Kerbal: Project B.E.A.S.T: Part 06

"Fusing episode" is the best possible thing to read before watching anything on Giant Bomb.

After having been absolutely destroyed by the ending of Life is Strange it feels nice to get back to this fun series again.

"Punch through Odin's face."

-Vinny

Beautiful. I love it.

Weight (Read: Mass) Is always "a thing." If you double something's mass, you need twice as much thrust to accelerate it at the same rate. That is a fact regardless of where you are. Aerodynamics is the only thing that stops being relevant once you're in orbit.

By far my favorite series.

Weight (read: Mass) is always "a thing." If you double an object's mass, you need twice as much thrust to accelerate it at the same speed. That's a fact regardless of where you are, and regardless of gravitational influence.

Second star to the right, Mr. Caravella. Straight on 'til morning...and no exploding this time!

"it'll be fine"

-Vinny 2016

@gerrid: The array of liquid tanks are more efficient than SRB's but as we see here it's harder to design properly. Liquid rockets also have the bonus of more control. One thing about these arrays is that they're pretty unrealistic. It's currently not feasible to pump fuel around a real rocket like they are although I believe scientist/engineers are working on a system.

The gangs problem isn't efficiency, however, it's a lack of understanding of basic physics and @vinny isn't aware of all the controls/aids he can use. For instance, just turning on SAS won't give you a good gravity turn because it will resist the natural pull of gravity to keep the rocket straight so you should tilt the rocket a little bit to get the turn going and then use the "point to prograde" function so the rocket follows the prograde marker or turn it manually.

These continue to be fun though! :D

I should go back to the first episode Austin is in and count how many times he says 'Vinnyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!', as I imagine it's surely going to reach the dozens.

In fact an Austin Walker 'Vinnyyyyyyyyyyyyy!' supercut might be amazing.

You can get to the moon and back with like, 75% fewer parts :)

Answering questions asked by the guys this episode:

TWR

The first number is your TWR when the stage initially fires, the number in parenthesis is at the end of that stage's life. As the rockets burn fuel, the thrust is staying constant, but the total weight goes down as the fuel burns off, increasing the TWR as time goes on.

"It's easier to get down from orbit than up into orbit because gravity's helping you" @Austin_Walker

In general, no. It's easier to get down from orbit on a body with an atmosphere, because that air resistance causes drag on your craft and slows you down (hopefully safely). For example on Kerbin, as long as some point of your orbit is lower than 70km (the atmospheric boundry height), you will eventually slow down enough from drag that you will land. On bodies without an appreciable atmosphere, you do actually need about as much to land safely on the planet from a given orbit as it would take to launch into that orbit from the ground. Think of landing on the moon like falling from orbit. You're constantly gaining speed on descent (since there's no air resistance to slow you down), so you need to use you rockets to slow down enough to not horrifically die.

ISP <=> efficiency

As a note, it can change significantly between atmospheric and space flight. Those teensy little engines like the terrier and poodle are noteably more efficient in vacuum, so they make good engines for space flight stages.

Asparagus staging

You want the 6 radially mounted rockets and the central engine to turn on at the same time. Asparagus staging is not at all realistic (real fuel could never be pumped around as quickly and with such little added weight), but the basic idea is that you're trying to burn through the fuel as fast as possible so you can dump the empty bits to save weight quickly. Any time you're doing A.S., you want engines on all the tanks and you're gonna ignite them all at the same time. (Also the dV calculated by Kerbal Engineer takes into account the different weights at each stage).

Astronauts

In the mode you're playing, Jebidiah, Bill, Bob and Valentina will respawn indefinitely. You are the devils of their own, personal space-hell.

East

East is indeed the 90 degree line on the navball.

"What's it need to be? To survive?"@vinny

If you look at the parts selection screen for your capsule, it will tell you the crash tolerance, which is how fast you can hit the ground without dying. Your Mk1 Command pod's crash tolerance is 14m/s, so don't hit the ground faster than that. Use the blue parachutes, not orange drogue parachutes.

Dealing with annoying things like tipping over

At launch, your center of mass is at the bottom with all those tanks. As those get used, your CoM moves heigher up the rocket and gets wobblier. You can try either more ways to gain stability (more wings / more SAS modules) or wait until you're heigher off the ground (which makes the air less thick, giving you less aerodynamic stuff to worry about) to turn. More SAS modules will also make it easier to turn your ship while it's in space, so that's a benefit. Note: fuel doesn't flow through those disc-shaped SAS modules, so don't put them in the middle of a stage's fuel stack.

Burning while you've got the firey rentry stuff going on

Using your engine won't make your ship explode. If you've got spare fuel and you're experiencing rentry stuff, you should point retrograde and full throttle it to slow your speed. The more you use rentry friction to slow down, the hotter your craft gets and the more likely you are to lose parts to heat damage.

What do we need electricity for?

Lights, SAS, steering and throttle control. A rocket with no juice is dead in space.

"Can we get engines that use solar power?"@austin_walker

There's something called a xenon engine. It uses electricity and xenon gas for propulsion. It's like 10x more efficient than rocket fuel, but their TWR is laughably weak. You'd use them for tiny unmanned space probes, not for what you're up to.

"Should they be connected together with metal?"@austin_walker

Yes. Internal wobble is always bad. Also there's no real worry about the geometry of the struts; they're basically just magical physics glue between parts. They can look as fucked up as you like but will still work flawlessly.

"Should we be using the solid fuel instead of the liquid fuel?"@alex

Not really. The advantage of solid fuel rocket boosters is mainly economic. In the mode you're playing, you're not paying for parts, so you can use liquid fuel everywhere.

"People will hate us."@austin_walker

Watching you guys fuck this up is like the funniest fucking thing ever. Knowing how KSP works only makes this shit funnier.

Great Teaser at the end.

"Tony Shalhoub!" - Alex Navarro

I think Austin got the whole decoupler/seperator thing backwards. The blue seperator he felt bad about is the only one that actively pushes the previous stage away, isn't it?

Needs more struts.

"Move, pitch, get out the way" .... Damn you Alex...

In the Life is Strange playdate I said that Vinny wasn't playing by the Cold Equations.

Of course, it's because he was saving those for this game

This, from experience and not reading the descriptions properly...

oh my god, it is such a relief to see them thinking this stuff out, checking the numbers, and actually learning in the first 20 minutes. I feel like I can finally exhale, but I know they're still gonna blow this shit up

EDIT: OH MY GOD THEY KEPT THE DROGUE CHUTE ON FUCK YOU AUSTIN

Nice to see the team trying to introduce a modicum of science and mathematics into their spaceship design.

Rest in peace Valentina.

You guys should consider unmanned flights for testing.

Every time an end of episode teaser has Austin screaming "VINNY!" I lose it...

The editing on this series is insanely good. Bravo Vinny.

The perfect description.

This is fundamentally incorrect, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, you don't need anything to 'push' against.

Newton's Third Law Brah!

@paulunga:The blue and yellow parts are separators and decouplers. Of a same size, they push things away with the same force. The difference is decouplers stay attached to the lower stage. Separators detach from both. Separators are for things like independent satellites or space station modules that don't want to stay attached to trash.

@apothaeos: I remember seeing some solar sail mods in fairly hacky ways at some point during development, but KSP physics are very focused on thrust based engines, and the sort of scale needed is kind of bigger than the physics envelope KSP likes to deal with.

@thunderstorm101: Please tell me what you plan to act on without anything to push against.

How did they go from being able to reliably get into an orbit to not being able to get off of Kerbal?

Man this episode has a hell of a cliffhanger. Unleash Part 07 soon!!!

I like imagining this is what the planning conversations between Nasa's scientists were like in the beginning of the space program.

Two quality of life hints:

1: To avoid the "Nope, that's too big" problem, you can sort parts by Size instead of the default, by Name. That way all the reasonable parts for your design will be next to each other.

2: Much like you discovered the convenient round battery, there is a monopropellant tank shaped like normal fuel tanks, you can just put in the rocket stack. They're the yellow-sided fuel tanks.

I picked up KSP from scratch after watching your first episode and now I'm docking space stations. Thanks for the inspiration.

@vinny @austin_walker@alex

BASIC Kerbal Space Program tips (edit 1/22 - added some additional tips and clarification):

• Use SOLID FUEL boosters to get into space (not Kerbin orbit, just space - 70km up). You don't have to solid fuel boosters exclusively, like you did on some of your earlier designs, but they are a great simple way to get you there when arranged in a symmetrical pattern surrounding a large powerful "main rocket" like the Kerbodyne Rhino or the Mainsail engine or if you want max-power but super-heavy, the Kerbodyne Mammoth, with lots of fuel that can be used both for the 1st "get to space" stage and the 2nd "get to Kerbin orbit" stage.

• On your first stage, wings/fins help stabilize, but do NOT put any wings/fins etc. on any other stages that are only used once you're in space... because they only do stuff when there's air resistance... and there's no air in space.

• On any other stages past the initial "get into space from the surface of Kerbin" stage, you probably want to make sure your rocket engines have vectoring. "Vectored thrust" means the tip of the rocket can be told to "wiggle" which lets you slightly shift your rocket's direction, which as a result gives you way more stability and a bit more control. This should be listed in any rocket engine's description in the [RMB]:More Info section that shows up while highlighting by clicking the Right Mouse Button (RMB) like it says in the bottom right corner of this part's highlight window.
  • For example the LV-T45 "Swivel" Liquid Fuel Engine has vectoring, but is slightly less powerful than its otherwise nearly identical non-swiveling cousin, the LV-T30 "Reliant" Liquid Fuel Engine.
• RCS thrusters (and mono-propellant) are not really necessary unless you're going to be doing docking maneuvers, which require VERY fine control on all axes (not just rotation, but positional changes too... it's REALLY hard - especially on a keyboard). A few "reaction wheels" spaced right below separators / decouplers on your various stages on your ship is in is all that's necessary to rotate your ship as needed. RCS thrusters do not help to turn your ship much in Kerbin's atmosphere and will just add unnecessary weight to your ship.

• Speaking of separators and decouplers there ISa difference - decouplers stay attached to the thing you're ejecting, like say an empty fuel tank from your next rocket stage.
  • When you use the decoupler, the empty tank is split from your ship, but the decoupler stays attached to that empty tank as it falls away.
  • If you use one of the separators, it will separate from both the things it's attached to - the rocket, like the decoupler does, but then also from the empty fuel tank as well, which is not useful for what you guys have been building, but would be useful if you need to separate something like a second command pod or satellite dish / solar panel /etc. where if you left a decoupler attached, it would block those devices from functioning.

• Take note that almost every single command pod/cockpit has a built in reaction wheel, so putting a dedicated one right next to the pod is redundant and unnecessary. If you see the need to add any more, put them on the other end of your ship to help it turn.
  • Also note that fuel cannot travel through a reaction wheel and a rocket, so don't put a reaction wheel directly between a fuel tank and the actual rocket engine.
• When launching, to turn 90 degrees to get ready for orbit, just feather the right arrow / S key (assuming your rocket isn't twirling as it's traveling upward).

• Also regarding launching, try to NOT get your ship going at "fireball-speed" when in the lowest 2 parts of the atmosphere. If you are moving fast enough through the lower atmosphere to look like a red-hot shooting star, flipping your ship, even if its well-designed is WAAAAY more likely.

• For landing on the Mun, having your landing gear on a stage that you eject is great, because dropping the legs after you launch back toward Kerbin means less weight.
  • Also, for landing on the Mun, think about the shape of your ship. A short fat hockey puck like this is easier to land on its flat face than it is to land a pool stick vertically on the flat face at the bottom of it like this (though these guys DID pull that landing off). So keep your Mun landing stage short and fat, NOT tall and skinny.
• Regarding parachutes:
  • Use orange parachutes for slowing to a speed where you can use the blue chutes. They work at much highers speeds and will light up green when safe to effectively use, but won't slow you down enough on their own to safely land your ship.
  • Use blue chutes for slowing to a safe STOP speed when you're cockpit is falling slower than 250m/s - it will turn green once it is safe to deploy, yellow once it's actually deployed, then green again when it "opens" to actually slow your descent. If that's confusing, here's a quick table that explains the parachute icon colors.

Basic stage recommendation for a Mun landing + return:

1. Get to space stage - Solid boosters + fins/wings
2. Get to Kerbin orbit stage - medium efficiency - lots of fuel + power
3. Get to Mun stage - higher efficiency - lower weight
4. Mun landing stage - short fat if possible - make sure stage has landing legs.
5. Get off Mun and back to Kerbin stage - SUPER low weight - extreme efficiency - very low fuel usage. No extra parts between rocket/fuel and cockpit except a reaction wheel. Not much power is needed here if you angle yourself right. You just need to aim to get caught by Kerbin and pulled in within 70km of its surface - the atmosphere will pull you down to the surface at that point.
6. Atmosphere re-entry / parachute / landing stage - make sure to have a heat shield right under your cockpit pod (it's in the wings parts / aerodynamics section) - at this point you should have nothing but the pod, orange chutes, blue chutes, and the heat shield on the base of the pod - angle the pod using whatever battery power you have left so the heat shield hits the atmosphere and protects you from turning into a ball of fire / exploding / destroying parachutes or other equipment mounted to the top of your last stage.

You can modify these stages a million different ways (you could try to combine your "get to Mun" and "Mun landing" stages if you wanted for example), but this is probably the simplest setup for doing what you guys want to that has a lot of flexibility.

Whew! Hopefully this isn't information overload.

I know you guys are reading a bunch about numbers like Delta-V, and TWR, and other daunting astrophysics and math-related stuff, but I don't think that's actually super necessary. Just remember the basic concept - heavy power and screw efficiency for getting up into space and in orbit, because you need to get up to a high speed fast so atmospheric drag + gravity doesn't grab you and pull you back in, then high efficiency but not necessarily powerful to get from Kerbin orbit to the Mun and back.

Protip: F = ma

*slow clapping* This series has taken the number 1 spot for me. Really great job. I can't wait to see more.

Never been more excited for new episodes of any series on GB. Can't wait to get home and watch this!

More rockets.

I'm only 20 minutes in. The thing that keeps coming to mind as I watch these is "keep it simple". You can get a lightweight lander from the surface of Mun back to Kerbin with like 100 units of fuel.

I hope they can do it this episode. I love watching the progression.

You want to land at less than 10m/s.
Build symmetrical.

For just going to the moon, you don't need to worry about batteries and keeping an electric charge, as long as you turn off SAS when you timewarp to the encounter with the moon. I've taken a few trips there where I forget to turn off SAS, and I'm out of power when I come out of the timewarp, and then you can't pilot the ship after that. But while your engines are running, they will charge your ship.

It's not just you, but this is sort of standard for KSP players. The guys are currently firmly entrenched in the "know just enough to be dangerous" zone.

Also, @austin_walker, it's exactly as hard to get out of an orbit as to get into one, gravity isn't helping you because your issue is your velocity, not your height.

Oh the parachutes oh no..

Well, I heard we just found a new planet so this feature could get an extension once - oh. Fusing?

Never mind.

When is Dan Teasdale going to fly to New York just to tell them exactly what is wrong with their rocket building reasoning? Bad habits are getting reinforced by more bad habits.

Try beginning your gravity turn sometime after you reach 15,000 meters, less drag from the thinner atmosphere will make it easier to keep control as you turn. To sturdy up your longer, wobblier rockets, run struts from the capsule down to your engine stages.

Asparagus staging isn't as good as it used to be due to changes in the aerodynamic model. Look at adapting to rockomax engines, the mainsail is a great way to get into space.

Well, now I want to rewatch the Fusing episode. Again. For the 20th time.

helluva cliffhanger!

can't wait for the next one :D

Yeah. Vinny, Alex and Austin are pretty firmly in the "overengineer everything" of their newbie KSP experience.