Kerbal: Project B.E.A.S.T: Part 10

The last few minutes of this were harrowing. Well done, guys.

That was impressive.

Ahhhhhh! Just EVA the 5 kilometers! That's just thumbnails in space terms. Didn't you see Gravity?

Okay, needed to get that out of my system. Good job and stuff.

Vinny must parallel park like a motherfucker.

@grimluck343: Yes, saving him basically works the same way as with the other ones, that are in orbit around Kerbin. You just need to do same on a much much bigger scale. So that might require them to build a stronger ship, because you need to adjust an orbit around the sun instead of a planet.

After seeing this episode, I am pretty sure they can do it, if they manage to build a decent ship!

The last few minutes of this video were tense as all hell. Congrats to gbeast for parallel parking in space. Now get those kerbals home!

I'm not gonna lie. I didn't think they could do it. but I was so impressed when they got their ship right up to the other one. Good job everyone.

After watching the expertise that Mr. Manley employed during his take on this operation I can't help but feel like this might be a bit of Mission Impossible for our intrepid band of B.E.A.S.T.nauts.

How does this series just keep getting better and better. The tension in that EVA was unbearable.

Looks like next time Alex has an attack of nerves and causes them to decouble the engine too early again, just like in the return from the successful mun mission. Oh alex.

Greatest Giant Bomb series ever.... That intro.

My favourite part of that is that in the quick look they did before this, Vinny did some EVA goofing around to freak out Alex & Austin, but in this they're all at the same level of terror

Is it me or is Vinny's voice becoming increasingly deep and masculine?
Is that a benefit of being a father? Hmm.

Ok no. No. This episode was literally one of the best pieces of content this website has ever put out. I fucking yelped with joy when that little dude climbed aboard the rescue ark. I used to think that UPF was the most enjoyable thing put out by Giant Bomb, but this series has slowly but surely earned that title. What a goddamn emotional rollercoaster. My nerves are frayed.

Shout out to Alex for being the much needed voice of reason in all of this madness, I think he's made some pretty great calls for the Beast team in the series so far. Excellent stuff, guys.

You can tell they are not used to the metric system if 1m/s is considered fast ;) That's slower than walking speed

I was thinking this for a bit but then... let's just say that without a solid grasp of relative velocities and orbital physics that was being discussed around the midpoint (towards the end I feel it got better with realisations of relatively stationary positions and finally zooming out to see that when two ships are at basically the same position and the same velocity then they obviously have the same orbital trajectory), I became very concerned that we would get a ~3km jump where they accelerated for most of the distance and so either cratered on or (far more likely) flew right past the ark at a great rate to knots due to not managing the relative velocity and rather thinking that several kms required a lot of EVA thrust to make up the gap.

Can't wait to see how the next rescue goes and if they manage to integrate those lessons into making a more efficient encounter and jump. Such a great series, even without regular screams of "Vinny!"

Waaaaay too cautious to the point it was infuriating to watch, but it's crazy how close he actually got it. When they had it within 2km I was like, boom, done, just EVA and move on to the next. Then like an hour later they finally had him on board. After 2 minutes of crawling along the ship for no reason.

Lol, they went from not understanding how fast things are in space to thinking 1 m/s is crazy fast. Watching them creep through space during the EVA was hilarious. Like a baby walking for the first time.

Their efforts to this point leave me skeptical.

Why dont i belive "things are off to a fantastic start" when the thumbnail is a Michael Bay intro?

At 30 minutes, that's about the hardest I've laughed at a Giantbomb video ever. Well done. This series is great.

This by far the best content GB has put out. I was really bummed it wasn't actually 3 hours.

Pleeeease start working towards going to other planets. You will never save those Kerbal. :(

Its not like the ordinary metric system user deals with speeds in m/s either ;)

I have no grasp of how fast it is until i convert it to km/h.

1m/s = 3.6km/h = 2.2mph

The entire length of this I was just continually yelling "Watch the Scott Manley Episode!!!".

Their collective understanding of relative velocity is nonexistent and it's fantastic.

Is this because you live in a hybrid measurement system? I ask because "how far are my eyes above the floor" is something you'd expect to know, except for if you live somewhere with legacy imperial units for some stuff (like how tall you are).

1m/s means that if something is falling at that (steady terminal velocity) speed and goes past my eyes, it'll be about 2 seconds before that hits the floor. At which point I realise I've used the wrong verb there, nothing fell past my eyes, it floated down past my eyes. km/h conversion not required. Because this is in no ways vehicle speeds, but rather "how long does it take me to walk 100 metres" or "what does something look like when it moves around me, using the length of bits of my body for context".

Wow, I've only just noticed that Kerbals are basically green Minions. Why the feck are you saving these guys!?

@shivoa: No we use only the metric system but i never ever use m/s in my ordinary life. Thinking like in your example will take longer than just taking it times 3.6 to get it converted to km/h for which i have lifelong references imprinted in my brain.

3.6km/h, yeh thats a slow walk!

Im so used to speeds in km/h so even if i did it your way i would end up thinking "that object would be floating by my eyes at roughly 3km/h" so an conversion to km/h is unavoidable.

This might be my favorite episode so far. It has it all.

I don't know if I can watch these anymore. They're not actually progressing with knowledge, it almost feels like they're regressing at times. I know the fun is to just try it and see what happens, but watching them try to line up orbits and pass up SO MANY good intersections and not really understand what they're doing is just rough. Maybe they just need to do a little more learning before attempting. I know when I did my first rescue missions I watched a lot of Scott manley before hand, but it is still nerve wrecking and hard, but at least I understood what I needed to do. And there's so much propellant in that EVA suit, just get out there and fly around.

I'm now just skipping around the video and watching the close call parts because matching orbits and all that was just draining.

@captainboosh said:

Yeh it can be frustrating at times and you just wanna reach out through the screen with a tiny tiny hint to save them hours of trial and error but you cant ;)

Eventually they will figure out an intersection between the two orbits and an close encounter is not the same thing. You can be within arms reach of each others without having intersecting orbits. As many times as Austin pointed out they actually where closer now than at the intersection ahead it wont be long before they have an eureka.

I can't believe you guys fucking did it! Congrats!!!!!!

1:54:00 was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

God, their caution is excruciating :)

I don't have any fingernails left!

The "kickstand" (aka the launch clamp system) is always a good idea, because it provides power as long as it's connected to your ship on the ground pre-launch, so your battery doesn't drain when you time-warp before launching.

@shivoa: This must be one of those "many ways in which our brains can work" things because to me, I can't conceive of not thinking about it as knowing how far 1m is and how long 1s takes; just visualising something moving that 1 metre in 1 second and getting a real solid feel for velocity with that context. Without any conversion.

"I don't know if I can get up to 1m/s on EVA"

*head-desk*

This series is just superb. The moments of high tension are just beyond sublime. Doodny's spacewalk was just amazingly tense. Bravo for managing to line those ships up. I'm sure for people who play KSP it's infuriating, but for a layman it's astonishing.

Yeah, shouldn't have watched the Scott Manley thing. This is impossibly frustrating after that :(

Thanks for the fix!!!!

Quality of life suggestion:

Kerbals always automatically orient themselves along the normal/anti normal axis (the purple triangles) when you turn their suit RCS thrusters on, so one way to make an EVA go much easier is to orient both of your ships along the normal/anti normal axis before getting out.

This is the most screaming-at-the-tv episode yet

Tangental Vinny Logic is the best Vinny Logic.

edit:

A watched pot never boils, but a Kerbal rocket does.

Holy shit you guys. That was very impressive. Well done.

How precisely they matched orbits was completely unnecessary, but seeing the two ships stationary next to each other is really awesome

For everyone who says "just EVA it", I'm pretty sure they don't realise that the amount of propellant they have to work with is drastically more than anything we actually have in real life, and I don't think they can be particularly blamed for that.

On top of that, I'm pretty sure what they were all thinking would happen is that the Kerbal who ejected from the stranded ship would not have the same velocity as the craft they were just in, and so would get left behind in a matter of seconds. That being why the boys kept referring to the transfer between ships as a "jump". They were picturing it like someone trying to jump between two cars as they travel down the highway. So they were being so outrageously precise with their thrusters going between the ships because they were expecting one false move to knock the Ark out of its synchronised orbit with MunShot, and to send the Kerbal careening away from MunShot in a manner that couldn't be fixed.

Yeah, they could have done it much sooner, and it's a problem that they didn't realise that they were so close so many times, but they got it in one voyage, and, like aerobraking, they can refine their process significantly now. Frankly, I was impressed that they all cottoned on to how speeding up and slowing down in orbit works so quickly, considering Scott's story about how actual astronauts could get confused by the whole process.