Kerbal: Project B.E.A.S.T: Part 05

God speed, brave Kerbals. Bring our boys home.

This can't possibly end well. At least I hope it won't.

How many Kerbals will Vinny send to early graves this episode? Let's find out.

Yes!

Ground control to Major Tom....

I'm so happy they spun this off into its own thing; the flow has gotten better with each episode, Vinny gets to show off a bit of his editing chops, and Kerbal is consistently funny. At the moment, it's my favorite thing on GB.

EDIT: @vinny@alex@austin_walker Just two quick tips for whenever you record a new episode after posting this one:

1. Delta V basically boils down to your ability to change your velocity. 8000 m/s means you can, say accelerate from 2,000 m/s to 10,000 m/s, or if you are going 3,000 m/s and want to slow down to 0, you can do that and still speed yourself back up to 5,000 m/s if you want to.
2. TWR is Thrust to Weight Ratio, or how muck kick you have vs how much needs to be kicked. A TWR of .5 means you've got half as much force as you do weight, 2.0 is double, etc. This is important for getting yourself into an orbit; a TWR that's at 1 or less isn't going to get you off of the ground.

Except for rare cases like using Xenon based propulsion, you can usually get away with focusing on Delta V as the more of that you have, the better your rocket usually is, and all the big engines that you'd naturally want to use for your first stage are optimized to be heavy lifters (at the expense of burning more fuel).

Plus, TWR is very easily visualized on Kerban; if you ain't going up (or not going up fast enough), you ain't got enough of it.

Some engines provide less push but are fuel efficient, and as such they are well suited for space crusin' or landing on things with lower gravity than Kerban. You can middle click and check out the ISP rating; the higher that is, the more fuel efficient an engine is, and that's usually want you want to go for once you are in space and don't have to fight drag or gravity as much.

I almost missed this because it wasn't highlighted on the front page! WHOOO VINCO!

yayyyy these make every Monday morning at work a bit more bearable :)

The intros for these videos are always spectacular. Great job on the editing!

I don't condone advertising of any sort, but this episode could've been brought to you by The Martian.

Oh man. Vinny definitely hasn't done the tutorial for intercepting or docking.

I mean, don't they realize how fast they rocket are going? They are, after all, rockets! Even if they managed to intercept using their homegrown method, they would pass by each other in the blink of an eye.

In all the years I have been watching and listening to GB stuff, I have NEVER laughed so hard as when the Ark blew past their stranded spacecraft at over 8,000 km/h.

Holy shit, I am tearing up laughing. That was absolutely amazing. Possibly the funniest single moment I can recall on this site, taking the throne from that time the crew decided to watch the live stream of their own live stream.

@mike: KSP is just the most joyous thing, especially with the GBEAST crew at the helm. :D

woke up early before work to watch this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Collecting 3 Kerbals in one mission is not the most sound of plans, but certainly the most economic!

Best episode to date. Worth the wait. Everyone contributing and nobody dragging it down or going too wild. The emerging story is legitimately compelling.

Correction for Austin: You guys weren't 8 meters away, you were kilometers away. It was pretty hilarious to watch you guys get so excited, though. You're going to need to do some research to pull this off, this is the sort of thing that's impossible to learn through trial and error. You're going to be hitting a wall pretty soon where lack of knowledge cannot be overcome by sheer perseverance, whether you're just trying to get to Mun and back, or rescue crew.

If Project B.E.A.S.T. were run by Scott Manley, it would be a quick fifteen-minute video with no casualties. With Vinny at the helm, it is hours of explosive entertainment!

@almostswedish: To be honest, I'm kinda glad he didn't! or we would have never had that moment.

That moment was fucking amazing.

I have no interest in playing this game as it's very much like work and I just don't have the time despite been really interested in it (back in my younger days as a student I'd be all over this). However I love watching these episodes they are incredible fun and occasionally I feel very much apart of it, I sit and think about solutions and how x works vs y its so good.

Good work guys, keep em coming.

Spent most of this episode waiting for them to realize that perpendicular orbits don't play nice with rendezvous missions. I love their overly ambitious plans.

This is my favorite series on Giant Bomb. Long may it continue. In Vinny we trust!!

So near and yet so far fast

Vinny, if you're reading this, I actually really preferred the little cuts you did in the first video of Project B.E.A.S.T. I know it's more work, but trimming the fat on searching for parts in the hangar, waiting to get to places, etc. makes for a more palatable video, in my opinion. It can also result in funny, subtle cuts, similar to your Caravella's Chitchen video.

This liquid fuel idea is going places.

The best bit was when they had no idea they were both going to be travelling at 2000m/s in perpendicular directions hahahahaha

Oh shit! this has been up for 2 hours already. Why didnt my Bat Phone ring?

I think it's going to be literally impossible to collect anyone from orbit, you have to achieve the same orbit from launch and then... i don't know, you can't just slow down one of the objects because then the entire orbit changes, and you can't intercept an orbit sideways because those objects are travelling at thousands of meters per second, not survivable.

@bicycle_repairman: Planet Kerbin is blue and there's nothing I can do...

RIP space Kerbals ;_;7

@cikame: Not impossible, you basically have to do the same thing if you want a space station. It's pretty tricky though, and not something they're going to figure out through trial and error.

This is truly wonderful. An extended exercise in learning one key thing about space and orbits.

Now, with that knowledge under their belt, Project B.E.A.S.T is perfectly placed to... ditch solid rocket boosters for take off? What? Oh no...

Oh duders!

That moment where they're wondering about this and you're praying they notice the information on the screen. Even if this wasn't a crazy plan, it's reporting a 1.8km gap at the nearest approach. However fast you jump and boost, that's not going to end well - jumping more than a mile to a ship travelling in a completely different direction. Sure it would make a pretty cool scene in an anime.

@cikame: Nah! You just have to enter the same orbit and get close enough to use more direct interception movement. It's explained really well in one of the tutorials. I would have no idea how to do it otherwise!

But doing it like they were, with perpendicular orbits yes it's completely impossible since they'll go by each other at thousands of m/s.

Edit: Also, no need to time it from launch. You get into a higher or lower orbit at first, doesn't matter where the target is (could be on the other side of the planet) there is always an interception path eventually since different heights of orbit automatically has different velocities.

Thanks! That is helpful!

parachutes and ladders

Haven't seen it posted yet, but http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83437-illustrated-tutorial-for-orbital-rendezvous/ is the guide that taught me orbital transfers.

Basically match inclination, so your orbital plane is parallel with your target's, then shoot for a larger/smaller orbit so one of you will catch up to the other. Screw around with maneuvers until you get an intercept at ~5-10km, and once you're there, plan a maneuver to match their orbit.

The initial plan of "find an intercept point" is fine, but the plane matching is the missing piece there.

Love it! Kept waiting for the moment they'd realize that their ships were moving thousands of meters per second in different directions - really happy that the moment of realization happened at the point it did though. Would've loved an actual collision, but that would've required some serious accuracy.

Calling International Rescue...

@mike: I know right!!! 7 years of PURE cut gold from these DUDERS...and this BROKE ME! I can't stop laughing

Best Episode so far!!!!

Time to watch this with a lot of Ziggy Stardust playing in the background.

If it makes y'all feel any better, NASA had trouble with orbital rendezvous at first because they didn't 100% understand the orbital mechanics involved. Of course they had the barest fundamentals down a little better and weren't planning on catching a bullet.

This one's for you Starman.

For the love of god, watch a video or read a guide on basic rocket design. I'm not an expert but I'm actually having a hard time watching this series. These guys will be making KSP videos until the end of time if they're trying to do an orbital rendezvous before successfully returning from the Mun or even achieving an eccentric orbit around Kerbin.