You win, PC Gamer.
Hey, remember that time 12 months ago when the release of Kerbal Space Program 2 got delayed by 1-2 years? If you thought that was cool, you’re going to love this:
Inspired by Perservance, and growing a bit bored with my current games. I fired up KSP for the first time in 18 month or so. I believe the last version was 1.7…
Kudus for Squad continue to work on improving the game. They are now up to 1.11.1 and have really made significant improvements in everything from graphics. to UX to new content.
1.11. adds the ability for engineers to fix things in space and even perform construction.
It comes with really nice manual, which illustrates many of the basic of orbital mechanics.
They’ve integrated much of the functions of mods like MechJeb, and Kerbal Engineer Redux into the base game. For example all the Delta V stuff.
The altimeter now can show both absolute altitude and above ground. Super helpful, while landing on moons and such.
Sadly I rage quit again, because I was playing Ironman and had a serious of screwup (some of which weren’t my fault.)
Edit: I forgot the reason for posting.
If you tried KSP more than a year ago and got frustrated, It’s worth giving it a second look. It is really a fun game, and by far the most educational video game out there.
Also, the new EVA construction stuff makes for some really hilarious disasters:
I haven’t played in years, since before even 1.0. I should go back.
That’s SO Kerbal. I laughed. ;)
That made me laugh too! And it sent me back to the KSP forums to see what’s new. I’m half-tempted to reinstall, but I’m not sure I’m ready to do gravity turns and such again. On the other hand, one of the great joys of gaming is docking manually in KSP. :)
That’s definitely perfect Kerbal material. I’m first docking in a almost two years I did it on my second attempt.
In a few weeks, Kerbal Space Program will be getting its final update after which Squad will completely shift to supporting development of KSP2:
I thought Squad was staying totally independent of KSP 2 and was never going to work on.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Squad ’s efforts will now shift towards joining Intercept Games in the development of Kerbal Space Program 2”
Maybe the shennanigans Take-Two pulled with the original studio changed things.
NASA needs your help!
Oh I am in! This looks like fun. I’ve never redirected two asteroids before. and with ions that should take about, oh say… 2 years?
Arrise ye undying thing!
My boy (9 this week) is about done with Minecraft so I’m graduating his ass to KSP. He’s gobbling it up despite the language barrier.
We’ve gotten kerbals to orbit and back, sent a probe to the mun and even managed to get an IR telescope in an orbit just beyond Kerbin’s.
Is there an easy way to get the game to show Holman transfer windows?
Cheers,
Schurem&Son
There’s a mod that does the calculations for you in game and can even set an alarm if you’re using Kerbal Alarm Clock.
It looks like TriggerAu just updated the Transfer Window Planner mod a few hours ago, after almost a year without updates.
If you’re just looking for Hohmann window transfers, assuming orbits are circular and co-planar (a “close-enough” assumption in many cases) I think you can still use Olex’s transfer planner. It’s almost 10 years old at this point, but I don’t think KSP’s solar system has changed:
You can also do the calculations yourself fairly easily. For a Hohmann transfer, the transfer ellipse always has a major axis that is origin body’s orbital radius + destination body’s orbital radius. For instance for Kerbin to Duna:
Kerbin orbital radius: 13.6 million km
Duna orbital radius: 20.7 million km
So the major axis for the transfer ellipse is 13.6+20.7=34.3 million km. And the semi-major axis is half of that, or 17.15 million km.
That 17.15 km is 1.26x bigger than Kerbin’s orbital radius, so the period of the transfer ellipse is 1.26^(3/2) or 1.42x one Kerbin year. Hohmann transfers always take exactly one half of the transfer ellipse period, so the transfer time is 0.71 Kerbin years or about 302 Kerbin days (=6.5 million seconds.)
Duna’s year is about 17.3 million seconds. (This information is on the wiki.) Since the transfer time (6.5 million seconds) is about 0.37 of one Duna year, Duna will move 0.37*360° = 135.3° of its orbit during the transfer. Since you want Duna to end up 180° from the launch angle at the end of the transfer, you have to launch when Duna is 44.7° prograde from Kerbin around the sun (which is what Olex’s planner shows.)
The wiki also tells you Duna’s synodic period is 19.6 million seconds (= about 910 Kerbin days), which is how often the launch window appears. Duna and Kerbin start out 135° apart. Since Duna is higher than Kerbin it orbits slower, so its synodic orbit is retrograde. It backs up 90° from 135° to the launch window of about 45°, which takes 1/4 of the synodic period or about 4.9 million seconds = 226 Kerbin days.
And using alexmun’s trusty launch planner webapp, you can see that there’s a delta-V minimum around 226 days, which represents that launch window.
(Interestingly, it’s actually more efficient to launch into a slightly larger transfer ellipse that intercepts Duna faster. I think this is because Duna’s orbital inclination aligns better with the transfer orbit that way, but Hohmann transfers don’t consider inclination. The delta-V difference between this shorter transfer and the Hohmann one is small, but the transfer time is about 60 days shorter.)
Whoa… noice! We now have ummm looked at the thinking a PhD in rocket science does :D
The kid looked at your graph. I tried my best to explain the things (the math is a bit beyond me tbh). He looked at 13k m/s Dv needed, grinned and went “challenge accepted”. He’s a kerbal allright!
Ha, no the minimum DV solution is about 1000 m/s assuming you aerocaptue. :)
Too late! 13k m/s it is!