KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM MKS TRIAL

In particular, I pulled down the one that allows modifying some of the costs in carrier mode because I want to jack up science costs tenfold at least, likely more. That said, I don't shy away from modding. I'd preferably stay away from modded parts until I've cut my teeth on the stock ones. And this day has been very educational for me because I finally found a use for those snazzy Mk1 cockpits that doesn't involve staying in the atmosphere.

KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM MKS TRIAL

I have seen plenty of Scott Manley videos and ran through the tutorial, but I'm otherwise figuring things out the Kerbal way: trial and error. Do note before complaining that I'm littering the thread with this crap that I'm a complete novice who hasn't been playing for even a week. Discovered that the booster was unstable because the cockpit's fins pulled the center of lift far in front of the center of mass added more fins to the main stage, booster no longer flips. Hit water at 8.8 m/s, heat shield held up. Repeat of experiment no.7 with retrograde reentry. Heat shield exploded on touchdown, but the cockpits remained intact. All four overheated and fell off, flipped retrograde from the asymmetric air resistance. Added two more fins and extra fuel for both stages, which solved the not-reaching-orbit problem. Almost smacked into the ground due to being too aerodynamic to decelerate, had to set SAS to retro to flip sideways in order to decelerate enough for safe chute release.Д®xperiment no.7, double cockpit in right-angle reentry. Failed to reach orbit (booster might be getting underpowered now) and reentered at ~1600 m/s, had to continuously roll back and forth to keep the fins from overheating.

Mk1 Standard Cockpit modified subassembly approved.Д®xperiment no.6, double cockpit (standard and inline back-to-back), kinda success. While attempting to keep the fins from falling off from the heat by rolling back and forth, rolled too far and got flipped retrograde. Repeat of experiment no.6, kinda success. Main stage flipped horizontal at the beginning of the gravity turn. Dangerous fuselage heating, but the nose heat shield did its job.Д®xperiment no.6 with a steeper reentry trajectory. Repeat of experiment no.5, major success! Survived nose-first reentry with no parts destroyed! Dangerous heating in fins, but minor rolling eliminated the problem (and whenever I rolled too far, the other fin almost hit maximum heat in half a second).

Main stage flipped over at 7k altitude, recovered but couldn't pull nose up from beyond horizontal, even with the extra reaction wheels on this design (to keep it stable during reentry). Experiment aborted assembly too aerodynamic and stops decelerating during reentry if not flying retrograde.Д®xperiment no.5 with the avionics suite removed to expose the heatshield. First attempt at nose-first reentry, side fins ripped off by reentry. Basic Mk1 Cockpit subassembly approved.Д®xperiment no.4 with Mk1 Standard Cockpit subassembly proposal (inline cockpit with heat shield between the nosecone and the nose avionics suite). I usually just dive right in but this time, I burned nearly half an orbit away and the heat was still going strong at 15k. I love this game.Д®xperiment no.3, success! Survived reentry and landing! About a third of the heat shield burned off must be the reentry trajectory. Cockpit landed on top of the admin building while the booster completed a 180В° turn and hit the ground nose-first. Rocket spun out of control seconds after launch due to the complete lack of any control surfaces or vectored engines with extremely frantic clicking, I managed to open the service bay containing the chutes and blow the terminal decoupler (forgot to set up the abort group yet again ). Still, note to self: despite the naysayers online, a Mk1 cockpit can survive reentry just fine as long as it's got something between it and the heat.Д®xperiment no.2, set the chute's release pressure to halfway and added a drogue chute. Also, rocket pitched over a couple klicks up, but managed to recover enough that the terminal stage still reached orbit. Key word being 'reentry', because the thing came in over mountains and smacked into the ground at near terminal velocity due to the chute opening too late because I maxed out the release pressure to keep it from opening too early (or rather, to keep myself from having to wait three minutes until it descended to the ground).

I finally managed to get a Mk1 cockpit through reentry today.

Kerbal space program mks