to compensate with SAS and a few key strokes but it's unable to lift its nose until the track actually ends, once there it flies flat for a very brief time and then starts pulling up, as it speeds up it becomes more and more controllable and easily enough gets an stable 45º ascent.
- Orbit is uneventful, other than the thing being slow to turn, but for a big rocket without RCS/control wheels that's to be expected.
- Re-entry works but there are two problems with it:
- Cockpit gets too damn hot, it stayed at 80% heat bar for looooong time, and just as I was getting into low atmosphere and going to sub sonic speed it threatened to go BOOM.
- The ship doesn't flip but it's extremely unstable at supersonic speeds at mid atmosphere (10 to 30 km) the nose keeps going up and down and refuses to stabilize while having a clear tendency to go back to prograde (doesn't flip)
Note to self: requires moar batteries, I had to power up engines to marginal strength at times during descent to keep batteries from running out.
Prime Junta
Guest
Congratulations! That's your first step to reusable craft. It's also the hardest.
That's a landing gear problem. Your main landing gear needs to be positioned only just behind your centre of mass; now it's way back. It should be almost balanced on the landing gear. If the nose gear briefly lifts off the ground when you plop it on the runway, move it just a hair back, but no more.
Yeah, reaction wheels would be nice.
The bit at the nose gets hottest. If you use the inline cockpit and put it back a bit, it will take less of the heat shock, but then something else will. So I think this is probably a problem with your return corridor or your attitude. Try a bit higher, or a bit lower, and try to keep the plane pitched very steep -- between 60 and 90 degrees -- when entering the atmosphere. If should stay at at least 30 degrees all the way down to 30k or so. If it noses down much before that, pump fuel back and forth to manage the CoM (forward -> more stable, backward -> less stable.)
The problem is probably with your canards although with aero stuff it's never easy to tell for certain. Try adjusting the control authority or redesign with a tail instead -- canards are inherently destabilising and bites especially hard at high speeds, whereas tails are inherently stabilising. The flat Mk2 cockpit also produces lift which makes aerodynamics more complicated.
Suggestion: remove the canards and adjust the pitch on the wing so they angle up a little, and put the main gear just behind the CoM. Then tune the wing pitch and position. The objective is to get it to unstick from the runway on the control authority you have. If it doesn't work, add a tail. And replace the flat Mk2 cockpit with a Mk1 inline cockpit with a fuel tank and nose cone in front of it. I think you'll find the result much more stable.
That's a landing gear problem. Your main landing gear needs to be positioned only just behind your centre of mass; now it's way back. It should be almost balanced on the landing gear. If the nose gear briefly lifts off the ground when you plop it on the runway, move it just a hair back, but no more.
Yeah, reaction wheels would be nice.
The bit at the nose gets hottest. If you use the inline cockpit and put it back a bit, it will take less of the heat shock, but then something else will. So I think this is probably a problem with your return corridor or your attitude. Try a bit higher, or a bit lower, and try to keep the plane pitched very steep -- between 60 and 90 degrees -- when entering the atmosphere. If should stay at at least 30 degrees all the way down to 30k or so. If it noses down much before that, pump fuel back and forth to manage the CoM (forward -> more stable, backward -> less stable.)
The problem is probably with your canards although with aero stuff it's never easy to tell for certain. Try adjusting the control authority or redesign with a tail instead -- canards are inherently destabilising and bites especially hard at high speeds, whereas tails are inherently stabilising. The flat Mk2 cockpit also produces lift which makes aerodynamics more complicated.
Suggestion: remove the canards and adjust the pitch on the wing so they angle up a little, and put the main gear just behind the CoM. Then tune the wing pitch and position. The objective is to get it to unstick from the runway on the control authority you have. If it doesn't work, add a tail. And replace the flat Mk2 cockpit with a Mk1 inline cockpit with a fuel tank and nose cone in front of it. I think you'll find the result much more stable.
Thanks for the tips, they were correct.
I moved the landing gear towards COM and restricted the winglets to only pitch, this solved both my taking off and stability problems which in turn gave me more confidence to manoeuvre the ship at re entry to aero brake more efficiently which helped a lot with the heat trouble at the cockpit.
I didn't want to remove the canards because I wanted to be faithful to that prototype, but I will keep that in mind for future planes.
Next I am thinking I may forget about space planes for a while to get more science so I can get more efficient engines so my next iteration of planes is actually useful to supply my orbital station, I still got to go to mine Minmus for science and I suppose my Mun rockets will work just fine for that.
Thanks Prime Junta.
PS, this time and because I aero braked more efficiently I actually missed the track, turns out landing on the green flatlands just after the mountain range next to the kerbodrome is eazy peazy and what is more I discovered that while the plane can be improved in flying mode it is a super stable rover, so I just simply rolled to the track to make an on-site recovery.
I moved the landing gear towards COM and restricted the winglets to only pitch, this solved both my taking off and stability problems which in turn gave me more confidence to manoeuvre the ship at re entry to aero brake more efficiently which helped a lot with the heat trouble at the cockpit.
I didn't want to remove the canards because I wanted to be faithful to that prototype, but I will keep that in mind for future planes.
Next I am thinking I may forget about space planes for a while to get more science so I can get more efficient engines so my next iteration of planes is actually useful to supply my orbital station, I still got to go to mine Minmus for science and I suppose my Mun rockets will work just fine for that.
Thanks Prime Junta.
PS, this time and because I aero braked more efficiently I actually missed the track, turns out landing on the green flatlands just after the mountain range next to the kerbodrome is eazy peazy and what is more I discovered that while the plane can be improved in flying mode it is a super stable rover, so I just simply rolled to the track to make an on-site recovery.
Last edited:
Prime Junta
Guest
Well.. yeah, you can, but that means putting off planes until very late in the career. There really isn't anything until the RAPIER that makes a dramatic difference especially for lifters (not talking about planes for Duna or Eve here). Anything between where you are now and that point is tuning and niche.
About canards. It's not that they're bad as such, but they are tricky. I usually base my designs around the assumption that I don't need canards. I add a pair at the end if I want to tweak behaviour, specifically to help unstick from the runway, or, conversely, flare up just before landing.
Both of these can be issues with very fast and very stable designs as they're nose-heavy and lacking in lift: this means that without the canards they don't want to nose up at low speeds. It also means that they're nose-heavy enough that the destabilising effect won't be a problem.
Last edited by a moderator:
Prime Junta
Guest
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 100,091
Making History expansion coming March 13th, the first game to be published by Take-Two Interactive's Private Division: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.co...-history-expansion-release-date-announcement/
Hello everyone!
With over a year in the making, we are getting closer to bringing Kerbal Space Program towards its next leap forward. Today, we are proud and super excited to announce that Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion will be available for PC on March 13th, 2018.
Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion brings a lot of new and exciting content to KSP, including the powerful and intuitive Mission Builder, where you will have the tools to create and share your own scenarios with other players. We are also including the History Pack, a set of missions ready to be played immediately, inspired by historical moments in space exploration, and more.
The new Mission Builder puts the process of creating and editing missions in your hands with endless possibilities. You’ll be able to customize your own missions to include launches, landings, rescues, malfunctions, explosions, repairs, and much more. You can set unique victory conditions, add exciting challenges, and place unexpected obstacles to keep other players on their toes as they play through these complex missions. Challenge others to complete your missions by sharing them with the Kerbal Space Program community!
The History Pack includes a variety of pre-made missions inspired by humankind’s own space exploration. Now you can spacewalk, pull off a crash landing, and attempt to recreate some of the most memorable moments inspired by historic events. But with our unique Kerbal twist, of course.
The expansion also includes a bunch of new parts and astronaut suits inspired by the Space Race that you can use throughout Kerbal Space Program!
Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion will be available for $14.99 (USD) on PC. And yes, we’re keeping our promise that all players who purchased the game through April 2013 will receive the expansion for free. We’ll provide more details on how that will work before launch.
Stay tuned for more news and exciting updates about Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion.
Happy launchings!
Drax
Arcane
Fuck, I can't remember when I bought my copy....
Hellraiser
Arcane
Check on the KSP store page. If you bought it on steam you were most likely too late. I think it debuted on steam a few months after the debacle that ended with the devs promising early adopter it will be free for them.
The bulk of their sales were only after it hit steam so they could afford it.
Drax
Arcane
yeah I got it off steam, fuck. 
Drax
Arcane
Just checked, I bought it in december 2013.....
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2011
- Messages
- 2,852
I did buy the game again on steam though.
Prime Junta
Guest
Goddamn pissfucking CommNet. I had enough fuel on what's left of Osiris but of course I forgot to account for comms blackouts again and couldn't do my midcourse correction burn. So now it's dry, on a polar orbit of Kerbin somewhere near the edges of the SoI. My plan was just to fly up a plane to pick it up from LKO; now I'm going to have to send up a fairly hefty tug to haul it there first.
Hellraiser
Arcane
Even if you don't get the expansion the new parachute will be featured in 1.4:
It is steerable, as should be expected given its shape.
It is steerable, as should be expected given its shape.
Prime Junta
Guest
Testing a new plane (spoiler: it's brilliant!). Took the entire remaining Kerbin staff on an agitprop tour of Minmus and the Mun. They planted flags, sang revolutionary songs, and listened to exciting political education presentations from the PolitRuk.
Impressive Prima Junta, I have trouble landing two kerbals on the Mun without getting them stranded somewhere, lol.
Meanwhile back in the 70s Riel's Space program keeps making progress (slowly), as I was pondering on my next steps after my first workable yet inefficient space plane a mission to build an station in Mun's orbit popped out! Not only it was an endeavour that motivated me but it also paid a bunch of kerbolars that made building it not just possible but profitable too! And to make thing even better it was useful to dry Mun's science out! So I set myself to the task: I had already built a station in Kerbin's orbit, it was mostly a training exercise and it ended being a bit chaotic mismatch of odd pieces without any other use than a refuelling station I have so far ignored so this time I set mysefl on planning the whole thing before I launched any piece of it and it worked out quite well! Here it is:
Scientific Module: This is the heart of the station, it has batteries and solar panels , RCS trusters, communications a mobile research lab and even an autopilot to keep control of the station when it's unmanned.
Evacuation Craft: No plans were originally provided for the return trip other than let's make sure there is a docking port for a rescue ship!, after several complains filed in by the on board kerbals a ship was sent for that purpose and because the station's main tanks were getting low which explains the disproportionally alrge fuel tank for a ship whose supposed point is a return trip to Kerbin.
Faulty Munar Landing Craft: it is not so much that it is faulty, it is actually a very workable landing craft whose original purpose was to do multiple missions on the Mun to bring experiment from different biomes to the SS, but alas! I was too cheapskate with the fuel tank so it is only valid for equatorial trips and can only be used with extreme care to not run out of fuel.
Spent NEL: This is a variant of my original first ever to the mun (and back) worthy ship, it houses a full science equipment with redundant equipment and it has at times brought back over 500 science in a single trip, this ship in particular went to the Mun to explore the poles which are beyond the lander's reach, it also carried an extra scientist to speed up research at the mobile lab (which levelled on the trip too), since the original NELs were autonomous vessels they didn't have docking ports but for this mission parachutes were removed to make room for a docking port, no RCS was added since it is an small ship that can be docked with careful usage of the main thrusters. The ship is as of this moment useless but as long as the docking port is not needed it will be kept "just in case"(tm)
There are big reserves left in Munar Station but science in the Mun is mostly done so they are not so useful any more
. As soon as the whooping 721 data stored in mobile lab (plus some extra experiments waiting for room in a lunch box) are processed and radioed to Kerbin I will move the personnel and resources to a new base around Minmus (whose foundation is already laid) there I am confident the "Faulty" Munar Landing Craft will be a very successful Minmus lander and I hope to be able to swim in science to the point that I will start thinking on calling this career a success and starting over with harder settings.
Meanwhile back in the 70s Riel's Space program keeps making progress (slowly), as I was pondering on my next steps after my first workable yet inefficient space plane a mission to build an station in Mun's orbit popped out! Not only it was an endeavour that motivated me but it also paid a bunch of kerbolars that made building it not just possible but profitable too! And to make thing even better it was useful to dry Mun's science out! So I set myself to the task: I had already built a station in Kerbin's orbit, it was mostly a training exercise and it ended being a bit chaotic mismatch of odd pieces without any other use than a refuelling station I have so far ignored so this time I set mysefl on planning the whole thing before I launched any piece of it and it worked out quite well! Here it is:
Scientific Module: This is the heart of the station, it has batteries and solar panels , RCS trusters, communications a mobile research lab and even an autopilot to keep control of the station when it's unmanned.
Evacuation Craft: No plans were originally provided for the return trip other than let's make sure there is a docking port for a rescue ship!, after several complains filed in by the on board kerbals a ship was sent for that purpose and because the station's main tanks were getting low which explains the disproportionally alrge fuel tank for a ship whose supposed point is a return trip to Kerbin.
Faulty Munar Landing Craft: it is not so much that it is faulty, it is actually a very workable landing craft whose original purpose was to do multiple missions on the Mun to bring experiment from different biomes to the SS, but alas! I was too cheapskate with the fuel tank so it is only valid for equatorial trips and can only be used with extreme care to not run out of fuel.
Spent NEL: This is a variant of my original first ever to the mun (and back) worthy ship, it houses a full science equipment with redundant equipment and it has at times brought back over 500 science in a single trip, this ship in particular went to the Mun to explore the poles which are beyond the lander's reach, it also carried an extra scientist to speed up research at the mobile lab (which levelled on the trip too), since the original NELs were autonomous vessels they didn't have docking ports but for this mission parachutes were removed to make room for a docking port, no RCS was added since it is an small ship that can be docked with careful usage of the main thrusters. The ship is as of this moment useless but as long as the docking port is not needed it will be kept "just in case"(tm)
There are big reserves left in Munar Station but science in the Mun is mostly done so they are not so useful any more
. As soon as the whooping 721 data stored in mobile lab (plus some extra experiments waiting for room in a lunch box) are processed and radioed to Kerbin I will move the personnel and resources to a new base around Minmus (whose foundation is already laid) there I am confident the "Faulty" Munar Landing Craft will be a very successful Minmus lander and I hope to be able to swim in science to the point that I will start thinking on calling this career a success and starting over with harder settings.
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.